“If anyone can show any just cause why Ava and Ryan may not lawfully be joined together, let them now speak...” About the Author Scandals! Title Page CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN Copyright

“If anyone can show any just cause why Ava and Ryan may not lawfully be joined together, let them now speak...”

Jane leapt to her feet. “Stop! I know of an impediment to this marriage.”

Stunned silence. The wedding party turned as one.

Jane ventured boldly down the aisle, her gaze fixed on the minister. “You can’t marry this couple. You’re going to ask them to promise to love and honor and forsake all others—but one of them is already committed to someone else!”

SUSAN NAPIER was born on St. Valentine’s Day, so it’s not surprising she has developed an enduring love of romantic stories. She started her writing career as a journalist in Auckland, New Zealand, trying her hand at romance fiction only after she had married her handsome boss! Numerous books later she still lives with her most enduring hero, two future heroes—her sons!—two cats and a computer. When she’s not writing she likes to read and cook, often simultaneously!

Scandals!

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Get ready for the next outrageous Scandal

THE RANCHER’S MISTRESS

by

Kay Thorpe (#1924)

All will be revealed in December 1997

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Mistress of the Groom

Susan Napier

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CHAPTER ONE

THE tall, statuesque brunette wound her way sinuously through the glittering throng. Her formal black gown, cut low across her voluptuous breasts and deep to the base of her spine, flared out from her hips as she walked, the thin fabric shimmering as it slipped and slid against her long legs. Her hair was braided into a glossy black knot on the top of her head, adding to her already considerable height and emphasising the stark bareness of her white throat and shoulders.

The colour of her dress and her total lack of jewellery were in dramatic contrast to the rest of the women in the crowded hotel restaurant. The sought-after invitations from Spectrum Developments had placed an emphasis on glitz and glamour, and the female guests had taken the ‘rainbow’ theme to heart in order to flaunt their social and financial status at what was already being called Auckland’s party of the year.

The woman in black didn’t appear to be aware of her social solecism. Her head was held high, her pale, sharp features a mask of haughty calm as she ignored the whispers gathering in her wake, her icy blue gaze fixed on the small group of important men and vivacious women clustered around a towering figure at the far end of the room.

She was almost there when the tall man at the centre of all the sycophantic attention turned to pick up his half-full glass from the elegantly set dining-table beside him and caught sight of her.

His dark head lifted sharply, his nostrils flaring, his powerful muscles bunching within the sleek confines of his black-tie regalia as he shouldered through the mass of hangers-on to confront her approach. He looked like a stallion rearing at an unexpected intrusion into his territory—a massive black stallion, standing aggressively tall, radiating a restless antagonism, his spiky, short-cropped hair the same midnight colour as his superbly tailored jacket, his cobalt-blue eyes wild with untamed spirit, his blunt, masculine features hard and hostile.

Her stride briefly faltered and his expression changed to one of smouldering anticipation. His broad, flat cheekbones gave him a primitive look, the dark bloom on the smooth-shaven jaw adding to the impression of unbridled masculinity. She knew he had only just turned thirty-three but he looked older, with ruthless lines of experience etched around his eyes and mouth.

‘Well, well, well...’ he drawled in a darkly insolent voice as she came to a halt in front of him. ‘If it isn’t Miss Sherwood. I didn’t realise you were on my invitation list. How tasteless of me to ask you to celebrate the man and the deal which sent your ailing little company to the wall.’

Jane Sherwood tilted her chin to an even more imperious angle, bitterly regretting that her three-inch heels still didn’t give her nearly six-foot frame a height advantage over the sneering giant. They both knew damned well that she hadn’t received one of the prized, hand-blown glass rainbows which had accompanied the engraved invitations.

‘I wasn’t invited, Mr Blair.’ She echoed his parody of politeness with the full force of her loathing. Out of the corner of her eye she could see the white-jacketed hotel employee she had evaded at the door pointing her out to one of the guests, a wiry, hatchet-faced blond man whose grim alertness stamped ‘security’ all over him. Jane recognised him as the trouble-shooter who was never far from his boss’s side, and as he began to forge towards them her nerves tightened another notch.

A hush had descended over the immediate vicinity as Ryan Blair’s eyes crawled over the expensive designer dress.

‘Ah, so you’re the one being tasteless...although I must say you dress extremely well for someone on the brink of bankruptcy,’ he said in the same insultingly condescending tone. ‘I thought that the bailiffs would have been more rigorous in the performance of their duties—that dress alone would pay off a few of your numerous creditors...’

He raised his black eyebrows, his eyes reflecting the malice of his contemptuous smile. ‘Considering the trouble you’ve taken to gatecrash, I’m surprised you haven’t attempted to blend in with the colourful spirit of the occasion, but I suppose the black is supposed to be symbolic. I buried your company and now you’re in mourning.

‘Or is this martyred, monochrome look supposed to make me feel sorry for you? Have you come to beg for the crumbs from my table? I’m sorry, but as you can see—’ he gestured mockingly towards the tables glittering with crystal and silverware ‘—we haven’t dined yet. Why don’t you call my secretary and arrange to see me at the office? If you’re lucky I might be able to dredge up a few odd scraps to throw your way. I can’t guarantee anything, of course, but then I’m sure you’ve discovered that beggars can’t be choosers, can they, Miss Sherwood...?’

There were several titters in the background and a questioning buzz, but the protagonists were too intent on each other to be aware of the distraction.

‘I didn’t come here to ask for any favours,’ denied Jane coldly, her stomach turning at the thought of being forced to beg before this sadistic swine. That was what he wanted, she realised sickly. Having stripped Jane of her family inheritance, her bright career and practically every material possession, he was now intent on exposing her nakedness to ridicule and contempt. As far as he was concerned this unexpected encounter was just another opportunity to grind her pride into the dust. Well, if she had to go down, the would go down fighting!

‘No? Then perhaps you’re here to do me one,’ he taunted as their eyes clashed, two hostile shades of blue. ‘It is my birthday, after all, and everyone else seems to be in a gifting mood. Have you come to give me something too, Miss Sherwood?’

‘As a matter of fact, I have,’ she said, stepping closer, her left hand momentarily concealed by the folds of her skirt.

Hatchet-face, who had glided silently up to his employer’s side, stiffened and began to lunge forward, but he was halted by an out-flung arm.

‘Really?’ Ryan Blair dropped his arm as his would-be protector settled obediently back. ‘I wonder what you could conceivably have to give me that I don’t already possess?’ The drawl was more pronounced than ever as he sipped from his glass of champagne, a picture of contemptuous relaxation, a man who was supremely confident of his enemy’s impotence. And, no doubt because she was a woman, he was doubly certain of his superiority!

She realised she still possessed the element of surprise.

‘This...!’

Even as she half turned away, dropping her left shoulder in a classic fighting gesture, he didn’t seem to recognise his danger, and when her clenched fist came shooting up and out it was too late to duck.

The full weight of her feminine strength and fury was behind the punch which smashed squarely into his insolent jaw with a deeply gratifying crunch.

A jolt of excruciating pain exploded up Jane’s arm and flashes of white light briefly dazzled her vision, but her smothered cry of agony was lost in the concerted gasp of the crowd and the female shrieks of dismay. Ryan Blair’s head snapped back and the abrupt shift of his centre of gravity sent him crashing back against the round table behind him, his powerful bulk tipping it over and toppling him flat on the floor amidst a rain of crystal and cutlery.

The sight of him lying there cradling his bruised jaw, cursing like a navvy into the stunned silence, his façade of polished sophistication in ruins, was balm to Jane’s lacerated spirit.

As the hotel events manager swooped down on the scene, gabbling horrified apologies, and the guests began to surge forward to help the man of honour to his feet, Jane turned her back on the chaos and walked out with the same calm, unhurried dignity with which she had arrived. She looked neither to left nor right, conscious of the path opening up before her as people drew back, afraid that their proximity to a social and business pariah might be interpreted as support. Ryan Blair had made it clear that whoever was not wholeheartedly with him was against him. And, as Jane had already discovered to her cost, he made a bitter enemy.

She reached the heavy glass door to the hotel foyer without hindrance, but as she reached for the brass bar a masculine hand was there before her, pushing it open. She turned her head in a bare acknowledgement and was startled to see that it was Ryan Blair’s blond hatchet-man assisting her passage to freedom. She half expected him to try to detain her, or at least warn her that she was going to be sued for full damages, but instead he merely inclined his head as she passed through the door, a peculiar glint of sardonic admiration in his silver-grey eyes.

When she stepped out into the street, the summer night enfolded her like a warm and humid blanket. The footpath was still slick with the light rain which had fallen earlier in the evening and she had to walk slowly and carefully in her spiky heels, acutely conscious that the glass wall of the hotel restaurant fronted the street, allowing everyone inside a clear view of her progress.

She was almost to the corner, where she would turn blessedly out of sight into the side-street where she had parked her car, when she heard a scuff of sound behind her.

Before she could react she was whirled fiercely round, her arms held in a steely grip.

‘Oh, no you don’t!’

She looked up into Ryan Blair’s blazing blue eyes.

‘You didn’t think you were going to walk off scot-free, did you? Nobody throws a punch at me and gets away with it!’

His voice was thick with rage and her eyes fell to his battered mouth, where a trickle of blood revealed a split in his swollen lower lip. The reddened puffiness ran down the left side of his jaw; by morning it would probably be black and blue. Jane had always shunned violence, in her whole twenty-six years she had never seriously sought to injure anyone, but now she felt a hot burst of pleasure at the sight of the damage she had caused to Ryan Blair’s handsome face.

‘I don’t see what you can do about it,’ she told him, riding a brave surge of adrenalin, struggling to wrench herself out of his iron fists. ‘Unless you want to make yourself a laughing stock by having me arrested for assault!’

‘You don’t think people are laughing at me now?’ he snarled, his fingers tightening on her bare arms.

‘Whose fault is that?’ she choked, giving up the unequal fight and standing straight and tall within his punishing grasp, her eyes icy with scorn. ‘You may be rich enough to buy loyalty but you still have to earn respect. Your campaign to drive Sherwood Properties out of business was vicious and underhanded and commercially questionable. I bet a lot of those toadies in there that you bribed or intimidated into your circle of influence secretly enjoyed seeing you get a punch in the face. They’re just too scared to admit it!’

She had reminded him of their curious audience behind the glass wall of the restaurant, but instead of looking their way he glanced over his shoulder. ‘So you did it because you think you have nothing left to lose?’ he grated. ‘Think again, sweetheart.’

And he jerked her against his chest, crushing her hands between them, lowering his head and forcing her shocked cry back down her throat with his plundering mouth. One large hand burrowed up into her immaculate coiffure, dislodging the pins, the other arm wrapped diagonally across her back, his fingers sinking into the swell of her buttocks as he arched her into a classic clinch. His foot thrust between her teetering heels, his knees squeezing her trapped thigh, and when she tried to push him away with her fists a burst of pain in her left hand made her gasp, opening herself even wider to the rough intrusion of his tongue. She felt the sting of his teeth against her tender lip and, tasting blood, didn’t know whether it was his or her own.

He made no pretence of passion—it was an exercise in pure male dominance—but there was no pretence about the kiss, either. It was no chaste theatrical illusion, it was deep, hard and shatteringly real. Strange waves of heat and cold battered Jane’s senses, and she thought she was fainting when a white light like the one that had dazzled her in the restaurant suddenly began pulsing and whirring around her head.

Just as suddenly Ryan Blair let her go and, staggering slightly, Jane saw a grinning photographer backing away, flashing off a few more shots as he went. She shuddered to think of the images he had captured on film.

‘What did you do that for?’ she panted furiously, putting a hand up to the heavy fall of hair which he had wrenched adrift. His gloating smirk told her that he had known the photographer was approaching when he had grabbed her.

His gaze fell to the lush, creamy-white breasts, heaving with outrage above her deep, square-cut neckline. ‘Why, to show the good people of this city that that punch had nothing to do with my business practices and everything to do with our private relationship.’

‘We don’t have a private relationship,’ she ground out, giving up and wrenching out the rest of the hairpins, tossing her head so that the raven-black waves rippled down her back. She knew she looked nothing like the cool, controlled, fearless woman who had confronted him in the restaurant a few minutes ago. Now she was flushed and crumpled and thoroughly kissed, demoted to the rank of a frivolous sexual object.

‘Tell that to them.’ He nodded towards the press of fascinated faces on the other side of the glass wall. ‘By tomorrow morning it’ll be all over town that you and I conducted a messy lover’s quarrel in public. The gossip columns’ll be speculating as to how long our secret affair has been going on, and whether we’re as competitive in bed as out. They might start wondering whether our business rivalry was a smokescreen that only turned into the real thing when the relationship started going sour.

‘Some people might even suggest that the real reason Sherwood Properties crashed was because its managing director fell in love and lost all sense of perspective, a classic case of a female letting her hormones rule her brain...’

Oh, yes, the creaking male chauvinists who inhabited the upper echelons of the business establishment would be only too delighted to bandy that theory around their executive men’s rooms, Jane thought furiously. Because she was young and a woman she had had to work long and hard for her success. Her driving determination to show everyone that she was more than capable of filling her father’s shoes had made her a formidable competitor in the field of commercial property dealing in the past five years...and put many older and more experienced masculine noses out of joint. The old boy network would enjoy the chance to dismiss her past achievements by turning her into a washroom joke.

‘You bastard,’ she hissed, stricken anew by the savage injustice of his actions. ‘Why are you doing this to me?’

He gave a bitter, incredulous laugh. ‘You know why. Because it’s pay-back time...’

Jane wrapped her arms around her waist, shaking her head in bewilderment. ‘Isn’t what you’ve already done to me payment enough? Thanks to you, I’ve lost everything. How long are you going to keep on hounding me like this?’

He thrust his face close to hers, his voice as smooth as exposed steel as he unsheathed his malice and gutted her of any expectation of mercy.

‘Oh, you haven’t lost quite everything, my dear; that comes later... You wrecked my marriage—now I’m going to wreck your life just as thoroughly. So say goodbye to all your hopes and dreams, Jane Sherwood, because your future is going to be very different from the one you had planned!’

CHAPTER TWO

JANE slumped in the driver’s seat of her two-door car, her forehead resting on the steering wheel. The keys were in the ignition but she wanted to get control of herself before she drove home. She knew changing gear was going to be wretchedly difficult.

The agony in her left hand had settled down to a dull throbbing that flared into hot needles of pain whenever she flexed her fingers. It was probably going to be as swollen and bruised tomorrow as Ryan Blair’s jaw. But it was worth it, she thought bitterly.

She had wrecked his marriage?

He had never even been married!

Halting a wedding ceremony was not the same thing as splitting up a husband and wife. When Jane had stepped in to prevent Ryan Blair and Ava Brandon from taking their final vows she had truly believed that the dramatic, last-minute intervention was the only way to save the bride and groom from making a miserable mistake.

A dynamic, self-made man like Ryan Blair wouldn’t have been happy with someone as passive and retiring as Ava, and her gentle, sensitive friend would have had her quiet individuality crushed by his dominating personality. If Ava had been madly in love with her future husband Jane would have wholeheartedly supported the match, despite her own serious doubts about the couple’s compatibility, but she knew that, far from being in love, Ava was intimidated by the man her ambitious, old fashioned, overbearing parents had pushed her into agreeing to marry.

Ava had said that Ryan claimed to love her when he had swept into her life and proposed, but the announcement, shortly after their engagement, of a Brandon/Blair financial joint venture and his hectic work schedule, which allowed them little time together during their six month engagement, had deepened Ava’s misgivings.

However, as usual, instead of confronting the problem, Ava had taken the path of least resistance until the last possible moment, only to have her belated attempts to assert herself ruthlessly dismissed as bridal jitters.

The first Jane had known of the depths of despair to which her friend had sunk was the day before the wedding, when Ava had invaded her office in tears. In between her friend’s savage draughts of Mr Sherwood’s eight-year-old Scotch, which still stocked the office drinks cabinet, Jane had dragged out the sorry details, realising with a shock that it had been months since she and Ava had sat down and talked together. No...since she had taken time to really listen to what her friend was saying.

Although she had ostensibly taken over Sherwood Properties when her father had been forced into premature retirement by a heart attack, Jane had only been a figurehead. Mark Sherwood had remained the real power behind the throne, as ruthless, demanding and critical as ever, constantly questioning her performance and countermanding her decisions, never letting her forget who was in ultimate charge. His sudden death when she had been still only twenty-two had made it critical that Jane prove as quickly as possible to competitors, clients and employees alike that she was as good—if not better—than her father.

So she had started putting in twelve-hour days at Sherwood Properties’ downtown office, constantly pushing to improve the business, and had felt vindicated when the company’s profits had begun to burgeon in response to her ambitious plans. Vindicated but not satisfied. Success had been like a drug. The more she achieved, the higher the goals she set herself.

In the process, Jane’s social life had dwindled to virtually nil. It had given her a strange chill to realise that Ava was not only her best friend, she was virtually her only real friend—the rest qualifying merely as acquaintances or colleagues. The guilt over her neglect of their friendship had made Jane boldly assure her sobbing friend that of course she’d help her think of a way to escape the imminent marriage, a way that wouldn’t result in an irrevocable family breach.

Secretly, Jane had thought Ava’s self-confidence might improve if she were temporarily estranged from her manipulative parents, but she had known that her insecure friend would go through with a marriage she didn’t want rather than risk permanently alienating herself from her mother. Having lost her own mother at six, Jane had no wish to be responsible for depriving anyone else of their maternal bond.

Jane cradled her injured hand in her lap, swamped by the memory of that awful wedding.

It had been almost exactly three years ago, on a beautiful, sunny spring afternoon. The graceful old inner-city church had been bursting at the seams with society guests when Jane had squeezed nervously onto the end of the back pew on the groom’s side, resisting the usher’s attempt to seat her further forward. She had had the feeling she might need the fast getaway, whether her hastily conceived plan worked or not.

Although, as giggling schoolgirls, she and Ava had vowed to be bridesmaids at each other’s weddings, Jane hadn’t been surprised when Kirstie Brandon had excluded Jane from the official wedding party by insisting that family take precedence. Ava had been upset but, as usual, quite incapable of standing up for herself. Mrs Brandon was an extremely possessive mother and had never liked the influence that strong-minded Jane had exerted over her precious only child during their time at school together. Not that she had been overtly rude; she had merely made it clear, whenever Jane visited, that she was a guest rather than a family friend.

Mrs Brandon set great store by appearances, and Jane was too tall, too plain, too outspokenly intelligent to conform to her view of a proper lady. If her father hadn’t been a wealthy businessman Jane suspected that the friendship would have been squelched altogether, rather than merely tolerated, but Kirstie Brandon’s mercenary streak was almost as wide as her snobbish one. It had always seemed a miracle to Jane that the Brandons had produced such a kind, generous-hearted offspring.

So, two petite teenaged Brandon cousins had been selected to serve as Ava’s bridesmaids along with her fiancé’s younger sister, and three excited little flower-girls and two sulky page-boys had completed the entourage. When Jane had seen the extravagantly flounced pale peach-coloured bridesmaids’ dresses coming down the aisle she had had one more reason to be glad not to be part of the fateful wedding party. With her height and colouring she would have looked disastrously overdecorated in all those pallid ruffles.

After the ceremony a lavish reception was to have been held on a hotel rooftop, with a helicopter booked to whisk the happy couple away to their honeymoon. The Brandons had spared no expense for their only child’s wedding, another reason why Ava had felt obligated to sacrifice herself to their wishes.

In the event, there was no marriage, no reception, no honeymoon, and Jane considered herself fortunate not to have been slapped with the bills by the furious parents of the bride.

She had sweated through the opening part of the very traditional ceremony, deaf to the poetry and grace of the lyrical words, glad of the large picture hat and embroidered net veil that she had chosen to wear with her tailored cream suit.

From under the deep brim she had watched Ava enter the church door on her strutting father’s arm. Just before she had taken her first step down the aisle Ava had glanced across at Jane, and her frightened, apologetic eyes and valiant, wobbly smile had said it all: she was trusting Jane to do what she herself had been unable to do.

They had been friends since kindergarten, blood-sisters since High School, and Jane had always been the natural leader of their various exploits, the one who boldly carried out Ava’s wishful thinking. Whenever they had landed in some scrape it had been Jane who had cheerfully shouldered the blame, shielding Ava from the full fury of adult outrage.

The years had passed but their respective roles had remained essentially the same.

Jane’s mouth had dried when the minister had finally uttered the words that she had been waiting for, the pronouncement that was usually mere ritual.

‘Therefore, if anyone can show any just cause why they may not lawfully be joined together, let them now speak or else hereafter forever hold their peace...’

He paused. The few seconds of silence seemed to stretch into eternity. Jane watched Ava’s fragile, laceclad shoulders stiffen and settle as if accepting a blow. In the periphery of her vision she saw a stir in the opposite pew and was released from her frozen inaction.

She leapt to her feet and stepped out into the aisle just as the minister drew his breath to continue.

‘Stop! I know of an impediment to this marriage. There’s a good reason why it shouldn’t go ahead!’

Stunned silence.

The wedding party turned as one.

Kirstie Brandon moaned and swayed in the front pew. Jane ventured boldly down the aisle, her gaze fixed on the slack-jawed minister, conscious of Ava’s trembling relief but afraid to look her way in case she caught the eye of the rigidly stupefied man at her side. The minister was quite young, the hint of panic in his shocked expression indicating that the interruption was unprecedented in his limited experience and he wasn’t quite certain how he was going to handle it. Jane knew... The solemnisation must be deferred until such time as the truth be tried...

She had lifted her chin, her cold, pale face a blur behind the opaque veil. ‘You can’t marry this couple—their vows would be a lie before God!’ Her voice rang with the sincerity of her conviction. ‘You’re going to ask them to promise to love and honour and forsake all others, but one of them is already committed to someone else!’

Sensation!

The steering wheel dug into Jane’s forehead as she rolled her head in negation of the real-life nightmare that had haunted her for three years. She had vaguely realised that she was going to make some powerful enemies that day, but she hadn’t realised how truly implacable and remorseless Ryan Blair would be in his lust for revenge. Fortunately, although she was still persona non grata as far as the Brandons were concerned, so was Ryan Blair. The humiliation of the failed wedding had been something the Brandons had attempted to expunge from existence, and in doing so they had held themselves aloof from the ensuing hostilities.

For more than a year, long enough to allow Jane’s fears of reprisal to fade, Ryan Blair had dropped out of sight, fighting desperately behind the scenes to regain the financial footing that he had lost after the simultaneous collapse of his wedding and the Brandon joint venture project, which had apparently been going to bring a vital infusion of funds into his company. He had moved to Sydney to restructure and rebuild his fortune, keeping such a low profile that when he burst back on the Auckland scene, wielding serious economic clout and considerable political. influence, it had come as a nasty surprise.

Ryan Blair had come storming back with a vengeance. Time, far from tempering his attitude to Jane’s untimely interference in his personal life, seemed to have forged it into an unyielding hatred. From the moment he had resettled in Auckland he had not allowed Jane a day’s respite. He had stolen her clients, head-hunted her staff, undercut her percentages, bought up her mortgages, blocked her financing, competed for every tender—so successfully that she knew he must have inside information from her office—and made attending business functions a misery by pointedly snubbing her and her companions completely.

Disaster had seemed to dog her every business decision. Unsourceable rumours had begun circulating about her private life, her mental stability, the viability of her company. Within two years her formerly superbly controlled life had been turned into total chaos.

Jane heard a tap-tapping and raised her head to see a tentatively smiling man knocking on her window, gesturing for her to wind it down. She did so, thinking that he was a kindly passer-by intending to ask if she was ill.

‘Miss Jane Sherwood?’

She frowned, the thick black eyebrows that gave her a perpetually serious look rumpling in puzzlement. ‘Yes.’

He consulted the piece of paper he was holding. ‘Jane Sherwood of Flat 5, 8 Parkhouse Lane? Formerly proprietor of Sherwood Properties?’

She experienced the sinking feeling that was becoming all too familiar these days. ‘Yes, but—’

She was cut off as he thrust the paper through the half-open window at her and at the same time deftly whipped her keys out of the ignition.

‘John Forster of Stanton Security. This vehicle is under a repossession order. I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to vacate the car, Ma’am, so that it can be returned to its rightful owner.’

While she was squinting at the small-print, which told her that all vehicles registered to or leased by Sherwood Properties were now the legal property of the mortgagee, he opened the door and invited her to step out onto the pavement.

‘But how do I get home? I live on the other side of town and I haven’t got enough money with me for a taxi or a bus—’ Jane began to protest.

‘What’s going on here?’

To her horror she saw Ryan Blair step into view behind the stocky repossession agent. That appalling kiss hadn’t been enough; he obviously wanted everyone to think that they had gone off somewhere together.

‘Nothing—’

‘I’m repossessing the car. The lady claims she hasn’t got any way of getting home.’

Jane blushed vividly as her denial mingled with the horrible man’s blunt announcement. She raised her chin and glared.

‘I’ll drive you home.’

Her eyes widened before her thick black lashes fell defensively. ‘Go to hell!’ she snarled.

‘Look, lady, you got a lift home—take it!’ the stocky man advised. “Cos you’re sure not going anywhere in this car. See my mate over there? He’s going to hitch it up to his tow-truck if you won’t let me drive it away.’

As Jane turned her head to look at the shadowy figure leaning against the cab of his tow-truck on the other side of the road she heard a rustle, and suddenly Ryan Blair was plucking her out of the car and setting her down on the pavement.

‘Get your hands off me!’ she hissed, struggling belatedly.

‘You really don’t know when to give up, do you?’ he said grimly, stepping out of range of her flailing arms. ‘What did you think you were going to do, sit there and argue all night? Let the man do his job.’

‘Let him do your dirty work, you mean!’ she snapped, remembering how, barely more than a month ago, she had been escorted off the premises of her own company by a security guard to ensure that she took nothing from the office, not even her personal effects. Sherwood’s was not a limited liability company, so literally everything she owned was forfeit.

Ryan Blair folded his arms across his broad chest. ‘It’s standard practice for a mortgagee to request that all assets be sequestered when a company goes out of business.’

‘What about my evening bag? I suppose you’re going to demand that be sequestered as well?’ Jane said sarcastically, pointing to the small black beaded drawstring bag which lay on the passenger seat.

He picked it up and handed it to her. ‘Come on, there’s my car.’

A black limousine was creeping across the entrance to the long cul-de-sac. The driver must have orders to follow his boss wherever he went, thought Jane contemptuously.

‘I’m not going anywhere with you,’ she said.

‘Are you asking me to give you cab fare?’

‘I’d rather beg in the streets!’

Her defiant statement was punctuated by the roar of her car engine as it was driven smartly away.

‘It might come to that,’ he pointed out softly. ‘A woman dressed like you...expensive, displaying a lot of flesh, obviously alone....you’re bound to attract plenty of attention from the kerb-crawlers. Only they’ll expect you to earn your taxi fare.’

Her throbbing hand tightened on her bag. ‘Why, you—’

‘Temper, temper, Miss Sherwood,’ he said, stepping back and lifting his hands in mock fright. ‘You’re not going to hit me again, are you? I always thought you were as cold as ice, but you have quite a volcano seething under that chilly exterior, don’t you?’ He dropped his hands and his voice acquired a bored impatience that suggested he didn’t care one way or the other. ‘Now, do you want a free ride home or not...?’

Pride warred with expediency and pride won.

‘Not!’

Head high, she skirted the limousine and began to walk up the hill in the opposite direction to the hotel, away from the centre of the city. All she wanted to do was get away from Ryan Blair as quickly as possible, then she would decide what was best to do. She was well past the theatre centre, and even though the night wasn’t very far advanced there were few people on this section of the street and no stores open, but she knew she had to come across a phone box soon.

Her sense of isolation rapidly intensified as she hurried on her way. Her heels sounded very loud against the concrete pavement and she shied at a shadowy couple in a shop doorway. Deciding that it might be more prudent to walk nearer the streetlights, she had barely got a few hundred metres when a car-load of young toughs cruised noisily past and then backed up, the scruffy youths leaning out of the window and crooning invitations and suggestions that burned her ears.

Her lack of reaction finally caused them to tire of their sport and the car roared away, spewing howls of raucous laughter, but almost immediately another one slowed to a crawl beside her. This time the suggestions from the lone driver were a great deal more sophisticated, but no less persistent and stomach-churningly graphic. At the end of her tether, Jane bent and rested her good hand on the open car window and delivered a blistering tirade to the sweaty, middle-aged man behind the wheel.

An obscene smile split his rubbery lips and he reached over and clamped his fat hand around her wrist. ‘Yes, I know. I’ve been very bad and I must be punished. I knew when I saw you striding haughtily along that you were a woman capable of the most delicious cruelty. I look forward to your discipline—’

‘Sorry, the lady’s already booked up for the night!’

For the second time in half an hour Jane found herself the object of an unwelcome rescue. Ryan Blair’s limousine was riding the bumper of the kerb-crawler as the man himself put his arm through the driver’s window and hauled the culprit up by the shirt-collar to utter a few sibilant phrases in his ear. As soon as he was released the unfortunate man rammed his car into gear and took off, burning rubber in the process.

Ryan Blair, still standing on the road, hands on his broad hips, said through his teeth, ‘Get into the limo, Jane.’

Jane opened her mouth.

‘Get in the car, dammit!’ he exploded, ‘Or I’ll wrap that silky black hair around your throat and drag you there!’

‘Bully!’ she slashed back, not quite certain that he wouldn’t do it. She moved with defiant slowness towards the open back door of the limousine. Her feet in the borrowed too-tight black stilettos were almost as painful as her hand, her crushed toes raw with blisters that chafed with every step.

‘Stubborn bitch!’ he said, climbing in opposite her. ‘At least now you’ll live for me to bully you another day.’

‘Oh, yes, you like to draw the agony out, don’t you? You probably could have destroyed Sherwoods in weeks instead of stringing it out for nearly two years,’ she accused wildly, anything to take her mind off the pain that was turning into a burning nausea in her stomach.

‘I could,’ he said coolly, lounging back on the luxurious white leather. ‘But it wouldn’t have given me half so much satisfaction.’

His frank admission took her breath away. She collapsed back against the seat, hardly noticing as the limousine pulled smoothly into the sparse flow of traffic.

She thought of all the times over the past couple of years when she had been certain that she was going to triumph over his bitter adversity, only to be hit by another financial blow that tumbled her down into the dumps again.

But there had never been a chance that she was going to win, she realised numbly. Those brief periods of euphoric hope had been as much a part of his strategy as the devastating body blows, designed to encourage her to fight, to blind her to the ultimate futility of her struggle. And the competitiveness drilled into her by her father had ensured that she had played right into Ryan Blair’s hands. In a sense, she had created her own torment.

‘But Sherwood’s wasn’t just me,’ she said through white lips. ‘There were other people involved, people who lost their jobs because of you—’

His swollen mouth curved cruelly. ‘No, they lost their jobs because of you.’

‘My God, you’re callous,’ she said, shaken by the depth of hatred revealed by the comment. She had known that he despised her but she hadn’t realised how much. If she had, maybe she would have been better equipped to predict the pattern of his revenge.

He shrugged. ‘I expect to be able to pick up what’s left of Sherwood’s for a song... I’ve no doubt I can make it a viable enterprise again in a very short time and reemploy most of the staff.’

‘Those who aren’t already in your employ, you mean,’ she said bitterly. ‘If you hadn’t been getting inside information you wouldn’t have found it so easy to destroy my company.’

‘Precisely. But all’s fair in love and war, isn’t it, Miss Sherwood? As it happens, your staff’s loyalty was pathetically easy to suborn... Did you know you weren’t a very popular employer? Too much of a chip off the old block, I understand. “Arrogant and intolerant”, “incapable of delegation”, “rigid and unapproachable” were some of the more flattering opinions of your management style.

‘You’re looking rather pale, my dear. Perhaps you need a whiskey to wash down the unpalatable truth.’ He opened a compact drinks cabinet and began to pour amber fluid from a silver flask into a crystal glass.

‘I don’t want anything from you.’

‘So you said. But there’s no gallery here to play martyr to, no one to care whether you show a glimpse of human weakness.’ He thrust the glass towards her.

‘I said no.’ She turned her head haughtily away. She hadn’t had anything to eat since breakfast and, even if she could bring herself to take anything from his hands, the alcohol would probably hit her like a freight train. She didn’t want to be any more helpless in front of him than she was already.

Had she really come across to her staff like an unfeeling robot? No, he was just saying those things to hurt her. They weren’t true. She had wanted Sherwood’s to be the best, and in striving to achieve her goals she had expected a lot from her employees but no more than she demanded of herself. Far from being a carbon-copy of her dogmatic father, she had wanted to stamp her own personality on the company, but real-estate was a dog-eat-dog business and the relentless pressure she had been under had necessitated her putting aside her new ideas in order to concentrate on the fight for sheer survival.

‘Suit yourself. Ah, well...here’s to the sweet taste of victory,’ he toasted her, and drank with robust pleasure, not flinching as the raw alcohol flowed over his split lip.

Everything about him was big and brash. There was an offensive vitality about him that contrasted with her own wilted state.

Jane remembered how uncomfortable Ava had been with his restless volatility, his constant need to be challenged, the natural aggressiveness which charged his character and made him a dangerous man to cross. Being engaged to him had been acceptable when they saw little of each other, but when he had started winding down his business activities closer to the wedding Ava had found herself unable to cope with the everyday reality of his forceful nature.

Jane had understood her fear, even though she didn’t share it. She had disliked Ryan Blair for reasons of her own but she had never been afraid of him. Even now she was more furious than fearful, for she knew that her own strength of character would carry her through this crisis, as it had through previous tough times in her life.

He lowered his glass and stretched out his long legs so that they brushed insolently against hers. ‘So...what are your plans now that Daddy’s little heiress is broke and unemployed?’

‘Do you think I’m going to tell you?’ she said, swivelling her hips so that her legs were no longer touching his, resenting the implication that she had been a spoilt brat for whom life had been cushioned by privilege.

His blue eyes glinted in the passing slash of a streetlight. ‘I’ll find out anyway.’

She didn’t answer, merely gave him the icy look of contempt with which she habitually bid her fears and insecurities.

‘Of course, your options are rather limited, aren’t they?’ he mused silkily. ‘The word is already out that anyone who offers a helping hand to Jane Sherwood could find themselves in the same mire. I think “unemployable” rather than “unemployed” is a better description, don’t you?’

She had already discovered the extent of his influence in her fruitless journey around the banks. With his connections she didn’t doubt that he could extend the threat to every city in New Zealand...and probably Australia, too.

She shrugged as if she didn’t care, her expression coolly unrevealing. ‘Whatever makes you happy.’

He leaned forward so sharply that the whiskey nearly slopped out of his glass. ‘You trashed my wedding without warning, without apology, without even an explanation,’ he said harshly. ‘What would make me happy is some expression of regret.’

She hesitated a fraction of a second too long and he leaned back again, his blunt features grim. ‘But of course you don’t regret anything, do you? Why should you? As far as you’re concerned you got away with your lies.’

‘I don’t regret what I did,’ she said bravely. ‘Maybe how I did it, but not that it was done. Ava was my friend; I knew you weren’t right for her—’

‘So you lied. In church. In front of my family. My friends. The woman I intended to spend the rest of my life with. You said that my vows would be a lie before God but you were the one committing an act of desecration!’

Jane flushed and looked blindly down at her throbbing hand. She couldn’t deny the searing accusation. Her guilty knowledge was a burden she would carry to her grave, and beyond—for she had not dared seek advice or absolution for her sin. She had done this man a grievous wrong in the very house of truth. Her only excuse was that he was strong and Ava was weak. He had survived—thrived, even—in the aftermath of disaster, as she had known that he would...

‘You told your lies and then you disappeared before anyone could ask you for proof,’ he said, with the pent-up savagery of years. ‘But you knew you wouldn’t need proof, didn’t you? You knew that Ava was highly strung, you knew that the shock of your words would be enough to send her into hysterics. You were her best friend, she trusted you, and you used that trust to humiliate her and her parents to the extent that she never wanted to see me again.

‘You were sick with jealousy of your best friend’s happiness so you smashed it to smithereens by publicly announcing that you and I were lovers!’

Jane’s flush deepened as she recalled the brazen words that she had flung down the aisle:

‘This man doesn’t love this woman enough to forsake all others. He hasn’t even honoured her with his faithfulness during their engagement I’m sorry, Ava, but I can’t let you do this without knowing what’s been going on behind your back—Ryan and I have been having an affair for months...’

‘Why didn’t you instantly deny it?’ she choked, defending the indefensible. ‘You just stood there...you didn’t even try to denounce me—’

‘I was as stunned as everyone else. It was such a flagrant lie I didn’t think anyone would believe it for a moment...especially Ava. She knew that I loved her—’

‘How can you say that?’ said Jane fiercely. ‘You hardly spent any time together...you certainly hardly knew her when you proposed. It was more of a business arrangement with Paul Brandon than a love-match—’

‘Is that how you justified yourself?’ He grated a bitter laugh and watched her flinch. ‘I loved her, dammit! From the first moment we met I knew that she was the one for me...she was so beautiful, so gentle and sweet and womanly. The business deal was just the icing on the cake as far as I was concerned; my feelings for Ava were separate—private and precious.

‘And that’s what you just couldn’t stomach, isn’t it? That Ava had someone to love her and you didn’t— because you’re a hard-faced, cold-hearted, selfish bitch who always has to be the centre of attention—’

‘No—’ Jane shook her head, a thick swath of wavy hair swirling over her shoulder, creating an inky splash against her white breast.

She didn’t want to believe that he had been as deeply in love with Ava as he claimed, but, oh, God, wouldn’t that explain the extraordinary viciousness with which he had come to pursue his revenge? It would also explain why he had left for Australia rather than force a confrontation when Ava had run away and shortly thereafter married someone else. If he had been in love, Ava’s lack of faith in his honour would have been profoundly wounding, perhaps rendering him incapable of acting rationally in his own defence.

Based on what Ava had told her, Jane had thought it was only Ryan’s pocket and his pride that would be injured if she forced the abandonment of the wedding, and those things were easily repaired for a man of his talent and toughness. But if he loved even half as passionately as he hated.

‘No...’ She shook away the weakening thought. If he had loved then it was an ideal, an Ava who had never really existed except in his imagination.

‘Yes! So now I’ve decided to give you what you wanted back then, sweetheart...’ The endearment was a subtle insult, an insidious threat, as he unfolded himself from his seat and loomed over her, his big fists sinking into the leather on either side of her hips, his breath hell-hot against her face.

‘Tell me, Miss Sherwood, how do you like being the centre of my complete and undivided attention...?’

CHAPTER THREE

‘WHERE are you taking me?’

At that moment, judging by the expression on his face, she wouldn’t have put it past him to be spiriting her to some isolated spot with a quiet murder in mind.

He didn’t move, still crowding her, surrounding her with the heat of his physical menace as he purred:

‘Where would you like me to take you?’

Her breath caught in her throat, but he eased away and she found her wits again.

‘Home, of course,’ she said grittily.

Without looking away from her he sprawled back on his seat and picked up the phone at his elbow, giving the chauffeur her address. When her eyes flickered he said softly, ‘Oh, yes, I know where you live... I know what you eat, what you wear, who you see. Nothing escapes me.’

‘Except the occasional bride,’ said Jane unwisely, wiping the smug expression from his face.

The breath hissed between his teeth. ‘Ava didn’t escape... I let her go.’

It was a very fine distinction, but one Jane was beginning to fear might be true.

‘You had no choice,’ she protested.

After fainting at the altar Ava had successfully followed her subsequent fit of hysteria with a full-blown impression of a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Any suggestion of reconciliation was clearly out of the question, and her parents had been forced to bundle her away on a quiet, stress-free holiday in order that they might sweep the whole embarrassing fiasco under the carpet.

‘There’s always a choice. I could have proved your lie, sued you for slander, paraded the whole sordid business through the courts and the newspapers, dragged a public apology out of you—’

‘Why didn’t you?’ She still felt a frisson of horror when she thought of all the things that could have gone wrong with her incredibly foolish plan. But she had been young enough to be fired by her own righteousness, rich enough to think that if the worst came to the worst she could buy her way out of trouble and arrogant enough to think that she was equal to anything he could throw at her...

His voice, like his cobalt stare, was riddled with contempt.

‘For Ava’s sake. I wasn’t going to compound her hurt and humiliation by broadcasting your vitriolic lies to an even greater audience, by exposing our intimate lives in open court. Ava hated being in the public eye—even the prospect of a big wedding was an ordeal for her. Exposing her to more ridicule and gossip wouldn’t have regained me her trust, or her parents’ respect.’

So he had known that Ava didn’t want an extravagant show on her wedding day but still hadn’t supported her against her mother. Given the choice of offending her parents or riding roughshod over the wishes of the woman he loved, he had chosen the latter. What did that say about his so-called love?

Jane summoned her most indifferent stare as he continued savagely, ‘You planned it very cunningly—I was damned whatever I did. A lie has no leg, but a scandal has wings, and no matter what penalty you were slapped with in court there would always be people who believed that there was foundation to the story. The only way to protect Ava was to remove myself from the scene. I was going to come back when the dust settled and quietly sort things out between us, but by then it was too late. Knowing how cautious she is, I certainly didn’t expect her to get married on the rebound...’

‘How very self-sacrificing of you,’ said Jane, crushing down a pang of sympathy. At some stage everyone involved in the sorry saga had modified their actions in order to protect Ava from cruel reality, when in actual fact the helpless little darling had been a clear-eyed pragmatist, operating on her own agenda!

‘A concept you wouldn’t understand...not with your heritage,’ he sliced back with razor-edged sharpness. ‘I wonder if old Mark is looking up from his seat in hell, cursing his only child for letting the worldly goods he sold his greedy soul for slip through her fingers...’

His insulting familiarity made Jane wary, prey to the ambivalent feelings that mention of her parentage always evoked. Mark Sherwood had been as crude as he was shrewd. Not many people had liked him. ‘You knew my father?’

He smiled unpleasantly. ‘By reputation only. Gone but not forgotten, you might say...’

His cryptic answer implied there was a great deal more, but as she tensed Jane bumped her sore hand against her thigh and a vicious jab of pain sent a fresh wash of nausea rolling over her, exacerbated by the motion of the car as it swayed around a corner.

She tried to localise the pain by consciously relaxing the rest of her body, closing her eyes and tipping her head back against the top of the seat, unaware that her sudden physical pliancy was viewed with cynical suspicion by the man opposite—especially as the slow rotation of her tense shoulders allowed the deep bodice of her gown to dip and tighten enticingly over her ripe breasts.

His big hands clenched at his sides, his blue eyes brooding over the gypsy-dark tumble of hair and the unmistakable signs of stress in the strong-boned face, the hollows shadowed by the thick fan of her lashes and the new prominence of her haughty cheekbones under the pale skin, translucent with tiredness. The lips, which were normally barely touched with discreet colour, were tonight a block of bright red gloss, now slightly smeared, that revealed a surprising fullness, the lush curve of her mouth a sensuous counterpoint to the straight, almost masculine slash of her thick ebony eyebrows. His eyes drifted back down to her breasts, to the long legs tilted away from his.

‘You have his looks.’

‘Whose? My father’s? I thought you said you didn’t know him,’ Jane said, without opening her eyes. She knew from his gravelly tone it wasn’t meant to be a compliment, even though her father had been considered extremely handsome in his heyday. A man who was attracted to Ava’s delicate, blonde, china-doll brand of femininity was bound to find Jane less than enchanting.

‘I know he was big. Dark. Chunky.’

She was in too much pain to take offence, as he clearly intended her to do. She was big-framed but she wasn’t fat, and in the last few stressful months she had actually dropped below optimum weight for her height.

‘So are you.’

She opened her eyes and found him contemplating the similarity with distaste, absently manipulating his bruised jaw with his blunt fingers.

‘Does it hurt?’ she asked involuntarily, jerking upright as she realised the vulnerability of her position.

‘Yes,’ he growled.

‘Good.’ There was a small silence as they measured glances, blue on blue. ‘You’ve still got blood on your mouth,’ she felt driven to add. ‘In the corner, on the right’

He probed the place with his tongue. ‘Sure it’s not your lipstick?’ he jeered, taking the immaculately folded white handkerchief out of his jacket pocket.

His answer caught her by surprise, and because she wasn’t sure she flushed. She felt again the hard, crushing grind of his mouth, the fierce stab of his tongue impaling her senses, filling her with the angry taste of him.

He studied her hectic colour for a moment before wiping the stain from his lips with a taunting slowness. ‘Better?’ He held out the handkerchief. ‘Your turn.’

‘For what?’ she said suspiciously.

‘Your lipstick’s smudged. It’s obviously not kiss-proof... not that it would need to be. You usually just freeze off any man who gets within touching distance, don’t you Lady Sherwood?’

Normally the snooty nickname didn’t bother her, but this man gave it an extra bite that made her snap. ‘If he’s anything like you—yes!’

‘You haven’t dated the same man more than twice in the last two years...they can’t all be like me!’ he said drily.

‘I’ve been too busy,’ she replied icily, and immediately regretted it as his eyes narrowed in sly triumph.

‘Have I been working you too hard? Were you afraid that I might sneak in and snatch your business while you were otherwise engaged? Too bad, since it happened anyway. Maybe you shouldn’t have cold-shouldered all those likely prospects that Daddy tried to set you up with... Oh, yes, Ava told me all about them. But none of them could compete with your ambition, could they? All work and no play...no wonder Jane is such a dull, lonely girl—’

‘Go to hell!’ she flashed for the second time that night, aware that in her inarticulate rage she sounded more like a sulky teenager than a seasoned businesswoman renowned for her acid wit. She should be immune to his insults by now—but her sense of self-worth was badly damaged and she no longer seemed able to maintain the icy, unemotional façade that had been her vital strength during the last two years of ceaseless pressure from Spectrum Developments and its charismatic owner.

‘Why, I do believe we’re already there,’ he murmured in mock surprise, looking out of the window as the car slowed down outside a strip of rundown wooden buildings. ‘Or someplace very much like it. Parkhouse Lane is a bit of a misnomer, isn’t it? I’d call it more of an alley than a lane. Quite a come-down from the Sherwood mansion. Who would have thought three years ago that Lady Jane would one day be living in a poky one-bedroomed flat above a greasy take-away joint?’

He looked at her sitting rigidly on the edge of her seat as the chauffeur turned into the kerb. ‘Still, it’s not as if it’s for much longer, is it...? Has your landlord given you your notice yet?’

She ignored him, trying to hide her growing panic as she fumbled for the doorhandle with her uninjured hand. The letter she had received the previous day had literally been the last straw. She had figured that she had nothing left to lose from one last, futile act of defiance.

Big mistake.

Ryan Blair evidently thought otherwise.

To date their battle had been conducted publicly, their poisonous exchanges filtered through clients, employees, lawyers, banks, formal letters, contracts and writs. Personal contact had been minimal. But, having won their public war, it seemed he was now preparing to transfer the battleground to the private arena, where Jane was frighteningly vulnerable.

‘I understand the poor man has been having a bit of trouble with council inspectors...something about fire regulations, I believe?’ he said, catching her by the left hand as she finally got the heavy door open and attempted to slide past him to the dubious freedom of her new and soon to be former neighbourhood. Jane almost screamed at the pressure of his iron fingers, vaguely aware of the chauffeur standing by the open door, a witness to Ryan’s oozing sympathy.

‘That’s something they’re very strict about, so I suppose your landlord has told you he won’t be able to give you the usual two weeks’ grace to find somewhere else to live. You don’t seem to be very lucky in your search for permanent accommodation since the bank sold up the old man’s pride, do you? Most places you enquire about you miss out on and those you do manage to get... Well, this is—what?—the third time in just over a month that you’ve had to move due to unforeseen circumstances arising with landlords or flatmates—’

Jane’s head whipped round, her hair swirling like a black storm around her pale face. The fact that the council inspections had been conducted on a secret tip-off and that her flat was the only one that couldn’t be occupied while being brought up to ‘complying standard’ had clearly borne the mark of Ryan Blair’s influence. But all those other times, when she had presumed she’d been simply unlucky...

Damn him!

‘Are you beginning to feel you might be jinxed, Jane?’ he enquired silkily. ‘That maybe you’re on a slippery downward slope to nowhere?’ He raised her throbbing hand to within a hair’s breadth of his mouth in a parody of polite salute. ‘It’s a long, dark, dirty, dangerous way...but perhaps someone’ll catch you before you hit rock bottom. Who knows? If I’m feeling generous, it could even be me...’

Jane twisted her hand away and stumbled out of the car on unsteady heels, his dark laughter following her into the ill-lit street.

‘Goodnight. Sweet dreams.’

Her dreams that night were anything but sweet. It took her ages to undress, and by the time she was ready for bed her hand was hurting so much that she had to take the last two aspirins in her medicine cabinet.

They didn’t seem to help much and she tossed and turned for hours on the hard sofa-bed that had come with the partly furnished apartment, worried about the stack of bills that she could only afford to pay if she used the bond her landlord was obliged by law to return. But that would mean she wouldn’t have the money to offer as bond on another flat. Even in shared accommodation one was expected to pay a lump sum up front.

Worse, her small reserve of cash was dwindling alarmingly fast, and the company was continuing to accumulate debts against her name even though it was no longer operating. Since she was directly responsible for all monies owed by Sherwood Properties, and lawyers’ and accountants’ fees had already eaten a huge hole in the surplus from the sale of the house and unhindered personal assets, the threat of bankruptcy loomed ever closer. Without a car it was going to take longer to get around the sprawling city, hampering her search for a job, but at least she would no longer have to contemplate skipping meals to pay for petrol!

When she finally fell into a troubled sleep Jane was tormented by lurid monsters who gnawed at her fingers, and when she woke in the morning she was horrified to find that her left hand had swollen like an overripe piece of fruit. The blade of her hand was blue and pulpy, her skin feeling as if it was stretched to bursting point and the fingers almost impossible to straighten. Moving carefully, she showered and searched her wardrobe for a dress that didn’t have a back fastening.

Unfortunately there wasn’t a lot of choice. Her former lifestyle had dictated very few casual clothes, and most of her custom-designed business suits and high-fashion dresses had been forfeited, along with her jewellery and extensive collection of shoes, when the bank’s valuers had swept through the Sherwood residence, spiriting off everything that was considered saleable. What was left would have fitted into two suitcases—except the matching leather luggage had gone too, and Jane had been forced to leave the house with her remaining possessions packed into plastic supermarket bags.

The black dress had fortunately been out for cleaning at the time and the valuers had been so ruthless in the execution of their duty that when Jane had later found the dry-cleaning receipt in her purse she had had no qualms about claiming it for herself. She looked on it as a symbol of hope, a small victory over the forces of darkness: a reminder that, even when the odds were stacked wildly against you, you could sometimes still win.

The black dress now hung shoulder to shoulder with off-the-peg skirts and blouses and the subdued dresses that the all-male valuers had considered ‘of insufficient interest’ to turn the quick profit the mortgagee was demanding. At least she had got to keep all her underwear, despite the famous French and Italian labels, but they had only left her three pairs of shoes, all of them flats.

Jane struggled into a simple shirt-waister with large buttons that were easy to do up one-handed and didn’t even bother trying to put up her hair.

Ever since she had moved in two weeks ago she had walked three blocks to a tiny pavement café where, for the price of a cup of breakfast tea, she could read the morning newspaper and copy out all the likely prospects from the Situations Vacant columns. Then she would return to the flat and write her application letters before starting the rounds of interviews and enquiries at the various employment bureaus. But today there didn’t seem to be much point. With her hand the way it was she wouldn’t present the image of flawless competence that she had glowingly described in her CV.

In an effort to relieve the swelling Jane tried bathing her hand in water chilled with ice-chunks chipped off the sides of the tiny freezer compartment of her fridge, but although the pain was numbed for a while it only seemed to get worse when the cold wore off, and by mid-morning she knew she was going to have to see a doctor.

When she returned the borrowed black high-heels to the girl who lived in the even pokier flat next door, Collette—she had admitted it wasn’t her real name but ‘guys think it’s sexy’—offered some gratuitous advice.

She shook her bleached head at the sight of the mangled hand, her crystal earrings clacking with outrage. ‘God, did that guy you were meeting last night do that? One of those, eh? Been there, done that, honey. Take my advice—dump him! And ignore any sob stuff—bastards like that never change...a few drinks and pow! They thump you and make you think it’s your fault.’

Jane smiled weakly. For all his ferocious temper Ryan Blair wasn’t a physically violent man. He was an expert at more sophisticated forms of intimidation...like kissing!

‘You should have used the shoes,’ Collette advised. ‘We don’t wear them just ’cos they make our legs look miles long, you know. A stiletto in the groin can give a man a whole new perspective on life, know what I mean?’

Jane nodded hastily, suspecting that the ‘we’ to whom Collette referred was a loose street-sisterhood engaged in a profession much more venerable than her own.

Having cheerfully targeted a few more choice portions of the male anatomy where application of a stiletto could produce instant indifference to the idea of violence and/ or sex, Collette gave Jane the address of the nearest emergency medical clinic. On the back of a dog-eared medical centre card, prominently promoting its STD clinic, she wrote down the numbers of the buses that Jane would have to catch there and back.

It was the first time Jane had been on a bus since her schooldays, but she was in too much pain to appreciate the novelty. The clinic’s crowded waiting room was also a first for her, and after a long, enervating wait Jane was relieved to be ushered into a bare office where a depressingly bouncy young doctor examined her and diagnosed a broken bone before sending her off to the X-Ray department ‘just to make sure I’m right’.

‘What does the other guy look like?’ he chirped forty-five minutes later, when Jane had come back with the X-Ray and he had clipped it to the light box to show her the thin, pale line unevenly bisecting one of the five long bones of her hand.

A fleeting vision of a dark, handsome face, inky hair and piercing blue eyes made her heart give a nervous skip. Thank goodness the doctor wasn’t taking her pulse. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘See this?’ He tapped the image. ‘You’ve broken the fifth metacarpal bone—the one that joins your wrist to your little finger—broken it right in the middle. Well, as far as I know there’s only one way to break this particular bone like that—with a blow. Ergo, you hit someone or something with real enthusiasm!’

‘Someone,’ admitted Jane, looking at the skeleton of her hand and wondering how such a tiny fracture could cause so much pain.

‘Any other injuries?’

‘No—I think I just split his lip. He roared like a wounded bull so I don’t think his jaw was broken or anything...’

‘I mean to you,’ the doctor said wryly. ‘Was it your husband? What did he do?’

‘Oh.’ Jane flushed at his assumption. ‘No, nothing like that...I mean, we hardly know each other. We’re just...’

The doctor’s grey eyes suddenly sparked with recognition. ‘Just good friends? Hang on a minute.’ He spun aside and walked over to pull a broadsheet newspaper out of the waste-paper basket beside his desk—a national daily. He leafed through the crumpled sections until he found the one he was looking for and smoothed it out.

‘I thought I recognised you when you walked in.’

There were two long photographs side-by-side—one a slightly blurred shot, obviously taken the moment after impact, showing Jane’s left arm at full extension and Ryan Blair, head snapped back, arms flung out, toppling across the restaurant table; the other, horribly crisp and clear, was a close-up of their seemingly steamy kiss in the street.

Some wag of a sub-editor had headlined the pictures:

SHE’S A KNOCKOUT!

And the story underneath was wittily couched as a boxing match... ‘Weighing-in’. ‘seconds out’, ‘round one’, ‘the final bell’...

Thank God the reporter obviously hadn’t bothered to go very far back in the files, for it was very much a ‘once-over lightly’ piece, dealing only with the tail-end of the Sherwood Blair feud and too full of deliberate boxing puns to be taken seriously.

As Ryan Blair had predicted there was much sly speculation about business turning into pleasure, but there was no mention of Jane being the veiled woman who had aborted his wedding—probably thanks to the Brandons, whose damage control at the time had consisted of smothering the intriguing, ‘disappearing mistress in the hat’ story with urgent bulletins on the life-threatening viral infection which had caused Ava’s untimely collapse and subsequent withdrawal from society for a lengthy period of convalescence.

Looking at the picture of herself wrapped in Ryan Blair’s bear-like embrace, her neck arched by the apparent passion of his kiss, her half-open eyes suggesting a dreamy bliss, Jane felt an unwelcome frisson of excitement.

‘Right, well...let’s fix that up, shall we...?’ The doctor became all efficiency again, directing her to sit on the edge of the examination table, drawing a wheeled trolley up beside him.

‘Do I have to have it in plaster?’ she asked, her heart sinking at the prospect.

‘Nope. Not this baby.’ He delicately lifted her hand. ‘It’s a fairly straightforward break so I’m just going to strap it to your ring finger to pull the bone straight while it heals.’

‘Just strap it up?’ It sounded too easy. ‘For how long?’

‘Probably three weeks.’ He touched her little finger and she winced. ‘Have you taken anything for the pain?’

‘Only a couple of aspirin last night...it was all I had in the flat.’

His eyebrows rose. ‘You’ll definitely need something stronger than that by the time I’ve finished with you. You’re going to have an uncomfortable few days until the local inflammation eases and the healing process starts. I’ll give you an injection of local anaesthetic now and a prescription for painkillers that you can have filled at the clinic pharmacy. They’re fairly strong, so don’t mix them with anything else.’

The anaesthetic was fast-acting, and Jane could watch in detachment as he tucked cotton wool between her little and ring fingers and firmly strapped them together, covering the adhesive with a short crepe bandage that encompassed her hand, leaving her thumb and other two fingers free.

‘That’ll protect the strapping and remind you and everyone else that you have an injury. Try to keep it dry and use the hand as little as possible. Don’t drive or do anything that puts a strain on the blade of your hand—the more you promote movement in the area the longer the bone’ll take to heal. And if the pain gets worse, or you’re worried for any reason, come back.’

Jane frowned. Her father had been a stoic, but she was a weakling when it came to physical suffering. Perhaps it was something she had inherited from her mother, who had walked out on her husband and child when Jane was only six because—according to Mark Sherwood—‘She didn’t have the guts to make a go of it. Typical woman—would rather snivel and run away than stand up for herself when the going gets tough.’

‘Why should the pain get worse?’ she asked the doctor warily.

‘The most likely reason is because the strapping is too tight. But...sometimes, if there are complications and the bone doesn’t heal properly, we might have to ask an orthopaedic surgeon to operate. But it’s highly improbable in your case—unless you intend to try for another knockout!’

Jane ignored this tactless attempt at a joke and studied her hand with its bulky wrapping. ‘Three weeks...’ she said gloomily.

‘Look on the bright side—at least it’s your left hand,’ he said.

Jane looked up at him. ‘I’m left-handed.’

‘Oh. Bad luck. What kind of work do you do?’

‘At the moment, none at all.’

He quickly recovered his irritating bounce. ‘Good. That’s good! It means you can rest that hand—’

‘It means I can starve,’ she corrected him. ‘If I don’t find a job soon I won’t be able to pay for food and rent, let alone medical bills.’

He put his hands up. ‘Hey, don’t shoot—this is covered by Accident Compensation; you’ll hardly have anything to pay. What kind of job are you looking for? What sort of qualifications do you have?’

If Jane hadn’t been tired, hungry and scraped raw by the previous night’s encounter she might have been amused at being patronised by an earnest young man no older than herself who was probably scarcely out of medical school.

‘Managerial,’ she said tersely. ‘But the sort of positions I’m interested in seem few and far between these days.’

Especially with Ryan Blair handing her the modern equivalent of the Black Spot—a red-flagged credit-rating.

‘So I’ve lowered my sights and lined up a few interviews for office jobs, sales, temping...the kind of thing that requires a certain manual dexterity, or at least an ability to write...’

‘You can still use a keyboard—’

‘Not very efficiently.’ She shrugged. ‘If I was doing the hiring I probably wouldn’t give me a job. You don’t take on someone if there’s a chance they’ll be applying for sick leave before they even get started!’

‘What about Social Welfare; will they help?’

She sighed, beginning to think that pride was another luxury she would have to learn to do without. ‘I’m involved in some heavy-duty financial wrangling...I’m not eligible for any government assistance until it’s straightened out.’

‘You’re certainly eligible for support payments if your injury prevents you from working,’ said the doctor, scribbling on his pad. ‘They’ll pay you a percentage of your weekly earnings averaged out over the past year. I’ll get the receptionist to give you an application form before you leave...’

Jane muttered an agreement as she accepted the prescription he had scrawled out, not wanting to get into a prolonged discussion of her depressing situation. The problem was she hadn’t earned any income in the last twelve months. So desperate had been the situation at Sherwood Properties that she had waived her salary and ploughed it back into the business, living off her various platinum credit cards in the expectation of better times ahead.

Over the next few days Jane saw several opportunities that she had managed to set up slip out of her bandaged grasp, just as she had predicted to the young doctor. She had done everything right—dressing smartly, if incredibly slowly, getting Collette to put her hair into its customary sleek roll, checking out the buses to make sure she wouldn’t be late for the widely dispersed interviews and presenting a pleasant, quietly confident demeanour no matter what the provocation. From her shrewd observations two of the rejections were genuine declines, the other three were because of her identity.

On the way back to the city bus terminal one lunchtime, aware of an empty afternoon stretching ahead of her, Jane impulsively called into the first employment bureau she had registered with, and the owner—a bluff, straightforward woman whom Jane knew slightly from her former life—was quietly blunt.

‘I’m telling you this, Jane, because I think it’s unfair for you to waste any more of your time...but I’ll deny every word I say outside this office. A bureau like mine depends on a lot of repeat business from the big companies. If we don’t deliver what the clients want and cater to their every whim someone else will get the business. The truth is, if I place Jane Sherwood in a job right now I risk losing several lucrative contracts, and I’m not prepared to do that. It’s probably the same at other agencies. There’s a lot of influence at work. I’m afraid you’re very much on your own...’

So what else is new? thought Jane that night as she decided on an omelette for dinner. The harsh reality was that she had always been more or less on her own. Even when her father had been alive their relationship had been more competitive than supportive.

A job wasn’t even her top priority any more. She had to move out in three days and she still hadn’t found a place to live.

There was a knock on the door and she nearly dropped an egg. It was the mousey man from the flat on the other side of Collette.

‘Telephone for you.’

‘Oh, thanks.’ She gave him a grave smile and nipped out into the hall, still holding the egg, to where the receiver dangled on its long grimy cord from the battered wall-phone. Eagerly she tipped the egg into the shallow cup of her bandaged hand and picked up the gently swinging receiver. ‘Hello?’

‘Miss Sherwood?’

Only one man said her name with that particular blend of menacing sibilance.

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