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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—’
