For Revenge or Redemption?

For Revenge or Redemption?
Elizabeth Power

Retribution… Years ago, wealthy socialite Grace Tyler humiliated Seth and almost destroyed his family. Now the former boatyard hand is a multi-millionaire, and he’s out to settle a long-overdue score. He’ll take Grace’s business, body and pride. Seduction! Except the ruthless businessman hasn’t reckoned on the desire between them burning him every bit as fiercely as it consumes Grace! Redemption?He’s come back to prove Grace’s guilt – but now it’s Seth who needs to be redeemed. For Grace is more inexperienced than he expected…and she’s expecting his baby!

He had everything he wanted. Money. Cars. Women. Power. And Culverwells.

There was only one thing left to make his achievements complete and that was Grace Tyler. She belonged in his bed, whether she liked it or not. And he meant to have her—even without her liking him if that was the way it had to be.

But she still wanted him. He’d have to be blind not to have noticed that betraying little flutter in her throat whenever he came within touching distance of her, the flushed cheeks and dilated pupils in the centre of her huge, man-drowning blue eyes. She still wanted him as much as he wanted her—if that were possible—and he wasn’t going to rest until her lovely legs were wrapped around him again and she was lying beneath him, sobbing out his name.

For Revenge or Redemption?

By

Elizabeth Power

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

ELIZABETH POWER wanted to be a writer from a very early age, but it wasn’t until she was nearly thirty that she took to writing seriously. Writing is now her life. Travelling ranks very highly among her pleasures, and so many places she has visited have been recreated in her books. Living in England’s West Country, Elizabeth likes nothing better than taking walks with her husband along the coast or in the adjoining woods, and enjoying all the wonders that nature has to offer.

FOR CAROL, SHEILA AND ROY

Chapter One

‘OPENING nights are always nerve-racking, Ms Tyler,’ the red-haired young woman with the clipboard told Grace reassuringly, pinning a microphone to the pearl-grey lapel of her designer jacket. ‘But this gallery’s going to do well. I just know it is!’ Her raised eyes skimmed a wall of contemporary paintings, signed prints and ceramics in the tall, glass case immediately behind Grace. ‘We’re doing the exterior shots first, so you won’t be on for a while yet.’ She tugged gently at the lapel, running deft fingers over the smooth sheen of the expensive fabric, brushing off a pale strand from Grace’s softly swept-up hair. ‘There! The camera’s going to love you!’ the woman enthused.

Which was more than the press did! Grace thought, remembering the hard time they had given her after her split with her fiancé, wealthy banker’s son Paul Harringdale, four months ago. Then the tabloid’s comments about her had ranged from “butterfly-minded” and “fickle” to “the tall, slinky blonde who wasn’t capable of making the right decision if her life depended upon it”. It had all been cheap reporting—and the fact that that last remark had come from a journalist who had pursued her romantically without success wasn’t worth losing sleep over—but it had hurt nevertheless.

‘Good luck,’ someone said in passing as the doors opened and invited guests, critics and members of the art world started pouring in.

‘Thanks. I’ll need it,’ Grace laughed over her shoulder, realising it was her friend, Beth Wilson, a curvaceous and vertically challenged brunette, as she liked to call herself; at four-feet-eleven, she assured everyone that life for her was always looking up. Also loyal and efficient, she was the woman Grace had appointed to run her small London gallery while she carried on with her main objective in life, which was to try to keep afloat the nationally renowned textile company that her grandfather had founded and which had run into serious problems since his death just over a year ago. And with no moral support from Corinne.

Since inheriting her husband’s share of the company, Corinne Culverwell had made it clear that she wasn’t interested in being actively involved in the business. Now, with showers of congratulations and good wishes seeming to come at her from every angle, Grace darted a glance around her as the launch party got under way, wondering why her step-grandmother—a name that always seemed inappropriate for a woman who was barely three years older than herself—had claimed that a prior engagement at the last minute prevented her from coming tonight.

Directing two well-wishers to the table where the champagne was being served, Grace noticed the camera crew packing up outside. She had to stay focused, she told herself firmly, steeling herself for the interview that was now imminent. Stay calm. Relaxed.

‘Hello, Grace.’

A prickling tension stiffened her spine as those two softly spoken words dragged her round to face the man who had uttered them.

Seth Mason! She couldn’t speak—couldn’t even breathe for a moment.

She would have recognised him from his voice alone, a deep, rich baritone voice with no trace of any accent. Yet those masculine features—strongly etched and yet tougher-edged in their maturity—were unforgettable too. How often had her dreams been plagued by the stirring images of that hard-boned face, those steel-grey eyes above that rather proud nose? The slightly wavy, thick black hair still curling well over his collar, with those few stray strands that still fell idly across his forehead.

‘Seth…’ Her voice tailed away in shock. Over the years she had both longed and dreaded to see him again, yet she had never expected that she would. Especially not here. Tonight. When she needed everything to go right for her!

From his superior height, his penetrating gaze locked onto hers and his firm, well-defined mouth—the mouth that had driven her mindless for him as it had covered hers—twisted almost mockingly at her discomfiture.

‘How long has it been, Grace? Eight…nine years?’

‘I—I don’t remember,’ she faltered, but she did. Those few fateful meetings with him were engraved on her memory like her five-times table. It had been eight years ago, just after her nineteenth birthday, when she had thought that everything in life was either black or white. That life was mapped out for her in just the way she wanted it to go and that anything she wanted was hers for the taking. But she had learned some hard lessons since then and none more painful than the ones she had suffered from her brief liaison with this man—when she had discovered that nothing could be taken without there being a price, and a very high price, to pay.

‘Don’t remember, or don’t want to?’ he challenged softly.

Flinching from the reminder of things she didn’t want to think about, she took some consolation from realising that they were concealed from most of the party by the tall case of ceramics. She ignored his velvet-sheathed barb and said with a nervous little laugh, ‘Well…fancy seeing you here.’

‘Fancy.’

‘Quite a surprise.’

‘I’ll bet.’

He was smiling down at her but there was no warmth in those slate-grey eyes. Eyes that were keener, more discerning, if that were possible, than when he’d been…what?…twenty-three? Twenty-four? A quick calculation told her that he would be in his early thirties now.

The tension between them stretched as tight as gut, and in an effort to try and slacken it she tilted her small pointed chin towards a display of watercolours by an up and coming artist and asked, ‘Are you interested in modern art?’

‘Among other things.’

She didn’t rise to his bait. He had an agenda, she was sure, and she wasn’t even going to question what it might be.

‘Did you just walk in off the street?’ His name certainly hadn’t been on the guest list. It would have leaped out at her instantly if it had been. Nor was he dressed to kill like a lot of the other guests. He was wearing an open-necked white shirt beneath a leather jacket that did nothing to conceal the breadth of his powerful shoulders, and his long legs were encased in black jeans that showed off a lean waist and narrow hips, a testament to the fact that he exercised regularly and hard.

‘Now, that would be rather too much of a coincidence, don’t you think?’ he supplied silkily, although he didn’t enlarge upon how he had managed to cross the threshold of her little gallery, and right at that moment Grace was far too strung up to care.

Making a more obvious point of looking around her this time, she asked, ‘Is there anything you fancy?’ And could have kicked herself for not choosing her words more carefully when she saw a rather feral smile touch his lips.

‘That’s a rather leading question, isn’t it?’ Rose colour deepened along her cheekbones as images, scents and sensations invaded every screaming corner of her mind. ‘But I think the answer to that has to be along the lines of once-bitten, twice shy.’

So he was still bearing a grudge for the way she had treated him! It didn’t help, telling herself that she probably would be too, had she been in his shoes.

‘Have you come here to look around?’ Angry sparks deepened her cornflower-blue eyes. ‘Or did you come here tonight simply to take pot shots at me?’

He laughed, an action that for a moment, as he lifted his head, showed off the corded strength of his tanned throat and made his features look altogether younger, less harshly etched. ‘You make me sound like a sniper.’

‘Do I?’ I wonder why? Grace thought ironically, sensing a lethal energy of purpose behind his composed façade, yet unable to determine exactly what that purpose was.

The dark strands of hair moved against his forehead as he viewed her obliquely. In spite of everything, Grace’s fingers burned with an absurd desire to brush them back. ‘Still answering every question with a question?’

‘It would seem so.’ She was amazed that he remembered saying that, even though she hadn’t forgotten one moment of those torrid hours she had spent with him. She met his gaze directly now. ‘And you?’ He’d been a boatyard hand from a poor background, manually skilled, hardworking—and far, far more exciting than any of the young men she’d known in her own social sphere. ‘Are you still living in the West Country?’ His nod was so slight as to be indiscernible. ‘Still messing about with boats?’ It was only her nervousness that made it sound so detrimental, but by the way those steely eyes narrowed he’d obviously taken it exactly the wrong way.

‘It would seem so,’ he drawled, lobbing her words back at her. ‘But then, what did you expect from a young man with too many ideas above his station? Wasn’t that what you as good as said before you went on to make me look an utter fool?’

She flinched from the reminder of things she had done when she had been too young and wrapped up in herself to know any better.

Defensively she said, ‘That was a long time ago.’

‘And that excuses your behaviour?’

No, because nothing could, she thought, ashamed, and it was that that made her snap back, ‘I wasn’t offering excuses.’