For Revenge or Redemption? (10 page)

She was having Seth Mason’s child—again!

‘You OK?’ Simone glanced up at her young boss with matronly concern as Grace emerged from the ‘ladies’ just outside her PA’s office. She had darted in there a few minutes before, overcome by a bout of sickness.

‘I’m fine, Simone.’ Grace wanted to dismiss any suggestion that she wasn’t, unwilling to draw attention to herself or her pregnancy. But she had just seen herself in the ladies’ room mirror and had been shocked by how washed out she looked, with her black pin-striped suit emphasising the sickly pallor of her skin.

‘Yeah?’ Simone sounded as sceptical as she looked. ‘And my name’s Errrol Flynn and I swing from chandeliers for a living.’

Grace couldn’t help but smile wanly at the images that conjured up. ‘I’d like to see that,’ she murmured, too under par even to want to talk right then. ‘Honestly, Simone, I’m fine.’ She managed to inject just the right degree of authority in her voice to silence her concerned PA; she was glad of her standing in the company which gave her the right to pull rank, that she seldom exercised, so that she could escape to the privacy of her own office.

The phone was ringing on her desk before she even had chance to sit down.

‘How are you getting on with that hunk you’re answerable to now?’ Corinne enquired from her yacht somewhere in the tepid waters of Madeira, sounding far too breezy. ‘And don’t tell me you’re not enjoying it, because he’s the type of man that could satisfy even someone with as many sexual hang-ups as you.’

Sighing, Grace rued the day that she had confided in her grandfather’s young wife about her lack of desire for the men she dated; she’d been especially worried when her real lack of enthusiasm had extended even to Paul.

‘Did you know my grandfather knew of Seth Mason from years ago?’ she asked the model, not feeling up to having this conversation with her. ‘And that he would have done anything to keep him from pushing his way into his company’s boardroom?’

‘Not pushing, Grace, dear—storming it. And with all that lovely drive and crackling authority!’ That the woman was smitten by Seth’s looks and dangerous charm was obvious to Grace. ‘Anyway, what do you mean?’ She could almost see the redhead’s green eyes narrowing in anticipation of some juicy snippet of information about him, and realised too late that she had said too much when Corinne, her voice dropping confidentially, enquired, ‘What did he do? Try to have his wicked way with you?’

She laughed, supposedly at the improbability of it. But it was so on the mark that Grace couldn’t contain the sharp little breath that escaped her. ‘Good heavens! Is that it?’ Corinne was far too shrewd not to have noticed. ‘My word! Have I hit the nail on the head? Is that why you’re so opposed to working for him? What did he do, Grace, spoil you for every other man?’ Corinne’s amused tones were just a little too loud, far too triumphant. ‘You aren’t frigid, love. You were just weaned on the wrong type of man far too soon.’

The wrong type of man full-stop! Grace thought, hating him, angry with him and with herself—for wanting him, for missing him like crazy, and for allowing herself to get pregnant—twice!—by the man she had once snubbed. Only now he was snubbing her, and it wasn’t very nice. No, worse than that—it hurt like hell!

But why? she asked herself, agonised. She wasn’t in love with him, was she? Or had she just been kidding herself all
along? Was that why she had never been able to indulge in casual sexual relationships with men as some of her contemporaries did? Or even find the degree of pleasure she should have found with the man she had been planning to marry? Was it because she had found her soulmate in a man her upbringing had forced her to reject? The man with whom she had compared all other men she met, only to find them lacking in every way?

‘Stop dreaming up romantic dramas, Corinne,’ she parried, shaken by the possibility, and desperate to keep the ex-model from realising that she had guessed the truth—or at least part of it, at any rate. No way was she ready to accept that all her problems with men stemmed from a void in her life that only Seth Mason could fill.

‘Granddad would have been appalled by what you did. Culverwells is going to wind up being sold off. Seth says he won’t do that, but I don’t believe it.’ And in a sudden rush of anger, because she hadn’t seen him, because she didn’t know where he was and because she had been unfortunate enough to conceive his child when he didn’t even like her, she blurted out, ‘He’s a money-making, social-climbing, mercenary opportunist! And if you ever see him again, you can tell him I said so!’

‘Why don’t you tell him yourself?’ Corinne’s voice suddenly sounded sultry, oddly provocative. ‘He’s sitting right here on deck beside me. It’s Grace. I think she’s missing you.’ There was no attempt on Corinne’s part to cover the mouthpiece.

In a mortified daze, Grace grabbed the edge of her desk for support. Seth was on her grandfather’s yacht? Seth was in Madeira with Corinne?

‘Hello, Grace.’ As it started to sink in that he must have heard everything that her grandfather’s widow had been saying about her, that deep voice coming down the line was agonising torment. ‘Is everything all right?’

No, it blasted well isn’t!

Then, as it dawned that Corinne must know everything that had been going on between Seth and herself, in a voice raw with accusation she exhaled, ‘Did you tell her?’

‘Tell her?’ He sounded puzzled. ‘Tell her what?’

‘About us?’ She imagined them together, discussing her, laughing about it.

‘What is there to tell?’

‘For goodness’ sake! Do I have to spell it out?’ He was stalling for time, making her sweat—and enjoying every minute of it. ‘You know exactly what I’m talking about.’

‘Now, come on, Grace. You know what I said about kissing and telling.’

‘Oh, thanks a bundle!’ Now Corinne wouldn’t be in any doubt about what had gone on between them. ‘So now you’ve made sure she knows, if she didn’t before!’ The pain she felt inside was excruciating, but she forced herself to continue even as she collapsed, sick with herself, onto her chair. ‘I suppose you’re getting immense satisfaction out of this?’

‘No more than you were when you tried to convince Simone—and probably the whole office—that I was involved in a paternity suit.’

His words made her flinch. Well the joke had backfired on her. And how!

‘So that’s what this is—tit for tat? Let the spoilt, stuck-up little brat stew while you’re sunning yourself with Corinne and having a good laugh over it at my expense? Why not just shout it to the crew? Why not tell everybody what we did? You’re worse than unscrupulous, you’re…!’

‘Hold your horses, Grace. Corinne’s gone below.’

‘What for?’ she enquired pointedly. ‘Her bikini top?’

‘You think I’m bedding your grandfather’s widow?’

‘Is that what they call it, lying bare-breasted on the open deck of a yacht? Or has she gone down to warm up that nice, big double bed for you?’

‘What’s really eating you, Grace?’ He was beginning to sound annoyed. ‘Are you jealous?’

‘Hah! Don’t be ridiculous!’ she retorted, feeling a wave of nausea wash over her. She took a deep breath to try and stave off the feeling before she went on. ‘It may surprise you to know that I don’t care what you do. Just don’t do it in my company’s time!’

‘It isn’t your company—it’s mine.’ All levity had gone from his voice. ‘And so help me, Grace, if I was in the building right now I’d come straight down to your office and take you over my knee.’

The anger trickling down the line from goodness knew how many miles away was a tangible thing in the silence that followed.

Through an imprisoning sexual tension, Grace could hear the water lapping against the side of the boat, hear the wind tugging at the rigging, a mixture of sounds confused and distorted by the ringing of a phone somewhere in another office and the deep, rhythmic sound of the photocopier on Simone’s desk.

‘I’m here to finalise a deal,’ he stressed before she could recover her vexed and wounded pride enough to deal with that last sexist remark. ‘But I’ll be back in the office next week, and then I’ll give both you and the company all the attention you need. Now, what was it you wanted?’

‘Wanted?’

‘Why did you ring me? Is there some problem?’

Trying to clear her head, Grace only then remembered that Corinne had telephoned
her
, whether to make her jealous, or in some weird, sadistic way to see how she would cope having her private emotions discussed in front of Seth, she wasn’t sure.

‘Yes,’ she breathed, so humiliated now that she didn’t care if she did ruin his week, wanting to make things as difficult and as painful for him as he was making them for
her in being with Corinne. That was impossible, though, she thought, because nothing could hurt him as much as she was hurting as she spat out bitterly, ‘I’m pregnant!’

T
HE
phone she slammed down started ringing almost immediately, and even without checking the number on the display Grace knew it would be Seth.

When she didn’t pick it up, it continued to ring, a shrill insistence that cut through her tension, causing the embryo of a pain to start throbbing on either side of her temples. At last the ringing stopped.

Good; let him stew! she thought, gritting her teeth against her headache and her suffocating misery. But instantly the phone started ringing again.

When she didn’t respond this time, the merciful seconds’ silence that followed was immediately broken by her mobile phone ringing in her bag on the shelf behind her desk.

Grabbing the bag, she found the phone with fingers that shook, and with more than a degree of unusual force switched it off.

She couldn’t—wouldn’t—give him the satisfaction of venting his frustrations on her now. If she was going to have to suffer all over again for her stupidity in going to bed with him, then he was going to as well, she agonised with bitter tears stinging her eyes just as a call came through on her internal line.

‘What is it?’ She knew the answer even before she heard the receptionist’s harassed response.

‘It’s Mr Mason. He’s on line one. He’s having difficulty getting through to your office.’

‘Tell Mr Mason I’m not taking any calls.’

There was a brief hesitation. ‘I can’t do that.’ Grace could almost feel the girl’s horror at even being asked to contemplate contradicting their new chief executive.

‘Then tell him I’m out,’ Grace instructed, her mouth tightening at the sway Seth held over what had been her grandfather’s and then her staff.

‘I can’t do that either.’ The disembodied voice sounded even more diffident. ‘He already knows you aren’t.’

Feeling sorry for the girl and not wanting to put her in an awkward position, Grace grabbed her coat and, imparting a resolute, ‘Well, I am now!’ she made a hurried exit from the building.

It was wet and murky outside and cold needles of rain stung her face, as she’d left her umbrella in the office. The bare trees around the square she turned into looked like dark shadows of their former selves, and even the houses and shops looked dreary and left-over now that the festive season was gone.

She needed to get out, she told herself in an attempt to justify dropping everything and making her escape from the office, a thing which under normal circumstances she would never even have considered. But these weren’t normal circumstances, were they?

The fact of her pregnancy had still scarcely sunk in when Corinne’s call had come through, and the woman had made those very personal remarks about her—in front of Seth. Only Grace hadn’t known that Seth was with Corinne up until that point. Until then she had simply been wondering how she was going to tell him about her pregnancy.

Anger and jealousy tore at her as she thought about him with Corinne; imagined them lying on the sun deck of that yacht, limbs entwined, pale skin yielding to the sinewy strength of dark bronze.

What would it matter to him that she was carrying his child? She was a woman of the world—or so he thought. Women of the world could handle little set-backs in their lives like unwanted pregnancies, particularly if they weren’t in love with the child’s father. And she wasn’t in love with him, was she? she asked herself fiercely. How could she be with a man who could treat her so badly? Who was determined to make her pay for the way she had treated him when she’d been a spoilt teenager, no matter what the cost?

The blast of a van’s horn brought her up sharply as she made to cross the busy road, and she jumped back onto the pavement, berating herself for jeopardising not only her own life but her unborn baby’s too.

She wasn’t a woman of the world. She would have this baby and she would bear the consequences, she determined grittily. It was just that it was going to be so humiliating, facing Seth.

She hadn’t planned to shout it down the phone at him. But she had been so mortified when she’d realised he must have heard the things Corinne had been saying that she hadn’t been able to help herself, knowing he must surely think her a wimp—besotted with him! And, if he found out that she had conceived after her rash behaviour with him last time, he’d think her even more of a fool now.

Which she was, she reminded herself with unsparing criticism. Not only for being weak-willed enough to let him break down all her defences, which had led to her winding up in bed with him, but for not even considering that she might not be adequately protected when she had vowed all those years ago that she would never let any man affect her enough for anything like this to happen again. And now here she was, eight years on, older but certainly no wiser. Not only in the same situation, but with the same man!

There were no calls for her when she returned to the office
with her head throbbing, her emotions in turmoil. At least, none from Seth, she was surprised to discover.

Perhaps he had given up trying to get hold of her and had simply gone back to enjoying himself with Corinne, Grace thought bitterly, although it didn’t make her feel any better to imagine him stewing over what she had told him. If he had any conscience at all, he had to be! And privately, too, because she couldn’t imagine for one moment that he’d discuss it with Corinne.

Or perhaps he would.

Piercingly she remembered the things that he and Corinne had said to make her fling the news of her pregnancy down the phone at him. Perhaps they had continued to discuss her afterwards. Perhaps even now he was taking solace in Corinne’s arms.

As she moved around her office, trying to maintain her usual degree of efficiency and failing miserably, she was unable to imagine Corinne not taking exception to her stupendous lover sleeping with another woman. And, not just another woman, her late husband’s granddaughter! Although, knowing Corinne, if Seth did tell her he was fathering a child she might even congratulate him on his virility!

Would he make love to the model, put his inconvenient mistake with Grace out of his mind until he returned next week? she wondered torturously. Because wouldn’t this unplanned pregnancy be the ultimate revenge as far as he was concerned?

Angry tears stung her eyes as her head continued to pound and it was very late in the day when Simone, aware that her boss was feeling under the weather, came into the office to help Grace find a file that she had misplaced.

When the phone buzzed on the desk and Simone took the call, she said in a dumbfounded whisper to Grace, ‘It’s Seth. And he’s in a hell of a mood.’

‘Tough,’ Grace responded flatly from the filing cabinet,
still determined not to speak to him. ‘I’ll talk to him when he gets back.’’

‘You’re damn right you will!’

Both women’s heads swivelled round to meet his implacable authority in the doorway. That uncompromising masculinity was only intensified by the white-hot anger in his face as he ordered, ‘Simone—out!
Now
!’

The PA didn’t stay to be told a second time. Distractedly it registered with Grace that the call that had come through from Reception must have been to warn her that the new CEO had just thundered in.

Her mood, though, matched his as, determined not to be intimidated by him, she snapped, ‘Don’t you ever come in here and speak to me or my PA like that again!’

‘And don’t you ever dare to deliver a blow like that closing remark you made this morning and then think you can just put the phone down on me!’

‘Why not? Did it cramp your style with Corinne?’ His face blanched with fury, but she was angry too. Very angry. ‘Well, I’m very sorry to have dragged you back from such adoring company!’

She was near to tears but strove to control them, realising that he could only have used the executive jet to get back here so fast. He’d probably flown it himself, she thought waspishly, remembering his PA telling her once that he was an experienced pilot in his own right.

He moved angrily past her, grabbing her raincoat from the coat stand.

‘Here. Take this. We’re leaving.’

She only obeyed because her head was throbbing too much to endure a shouting match with him in the office, and because an imperious hand at her elbow was already urging her towards the door.

‘Where are you taking me?’

‘Somewhere where we can be alone.’

Every cell in her body rebelled against it, although her heart was beating with a wild anticipation that left her despairing with herself.

She caught Simone’s discreet glance up at them as Seth marched her past her PA’s desk, but she was too keyed up to argue with him or to say anything to Simone.

With his jaw set in stone, Seth summoned the lift, saying nothing as he urged her out of the building to the waiting Mercedes.

‘Where are we going?’ she demanded to know, as Seth handed her into the back of the car and slid in beside her. ‘What makes you think you can just march into my office and start trying to take control of my life?’

The transparent screen closing in front of them obliterated any chance of their being heard by the man who was just pulling the car away.

‘I would have thought that was obvious. You’re having my child. Much as that must be the last thing that you, or either of us, wanted, I think that gives me some rights.’

He couldn’t have made it any plainer than that!

Although, she’d known her pregnancy would be the last thing he’d want or expect, hearing him say it cut as painfully as scaling a wall of broken glass, and she turned away from him to hide the anguish scoring her face.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, but coldly, tersely, noticing the pain of rejection in her tight, tense profile. ‘I really believed you were on the Pill. It was wrong of me to assume.’

‘Yes, it was,’ she bit back with her eyes fixed on the headrest in front of her. If he’d used protection too, then this would never have happened, would it? she reasoned bitterly.

‘And you weren’t involved?’ he challenged thickly before she could go on to explain that she wasn’t as irresponsible as he obviously thought she was. ‘You weren’t the one writhing and sobbing beneath me in that bed?’

With flame colour touching her cheeks, Grace darted a
glance towards the thick neck of the man in front of the glass screen, immensely grateful that he couldn’t hear what was being said.

Seth’s graphic reminder of the way she had welcomed his love-making until she was begging for him to take her that night, though, shamed her into responding, ‘I don’t know what
you’ve
got to be so angry about. Anyway, I
was
on the Pill—or supposed to be.’

‘So what happened?’ His brows came together over eyes that were interrogative, darkly accusing. ‘Did you forget to take it or something?’

‘No, I didn’t! I’d had a bout of tummy trouble just before we—’ She couldn’t even bring herself to say it. And because his attitude and his insinuation that it was all her fault was only making her feel worse than she did already, she threw angrily back at him, ‘I’m not any happier about this than you are. And I’m sorry if it’s messed up whatever you had planned with Corinne, but you needn’t worry—I’ve got no plans to try and trap you!’

‘Will you shut up?’ It was a soft yet unmistakable command. ‘For heaven’s sake! Isn’t it possible for you to utter one civil word to me unless you’re being kissed?’

Turning her head sharply away from him, Grace stared sightlessly through the tinted glass at the surging bodies moving past the endless shops with their ‘sale’ signs splashed across the windows. She tried not to remember the ecstasy of that firm, male mouth covering hers, the mind-blowing pleasure as it had rediscovered her body like a familiar map, reading it with the deftness of a skilled explorer, recognising every secret curve and dip he had made his own.

‘I swore,’ she railed at herself. ‘I swore I’d never let myself get pregnant—’

Again
, she nearly said, but stopped herself in time, cupping her hands over her face with an exasperated sigh.

‘It happens.’ His voice was low, clipped, matter-of-fact.

‘Not to me.’ Inhaling deeply, Grace leaned back against the plush cushion of the headrest, closing her eyes against the truth.

Because that was just it—it did happen to her.
Twice.
Twice in her life she had gone the whole way with a man, and only one man. And twice in her life she had conceived, as though something beyond herself was determined that she would be impregnated with his seed. As though her ultimate function in life was to be the mother of his child.

‘I expect every woman who finds herself in the same situation without wanting to be probably says the same thing.’

Yes, but they aren’t having a baby with a man who doesn’t even like them. Whose only reason for making love to them in the first place was just to exact some sort of revenge!

Noticing the increasing tension in the tight line of her jaw, Seth could see that this thing had come as an appalling shock to her, much as it had come as a complete shock to him. She looked now as she had looked the night they had made love and he had queried the possibility of her getting pregnant—like having his child was the last thing she could bear to contemplate. Which it probably was, he thought.

Because of her very high-profile affairs and the way she had treated him originally, he’d believed that to a girl like her men were just things to provide amusement, but in that, at least, he was beginning to realise he’d been wrong. The things Corinne had let slip about her had amazed him, even if he did suspect that they had been disclosed solely to reduce her step-granddaughter’s possible appeal to him and boost her own sexual appeal in his eyes.

But in fact it had had the opposite effect. The knowledge that he could turn the haughty little enchantress who dumped men for a pastime, and who was really as cold as a Siberian winter, into a mass of steaming, sultry passion when he got her between the sheets had given him a shameful, chauvinistic satisfaction. Just how pliable did that make her in his hands? he
wondered with a rush of masculine hormones raising the level of his libido a few notches. Because there was no doubt that she did things to him that no other woman had ever done.