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Caleb stood up with lithe grace and rearranged his cuffs negligently. Maggie looked at him warily from beneath dark lashes, her heart still hammering painfully. ‘Murphy, I’ll leave the rest to you. Ms Holland, I have nothing more to say to you. I’ll expect you and your mother to be out of this house within two weeks; I trust that will give you time to sort yourselves out.’ He smiled cruelly. ‘I could have exercised my right to take the house today, but would rather you be gone should I decide to move in.’
‘Move in…’ Maggie repeated dumbly.
‘Yes. I’m doing some business in Dublin for a couple of months and need a bolt-hole from the city. This place would serve nicely…’ he flicked a dismissive glance around the room ‘…after I’ve had it redecorated, of course.’
Maggie stood up again, every inch of her body quivering in anger and reaction, this intrusion into their private sanctuary too much. ‘How dare you come in here and speak to me like this, on the very day of a funeral…have you no decency?’
‘Decency?’ He laughed mirthlessly. They had both forgotten the presence of the other man. Standing close to him, Maggie’s head bent back to look up, her throat exposed. She could feel the pulse beat rapidly at her neck. His eyes roved her face contemptuously, his lips curling in obvious distaste at what he saw. ‘You have a nerve to talk about decency…or should I inform our friend here exactly what role you played in your own downfall?’
So this was his revenge. He had gone after her stepfather with ruthless precision and now it was her turn. She looked at him, aghast at his capacity to take vengeance to the very last degree. In his mind she had been just as complicit as Tom Holland and deserved everything she was getting.
Without a backward glance, he strode from the room. It felt curiously flat and drained of colour after his explosive energy had left. She heard the doors close, the car start up, the gravel spurt from under the wheels as he sped away, taking their lives with him. After he was gone, Mr Murphy stood too. Maggie looked at him blankly, still stunned.
‘As you can see, your stepfather bit off a little more than he could chew with Cameron. He’s never been known to suffer fools gladly and when your stepfather made a second bid to topple Cameron’s empire he unleashed the tiger.’
‘The second bid…’
‘Well, actually, it was the third or fourth…Your stepfather really had a bee in his bonnet about Cameron, saw him as the ultimate prize to win. I know you and your mother weren’t aware of most of Tom’s dealings. After he tried to take over the Cameron Corporation by legitimate means and failed, he then went underground…and used other tactics, but still couldn’t do it.’
Maggie felt sick. She remembered all too well her unwitting role in those tactics. It had been she who had been used in the effort to divert his attention for a crucial moment in time. Thank God Mr Murphy didn’t seem to know too much and, after all, it had been in London, not Dublin.
The solicitor continued with a touch of awe in his voice, oblivious to Maggie’s turmoil. ‘Cameron systematically went through every one of Tom’s interests and with a lot more finesse managed to bring him to his knees, which was unusual really; Cameron isn’t known for going after his enemies so arbitrarily and mercilessly—he’s usually happy to cripple their defences, render them impotent.’ He shook his head. ‘Tom must have really pushed his buttons…’
Maggie flushed guiltily. ‘Well, he’s finished us too, it would seem.’
‘Yes.’ He sighed heavily. ‘I’ve looked at it every which way and he really does have it all sewn up. About the Revenue—I’m hoping if it comes to it that we can make a case…I can try to prove that your mother, while being named in the will, had no other part in her husband’s affairs.’
Maggie turned worried eyes to his. ‘But we don’t have anything any more, no money…How could we afford…?’
He patted her hand. ‘Don’t worry about that now. I know how hard it’s been for your mother. I won’t let that man make her life worse than it’s already been if I can help it.’
Maggie felt tears threaten at his kindness. ‘Thank you.’
With a few more comforting words he got up to leave and, after Maggie had closed the front door, she sagged against it. How on earth was she going to tell her mother? She knew this news would devastate her. For Maggie, her worst nightmare had just happened—coming face to face with Caleb Cameron again. She went back into the front room and, for the first time in her life, with a shaking hand, poured herself a shot of brandy and swallowed it back in one gulp.
As Caleb came to a halt in traffic, he struck the steering wheel with such force that drivers around him looked over, but the light of sudden interest in one woman’s eyes went unnoticed. When the lights went green he pulled away sharply, castigating himself. What had he been thinking? He’d always known he was going to ruin Tom Holland after his regular repeated takeover bids—the last one being the closest call. Far too close. The one that had involved her. But the takeover wasn’t what occupied his thoughts.
He’d told Maggie Holland he never wanted to see her again six months ago and yet, within hours of landing in the country, he had to come and see for himself…stand over his final piece of revenge. He could have left it in the solicitor’s hands. So why had he gone all the way out there? To confirm for himself that she couldn’t possibly still hold him in thrall?
But it had backfired spectacularly.
To his utter and complete self-disgust, his body had told him in no uncertain terms that she did indeed have the same intoxicating effect. The minute he’d seen her. And yet now he’d made them all pay. So why didn’t he feel satisfied? Why was her image burned on to his retina? And how the hell did he think he was going to survive in Dublin for two months, knowing she was in the same city?
As if to dampen the desire, he thought back to that night, when she had done everything exactly as he had suspected. Even down to having a room booked at the hotel. She’d brought him up there and seduced him. Exactly as he’d known she would.
But yet she didn’t sleep with you…a small voice reminded him mockingly.
Maybe that was it? He’d never walked away from a woman he desired before and yet he’d walked away from her that night. He still wasn’t sure why he’d left, when he knew he could have had her…without force. Her attraction had been undeniable, it was in every breathless gasp, every eye-dilating look she’d given him. But when she’d refused him herself at the last moment…somehow he couldn’t…He cursed and halted uncomfortable memories. All he knew now was that the unsatisfied ache he remembered had taken up residence again. The ache that had never really gone away if he was brutally honest with himself.
He would have to take a mistress. And soon. He’d been without a woman for too long and that was just what he needed to redirect his wandering attention. And erase Maggie Holland from his thoughts once and for all.
CHAPTER TWO
THAT evening Maggie prepared a light supper and woke her mother up. When they were sitting in the kitchen afterwards she finally asked the question Maggie had been dreading. ‘How did it go with Michael?’
She steeled herself. ‘Not great. I’m afraid I have some bad news.’
Her mother’s fingers clenched around the mug, her knuckles white. ‘What is it?’
Maggie could have wept at the familiar stoic look in her eyes. She drove down the lump. ‘Mum…someone took over Tom’s business…Just the day after he died it became apparent that he had lost everything. Effectively we’re bankrupt. It was…’ she quashed the potent image of Caleb from her mind’s eye ‘…someone who he had tried to take over.’
‘I always knew a lot of people had grievances against him…There was bound to be someone…So what does it mean?’ her mother asked.
‘Well…’ Maggie desperately fought against saying the house just yet ‘…it means that we don’t get anything; it’s all gone.’
Her mother gave much the same reaction as Maggie had earlier. ‘Well, that’s not the worst thing, is it? I mean, what have we ever had?’ She smiled a watery smile at her daughter and looked around the kitchen. ‘At least we have the house…Honestly, love, I don’t know what I’d do if we didn’t have this; it’s all I have left of your father and now I’ll be able to live here in peace.’ Maggie’s mother reached across the table and took her daughter’s hand, ‘Don’t look so worried, pet, everything will work out. I’ll get a job…you’ve got your painting; we’ll be okay.’
She hadn’t figured it out yet, Maggie knew with a sick horror. Somehow, her mother hadn’t equated signing over the house as collateral with Tom losing everything.
‘Mum…you don’t realise. We’ve lost everything…’
Her mother still looked at her blankly.
‘Mr Murphy said you signed the house over to Tom before we left London…’
‘Yes, love, but that was just…he just said it was…that it was only to…’ She stopped talking.
‘Oh, dear God, what did I do?’
Maggie held her hand. ‘It’s gone too. It was included in the rest of his assets.’
Her mother didn’t move for some time and then pulled her hand away slowly and got up to rinse out her cup. Maggie followed her, worried about her lack of reaction.
When her mother turned to face her she felt real fear, her eyes were dead, any sign of life or spark gone.
‘Mum…’
‘Margaret, I can’t…don’t make me think about this…I can’t bear it.’
She watched helplessly as the bowed woman walked out of the kitchen and knew that she was struggling with all of her might to keep herself together. That night she heard the muted sobs through her wall and knew that her proud mother would hate her to witness the awful grief. She couldn’t bear to hear her pain. What could she do? There had to be some way out…some solution.
The next morning, as the weak dawn light filtered through the curtains, Maggie lay with eyes wide open after a sleepless night. A night where demons had invaded every thought. Demons that had a familiar severely handsome face. She knew with a fatal certainty what she had to do. What the only option was.
When she walked into the kitchen a short while later any doubts in her head about her plan fled. Her mother was sitting there listlessly. She looked up briefly with shadowed eyes, her face a grey mask of disappointment and weariness. Maggie went and sat down beside her. ‘Mum, look at me.’ She waited until her mother brought her head around, slowly, as if it were a heavy weight.
‘I’m going to go into town for a while…I have something to do, but I’ll be back later or first thing in the morning.’
Hopefully with good news…
She didn’t want to say too much in case she got her mother’s hopes up, but right then and there Maggie vowed with everything in her heart that she would do whatever it took to get the house back in her mother’s name. She cooked a light breakfast and forced her mother to have some, relieved to see a slight bloom return to her cheeks before she left.
Once in her small, battered Mini, she stopped by Michael Murphy’s office in the main street to find out where Caleb’s offices were. He didn’t ask any questions, just said as he handed her the address, ‘He’s not going to be easy to see; everyone in Dublin is begging an audience…’
‘I know, but I’ll camp outside his door if I have to,’ Maggie replied grimly.
She hit the rush hour traffic on the way into town and the journey, which might normally take thirty minutes, took three times as long.
Finally she was in the city centre and parked near the building in the financial district where Caleb’s offices had been set up. She was dressed smartly in her one and only suit. She wanted to look as businesslike as possible. It was dark blue—a skirt and short jacket with a matching cream silk shirt. She wore sheer stockings and high heels and had tied her unruly hair back in a severe bun. She wanted to feel armoured against Caleb’s scathing looks and condemnation. Even if she was shaking like a leaf on the inside.
The spring air was deceptively mild, yet she shivered. At reception they directed her up to the top floor, which Caleb had taken over in its entirety for his sole use. Her stomach churned as she ascended in the lift, the thought of seeing him face to face again more daunting than she had thought possible.
Any illusion of ease in getting to see him was swiftly dashed on her arrival on to the opulently designed floor. A veritable bulldog of a secretary was guarding the main foyer and looked Maggie up and down when she requested to see Caleb.
‘Do you have an appointment?’
‘Well…not exactly, but when he hears who it is he might have a couple of minutes to spare. I won’t take up much of his time.’
‘I’ll let him know, but he has meetings back to back all day. You might be waiting for some time.’
‘That’s fine.’ She’d wait until midnight if she had to. She made a quick call on her mobile to a friend of her mother’s in the village, asking her to look in and make sure she was okay. With that done, she settled in for the wait.
Some eight hours later Maggie had run the gamut of emotions: irritation, boredom, anger, despair, disbelief and now she was just exhausted. Her suit was crumpled, her shoes were off and her hair was unravelling. Any make-up that had been there had long slid off. She hadn’t left for anything except a crucial toilet visit in case she missed him. All day long men in suits had come and gone. She’d seen lunch being delivered and then taken away again, prompting her own stomach to rumble. The first secretary had been and gone and had been replaced by another similarly bad-tempered one.
Caleb’s door opened again and Maggie resigned herself to seeing yet more faceless suits departing and thought dimly that the man’s stamina was unbelievable. She didn’t register for a minute that it was Caleb himself walking out, his tall, powerful build unmistakable. When her sluggish brain finally clicked into gear, she jumped up, her body protesting at the sudden movement after sitting for so long. He was striding towards the lift, not looking left or right; he hadn’t even seen her as she was partially tucked away behind a plant.
‘Caleb…’ she cursed her impulse to call him by his first name ‘…Mr Cameron—wait!’
He had just pressed the button for the lift and turned around slowly, his brows snapping together when he saw her. Maggie forced herself to stand tall, only realising then that she was in stockinged feet, her shoes abandoned somewhere near the chair. She hitched up her chin.
‘Mr Cameron, I’ve been waiting all day to see you. I know you’re busy, but I’d appreciate just a few minutes of your time.’
‘Ivy told me you were here earlier, but she knew I was tied up all day.’
‘I insisted on staying…I hoped you might have a window somewhere…’
‘Well, as you can see, I didn’t. And now, if you’ll excuse me…Call tomorrow and maybe there will be a free appointment.’
He couldn’t leave. Maggie stood, open-mouthed. She’d been waiting for hours without food or water to see him. The look on his face said he couldn’t have cared less if she’d been bleeding and begging at his feet. He turned away dismissively.
She looked at his broad back, the doors of the lift opening silently; she had to stop him. She ran forward and put her hands in to stop the closing doors, looking up into his forbiddingly expressionless face.
‘Please, Mr Cameron, I’m begging you to just listen to what I have to say for five minutes. I’ve been waiting here since half ten this morning. I know that’s my own fault, but I have to talk to you.’
He stood back against the wall of the lift, casually looking Maggie up and down as if he were used to women flinging themselves in his path. Which he more than likely was, she thought bitterly. He regarded her for a long moment. She fought against squirming under his look.
‘Very well. Five minutes.’
‘Thank you,’ Maggie let out on a sigh of relief.
He stepped back out of the lift and, with a flick of his hand, instructed the gaping secretary to go for the night. Without looking back to see if Maggie was following, he went into his office. She found her shoes and scrambled to put them on and follow him in before he changed his mind.
When she walked in warily he was pouring himself a shot of some dark liquid and sat down at his desk, one large hand clamped around the glass. Maggie stood nervously, taking in the dominantly masculine aura of the room. One low lamp cast a pool of light. The shadows in the room made him look even darker than he normally did, which, she remembered, came from his Brazilian mother. His father was the quintessential Englishman and the two sides—one tempestuous and passionate, the other sophisticated—proved to be a heady combination. As Maggie remembered all too well.
‘Well?’ he asked softly, with more than a hint of steel in his tone.
She took a deep breath. ‘It’s about our house.’
‘You mean my house.’
She nodded slightly, feeling a surge of anger at his proprietary arrogance. ‘That house belonged to my father…my birth father,’ she qualified. ‘It’s always been my mother’s, the one thing that Tom didn’t own.’
‘And…?’ he asked in a bored tone, vaguely remembering a plain, nervous woman who had hovered around the edges of the meetings in Holland’s house.
Maggie moved closer behind the chair opposite his, her hands curling unconsciously around the top, knuckles white. ‘Tom made her sign the house over to him. It’s always been in her name. I…I don’t know how he managed it; she always vowed she’d never—’ Maggie stopped herself. He didn’t need to know the gory details. ‘By taking the house, the only person you’re punishing is my mother, and she’s got nothing to do with what happened…She’s suffered enough—’
‘As the wife of a multi-millionaire?’ he sneered, his lip curling in disbelief. ‘You must be joking if you expect me to believe that. You just want to salvage something and you’ve concocted some lame sob story—’
‘It’s not!’ Maggie said fiercely. ‘Please. You have to believe me.’
‘Believe you?’ He stood up and advanced around the desk to her side. She stood rooted to the spot. ‘You don’t have a truthful bone in your body…Tell me, how many other men have you teased for Tom Holland in the last few months…Ten? Twenty? Or maybe you gave them the delectable fruits of your body that you denied me?’
His crude words shocked her into action, wide green eyes stared up and, without thinking about what she was doing, somehow she had moved closer and her hand lifted up, trembling, but before it could reach its target, her wrist was caught. She abhorred violence and yet, here she was, about to strike him.
‘Now, now…Sheath your claws, you little cat. I don’t think you really want to do that, do you?’
With the shock of the near violence and Caleb’s hand like a steel clamp around her wrist, Maggie felt her pulse speeding up to triple time. Her eyes drank him in despite herself, taking in the hard jaw, the dark hair swept back off his forehead. The sensuous lips pulled into a grim line. But it was the eyes she remembered the most. Piercing blue—a blue that she’d fancied herself drowning in once…she shut her eyes at the memories…eyes which sliced through her when she opened her own again.
‘You can give up the act.’ He dropped her hand as though it was infectious and Maggie stepped back; she had to put space between them. She rubbed her wrist absently where he had gripped it, knowing that she’d have a bruise in the morning. She forced herself to look at him again.
‘The simple fact is that if you take the house it will kill my mother. It’s all she’s ever counted on, all that she has to remind her of my father. She didn’t get anything from Tom Holland except—’
Maggie belatedly remembered her mother’s desperate plea not to reveal the reality of her marriage.
‘Yes? Except what?’
This man would never understand. Too much had happened for her to count on any level of trust.
She steeled herself against his overpowering presence, the condemnation in his cold, implacable gaze. She ignored his prompt. ‘I know my word means nothing to you, but please just hear me out. She never had anything to do with any of his business concerns and certainly nothing to do with trying to take you down…’
Caleb’s eyes narrowed and Maggie seized on a chink in the armour. ‘You can ask anyone who knew him,’ she said in a rush, ‘Ask Mr Murphy; he knows. This isn’t for me; it’s for her. I’m asking you to put the house back into her name…for her sake.’
He just watched her with those hard eyes, his face shuttered. Then he said slowly, ‘And all the time your mother was supposedly blithely unaware, you were in league with your stepfather, doing your seductive routine, conning innocent men…and now what? You have a fit of conscience and want to make it up to her? I don’t buy it.’
Maggie couldn’t fight his opinion of her; it was so low that it may as well have been in the gutter.
She answered with a brittle smile. ‘Yes, you could say that’s what it is. I’m trying to mend my ways, starting with my mother.’ She felt silly tears smart at the back of her eyes. The truth of what she too had suffered at the hands of that man burned like a brand and that someone like Caleb, especially Caleb, would never believe her.
‘If I were to do as you ask, how can I be sure you’re being altruistic—and what will make it worth my while?’
‘I’ll do anything you want…anything! Wash floors…’ she said wildly, the brittleness gone, sensing a chance, however flimsy. ‘Anything. Just please give my mother back her house; she doesn’t deserve this punishment.’
Caleb lounged back nonchalantly against the desk, arms folded across his broad chest, the material of his shirt straining. Maggie couldn’t believe that in the midst of all this she could be so aware of him. His gaze was uncomfortably assessing.
He’d already decided he was going to take a mistress, but why go to the tiresome bother of having to go through the motions just to get someone into his bed? When what…who he really wanted was conveniently within his grasp. One thing he knew for certain as she stood in front of him, her whole petite frame quivering so lightly that it was barely perceptible—was that he wanted her. Badly. More than he’d ever wanted a woman in his life. And he always got what he wanted…
‘You’d sell your soul to the devil?’
‘Yes.’ She answered simply, without hesitation. ‘If I had to.’
‘You’d sell yourself to me?’ he asked softly.
It took slow seconds for his words to sink in; she wasn’t sure if she had heard him correctly. ‘I’m sorry—what…?’
‘You heard me.’
‘Sell myself like…like some kind of—’
‘Mistress. You…’He looked her up and down thoroughly, his eyes resting for long seconds on her breasts, which rose and fell, her distress evident. ‘Your body to me in exchange for the house.’
Maggie stepped back, blanching at his stark words, his intent, but Caleb stood and advanced a step for every one that she took back. As if she could have ever hoped that she could appeal to just his mercy. Men like him exacted payment for everything.
‘I couldn’t do that…How…how could you even suggest such a thing?’
‘Because, you see, I can. Believe me, I don’t want to want you…but I do. And you owe me…ever since you seduced me up in that hotel room six months ago and then turned on the ice maiden act. Tell me, did it turn you on? Was it part of the plan? Did you feel powerful, knowing that you could bring a man to the brink—’
‘Stop! It wasn’t…I didn’t…’ she denied automatically, wanting to halt his words, the tide of burning humiliation that threatened to overwhelm her, as she remembered just how awfully wanton she had been, the shock of her response to him. It had been that, along with the crushing burden of guilt, that had stunned her into frozen immobility at the time. Everything else had been forgotten. Even her mother. Even the threat. And it had scared the life out of her.