Power Games

‘Have you seen Helena recently?’ she asked him. ‘I really must get in touch with her.’

Olivia Carstairs and Helena had been at Roedean together. They had kept in touch over the years and it was through Helena that Bram knew Olivia.

‘We received an invitation to Plum’s eighteenth, but unfortunately Gerald is due to go to Russia the day before. It’s such a pity about Plum. I really feel for poor Helena. But then teenage girls can be so difficult.’

Her voice held the confidence of being the mother of four sons, Bram noticed wryly.

‘And of course, the problem is,’ Olivia continued, ‘by the time she does come to her senses, the poor girl will have gained such a dreadful reputation. I remember when I was at—’ She broke off, apologising. ‘Oh dear, I’d better go. Gerald looks as though he’s in trouble. The problem with these affairs is that one never has the time to talk to the people one really wishes to converse with. You will give Helena my love?’

‘I shall,’ Bram assured her.

Her comments about his goddaughter hadn’t been motivated by malice but, even so, they made him frown. In other circumstances he would have been tempted to talk to Plum himself, to try gently to help her understand that she could not and would not find the emotional security she was seeking by trying to purchase it with sex. However, he was acutely aware that Plum considered herself to be in love with him—how could he not be when she had earnestly and forthrightly told him so on more than one occasion?

Two years ago, when she was still not quite sixteen, he had let himself into his apartment one night to find her waiting in his bed for him. His fortieth-birthday present.

The combination of her too adult sexuality and her too youthful body and face had filled him with a mixture of despair and distaste. How could he explain to her that his love for her was that of an adult for a child, and that to him the thought of knowingly being sexually stirred by any fifteen-year-old girl was acutely repugnant. Her straight coltish limbs, her high small breasts, which she was displaying to him with such terrifying insouciance, were those of a child, not a woman.

In the end he had had to leave her in possession of his bed and spend the night in a hotel. Since then she might not have gone so far as invading his bed, but she certainly still insisted that she loved him.

On the other side of the room Anthony was talking to the aide of one of the charity’s royal patrons. Bram made his way over to join them.

‘Ah, Bram.’ Anthony welcomed him with a smile, introducing him to his companion. ‘I was just telling Charles here about you. I’m sorry I had to break our appointment this afternoon, by the way, but no doubt Taylor was able to help you.’

‘Very much so,’ Bram agreed, as the royal aide turned away to speak to someone else. ‘But…’

‘But?’ Anthony repeated, frowning as he picked up on the hesitation in Bram’s voice. ‘Was there a problem?’

‘Not with your archivist,’ Bram assured him. ‘Far from it. But I have to admit I just wasn’t prepared for the amount of material she gave me. I haven’t had time to look at it properly yet, but I doubt that I’m going to be able to extract the statistics I need without some very knowledgeable assistance.’

‘Well, that needn’t be a problem,’ his friend assured him. ‘In fact, the person in the best position to help you is Taylor herself. She’s been with the charity for a long time and the new information-collating system we put in last year was very much her baby.’

‘Well, if you’re sure she can spare the time,’ Bram responded reluctantly. ‘I must admit she would seem to be the ideal choice, especially if, as you say, she’s familiar with your own computer system.’

While Anthony was assuring him that some satisfactory arrangement could be reached, Bram was inwardly marvelling at his own hitherto unsuspected capacity for duplicity and manipulation. He had never before in his life imagined, or needed to imagine, employing the kind of deceitful sleight of hand he was using now. He had simply never had the need…or the desire.

He had a gut-deep feeling that working alongside Taylor was not going to be a good idea—either for his libido or his emotions. But the attractive proposition of another chance to get close to Taylor far outweighed any possible doubts.

‘I imagine she must have come to you straight from university,’ he heard himself saying to Anthony further compounding his deceit.

‘No. She did actually go to university, but she left without taking her degree. I’m not sure why.’ He started to frown. ‘She’s an extremely private person who doesn’t encourage personal questions, although I do know that she eventually obtained her degree via the Open University system. She’s got a first-rate brain. And a good sense of humour, too, when she allows it to surface. Sometimes, though, it’s almost as though she’s afraid of laughing, as though she’s afraid of…’

‘Living,’ Bram suggested quietly.

‘How high do you rate your chances of being able to come up with something for us?’ Anthony asked.

‘It’s hard to say,’ Bram responded honestly. ‘Especially since I need to break down all the reference material and collate it properly.

‘What I’m hoping to do is to establish some common ground between the different degrees of communication problems and to use that as the base for a general program which can then, hopefully, be adapted to meet the needs of the individual user. But as yet we’re a long, long way from that stage.’

‘Well, having Taylor seconded to you should help.’

‘Oh, it will,’ Bram told him truthfully. ‘It will.’

‘I’ll speak to her first thing in the morning. It shouldn’t be too much of a problem. She was complaining only the other week that since we’ve put in this new computer system, she’s finding she has time on her hands.

‘I was discussing this project with our patron this afternoon,’ Anthony continued. ‘He was very enthusiastic about it. It’s going to make one hell of a difference if you can pull it off. Commercially for you as well as for us.’

‘Potentially, yes.’ Bram agreed cautiously, aware that he was now voicing the same doubts which Jay had expressed earlier—but from a very different standpoint.

It was almost one o’clock when he eventually left the reception and made his way back home.

He did not, however, retire straight to bed. Instead, he went into his study, a square room to the rear of the house, with windows which overlooked a surprisingly large garden. With the heavy antique damask curtains closed, shutting out the sounds of the city, it was almost possible for him to imagine he was back on the fens.

Almost… A wry smile curled his mouth as he contrasted the expensive elegance of his present surroundings with the small, shabby cottage he had rented there. The two places, the two lifestyles, were worlds apart, but he was still the same man.

No, not the same, he acknowledged. He had changed the moment he had walked into Taylor’s office. She intrigued him, interested him, aroused his curiosity, his compassion—and his desire! And if he did desire her, was that so very wrong? Not wrong, perhaps, but certainly foolhardy—surely he had learned enough about life to realise the stupidity of wanting a woman who did not want him?

He picked up the file. He hadn’t lied when he told Anthony he was going to need help collating the information she had given him… Well, not totally, although he suspected she would take convincing of that fact.

And if she chose not to be convinced, if she refused to work with him? To work with him—was that all he wanted? Would he be able to stop at merely working with her? He was more than forty, he reminded himself, well capable of controlling whatever inappropriate physical or emotional desire Taylor aroused in him. As he had done the first time they met? His body tensed a little uncomfortably as he looked down and saw what he had doodled on the edge of the file. A small and extraordinarily feisty-looking little mouse.

Chapter 4

Down below, to the left of Jay’s bedroom window, Fifth Avenue lay under a haze of car exhaust fumes and heat. To the right the trees in Central Park were just beginning to lose the bright, fresh greenness of early spring. The temperature was rising, and with the approach of summer came an energetic and collective shedding of layers of clothing from women’s bodies, which should have rejoiced the heart of any red-blooded male, Jay acknowledged as his glance lingered briefly on the slim, golden limbs of a girl crossing the street below him.

Perhaps if he had been able to make his father see reason, bring him round to his point of view, he might have felt more inclined to join the general rush to welcome summer.

As it was… New Yorkers obviously had conveniently short memories, he decided cynically. In another six weeks’ time they would be moaning about the stifling heat of their city. In another six weeks…

On the surface his meeting with the Japanese had gone well enough; they had seemed to accept his careful noncommittal statement that he and his father both felt they needed more time before coming to a final decision about such a very important step. On the surface… Oh, they had been polite enough, but there had been that firm reminder that they would not wait for ever, that resources for investment were finite and there were other small companies in which they were interested. Like Jay they had other business in New York, and their comment had somehow sounded more like a warning than general conversation.

Another meeting had been set up for six weeks’ time. Six weeks—would that be long enough to bring his father around to his point of view? To make him see sense? To make him realise how very, very vulnerable they were, and how much they needed the kind of partnership the Japanese were offering?

Jay frowned impatiently as he continued to stare out of the window. What was his father doing—thinking—was he regretting not agreeing with him?

The familiar edginess and anger he always felt when he and his father were apart, when others were in a better position to influence him than he was himself, were beginning to make him wish he hadn’t committed to a two-week stay in New York. Damn. Jay silently cursed himself—and Plum. Still, it would be worth the wait just to see her face when he gave her her ‘present.’ Hers and everyone else’s, once they realised just what it was.

He was already regretting rearranging his dinner date with Nadia, but she had wanted to see him, or so she’d said.

Their affair had ended more than six years ago, and although he continued to hear, through mutual acquaintances, about her almost meteoric career progress, they had not kept in touch on a personal basis.

He glanced at the phone, wondering if it was too late to ring her and cancel their date for the second time, but then, if he did, he was grimly aware of the conclusions she was likely to draw.

‘If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s a man who sulks,’ she had once told him pithily, after they had quarrelled.

‘I do not sulk,’ he had countered angrily, but she had raised her eyebrows and mocked.

‘Oh no? If you believe that, then you’re nowhere near as intelligent as you like to pretend to be, Jay. When it comes to handing out the silent withdrawal treatment you’re an expert. And they say that women are manipulative! The moment a situation comes along where you think you might not win, you don’t want to be involved. You back off and retreat into that cosy, safe little world of yours and you bar the door behind you.’