Pride & Consequence Omnibus (19 page)

‘Unfortunately, it is all a question of economics,’ Leo was replying. ‘The market simply isn’t big enough to support so many different factories all producing the same thing...’

Suddenly Jodi had heard enough. Her passionate desire to protect her school overwhelmed the fear and shame that had kept her silent throughout the evening and, turning towards Leo, she told him angrily, ‘It managed to support them well enough before your takeover, and it seems to me that it would be more truthful to say that the economics in question are those that affect your profits—not to mention the tax advantages you will no doubt stand to gain. Have you no idea of the hardship it’s going to cause? The people it will put out of work, the lives and families it will destroy? I’ve got children at school whose whole family are dependent on that factory—fathers, mothers, grandparents, aunts, uncles. Don’t you care about anything except making money?’

Jodi could feel the small, shocked silence her outburst had caused. Across the table, Nigel was giving her a warning look, whilst Graham Johnson was frowning slightly.

‘We all understand how you feel, Jodi.’ he told her calmly. ‘But I’m afraid that economics, profits, can’t just be ignored. Leo is competing in a worldwide market-place, and for his business to remain successful—’

‘There are far more important things in life than profits,’ Jodi interrupted him, unable to stop herself from stemming the intensity of her feelings now that she had started to speak.

‘Such as what?’ Leo checked her sharply. ‘Such as you keeping enough pupils in your school to impress the school inspectorate? Aren’t you just as keen to show a profit on your pupil numbers in return for Education Authority funding as I am on my financial investment in my business?’

‘How dare you say that?’ Jodi breathed furiously. ‘It is the children themselves, their education, their futures, their lives, that concern me. What you are doing—’

‘What I am doing is trying to run a profitable business.’ Leo silenced her acidly. ‘You, I’m afraid, are blinkered by your own parochial outlook. I have to see the bigger picture. If I was to keep all the factories operating inevitably none of them would be profitable and I would then be out of business, with the loss of far more jobs than there will be if I simply close down two of them.’

‘You just don’t care, do you?’ Jodi challenged him. ‘You don’t care about what you’re doing; about the misery you will be causing.’

She knew that she was going too far, and that both Nigel and the Johnsons were watching her with concern and dismay, but something was driving her on. The tension she had been feeling all evening had somehow overwhelmed the rational parts of her brain and she was in the hands of a self-destructive, unstoppable urge she couldn’t control.

‘What I care about is keeping my business at the top of its field,’ Leo told her grimly.

‘Precisely,’ Jodi threw at him, curling her lip in contempt as she tossed her head. ‘Profit... Don’t you care that what you are doing is totally immoral?’

Jodi tensed as she heard the sharp hiss of collective indrawn breath as she and Leo confronted one another in bitter hostility.

‘
You
dare to accuse me of immorality!’

Had the others heard, as she had, the way he had emphasised the word ‘you’? Jodi wondered in sick shock as she tried to withstand the icy contempt of the look he was giving her.

‘Jodi, my dear.’ Graham finally intervened a little uncomfortably. ‘I’m sure we all appreciate how strongly you feel about everything, but Leo does have a point. Naturally his business has to be competitive.’

‘Oh, naturally,’ Jodi agreed bitingly, throwing Leo a caustic look.

Nigel was standing up, saying that it was time that they left, but as Graham pulled out Jodi’s chair for her she still couldn’t resist turning to Leo to challenge, ‘In the end everything comes down to money, doesn’t it?’

As he, too, stood up he looked straight at her and told her softly, ‘As you should know.’

Jodi could feel her face burning.

‘Oh, and by the way,’ Leo added under cover of Mary going to fetch them all their coats, ‘you can tell your friend Driscoll—’

Jodi didn’t let him get any further.

‘Jeremy Driscoll is no friend of mine,’ she told him immediately. ‘In fact, if you want the truth, I loathe and detest him almost as much as I do you.’

She was shaking as she thanked Mary and slipped on her coat, hurrying out into the warmth of the summer night ahead of Nigel, who had turned back to say something to their host.

As she waited for him beside the car, her back towards the house, she was seething with anger. At the same time she began to feel the effects of the shock of seeing Leo Jefferson and the way she had argued with him so publicly.

As she heard Nigel come crunching over the gravel towards her, without turning to look at him, she begged fiercely, ‘Just take me out of here...’

‘Where exactly is it you want me to take you? Or can I guess?’

Whirling round, Jodi expelled her breath on a hissing gasp as she realised that it wasn’t Nigel who was standing next to her in the shadow of the trees but Leo Jefferson.

‘Keep away from me,’ she warned him furiously, inadvertently backing into the shadows as she strove to put more distance between them.

Her reaction, so totally overplayed and unwarranted, was the last straw so far as Leo was concerned.

‘Oh, come on,’ he snarled. ‘You haven’t got an audience now!’

‘You don’t know anything,’ Jodi spat back shakily.

‘That wasn’t what you were telling me last night,’ Leo couldn’t stop himself from reminding her savagely. ‘Last night—’

‘Last night I didn’t know what I was doing,’ Jodi retaliated bitterly. ‘If I had done I would never...’ She was so overwrought now that her voice and her body both trembled. ‘You are the last man I would have wanted to share what should have been one of the most special experiences of my life.’

Jodi was beyond thinking logically about what she was revealing; instead she was carried along, flung headlong into the powerful vortex of her own overwhelming emotions.

Leo could hear what she was saying, but, like her, his emotions were too savagely aroused for him to take on board the meaning of her words. Instead he held out to her the handbag she had unknowingly left behind in the house, telling her coldly, ‘You forgot this. Your cousin is still talking with Graham and Mary and he asked me to bring it to you. I think he probably wanted to give you the opportunity to apologise to me in private for your appalling rudeness over dinner...’

‘
My
rudeness.’ Jodi reached angrily for her handbag and then froze as her fingertips brushed against Leo’s outstretched hand.

Just the feel of his skin against her own sent a shower of sharp electric shocks, of unwanted sensation, slicing through her body.

‘Don’t touch me,’ she protested, and then moaned a soft, tormented sound of helpless need, dropping her handbag and swaying towards him in exactly the same breath as he reached for her. He dragged her against his body and the feel of him was so savagely, shockingly familiar that her body reacted instantly. She looked up into his face, her lips parting. His mouth burned against hers like a brand, punishing, taking, possessing. She felt him shudder as his fingers bit into the tender flesh of her upper arms. But then as his tongue-tip probed her lips he seemed to change his mind. He released her abruptly and, turning on his heel, walked away.

It was several seconds before she could stop shaking enough to bend down and pick up her bag. Whilst she was doing so she heard Nigel saying her name.

‘Sorry about the delay,’ he apologised as she stood up and he unlocked the car. ‘Feeling better now that you’ve got all that off your chest?’ he asked her wryly.

‘Better?’ Jodi demanded sharply as they both got into his car. ‘How could I possibly be feeling better after having to spend an evening with that...that...?’

‘OK, OK, I get the picture,’ Nigel told her, adding, ‘In fact, I think we all did. I do understand how you feel, Jodi, but ripping up at Leo Jefferson isn’t going to help. He’s a businessman and you’ve got to try to see things from his point of view.’

‘Why should I see things from his point of view? He doesn’t seem to be prepared to see them from mine,’ Jodi challenged her cousin.

Nigel gave her a wry look.

‘There is a very apt saying about catching more flies with honey than vinegar,’ he reminded her, ‘although something tells me you aren’t in the mood to hear that.’

Jodi could feel her face starting to burn.

‘No, I’m not,’ she said tersely.

‘Why couldn’t things have just stayed the way they were?’ she moaned to Nigel as he drove her home. ‘Everything was all right when the Driscolls owned the factory.’

‘Not totally,’ Nigel told her quietly, but shook his head when Jodi looked at him. He had already said too much, and he wasn’t yet free to tell her about the fraudulent practices that Jeremy Driscoll was suspected of having operated within the business.

Jodi didn’t push him further on that point; instead she burst out, ‘Leo Jefferson is the most hateful, horrid, arrogant, impossible man I have ever met and I wish...I wish...’

Unable to specify just exactly what she wished, and why, Jodi bit her lip and looked out of the car window, glad to see that they were already in the village and that she would soon be home.

* * *

Leo grimaced as he paced the sitting-room floor of his suite. He had a good mind to ring down to Reception and ask them to transfer him to a different set of rooms; these reminded him too much of last night and her—Jodi Marsh!

That infuriating woman who had by some alchemic means turned herself from the wanton, sensual creature who had shared his bed last night into the furious, spiky opponent who had had the gall tonight to sit there and accuse
him
of immoral behaviour! How he had stopped himself from challenging her there and then to justify herself Leo really didn’t know. And she was a schoolteacher! Perhaps he was being unduly naïve, but he just couldn’t get his head around it at all.

And as for her comments about his plans for the factory and the effect it would have on other people’s lives if he was to close it down...!

Leo frowned. Did she think he enjoyed having to put people out of work? Of course he didn’t, but economic factors were economic factors and could not simply be ignored.

Well, he just hoped that she didn’t get it into her head to come back tonight and pay him a second visit, because if she did she would find there was no way he was going to be as idiotically vulnerable to her as he had been last night. No way at all!

CHAPTER FOUR

‘Y
OU
PUSHED
ME
.’

‘No, I didn’t.’

With gentle firmness Jodi sorted out the dispute caused by one of her most problematic pupils on her way across the school yard.

Left to his own devices, she suspected, seven-year-old Ben Fanshawe might have been a happy, sociable child, but, thanks to the efforts of his social-climbing mother, Ben was a little boy with an attitude that was driving the other children away.

Jodi had tried tactfully to discuss the situation with his mother, but Ben’s problems were compounded by the fact that Myra Fanshawe was not just a parent, but also on the school’s board of governors. It was a position she had single-mindedly set her sights on from the minute she and her husband had moved into the village.

A close friend of Jeremy Driscoll and his wife, Myra had made it plain to Jodi that she would have preferred to send her son to an exclusive prep school. It was only because her in-laws were refusing to pay their grandson’s school fees until he was old enough to attend the same school as the previous six generations of male Fanshawes that Ben was having to attend the village primary school.

Having bullied and badgered her way into the position of Chair of the Board of Governors, Myra had continually bombarded both the board and Jodi herself with her opinions on how the school might be improved.

Having lost her most recent battle to impose a system of teaching maths that she had decided would be enormously beneficial for Ben, Myra had made it abundantly clear to Jodi that she had made a bad enemy.

For Ben’s sake, Jodi had tried tactfully to suggest that he might benefit from being encouraged to make more friends amongst his schoolmates. But her gentle hints had been met with fury and hostility by Myra, who had told Jodi that there was no way she wanted her son mixing with ‘common village children’.

‘Once Benjamin leaves here he will be meeting a very different class of child. He already knows that, and knows too that I would have preferred him to be attending a proper prep school. I do wish I could make his grandparents understand how much better it would be if he was already in private education. Jeremy and Alison were totally appalled that we could even think of allowing him to come here. At least now that I’m Chair of the Board of Governors I shall be able to make sure that he is receiving the rudiments of a decent education.

‘The vicar’s wife commented to me only the other day how much better the school has been doing since I became involved.’ She had preened herself, leaving Jodi torn between pity for her little boy and amazement at Myra’s total lack of awareness of other people’s feelings.

As it happened, Anna Leslie, the vicar’s wife, had actually told Jodi herself how unbearable she found Myra and how much she loathed her patronising attitude.

With only such a short time to go before the end of term, it was perhaps only natural that the children should be in such a high-spirited mood, Jodi acknowledged as she made her way to her office.

By the time the school bell rang to summon the children to their classes she was so engrossed in her work that she had almost managed to put Leo Jefferson right out of her mind.

Almost...

* * *

Leo tensed as his mobile phone rang. He was in his car, on his way to meet with his accountant at the Frampton factory that had been the subject of his heated exchange of views with Jodi on Saturday night.

He frowned as he registered the unavailable number of his caller. If Jodi was ringing him in an attempt to... Reaching out, he answered the call using the car’s hands-free unit, but the voice speaking his name was not Jodi’s and was not, in fact, even female, but belonged instead to Jeremy Driscoll.

‘Look, old boy, I just thought I’d give you a ring to see if the two of us couldn’t get together. The word is that you’re going to have to close down at least a couple of the factories and I’m prepared to make you a good offer to buy Frampton back from you.’

Leo frowned as he listened.

‘Buy it?’ he challenged him curtly, waiting for Jeremy to threaten to blackmail him into agreeing, but, to his surprise, Jeremy made no reference whatsoever to either Jodi or her visit to his bed.

‘Look, we’re both businessmen—and we both know there are ways and means of you selling the business back to me that would benefit us both financially...’

Leo didn’t respond.

Jeremy Driscoll had been away on holiday in the Caribbean with his wife when his father-in-law had accepted Leo’s offer to buy out the business, and it was becoming increasingly obvious to Leo that for some reason he did not wish to see the sale go through.

‘I haven’t made my mind up which factories I intend to close as yet,’ Leo informed him. It was, after all, the truth.

‘Frampton is the obvious choice. Anyone can see that,’ Jeremy Driscoll was insisting. Beneath the hectoring tone of his voice Leo could hear a sharper note of anxiety.

Leo had almost reached the factory. Reaching out to end the call, he told Jeremy Driscoll crisply, ‘I’ll call you once I’ve made up my mind.’

As he cancelled the call Leo’s frown deepened. It disturbed him that Jeremy Driscoll hadn’t said a single word about Jodi. Somehow that seemed out of character. Driscoll wasn’t the sort of man to miss an opportunity to maximise on his advantage and, even though Leo knew he wouldn’t allow himself to be blackmailed, he was still in a potentially vulnerable position.

But nowhere near as delicate and vulnerable as the one Jodi herself was in, he acknowledged grimly. What on earth had possessed her?

* * *

‘So what you’re saying is that I should close this factory down?’ Leo asked his accountant as they finished their tour of the Frampton site.

‘Well, it does seem to be the obvious choice. Newham has the benefit of being much closer to the motorway system.’

‘Which means that it would be relatively easy to sell off as a base for a haulage contractor,’ Leo interrupted him wryly. ‘That would then allow me to consolidate production at Frampton, and use the Newham site solely for distribution, or if that proved to be uneconomical to sell it off.’

‘Well, yes, that could be an option,’ the accountant acknowledged.

‘Frampton also has the benefit of having recently had a new production line,’ Leo continued.

‘Yes, I know. It seems there was a fire, that destroyed the old one, which brings me to something else,’ the accountant told him carefully. ‘There are one or two things here that just don’t tie up.’

‘Such as?’ Leo challenged him curiously.

‘Such as two fires in a very short space of time, and certain anomalies in the accounting system. It seems that this factory has been run by the owners’ son-in-law, who prior to working in the business gained a reputation for favouring practices which, shall we say, are not entirely in line with those approved of by the Revenue.’

‘So what we are actually talking about here is fraud,’ Leo stated sharply.

‘I don’t know, and certainly I haven’t found anything fraudulent in the accounts that were submitted to us on takeover. However, it may be that those accounts are not the only ones the business produced. Just call it a gut feeling, but something tells me that things are not totally as they should be.’

Had his accountant unwittingly hit on the reason why Jeremy Driscoll was so anxious to retain ownership of this particular factory? Leo wondered.

‘If you’re serious about finding a haulier buyer for the Newham land,’ his accountant continued, ‘I might know of someone.’

Leo stopped him. ‘I might well opt to set up my own distribution network. With distribution costs rising the way they are, it makes good economic sense to be able to control that aspect of the business.’

‘Mmm...’

What the hell was he doing? Leo asked himself in inner exasperation. He was finding arguments to keep Frampton open! Surely he wasn’t allowing himself to be influenced by the emotional opinions of a woman who knew nothing about business? Although she did know everything about how to please a man. This man! How to infuriate and drive him insane was more like it, Leo decided in furious, angry rejection of his own weak thoughts.

He and the accountant parted company at the factory gate. It was almost lunchtime, and Leo recalled that there was a pub in the village where he could no doubt get something to eat.

If he was to change his plans and retain the Frampton factory it would mean spending a good deal of time in the area; several months at least. He would have to rent somewhere to live.

Perhaps predictably the pub was almost opposite the church, and separated from the church by the graveyard and a small paddock was the school.

Her school!

Since it was lunchtime, the school yard was filled with children.

Turning into the pub car park, Leo parked and then got out to walk round to the main entrance to the dining room.

As he did so his attention was caught by a small group of children clustering around a familiar figure.

Jodi’s curls were burnished a deep, rich colour by the sunlight. She was wearing a cotton skirt and a toning blouse, her legs bare beneath the hem of her skirt.

She hadn’t seen him, Leo acknowledged, and she was laughing at something one of her pupils had said, her head thrown back to reveal the taut line of her throat, with its creamy smooth skin, the same skin he had caressed and kissed.

Leo could feel the sensual reaction filling his body. He still wanted her!

She looked completely at home in her chosen role and Leo could see that the children were equally relaxed with her. And then, as though somehow she had sensed his presence, she looked towards him, her whole body freezing and the joy dying abruptly from her face as their gazes battled silently across the distance that separated them.

As though they sensed her hostility the children too had become still and silent, and as he watched Leo saw her ushering them away from the school boundary out of sight.

* * *

The pub dining room was surprisingly busy, but Leo barely paid any attention to his fellow diners. His thoughts were taken up with Jodi, a fact which caused him to wonder grimly yet again just what the hell was happening to him.

He ate his meal quickly without really being aware of it. In his mind’s eye he could still see Jodi surrounded by her pupils. She had looked...

He shook his head, trying to dismiss her image from his thoughts, and caused the waitress who had served him to give a tiny little shiver and reflect on how dangerous and exciting he looked—and how very different from her boyfriend!

Having finished his meal and refused a second cup of coffee, much to the waitress’s secret disappointment, Leo got up, oblivious to her interest in him.

On his way back to the car he noticed that the school playground was now empty, the children no doubt back at their desks.

For God’s sake, he derided himself as he drove back towards the town, didn’t he have enough to think about at the moment without being obsessed by a schoolteacher?

* * *

‘Well, we don’t normally have many rental properties,’ the agent in the local town was informing Leo. ‘But it just so happens that we’ve been asked to find a tenant for a thoroughly charming Georgian house, just outside Frampton. I don’t know if you know the village.’

‘Yes, I know it,’ Leo confirmed a little grimly.

‘I live there myself.’ The agent smiled. ‘I don’t know if you have children, but if you do I can thoroughly recommend the village school. Jodi Marsh, the head teacher, is wonderful—’

‘I know Jodi,’ Leo interrupted him brusquely.

‘You do?’ The agent gave him a discreetly speculative look. ‘Well, if you’re a friend of Jodi’s you’ll find you get a very warm welcome in the village. She’s as popular with the parents as she is with the children, and deservedly so.

‘My wife dreads the thought of her leaving; she says the school just wouldn’t be the same without her. We all admire the way she campaigned so tirelessly to keep the school open and to raise enough money to buy the playing field adjacent to it to stop Jeremy Driscoll from acquiring it as building land. That didn’t make her popular with Jeremy at all, but Jodi has never been a fan of his, as you’ll probably know...’

Again he gave Leo a speculative look, but Leo discovered that he was strangely reluctant to correct the other man’s misconceptions. For one thing he was too busy analysing the agent’s surprising comments about Jodi’s antipathy towards Jeremy Driscoll to notice.

‘If you’d like to view Ashton House?’ the agent continued questioningly.

Leo told himself that he should refuse, that deliberately choosing to live anywhere within a hundred-mile radius of Jodi Marsh was complete madness, but for some reason he heard himself agreeing to see the house, and accepting the agent’s suggestion that they should drive over to view it immediately.

‘I rather get the impression that Jeremy Driscoll isn’t the most popular of people around here?’ Leo commented to the agent half an hour later as they stood together in front of the pretty Georgian property.

‘Well, no, he isn’t,’ the agent agreed. ‘And, despite the fact that he’s married, Jeremy fancies himself as something of a ladies’ man. Of course Jodi, in particular, is well known for her strict moral code, so I suppose it was almost inevitable that she should make it very plain to him that his advances were unwelcome.’

Leo struggled to absorb this new information as the agent changed tack to tell him about the house. ‘It was built originally for the younger son of a local landowner; it’s listed, of course, and with all its original internal decorative features—a real gem. If I had the money I would be very tempted to put in an offer for it. The elderly lady who owned it died a few weeks ago, and the beneficiaries under her will ultimately want to sell it, but until the estate is sorted out they need to find a tenant for it so that it doesn’t fall into disrepair. Shall we go inside?’

The house was undoubtedly, as the agent had said, a ‘gem’, and had he been looking for a permanent home Leo knew that he too would have been tempted to acquire it. As it was, he was more than happy to meet the relatively modest rent the owners were requesting.