Undressed by the Boss (Mills & Boon By Request) (61 page)

‘A risk!’ He was silent, then said grimly, ‘Let it be, then. I suppose it had to end sooner or later.’

The blood drained from her heart.

After that she turned the phone off. It wasn’t that she
expected him to call again. She just knew she wouldn’t be able to talk to anyone without crying. She lay down in her bed, and let devastation set in. If he’d had the slightest feeling for her, would he have accepted it was over so easily?

She thought of all the things she loved about him, the times they’d laughed, and suffered an agony of yearning so intense she could have doubled up with the pain.

After a long intense weep she tried to view the situation objectively. She’d been such a fool, deluding herself so thoroughly into her romantic dream state. The stark, unvarnished reality was, she’d allowed herself to become a rich man’s mistress—not even a mistress, in fact. A short-term fling.

Face it. She’d been a handy diversion to him. A distracting interlude after the sadness of his father’s death. Now it was humiliatingly clear that the tough business operator in him had never let him lose sight of who and what she was. How ironic, when she’d let go of all her reservations about him.

Not that she had been ashamed of him. The unfairness of that remark utterly mystified her. She’d explained about Gran’s heart condition, hadn’t she? And if he was referring to how she’d kept their affair a secret from her friends, he must have known how it would have complicated things for her at work to have it made public.

As for her being
secretive
—the accusation had hit her on the raw. She scrolled back through the days and nights to see if there’d been any justification for it. She had, of course, been to see Gran every day, and hadn’t always said where she was going. And why should she have? She was a free and independent woman living in a democracy, wasn’t she?

The boarding-house bed must have been made of rock ice. But the aching physical torment of not having Tom’s big warm body wrapped around her, his hand cupping her breast, was nothing compared to the anguish of knowing her love for him was unrequited. She cried into her pillow like a Hunter Valley rain depression.

In the morning there was a text from him on her phone about her clothes, but she couldn’t face the ruthless finality of it, and deleted it without reading it properly.

She looked like hell. The bags under her puffy eyes were only outdone by the misery lines around her mouth. She had to rely on her compact, and drops in her eyes, to make herself human enough for work. Not that it mattered. Who would see her there?

She managed to rake up a passable skirt and top, but short of buying a new wardrobe, knew she’d have to find some way of collecting her things from Tom without seeing him.

On the train to work a scenario raised its head she should never have allowed herself to contemplate. The one where, when she went proudly back for her things, he was so pleased to see her, he apologised on his knees and begged her to come back to him. In the fantasy she was stern and unforgiving, and that was when he told her he loved her.

The impossibility of this actually happening, given that he considered her to be the type of person to betray him with another man, brought more tears to her eyes. The reality was, he’d demonstrated that he wasn’t a man who would beg a woman, and knowing it only made her yearn for him more.

At work, Marge gave her some sidelong glances and muttered something to herself about people who were gluttons for punishment.

It was the longest day on record. Though she didn’t expect him to, not really, he didn’t phone again. It was obvious what it meant. Out of sight, out of his life. On the third day she returned home in the evening to find her baggage neatly piled in the downstairs hall.

It was like a javelin through her chest. Nothing could have been more final.

When she arrived at work the next morning, she permitted herself a last legitimate reason to text him, thanking him for having her things delivered back to the Lady Musgrave. Her desk phone rang almost immediately. She picked it up with a
shaking hand and heard his deep, crisp voice. He sounded controlled and unemotional.

‘If you want that interview about the West-Russell merger, I can give you an hour today at eleven o’clock.’

That was all. No apologies. No attempt to suss out her feelings. She could tell by his businesslike tone exactly how he’d looked when he’d said it. Cool, serious.

Gorgeous.

She unravelled into chaos. She needed to be strong, but … Admit it. It was a chance to see him. Regardless of how he’d hurt her, she couldn’t deny herself seeing him one more time. And she’d earned that interview. Despite what he’d suspected she was capable of, she’d kept her end of the bargain.

In accordance with
Clarion
rules, she was supposed to inform Harry of the interview offer. That faced her with a dilemma. Harry would expect her to take a photographer with her. If she did that there’d be no opportunity for any personal exchange, but if she went alone, Tom would assume she had expectations. Hopes, even. And face it—alone, could she trust herself to maintain her dignity?

In the end, she did mention it to Harry, who immediately assigned Mike to go with her. She could have cringed at the surprised flicker of respect in Harry’s eyes. If only he knew how far her personal feelings had overridden her professional responsibilities.

By the time she found Mike resting his bones against a wall at their rendezvous on the ground floor of the Russell building, her insides were in turmoil. What could she and Tom possibly say to each other? Against all reason, the certainty—
hope
—grew in her mind that he was using this interview as an opportunity to get her back.

His phone call had set the tone for how she must behave. Cool, professional and unemotional. Dignified. Dispassionate. She retied the ribbon securing her hair in her nape and smoothed her slim, sand-coloured skirt and crisp white shirt.

Riding up in the glass-walled lift with Mike, she caught brief glimpses of various newsrooms in the throes of churning out cheap Russell trash, but felt too emotional to bother ridiculing them.

A sleek receptionist on the fiftieth floor invited them to be seated outside Tom’s office. Mike deposited his equipment, then stretched out on a couch and shut his eyes, while Cate paced about, inspecting the artworks with a nervous, thudding heart. For a cowardly moment she wasn’t sure she would cope. Her legs felt strangely reluctant to hold her up. She was staring blindly at a drawing of some foreign skyscraper that was shaped like a sail, and had walls consisting entirely of solar panels, when the door opened.

Tom strode out, looking sophisticated and authoritative in his dark suit. Her heart thundered so painfully she could scarcely breathe.

Immediately his grey gaze trapped hers for spark-showering seconds. The heavy sexual current pulsed between them, barely distinguishable from anguish. His glance flicked sharply to Mike, caught in the act of hauling himself lazily to his feet, and his expression hardened.

With his sensuous mouth firmly compressed, he forced her into a brief, disturbing handshake. As his lean, hard palm connected with hers the electric desire sizzled through her veins. How could bodies be so treacherous? She read his knowledge of her yearning in his fierce gaze. He still wanted her, she could sense it.

Overcoming his apparent annoyance at her having brought a companion, he turned his attention to Mike. ‘Don’t tell me,’ he said, extending his hand with polished courtesy. ‘Mike.’

The smile in his eyes as he guessed the photographer’s identity from her description was an added assault to the sore spot in her heart. He’d looked at her sometimes with just that gleam. How could he feel amusement
now?

In ignorance of her pain and regret, he ushered them both inside, smoothly enquiring of Mike how he preferred to work.

Mike suggested they start the interview, and he’d take his shots when they’d warmed up a little and relaxed. As
if.

Tom showed them to a leather lounge suite, and said, further destabilising Cate’s shaky façade, ‘How’s your grandmother?’

She was taken aback. Did he have any idea how inflammatory that question was? Speechless at first, she dredged up a few dry, incoherent words, then, with a sense of unreality, started through the motions of her profession.

She sat opposite Tom in an armchair, and took out her notebook and cassette. Thoughts whirred round and round in her head. How could they have come to this? A few days ago they’d been lovers. It seemed so painful and absurd not to be able to touch him, or even look at him properly.

Screamingly conscious of the vibrations in the charged air, she felt his glance raze her face and hands and legs. If only they could bury the sword that lay between them. If the disaster had never happened …

If
only
he hadn’t revealed his true colours …

But it was no use grieving. She had a job to do.

‘Do you mind?’ she said, placing her recorder on the coffee table.

‘Please. Go ahead.’ She felt rather than saw the smooth gesture of his lean hand.

His PA brought coffee in, though Mike declined, preferring to prowl around to get the feel of the room. While the coffee was poured Tom maintained an easy flow of conversation. As if he’d never held her in his arms, and they’d never been lovers.

He handed her some coffee, careful not to touch her.

He was playing it straight, she realised with a sinking heart. The interview was for real. He was just fulfilling their bargain. She hardly knew what she said, she felt so miserably unable to come to terms with the new status quo. But even if it had
been attainable, the old status quo could never work again. Not now she knew the truth.

At last he paused to look mockingly at her, and it was time to begin.

She cleared her croaky throat. ‘How does it feel, Mr Russell, to be among the hundred wealthiest people in the world?’

‘I’m not among them,’ he said. ‘I’m not even among the thousand wealthiest. Or the ten thousand wealthiest. Not at the moment, that is.’

As shock reverberated around the walls she noticed Mike’s gaze whip round, and was aware of him lifting his video camera onto his shoulder for an online grab.

She stared at Tom in puzzled disbelief. ‘But—your inheritance.’

‘What very few people know, Cate—May I call you Cate?’ he enquired, tearing her heart out ‘—is that before his death my father made over most of his fortune to the Developing World Foundation. You’ve heard of that?’

If he’d hit her with a stun gun she couldn’t have been more thoroughly knocked out. Of course she’d heard of it. Everyone knew of the trust set up by the richest man in the world. In the name of morality, and perhaps the chance to make it through the pearly gates, other billionaires were now scrambling to join him on the nobility bandwagon.

But Marcus Russell?

The information was startling, to say the least. It certainly explained why Tom’s company had needed a merger. While her brain fast-tracked to slot the news in with all the events she’d witnessed since the conversation in the cathedral, Tom said, ‘It will come as a surprise to the
Clarion’s
readers, no doubt, that my father had a conscience.’

‘I apologised to you about that,’ she said hotly, flushing.

‘Yes, you did.’ His sensual gaze rested on her face. ‘And very stirringly. I can’t recall a more heartfelt apology.’

It was cruel of him to bring that up. A potent image of the
first night they’d made love rose before her. Tears pricked her eyes and she had to lower her glance. But, remembering Mike, she scrambled to steer the subject away from the danger zone.

‘Is this why you’re selling all your houses?’

He hesitated. ‘Not altogether. And I’m only selling the ones I feel a need to break with.’

‘Oh.’ She swallowed. ‘And does that include the Château Bleu?’

‘I think so. I’m finding it very large.’

She cast him a veiled glance. Was he implying that it felt lonely? Without her?

‘Anyway,’ she said huskily, ‘now that you have—control of—Russell Inc, what are your plans for the future? I mean, your
company’s
future? Not your—personal future, of course.’

‘Of course. What possible interest could Cate Summerfield have in my personal future?’

Stung by the injustice, she leaned forward. ‘Look, I wasn’t the one who ruined things. I wasn’t the one who didn’t trust
you.
’

The response shot back like a bullet. ‘Did you trust me, though? It seems pretty clear to me you didn’t trust me to measure up in your grandmother’s eyes.’

‘Oh,’ she gasped. ‘That wasn’t it at
all.
I told you. You know I told you about Gran’s heart. She’s very fragile. She went through a distressing incident a while back and it caused her to have a heart attack that was very nearly fatal. And that was
all my fault.
I couldn’t possibly risk that happening again.’ Suddenly she noticed the camera directed straight at her and Mike’s fascinated gaze. ‘Cut that out, Mike,’ she screeched in dismay. ‘I’m not part of this story.’

Tom looked amused and she turned sharply to him. ‘If you wouldn’t mind just keeping to the questions.’ There was no concealing the raw emotion in her voice.

He lowered his black lashes. To hide his satisfaction, she was willing to bet. Now that he’d drawn blood. After a few smouldering seconds he spoke again.

‘In answer to your question, I’m downsizing Russell Inc. Instead of eighteen diverse companies it will now simply be two. One—which controls my tabloid and magazine holdings—is in the process of merging with the West Corporation as we speak. The other will require my full and personal attention for some time. I want to establish a quality national daily to compete with papers like the
Clarion.
You’ll find the details in here.’ He took up some papers from the coffee table and handed them across. ‘I intend to raid your market, so you people had better look to your laurels.’ He turned towards Mike. ‘Thanks mate. That’ll be all.’

Mike looked a little taken aback, but didn’t argue. He packed up his equipment, thanked Tom with a brief handshake, and, shooting her a quizzical glance, left.