The Marriage Deal

‘There is no question about Landons’ future,’ Ashley denied sharply.

‘Now there we differ,’ he said quite gently. ‘I’d say that without some pretty fancy footwork on your part, Marshalls are going to snap you up, and cheap at the price. Is that what you want?’

‘Of course not,’ she said impatiently. ‘But it’s no concern of yours.’

‘It’s my concern.’ There was no amusement in his face. The hazel eyes were cold and inimical as they rested on her. ‘Silas was my good friend, remember?’

‘I’m hardly likely to forget. I’ve often thought it a pity you couldn’t marry him yourself.’

‘And I’ve often thought it a pity you weren’t smacked, as a child, until you couldn’t sit down for a week,’ Jago said bitingly. ‘Now go and get dressed, unless you want to spend the morning in that travesty of a dressing gown. I’ll call you when the food’s ready.’

She said shakily, ‘If I were a man, I’d throw you out.’

‘Don’t be silly, Ash.’ He tapped her hot cheek lightly with his forefinger. ‘If you were a man, I wouldn’t be here, period.’

She wanted to tell him not to call her ‘Ash’, but it suddenly seemed infinitely safer to go to her room, and put some clothes on as he’d suggested.

She dragged on jeans, not new, and a sweater which had seen better days, dragging a comb ruthlessly through her black hair. Cosmetics she left severely alone. Jago was not to think she had taken any trouble with her appearance on his account, she told herself vehemently.

The kitchen was full of the scent and crackle of frying bacon and percolating coffee, and in spite of her anger, Ashley’s nose twitched in appreciation as she entered. Jago was standing by the hob, slicing tomatoes. He too was wearing jeans, she noticed, the close-fitting denim accentuating the length of his legs and the leanness of his hips. The cuffs of his shirt were unbuttoned and turned casually back revealing tanned forearms. He made her trim kitchen seem cramped, Ashley thought resentfully as she unwillingly took a seat at the small breakfast bar.

‘Here.’ He poured coffee into a mug and pushed it across the worktop to her.

‘Thank you,’ she acknowledged stiffly.

‘And three bags full to you.’ He gave her a long look. ‘Unless you relax your attitude, lady, and fast, we’re going to get nowhere.’

‘Well, that suits me down to the ground,’ said Ashley coldly. ‘As I haven’t the slightest wish to make any kind of progress with you.’

‘So, hurt pride and resentment still rule, O.K. You aren’t prepared to swallow either or both for the sake of Landons?’

‘I’d give whatever I had to in order to save the company,’ Ashley retorted. ‘I’ve already given the last couple of years of my life. Apparently for some of the board, this isn’t enough. I don’t know what more they want—blood, presumably.’

‘No,’ he said, ‘I think they want the assurance that Landons will continue to be the dynamic, thrusting concern that Silas made it.’

‘You seem very well informed,’ said Ashley coldly, gritting her teeth, as she complied with his signal to start on her grapefruit. ‘Perhaps you’re also aware that Landons had a record profit last year.’

‘That’s true,’ he admitted. ‘But accrued from the projects that Silas set up. You’ve kept the company ticking over, and you’ve delivered the goods, as no one could wish to deny. But your forward planning is lousy. There’ve been a number of tenders you should have gone for—and got—but haven’t. Silas went out and sold Landons in the market place. He was the arch-instigator of all time. Those new civic buildings in town were a case in point. The council never thought on that scale until Silas sold them the idea. Now no one can imagine how they ever did without them. And you can repeat that story over and over again up and down the length of the country.’

‘We have plenty of work,’ Ashley protested indignantly.

‘For the time being—but how much of it is new? How many of your present contracts have you fought for and won?’ He shook his head. ‘This is what concerns the majority of the board, Ashley, and in their place, I’d probably share that concern.’

Ashley bit her lip, looking with disfavour at the plate he was setting in front of her. ‘I can’t possibly eat all that,’ she protested.

‘You’ll eat it if I have to hold your nose and force-feed you,’ Jago told her forthrightly. ‘You’re going to need all your strength, lady, and besides, we have other more important issues to argue about than food.’ He took his place beside her and began to eat with relish as she registered with annoyance. His presence in her flat, his intrusion into her life was an outrage, but he seemed unconscious of the fact.

‘So why are you interfering?’ she asked sulkily, cutting into her bacon, and noting crossly that it was done to a crisp, just as she liked it. ‘I suppose you’ve come here to give me some good advice. Well, let me tell you, I don’t need …’

‘Mere advice won’t get you out of the hole you’re in.’ He reached for a piece of toast. ‘I think the situation calls for rather more drastic action.’

‘And you, of course, know exactly how to cope with the crisis,’ she said derisively.

‘I could get rid of Marshalls for starters.’ Jago bit into his toast.

‘How?’ His confidence needled her.

He sighed. ‘By persuading the board to reject their offer.’

Ashley put down her knife and fork. ‘But why should they do any such thing, particularly on your say-so?’ she demanded heatedly. ‘My God, you’re not even a member of the Landons board!’

‘But I could be.’ The hazel eyes looked coolly and directly into hers. ‘In fact I could be chairman—if you and I were married.’

CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_71cd812a-6e95-5eea-9bbe-20146116b7ce)

IN a voice she hardly recognised as her own, Ashley gasped ‘That—has to be the most insane idea I’ve ever heard!’

‘On the contrary, it makes a lot of sense.’ He even had the gall to go on eating, she realised dazedly. ‘Think about it, and try using your head, instead of your hormones. It was what Silas always intended, after all.’

‘I’m only too well aware of that,’ she said rigidly. ‘It was a very nice, businesslike arrangement for you both, until you allowed your other—proclivities to get in the way.’

‘Ah,’ Jago said softly, ‘I thought we wouldn’t get far before that thorny subject was dragged kicking and screaming into the light of day. You never gave me a chance to explain at the time. Perhaps now you might allow me a few words.’

‘The fewer the better.’ Suddenly she was hurting again, every image from that terrible night etched on to her memory in agonising detail. ‘Although I fail to see what possible explanation you can come up with for your conduct.’ She paused theatrically. ‘Ah, I know. The lady was your long-lost sister—or your maiden aunt twice removed seeking shelter for the night. Is that how it was?’

‘No,’ he said, his mouth curling. ‘The situation was exactly as you read it. And before you ask—no, she wasn’t an old flame, either. I’d picked her up in a bar earlier in the evening. Satisfied?’

‘Please spare me the sordid details,’ Ashley said scornfully. ‘I don’t want to hear them.’

‘What did you want to hear, I wonder?’ he asked cynically. ‘Some cosy lie, designed to make you feel better, and whitewash the whole incident? Not a chance. I offered an explanation for what it’s worth, but no excuses.’

‘There is no possible excuse for what you did,’ she said bitterly. ‘And you have no right to walk back into my life, and—proposition me in this insulting way.’

‘The word is proposal,’ Jago interrupted sardonically. ‘A proposition has a totally different connotation, although you wouldn’t know anything about that, my little Puritan. You froze me off so many times during our brief but eventful engagement that it was a miracle I didn’t die from frostbite.’

‘Oh, I see,’ exclaimed Ashley, heavily sarcastic. ‘Then it’s all my fault. I should have allowed you to seduce me when you wanted to—and then this little local difficulty would never have happened.’

Jago pushed his plate away. ‘Seduction,’ he said levelly, ‘was never what I had in mind. All I wanted from you, Ash, was a little human warmth—a sign, however fleeting, that when we were married, you’d welcome my arms round you—enjoy going to bed with me. All I got was one terrified hysterical rebuff after another. Is it any real wonder that my courage failed at the prospect of a bride who turned to stone every time I came near her?’

‘And human warmth was presumably what the lady in the bar had to offer,’ said Ashley, her heart beating harshly and discordantly.

His smile was twisted. ‘No, it was slightly more than that. In fact, she made it quite clear that she fancied me rotten, and that was balm to my soul after having you fight me off night after night as if I was the Mad Rapist. I don’t go in for one-night stands as a rule, but she caught me at a weak moment, and I was more than ready to enjoy what she was offering.’ He paused. ‘Now you know everything.’

‘What a pity all I had to offer was Landons.’ Ashley drank some coffee. ‘And what a pity you wanted not just the cake, but the icing too. Getting control of the company eventually wasn’t enough for you—you wanted passion as well. It never occurred to you that I might not feel particularly passionate towards a man who was using me only as a stepping stone to being chairman of the board.’

There was a silence. He said at last, ‘Frankly, no, it never occurred to me.’

‘You were clearly too used to finding your attractions irresistible,’ she said savagely. ‘And I was young and naïve, and easily conned, or so you thought. But I soon realised what the score was.’