The Hidden Years (38 page)

'I wanted to check up on who had bought that piece of
land,' Sage told her.

'Oh, that… yes. Gran tried to buy it when it
came up for auction.'

'Mmm.' If Daniel Cavanagh did plan to build houses on that
land, he would be even more obdurate about any change in the proposed
route of the road. Sage was pretty sure that Ms Ordman would take
whatever view Daniel wanted her to take, but as she mulled over these
thoughts it occurred to her that the right kind of publicity campaign
could do a great deal of damage to the apparently pristine reputation
of Daniel's companies.

She wrinkled her nose, knowing immediately that her mother
would have vetoed such a suggestion as being underhand… but
what was Daniel himself, purchasing the land in the first place?
Sometimes one had to fight fire with fire. As this thought formed, she
also realised uncomfortably that some old scars had not entirely healed
and that there was a certain pleasure in anticipating throwing back at
Daniel some of the insults he had once so bitterly tossed at her, in
heaping on him the same kind of scorn and contempt he had once made her
suffer, in taking exactly the same kind of high-minded and
infuriatingly arrogant moral stance. Yes, she would enjoy making him
squirm…and perhaps, after all, there need not be a public
battle… Perhaps the mere suggestion that they had the
information, that such a publicity campaign could be mounted against
him…

She closed her mind to the fact that her knowledge of him,
fifteen years or more out of date though it might be, did not incline
her to believe that he would readily back down to any kind of pressure.
It would do no harm to make a phone call—to suggest a
meeting, to test the water, so to speak. And certainly it would do no
harm to let him know that his purchase of the land had been discovered.

Behind her she heard Camilla making some comment about
going riding and nodded as she picked up the file again and opened it,
quickly searching for what she wanted.

Yes, there it was, the name and address of Daniel's London
head office and, of course, its telephone number.

As she punched the number into the phone she discovered
that her stomach muscles had become unexpectedly tense.
Nervous… of speaking to Daniel Cavanagh…? How
ridiculous. Why, she could remember when…

The cool, efficient tones of the girl answering the phone
stopped her train of thought. She asked for Daniel by name, giving her
own and adding crisply, 'I wanted to have a word with him about the
proposed new motorway contract…'

'Sage… What can I do for you?'

To be put straight through to him caught her a little off
guard, as did the unexpected jerk of sensations deep inside her
body—the shocking familiarity of hearing him speak her name,
almost as though some hidden part of her had remembered exactly that
intonation, that timbre, when there could be no reason for it to have
done so.

Infuriating that her brain should have logged Daniel's
voice so accurately, when despite all her striving she could no longer
even hear a faint echo of Scott's in her memory.

'I think we ought to have a meeting, Daniel…'

The very quality of his silence made her face burn, almost
as though she had been guilty of propositioning him. Her fingers
curling round the receiver, she forgot about tactics and said acidly,
'This is business, Daniel.'

'But of course.' He sounded so urbane, so polite, and yet
she could have sworn there was laughter beneath the calm
words… and not just laughter either.

You fool, she derided herself. What an idiotic thing to
say—of course it was business… how could it have
been anything else?

'What exactly was it you wanted to discuss?'

'I… we need to meet. It isn't something we can
discuss over the phone…'

What the hell was the matter with her? She sounded like a
teenager trying to make a date. Infuriated with herself and with him,
she was almost tempted to ring off and abort the whole idea. It was
typical of her, she acknowledged bitterly, that she had leapt in
without proper planning…without proper thought. In her
shoes, her mother would have made notes, carefully calculated what she
could and could not say. Her mother would have trailed some bait, and
waited cautiously until it was taken up before betraying anything. She,
on the other hand—she was a fool, she derided herself,
grinding her teeth in vexation.

There was another telling pause, and then a thoughtful, 'I
see… Well, in that case, I believe I have half an hour free
tomorrow, if you could be at my office for—'

His
office. No way. This wasn't
something she was going to tackle on his territory, giving him the
advantage…

'I'm sorry, that's impossible,' she told him quickly. 'My
sister-in-law is away at the moment and I can't really be out of touch
with the hospital.'

Not strictly true, but it was the best excuse she could
come up with.

'I see… and this matter you wish to discuss
with me appertaining to the new motorway is urgent, I take
it… Something that can't be dealt with through the usual
channels of your committee?'

He sounded so suave… so polite… so
understanding… so why did she suddenly feel threatened,
exposed?

'I think you'll find that it's better if we deal with it
on a one-to-one basis,' she told him ignoring the faint
frisson
of wariness cautioning her, adding with what she hoped was a suaveness
to match his own, 'It would certainly save us both time.'

First the threat and then the palliative…
wasn't that the way it was done?

She had little experience of this kind of thing. It ran
counter to everything she believed in. Deceit was not her currency. She
did not have the mind for it.

'Well, of course, in that case… Perhaps if I
were to drive down this evening to Cottingdean…? Or would
you prefer a more—anonymous rendezvous…?'

Why was it that the words 'anonymous' and 'rendezvous'
made her nerves prickle so uncomfortably? Was it because she had so
recently been thinking them herself, but in a different context? There
was no reason, was there, why she should suspect that Daniel was
deliberately trying to undermine her, to use the words of lovers rather
than adversaries?

'There's no reason why we shouldn't talk here at
Cottingdean,' she told him crisply. 'At least from my point of
view…'

There, let him see how he liked a taste of his own vile
suggestiveness. She certainly had nothing to hide in meeting with
him… while he, on the other hand… Ms Ministry had
been extremely possessive… She hesitated, wondering if she
dared imply that he might not want the other woman to know he was
meeting her, and then regretfully abandoned the idea as too dangerous.
The last thing she wanted to do was to alienate him to the point where
he refused to meet with her.

'Generous of you, especially when you need to be so close
to home in case the hospital need to get in touch.'

Sage stared bitterly at the receiver, wanting to tell him
exactly what she thought of him and his sneaky purchase of the land,
but knowing that the last thing she could afford now was to lose her
temper. So many, many times in the past she had done exactly that, to
spectacular and certainly momentarily satisfying effect, but
afterwards… well, on more occasions than she cared to
remember afterwards had come the humbling and often soul-destroying
realisation that her temper had cost her dear. Too dear…

'We normally finish dinner around nine,' she told him,
fighting to sound calm and unmoved.

'Nine it is, then,' came the courteous and yet somehow
unnerving response, followed by an even more unnerving, 'Until then,
Sage. I must say I'm rather looking forward to it… It isn't
often one gets the opportunity to cross swords a second time with an
old adversary… I warn you, though—I do hope your
blade is well honed. I seem to recollect that on the last occasion you
rejected science in favour of passion. Never a wise decision—'

Sage hung up on him, not trusting herself to speak. How
dared he…? How dared he allude to that…? How
dared he imply that what had happened in the past had any relevance at
all to the present? That had been personal—extremely
personal. This was different—very different, and this
time…this time
what
! She was going to
be the victor. She certainly hoped so!

As he
replaced the receiver, Daniel stared across his office. It was a
handsome room, its walls cloaked in the seventeenth-century pine
panelling he had rescued from a demolition site, its floor covered in a
very masculine dark green wool carpet to complement the traditional
tapestry weave fabric which covered the two large wing chairs either
side of the room's fireplace.

The board had been dubious when he had turned down the
opportunity to site the company's head office in a prestigious modern
city block, opting instead to purchase one of the four-storey
seventeenth-century houses in a square in what had then been a very
unfashionable part of London.

He had overruled them though. Not by force, but by
discreetly working on them as individuals, bringing them round to his
point of view, and it had been worthwhile, not just for the aesthetic
advantages of working in such pleasant surroundings. This once
unfashionable part of the city was now highly sought after. To the
original house they had added those on either side, so that their share
of the square, which outwardly retained the facade of three separate
dwellings, now housed the entire administrative side of the business.

He considered himself to be a builder, not merely by
trade, but by inclination as well—building bridges between
people was as much his forte as building homes for them to live in, but
when it came to Sage Danvers he doubted that he would ever to be able
to construct foundations strong enough to bridge the divide between
them.

The last thing he wanted right now was a confrontation
with her, and yet quite plainly she was spoiling for a fight. What on
earth did she want to see him for? He was quite certain it wasn't to
talk over old times.

Old times. His mouth hardened cynically. Ever since the
shock of seeing her so unexpectedly at that damned meeting he had been
fighting to hold back the memories.

Perhaps it was time to stop fighting them. Perhaps it
might even be therapeutic. He prided himself on having a fairly
comprehensive knowledge of what motivated him, on being able to look
within himself and analyse what he found there. Unlike many of his sex,
he did not dismiss the need to understand more about himself, nor did
he normally ignore his own intuition. So why start now?

His desk was between the room's two high windows, facing
the fireplace. Above it hung a portrait of his mother's second husband.
Robert Cavanagh, the man who, on his marriage to Daniel's mother, had
also given the teenage boy his surname. Daniel had commissioned the
painting after his death. The artist had worked from photographs and
had managed to portray an extraordinarily lifelike and vigorous image
of Robert Cavanagh.

Strange how much he missed Robert even now. Their paths in
life had crossed so very briefly and yet that crossing had had a
cataclysmic effect upon him, just as had his brief passage of arms with
Sage. In many ways they were two of the most important pivots on which
his whole life had turned.

As he stared at Robert Cavanagh's portrait, he pondered on
what this man would have made of the new bullish attitude being
displayed by builders and developers. An attitude that cut right across
the entire field, from the small builder of the odd pair of houses to
the mighty giants of construction who were responsible for laying down
the new motorways. He had a foot in both camps.

The company he had inherited from Robert Cavanagh was now
heavily involved in civil engineering, had gone public, and was no
longer his private concern, a move dictated by market demands, by the
threat of takeovers and asset-stripping exercises. In his role as
chairman of the new public company he had in many ways lost touch with
the reality of the industry and spent what seemed like the vast bulk of
his time in series after series of often emotive meetings. When it came
to new motorways, everyone thought they were a wonderful idea, everyone
saw the necessity of them, everyone wanted to use them— but
no one wanted to live next to them.

The route for this latest part of the road network had
been particularly contentious. He frowned again. He still wasn't
entirely sure… But the D of E… He realised he was
doodling on his blotter, and grimaced a little when he saw what he had
sketched; the outline of an old, traditionally E-shaped
house… He threw the pencil down in disgust, recognising the
sketch for what it was. He was worse than a baby with a dummy, he
reflected acidly, reverting to the sketch like a child to a comforter.
What was the matter with him? He wasn't afraid of seeing Sage, was he?

He moved violently in his chair and then got up, going to
stand under the portrait. In winter a fire burned in this grate; or at
least the application of a modern science allowed one to believe that
it did. In summer the same firm that planted up and took care of the
carefully coordinated window-boxes which lined the windows of the
company's headquarters provided fresh flowers daily for the huge urn
that filled the fireplace.

As he glanced at the arrangement of country-style flowers,
his eyes became hooded, lending austerity to his features. His mother
had loved fresh flowers. Not that she had ever been given much
opportunity to do so… At least not until…

Was it because of his mother that he had refused to see
the truth about Sage, that he had believed…? He closed his
eyes briefly and then opened them again, flicking a switch on his
intercom and when his secretary answered telling her, 'I'm going to
call it a day, Heather. If anything urgent crops up I'll be in the
flat, but only if it is urgent. Oh, you can go early yourself if you
like.'