His Most Exquisite Conquest: A Delicious Deception / The Girl He'd Overlooked / Stepping out of the Shadows

Her voice was infused with resentment, King noted. Something she had held against Mitch—against him—for years. ‘He knows who you are,’ he disclosed.

‘And what did he say?’ She looked up at him again now, her lovely face pained and accusing. ‘Did he admit that MiracleMed was Dad’s? And that he snatched it from under his nose?’

King took a deep breath. ‘It wasn’t quite like that, Lorri.’

‘No?’ Her head was tilted in rebellious challenge and her hair was as fiery as the Monte Carlo sunset. ‘How was it?’ she bitterly invited him to tell her.

King glanced away, way down across the scintillating Principality, watching a stream of red tail lights form a blur of colour along the highway following the curve of the coast.

This day had wreaked havoc on him, if any day could. First finding out that Rayne was Lorri Hardwicke. Then Mitch’s suspected heart attack. And, to add to all that, those soul-sinking moments at the clinic when he’d believed his father was the worst kind of criminal. But Mitch’s sin had been a moral one, rather than anything illegal. Even so, it still offended King’s sense of propriety to realise that Grant Hardwicke had been treated so unfairly. And it wasn’t going to be easy telling his daughter the truth when, either way, she wasn’t going to want to hear the answer.

‘Your father signed an agreement with Mitch just after they went into partnership together, to the effect that any work done for the company while they were directors of the company would be to the benefit of the company. I know. I’ve read the clause in that agreement. I had my secretary email it through to me today. Your father was the technical whiz-kid, but was lax when it came to business dealings or keeping vital records. If he hadn’t been, he would have registered his right in that software prior to signing that agreement, but he didn’t, which was a pity,’ he said, sounding as though he meant it. ‘And much to his cost, as it turned out.’

‘And that’s it?’ she queried in protest. ‘He signed his rights away and it’s a pity! Why? Because it made Claybornes so much money!’

‘Lorrayne, stop,’ King advised gently, understanding her pain, her justified anger and bitterness. He wished he hadn’t learned from Mitch today that he could have acknowledged the other man’s concept of that software and that he had chosen not to. It had been an act of vengeance against a man who had been his friend and whom he had wound up hating. ‘No one could have quite foreseen the impact that MiracleMed would make after it was launched.’

‘But it did!’ she complained. ‘And Dad never received any credit for it!’

‘And, believe me, no one regrets that more than I do,’ King said somberly.

He didn’t add that, for what it was worth, Mitch now regretted it too. That would be like openly admitting his father’s wrongdoing, and if Mitch wanted to apologise to her then it was up to Mitch to do it himself.

He didn’t know why his father had suddenly burdened him with this today, unless it was because he’d feared he was going to die and wanted to get it off his chest. But at least he could understand now why his father had become so bitter, and how shouldering such a weight of remorse could have contributed to making him ill.

‘OK. So there’s nothing I can do about it now,’ she accepted grudgingly, ‘because it was all signed, sealed and delivered legally! But that doesn’t alter the fact that your father came by that software immorally and very conveniently, after that quarrel he obviously instigated, which made Dad walk out. And I know it wasn’t Dad’s fault, because Dad never quarrelled with anyone!’

‘For heaven’s sake, Lorri, stop being so naïve!’

‘Naïve?’ She gave a brittle little laugh. ‘You think I don’t know my own father?’

‘Apparently not.’

She sent a sidelong glance up at him. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ she bit out with her eyes narrowing.

‘It means that, much as I believe my father exercised his rights under that agreement—whether ethically or otherwise—I also believe that it’s time you, my misinformed little kitten, heard a few home truths about what really broke up their partnership.’

‘I already know that,’ Rayne tossed back assuredly. ‘It was professional jealousy. He knew what Dad had created was going to be worth a fortune and he wanted to reap all the rewards for it himself!’ She couldn’t believe she was saying things like this about Mitch Clayborne. The man who had taken her in. Offered her food and shelter and a safe haven to get her affairs sorted out when she’d found herself virtually stranded so far from home.

‘Jealousy, maybe. But not so much professional as deeply personal, I imagine,’ King was saying with a grim cast to his features. ‘My father quarrelled with yours because of the affair Grant was having with Mitch’s wife.’

‘You’re lying!’ She couldn’t believe King could dream up something so despicable.

‘Am I? Then why do you think there were never any proper claims made by your father to try and secure the rights to his software?’

‘Because you threatened him! I was there when you did it!’ she reminded him passionately.

‘And you think that was enough to stop him pursuing any claim against the company if he thought he could have, unless he hadn’t something to hide?’

She wanted to protest, but his words rang with something so akin to the truth that they left her speechless. There were times when she had wondered why her father hadn’t fought harder to try and get the rights to MiracleMed into his name. Sometimes she had begged him to, but he hadn’t, and she’d thought it was because he just hadn’t had any fight left in him.

‘I came round that night—rightly or wrongly—to tell him to stay away from my father. I had very little else on my mind except that my stepmother had been killed and that Mitch was more than likely to be in a wheelchair for life. He’d known about the affair for weeks, which had led to Grant leaving the company. But it was the shock of being told by Karen that she was leaving Mitch to run away with your father that caused him to lose control of the car that night and swerve into that tree. He was going to leave you, Lorrayne. You and your mother. The dear, devoted husband and father.’ The censure which dripped through his words was evidence of just how little respect he had for Grant Hardwicke—or the institution of marriage. ‘Did you really not know?’

Mortified, Rayne could only stare up at him. Finally she made a small negative gesture with her head.

How could it be true? Her parents had loved each other, she reflected achingly. Or had King been right in calling her naïve? Had Cynthia Hardwicke known? Been aware of her husband’s infidelity? But no, she couldn’t have been!

Painfully, she recalled her mother’s constant assurance that it was Grant’s memory that had given her the strength to fight through her recent illness. So what would it do to her now if she found out that all that love and devotion she’d thought he’d shown her had been just a sham? It would destroy her!

‘I’m sorry I’ve had to be the one to destroy all your illusions about love and commitment, my dearest.’

‘I’m not your dearest.’ She wasn’t ready yet to accept endearments from him after he had opened her eyes so cruelly.

‘Maybe not,’ he conceded which, contrarily, hurt her even more, ‘but you’re feeling bruised and cut up about it, naturally.’

How do you know how I feel? she wanted to fling at him, but bit the words back. It wasn’t his fault that everything she’d believed in seemed to have crumbled to dust within the space of a few short minutes, even if it felt like it right at this moment.

She turned away from him, her hands resting limply on the top of the balustrade.

‘He lied,’ was all she could say, staring out at the darkening sea, hurting so much she didn’t think she’d live to trust anyone ever again. ‘To me. To Mum …’

‘I’m sorry,’ he murmured deeply. And, after a few seconds, ‘Passion makes us do the most unprincipled things,’ he said.

Didn’t she know it!

‘It’s the second strongest animal force in the universe.’

‘Only the second?’ she uttered disdainfully.

‘Perpetuation of the species.’ His tone was flat—unsentimental. ‘Preceded only by self-survival.’

He made it all seem so cold. So basic.

He laughed rather harshly when she told him so. ‘Isn’t it?’ he suggested with unyielding scepticism.

‘Is that all you think love is for?’ she challenged, wondering how she had got on to this subject with him as she faced him again. ‘Just to create babies?’

‘Yes, but then we aren’t actually talking about love, are we … Lorri?’

He caught her hand, his fingers strong and warm, but angrily she tugged out of their grasp.

‘Don’t call me that!’ It was her father—her father, whom she had loved and trusted and looked up to, who had first started using that name. Everyone else had simply called her Lorrayne. ‘It’s Rayne to you!’

Which suited him fine, King thought, having been used to calling her that. It suited the woman she had become and who had changed so dramatically from the thin and stammering—at least with him, he remembered wryly—little scarecrow whom he’d known as Lorri, and who had graced the office for a time with her quiet presence.

‘Then don’t hate me, Rayne, for simply acquainting you with the facts.’

‘I don’t hate you.’ Hate was just the flip side of a coin that suggested far too intense an emotion than she was prepared even to think about. ‘Why should I hate you?’