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www.millsandboon.co.uk
Former journalist SARA CRAVEN published her first novel ‘Garden of Dreams’ for Mills & Boon in 1975. Apart from her writing (naturally!) her passions include reading, bridge, Italian cities, Greek islands, the French language and countryside, and her rescue Jack Russell/cross Button. She has appeared on several TV quiz shows and in 1997 became UK TV Mastermind champion. She lives near her family in Warwickshire – Shakespeare country.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
COVER
TITLE PAGE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
ENDPAGE
COPYRIGHT
CHAPTER ONE
‘WONDERFUL party, darling,’ the man said. He was smiling owlishly and slurring his words, and Lisle wondered without interest who he was. A friend of Janie’s, perhaps. Certainly no one she knew.
‘Thank you.’ She gave him an absent smile and tried to move past him down the passage to the kitchen. ‘It’s not a wonderful party,’ she thought. ‘It’s a lousy party, and I’m bored out of my skull. I wish they’d all go.’
She was amazed to hear herself. She was the girl who enjoyed life to the full, who only needed a few hours’ sleep, whose pace never slackened.
‘I’m starting to believe my own publicity,’ she thought ruefully.
‘Where are you goin’?’ The man seized her arm, his face plaintive. His fingers felt warm and clammy on her skin, and she had to repress a shiver of distaste.
She tried to detach herself, but he hung on. ‘To get some more ice.’ She kept her voice cool and equable, because she didn’t know who he was. Someone had once made a semi-drunken pass at her at a party, and she’d administered a crushing snub and a slapped face, only to discover when taxed on the matter by a furious Gerard that he had been an important client, and she had just lost Harlow Bannerman a contract that they had wanted. Since then, she had learned to handle the casual fondling, the innuendoes and sometimes blatant propositioning with imperturbable charm. As Gerard had pointed out, it was part of her job.
‘Don’ leave me,’ the man said, and winked at her. ‘I’ve been trying to get you alone all evening.’
She doubted that. The truth was probably that he had seen her slip out of the room and followed, fancying his chances, and now he was blocking the way to the kitchen and leering.
She groaned inwardly, and at the same moment the doorbell pealed loudly. Saved by the bell, she told herself drily, inwardly blessing the late arrival.
She threw the front door open, smiling with determined gaiety, but the man on the threshold didn’t smile back. In fact the expression on his face was almost one of contempt, which was ridiculous considering he was a complete stranger to her.
Lisle wondered for a moment if he was a new neighbour coming to complain about possible noise, because he wasn’t a party guest, or even a hopeful gatecrasher. Instinct told her that.
He said, ‘Miss Bannerman?’
She went on smiling. ‘Yes?’
A dark forbidding face, she thought, the features harshly marked, with a firm-lipped mouth and a nose which had quite evidently been broken at some time in its career, but attractive nonetheless.
He said, ‘Perhaps we could have a private word—preferably out of earshot of that—bear-garden.’ He waved towards the muted roar of the party.
‘Oh dear.’ Lisle raised her eyebrows. ‘So who are you? The police—the bailiffs—the Inland Revenue?—because whoever you are, I think you’ve got the wrong person.’
He shook his head, the wintry grey eyes going impassively over her, taking in every detail of the expensive black dress from the low neckline to the skirt slit as far as her thigh.
‘I don’t think so.’ There was a sudden burst of noisy laughter from the living room, and he glanced towards the half-closed door, his mouth twisting. ‘And how will this ultimately feature in the Harlow Bannerman accounts?’ he asked. ‘As entertaining clients?’
‘My God!’ Lisle struck a pose of exaggerated horror. ‘It is the Inland Revenue!’ The owlish man released his grip on her arm and slid back to the party, leaving them alone in the narrow hall, watching each other warily.
She said, ‘All joking apart, would you mind telling me who you are, and what you want?’
‘In privacy—yes.’ He walked past her unhurriedly, down the passage, away from the din of the party. ‘In here, perhaps.’ He opened a door.
‘And perhaps not,’ Lisle said indignantly. ‘That happens to be my bedroom.’
He said grimly, ‘Spare me the coy protests, Miss Bannerman, they don’t go with your clothes. I assure you I’m not in the mood, and even if I were, you overestimate your charms where I’m concerned.’
The breath caught in her throat. She said slowly, ‘I—think I’ve just been—insulted. Will you leave now, or must I have you thrown out?’
‘You have to have me thrown,’ he said at once. ‘And before you do perhaps I should tell you that your grandfather was taken ill this afternoon, and is asking for you. He isn’t expected to live.’
She made a muffled sound and sank down on the bed, pressing her hand against her mouth, her green eyes widening in shocked incredulity.
She exclaimed, ‘This afternoon? But why has no one been in touch—why wasn’t I told before?’
‘You could have been,’ he said, ‘if you entertained less, or left your phone on the hook more. I’ve been trying to make contact for several hours. In the end I decided it would be easier to come in person and fetch you myself.’
‘Breaking the news to me gently en route,’ she said in a shaky breath.
‘You’re tough, Miss Bannerman. You can take it.’ But the grim note in his voice told her it would make little difference to him whether she could or not.
‘Who are you?’ she demanded.
‘Jake Allard,’ he said. ‘You may or may not have heard of me.’
She’d heard of him all right, but she’d never bargained for meeting him, and the shock of it drove the breath out of her body for a moment. Gerard had confidently insisted that he was no longer a threat, but here, in the confined space of her bedroom, he seemed about as threatening as it was possible to get.
‘You seem lost for words,’ he observed, after a pause. ‘How about “I thought you were in the States"?’
Her lips parted to deny all knowledge of him, or interest in him or his movements, and then closed again.
‘Very wise.’ He sounded faintly amused for the first time. ‘I wouldn’t have believed you. I’m sure that brother of yours has been keeping you well up to date on the whole situation.’
Not, she thought, if you’re here when he thinks you’re in America.
It was over a year since Gerard had first mentioned Jake Allard’s name. At that time, he had been no more than a cloud no bigger than a man’s hand on the Harlow Bannerman horizon, but in the months which followed, he had assumed ever larger and more ominous proportions.
‘He wants the company,’ Gerard had stated flatly. Allard International have a small electronics subsidiary of their own, and he wants to expand it. We have the know-how that he needs, but he doesn’t want to pay for it. He knows that we’ve been badly hit by the recession and he reckons if he waits long enough he can pick us up for peanuts. That’s of course if Grandfather doesn’t invite him to join the Board anyway.’
Lisle had given him a swift anxious glance. ‘You think that’s likely?’
‘I wish I didn’t.’ Gerard lit a cigarette and puffed at it edgily. ‘But when I got back from Rome last week, Oliver Grayson told me they were practically living in each other’s pockets.’ He added furiously, ‘He seemed delighted.’
Oliver Grayson would, of course. He had all the respect in the world for their grandfather Murray Bannerman, who had built the company up from nothing, and he had been close to their father too, but he had never made any secret of the fact that he felt it was time the family control over the firm ran out, and that Gerard would achieve his ambition of becoming managing director, and ultimately, the chairman only over his dead body. A solution which would suit Gerard perfectly well, Lisle thought drily.
Oliver Grayson wouldn’t altogether object if Harlow Bannerman became part of the expanding Allard empire. He must have been desperately disappointed when all the talk in the financial papers of takeovers and mergers quietly died away, and Gerard announced that Jake Allard had gone to the States to open a new research laboratory, adding with satisfaction that there had been a slight rise in the value of Harlow Bannerman shares.
Now Lisle looked at Jake Allard, her face expression-less.
‘I take it that you’ve been at the Priory.’
‘A private visit, at your grandfather’s invitation.’ He gave her a faint smile. ‘So, if you’re trying to pin the blame for this latest attack on to me, forget it. You know as well as I do what a sick man he’s been, and I’d say that your brother’s machinations, and your increasingly public performances haven’t done a great deal to contribute to his well-being.’ He eyed her levelly for a moment. ‘So now perhaps you could get a move on, unless being stubborn and obstructive is a trait you share with your brother.’
Lisle opened one of the fitted cupboards which ran the length of one wall, dragged out a weekend case, and began to hurl things into it, almost at random. She was trying to keep her temper under control, to concentrate on the thought of her grandfather and her concern for him.
Because he had always been the rock in her life. Her mother had died when she was born, and as her father had been a charming lightweight who had preferred travelling the world, selling Harlow Bannerman, rather than providing a stable home background for two growing children, Lisle and Gerard had been brought up instead at the Priory, under Murray Bannerman’s aegis.
But now the rock was crumbling, and she felt the stirrings of a blind panic within her. She retrieved a scent spray from the dressing table and in the mirror she saw Jake Allard reflected, watching her, the grey eyes icily inimical, and the panic grew.
She said, ‘Does Gerard know?’
‘He seems to have disappeared,’ he drawled. ‘I’ve set Grayson on to look for him, but perhaps you can help us trace him. I imagine he’s on one of his expense account forays after someone else’s wife.’
She raised her eyebrows scornfully. ‘A puritan, Mr Allard? How unusual!’
‘In your circle, without a doubt.’ His hard mouth twisted. ‘But I’m no puritan, sweetheart, so don’t push your luck. I’m quite prepared to believe that you share your brother’s alleycat standards.’
Lisle was holding her hairbrush. It was a heavy one, silver-backed, and she threw it at him with all her strength. He dodged without haste, and fielded it neatly to her chagrin.
‘Red hair and a temper to match,’ he said softly. ‘Well, control it when I’m around, Miss Bannerman, or I shall take this brush and apply it hard to a portion-of your spoiled anatomy. Do I make myself clear?’
‘More than clear.’ Her rounded breasts were rising and falling stormily, but most of her anger was directed at herself. She should have stayed cool, not allowed him to get at her, or at least let him know that he had done so. She swallowed, steadying her breathing deliberately. ‘I’m going to change now, so perhaps you’d leave the room.’
He lifted one shoulder in a negligent shrug. ‘If you feel it’s necessary.’ His gaze slid mercilessly down her body. ‘That dress, after all, leaves little to the imagination.’
‘But fortunately,’ she snapped, ‘not everyone has your brand of imagination!’
The door was flung open, and Janie appeared on a little breeze of resentment. ‘I thought you were supposed to be getting more ice. Alan’s drink is practically coming to the boil. …’ She stopped dead. ‘Oh dear,’ she went on after a well-judged pause. ‘I appear to be interrupting something. Lisle darling, you really should learn to lock your door.’
‘You’re interrupting nothing,’ Lisle said wearily, noticing Janie’s eyes bright with malicious interest. She was used to Janie. Jake Allard wasn’t, and she knew that crack about the locked door would have been noted and filed away for future reference. ‘I’m sorry about the ice. As it happens, I’ve got to break up the party. I’m going away for a few days.’
‘Now that is fast work!’ Janie’s incredibly long mascaraed lashes were fluttering as if they’d been caught in a gale. ‘Not that I blame you, darling, not for one moment.’ She sent Jake Allard one of her deliberately provocative sexy looks, and he laughed suddenly, the harsh lines of his face softening into genuine amusement.
When he wasn’t being a bastard, he could be diabolically attractive, Lisle realised wonderingly.
She said quietly, ‘Janie, Grandfather’s dying.’
For a second her flatmate’s face wore an expression of almost ludicrous astonishment. ‘But he can’t be, darling! He’s Murray Bannerman. He’s immortal—everyone knows that.’ In one of her mercurial changes of mood, she was sober suddenly, taking control. ‘You look ghastly. I’ll finish your case.’ She looked at Jake Allard. ‘Perhaps you’d get Lisle a drink. She looks as if she could do with a brandy. And yourself, of course.’
‘Not now, thanks. I’ve a long drive ahead.’ He went out, closing the door behind him.
Janie swept up a handful of underwear and tucked it into the corner of the case. ‘Who was that?’
‘Jake Allard.’ Lisle was feeling limp again. She sat down on the dressing stool.
‘My God! No wonder his face seemed familiar.’
‘You know him?’
‘Graham does.’ That was her boss. ‘And I’ve seen the odd blurred pic in the financial pages. According to all reports, he’s dynamite, and not only in the boardroom.’
Lisle grimaced slightly. ‘That doesn’t altogether surprise me.’
Janie folded Lisle’s nightdress with exaggerated care. ‘Does the fact that he’s here mean that the deal is on again with Harlow Bannerman?’
‘I don’t know.’ Lisle shook her head slowly. ‘I dare not think. Everything’s happening too fast—and Gerard’s vanished.’
‘You don’t know where he is?’ Janie’s eyes were on her face.
Lisle shrugged. ‘I could make an educated guess.’ Barbados, she thought. That was where Gerard would be, with Carla Foxton. Mrs Carla Foxton. A wave of irrational anger at Jake Allard swept over her. God damn him, he had a reputation of his own, so what right had he to sit in judgment on anyone else?
‘Then I’d get him back if I were you. This is not a good time for him to be missing, believe me.’ Janie was unwontedly sober, and Lisle bit her lip.
‘Is it that bad?’ She tried for lightness of tone, and didn’t quite make it.
‘It could be.’ Janie gave a little shake of her head. ‘I’m sure Gerard would rather be here, fighting, than coming back to salvage what he can from the wreckage. For that’s all there’d be, and you can ask Graham if you don’t believe me.’
‘Oh, I believe you,’ Lisle said bitterly. ‘I believe you only too well. The Allard man looks capable of anything.’
‘And in this case appearances aren’t deceptive,’ Janie said grimly. ‘According to all reports, he’s fought his way single-handed up a very steep ladder, and you don’t do that these days without stepping on a number of faces.’
‘By the look of him, he’s also been trodden on in his time,’ Lisle said caustically. ‘I’d like to shake the hand of the man who did it.’
‘I don’t recommend it.’ Janie shot her a minatory glance. ‘My advice is to forget that you don’t find him the flavour of the month—particularly if he’s going to be a force to be reckoned with in Harlow Bannerman. Graham says that Jake Allard can be a good friend—but a very bad enemy.’
‘Indeed?’ Lisle had discarded the black dress by now, and was pulling a cashmere sweater over her head to match the olive green corded jeans. She tugged the sweater into place, and raked her fingers carelessly through the heavy waves of copper hair, pushing it back into shape. ‘Well, perhaps he’ll discover the same can be said of me.’ She cast a swift glance over the contents of the case and remembered her toilet bag from the bathroom. ‘He doesn’t frighten me,’ she flung over her shoulder as she went to the door.
Jake Allard was coming down the passage, glass in hand. There was no way he couldn’t have heard her last remark, and his teeth glinted momentarily in a faint, hard smile as he held the glass out to her.
‘Your brandy, Miss Bannerman, or perhaps the need for it has passed.’
She said curtly, ‘Yes, it has,’ and went on down the passage to the bathroom.
It was unoccupied, and obeying an impulse she hardly understood, she closed the door behind her, and shot the small bolt, shutting herself in away from the rest of the world. There was a mixture of exotic scents in the warm air, and several of the towels lay damp and crumpled on the floor. Automatically she retrieved them, straightening them and returning them to the heated handrail. There were mirrors everywhere and she seemed to catch sight of herself in them all, a myriad reflections of Lisle, two bright spots of colour in her pale face, her green eyes glittering like a cat’s.
She’d spoken brave words, but they had been a lie. Of course she was frightened, with a deep gut-wrenching panic which was totally outside her experience. She felt as if every prop and stay to her security were being knocked away one by one, and there was nothing she could do to prevent it.
She sank down on the high-backed wicker chair and tried to think, to reason out everything which had happened in the past hour.
Grandfather, she had been told, could be dying, but then his doctors had written him off before, and been wrong. As Janie had said, Murray Bannerman was immortal. He didn’t believe in illness, or particularly in safeguarding his health against the march of time either.
‘If you lived as these damned medicos want you to, you might as well be dead,’ he had growled testily more than once.
The doctors grumbled too about his refusal to follow their advice, his frankly avowed aversion to hospitals, They complained it was impossible to give him the treatment he needed, but Lisle knew that secretly they admired his stubbornness and his fighting spirit.
She tried to imagine life without him—Harlow Bannerman without him, and the exhilarating boardroom battles he had always enjoyed. She had often felt he secretly relished the covert sniping between Gerard and Oliver Grayson, but she had never until then doubted for a moment whose side he would be on if ever the chips were down.
Now she was not so sure.
Jake Allard at the Priory—on a private visit. And just what discussions had gone on under the shelter of that privacy? she wondered desperately. It was surely beyond coincidence that all this should have taken place when Gerard was safely out of the way, so what could her grandfather have been thinking of?
She would have to telephone Gerard somehow, get him back into the country before it was too late.
He’d covered his tracks well if Jake Allard had failed to find him, she thought, but it was hardly surprising. Harry Foxton wasn’t over-jealous, or particularly suspicious, but he was no fool either, and any hint that Gerard and Carla were enjoying a break from a damp English autumn on the same Caribbean island would set all kinds of alarm bells ringing. Few men with very attractive wives trusted Gerard, she was forced to admit.
But it wasn’t altogether his fault, she thought loyally. Since childhood, he had always been too–good-looking and possessed of far too much charm for his own good. His hair was darker than hers—a kind of rich chestnut, and his eyes were bluer, and he had the look of a young Renaissance prince. Women had begun drooling over him in his pram, and almost before he had left adolescence the admiring looks had become frankly speculative. It was like letting a child loose in a sweetshop, Lisle thought ruefully. And so far he had shown no sign of surfeit ….
She sighed. She knew the fact that Gerard had laughed to scorn any idea that he should settle down and give some thought to the next generation of Bannermans had distressed her grandfather. Murray Bannerman believed in the family, and the stability of marriage. He had said openly that a wife and child might give Gerard the sense of responsibility he so often seemed to lack, and yet at the same time he usually greeted the rumour of some new romantic adventure by his grandson with a muttered, ‘The young dog!’ and a hoarse chuckle.
Lisle’s attitude to Gerard’s constant affairs fell a long way short of approval, but he was her older brother, and although there was now no trace of the hero-worship with which she had regarded him when they were much younger, she loved him and made mental excuses for his faults, even when his selfishness and lack of consideration impinged upon herself.
And if there was to be a battle between him and Jake Allard for the control of Harlow Bannerman, she would be fighting at Gerard’s side all the way, she told herself angrily.
Someone rattled the bathroom door and retreated with a muffled curse, and Lisle started to her feet, seizing her brown quilted bag and filling it rapidly with essential toilet items. She wondered how long she would be staying at the Priory. Until. … Her mind closed down, refusing to admit the rest of the thought.
Her only comfort as she unbolted the door and went slowly back to the bedroom was that Murray was a fighter too.
Janie was alone when she went in, and she looked at her, a mute question in her eyes.
‘He’s gone to get his car.’ She zipped the case shut and held it out to Lisle. ‘You’ll need a jacket or something.’
‘Yes.’ She had a new one, dark brown supple suede with a deep fur trim on the collar and cuffs, and now seemed as good a time as any to wear it. She needed the reassurance that something new, expensive and glamorous could give her.
She swung her bag over her shoulder, draped the coat over her arm and picked up her case. Janie followed her out of the room and along to the front door. Lisle gave her a taut smile.
‘Perhaps you should get back to our guests,’ she said, ‘before they drink us dry and start wrecking the place.’
Janie nodded, biting her lip. She said gently, ‘Take it easy, love. Remember what I said.’
‘I’m not likely to forget it,’ Lisle said ruefully.
As she pushed open the glass door and emerged on to the street, the car pulled up at the kerbside, and Jake Allard got out. He opened the passenger door, and stood impassively, waiting for her to cross the pavement to his side, the slight chill of the breeze ruffling the thick blackness of his hair.
Lisle had to force herself to move. She felt drained of strength so that walking became almost an effort of will alone. The only thing which kept her from falling down was the sure and certain knowledge of who would pick her up again, because, crazily, the prospect of being touched by him was suddenly the worst threat of all.
When he reached for her case, to stow it in the boot, she pretended she hadn’t seen the gesture, and put it down on the pavement in front of him instead. She was so uptight that even an accidental brush of fingers could well make her fall apart.
The car was capacious, the front seats well spaced, but when he closed her door and came round to take his place behind the wheel, she felt claustrophobic. She lifted a hand and eased the high collar of her sweater away from her tight throat, making herself breathe deeply.