Subtle Revenge

Lori pulled away from him, taking exception to the innuendo this time. ‘I never purr. Now if you’ll excuse me, I think Nikki and Paul are about to leave.’ She walked away, a tall graceful woman. It would have irked her immensely to know that several of the people watching her thought she had the sensuous grace of a cat!

‘Thank you for everything you did to help, Lori.’ Nikki came over to hug her, ecstatically happy, looking very beautiful in the stunning lemon dress she had chosen to wear for the flight to Barbados. ‘Hasn’t it all been wonderful?’ she glowed.

‘Wonderful,’ Lori nodded, kissing her friend warmly on the cheek. ‘Now off you go and join your impatient bridegroom.’

‘What are you going to do about poor Luke?’ Nikki giggled, needing no champagne to make her intoxicated, although she had probably had some of the bubbly wine too. ‘He’s quite smitten, you know.’

Now was her chance to find out more about him. ‘But, Nikki, wh——’

‘Come along, darling.’ Paul’s arm came about his new wife’s waist. ‘Sorry to interrupt, Lori,’ he kissed her on the cheek, ‘but the car is waiting to take us to the airport.’

‘Sorry, Lori,’ Nikki looked regretful, ‘but we’ll talk when I get back,’ she promised before she was pulled away by her husband.

Lori sighed her dismay. The new husband and wife were to be away for a month, so Nikki was going to be no help at all where the man called Luke was concerned.

‘She’s quite right, you know,’ he spoke softly behind her, startling her. Although she didn’t know why—he was starting to be her nemesis! ‘I am smitten,’ he looked down at her with serious grey eyes. ‘So what are you going to do with me?’

‘Nothing!’ she snapped, turning away. ‘Except ignore you.’

‘I’m afraid I’m not very ignorable,’ he derided softly.

Lori maintained a stony silence, watching as Nikki tearfully gave her bouquet of roses to her mother, and the two of them hugged each other tightly before Nikki got into the car with Paul.

‘If she had thrown that bouquet,’ Luke’s voice was strangely close to her ear. ‘I’d catch it for you. Because you’re going to be the next bride, Lori. My bride.’

She couldn’t keep her silence after red-flagwaving like that! ‘Are you mad?’ she rasped, turning to him fully as the bridal car drove away and the crowd began to wander back into the ballroom of this fashionable London hotel now that the bride and groom had left.

‘I’m beginning to think I must be,’ but he didn’t sound too worried about it. ‘But you are going to marry me, Lori.’

‘I—Never!’ she almost shouted, running to catch up with the other guests, sure that he was a madman.

She was going to marry him, indeed! She had hardly spoken to the man, let alone—He was mad!

‘Lori, my dear,’ Claude Hammond approached her, ‘I’m glad to see you and Luke are getting on so well together.’

‘Oh, but——’

‘Brilliant man. Brilliant!’

That was high praise indeed, coming from this north-country man. Lori listened with more interest. If Claude Hammond said the man was brilliant then he must indeed be so. At what she had no idea.

‘With a father like that he was bound to be outstanding,’ Claude Hammond continued. ‘I’m proud to know him.’

‘A father like that?’ Lori prompted.

‘Mm, Jacob was the best.’

‘J-Jacob …?’ she echoed with a sickening jolt in her stomach. It couldn’t be——

‘Jacob Randell,’ Claude explained jovially. ‘Of course he made that one mistake with the Chisholm case, underestimated the man. But that was before your time.’

No, not before her time at all, she remembered it very well, both the case and Jacob Randell. He was a man with the ruthlessness of a viper, a cruelty that inflicted scars in his victims. And she remembered Michael Chisholm too. Her father …

CHAPTER TWO (#u1a215608-9257-5095-bb82-071a167f6218)

THE court case had gone on for months—months and months, when both Lori and her mother had been as much in the public limelight as her father had. They had been hounded by photographers wherever they went. Even on the day her father had been buried …

‘Of course it was a shame the case couldn’t reach its proper conclusion,’ Claude Hammond continued with a shake of his head. ‘I’m sure Jacob would have got his conviction. Still, I mustn’t bore you with history, my dear,’ Claude smiled. ‘Especially on a day like today. Old fogeys like Jacob and myself can’t be of much interest to you.’ He patted her hand. ‘You go ahead and enjoy yourself. It’s early yet.’

Lori gazed after him with widely shocked eyes. Luke Randell was the son of the man she hated most in the world, the man who had caused her father to take his own life, who had been responsible for her mother’s subsequent failing health and prematurely young death, who had been the cause of all the misery in her life, including losing Nigel, the man she loved.

No one looking at her could have guessed quite the shock she had just received, the trauma. Her expression remained calm, her movements unhurried as she entered the door marked ‘Ladies’, but the memories suddenly crowded in on her.

Twelve years, twelve long miserable years, when her own and her mother’s name was changed to Parker. But the change of a name couldn’t eradicate the shame her mother felt, the fact that her husband had been accused of being a criminal, and that his suicide before he could be sentenced had seemed to confirm this.

For the next five years Lori had watched her mother shrivel up and die, had watched the life slowly fade from within her, her once happy carefree face no longer beautiful but ravaged with age, the pride she had taken in her youthful figure no longer there; she often did not even bother to dress at all towards the end. A heart attack, the doctor had diagnosed at her death at only thirty-eight, but Lori had known the real cause of death, and at seventeen she had sworn vengeance on Jacob P. Randell.

All her excellent capabilities as a secretary had been attained for the sole reason of eventually getting to work for Jacob P. Randell, of somehow being able to discredit him, of ruining him. She wasn’t even sure how she had thought she could do that, she had just felt that if he had been so wrong about her’ father—and he had been wrong—that there had to be other cases he had been wrong about, cases where he had got a conviction merely to further his career.

Before she had even qualified she had learned that Jacob P. Randell had retired, and her plans for revenge were foiled before they had even begun.

But he had a son, a son she hadn’t even known existed, a man who minutes ago had told her he intended marrying her! She hadn’t liked him from the beginning, even when she had had no idea who he was, of the devastating effect his father had had on her life. Luke Randell—she could hardly believe it, not after all this time.

She had left the idea of vengeance far behind her, had buried the bitterness she had for the past, knowing it could never be undone, that it was much too late to help her mother and father. But Nigel and herself——? It was too late for them too!

‘Lori, my dear,’ Ruth Hammond entered the powder-room to join her on another of the velvet stools in front of the ornate mirrors. ‘I thought for a moment you’d left without saying goodbye,’ she smiled.

Lori gathered herself together with effort. ‘I wouldn’t do that, Mrs Hammond,’ she returned the smile, only the strain in her eyes telling of her disturbed emotions.

She liked her employer’s wife, found the other woman had a cryptic wit and a quite surprising sense of fun, despite her sometimes uncomfortableness with her husband’s north-country bluntness. Being a southerner Ruth was a little more reserved, but her forthright husband believed in calling a spade a spade, sometimes with embarrassing repercussions. Lori found them an enchanting couple, and knew that they had a genuine affection for each other.

‘Claude and I would like you to come to lunch tomorrow. Could you manage that?’ Ruth raised finely shaped brows, still an attractive and energetic woman despite being sixty years of age. ‘There’ll just be the four of us,’ she added encouragingly.

‘Four of us?’ Lori echoed softly.

‘You, Claude and I—and of course, Luke,’ Ruth added coyly.

If the last was supposed to be an incentive it had the opposite effect. ‘I’m sorry,’ Lori shook her head, ‘I have to visit my aunt.’

A look of irritation crossed Ruth’s perfectly made up face. ‘Couldn’t you do that some other time?’

‘No, I’m afraid not.’ Her Aunt Jessie, Great-Aunt Jessie, would never forgive her if she missed one of her visits. The old lady had put herself into a nursing home two years ago, treating the place more like a hotel than anything else. In fact, Lori often thought her aunt ran the old people’s home instead of the Matron!

‘Damn!’ Ruth frowned. ‘Luke is only with us for the weekend, then he’s moving into his flat. Couldn’t you come for tea instead?’ she asked hopefully.

Once again Lori shook her head, glad she had a real excuse for refusing—if she hadn’t Ruth would soon have worn her down. And she never, ever, wanted to see Luke Randell again; she hated him for the bitter memories he had evoked.

‘I always spend the whole day with my aunt,’ she said truthfully.