Mistress Of The Groom

Her lack of reaction finally caused them to tire of their sport and the car roared away, spewing howls of raucous laughter, but almost immediately another one slowed to a crawl beside her. This time the suggestions from the lone driver were a great deal more sophisticated, but no less persistent and stomach-churningly graphic. At the end of her tether, Jane bent and rested her good hand on the open car window and delivered a blistering tirade to the sweaty, middle-aged man behind the wheel.

An obscene smile split his rubbery lips and he reached over and clamped his fat hand around her wrist. ‘Yes, I know. I’ve been very bad and I must be punished. I knew when I saw you striding haughtily along that you were a woman capable of the most delicious cruelty. I look forward to your discipline—’

‘Sorry, the lady’s already booked up for the night!’

For the second time in half an hour Jane found herself the object of an unwelcome rescue. Ryan Blair’s limousine was riding the bumper of the kerb-crawler as the man himself put his arm through the driver’s window and hauled the culprit up by the shirt-collar to utter a few sibilant phrases in his ear. As soon as he was released the unfortunate man rammed his car into gear and took off, burning rubber in the process.

Ryan Blair, still standing on the road, hands on his broad hips, said through his teeth, ‘Get into the limo, Jane.’

Jane opened her mouth.

‘Get in the car, dammit!’ he exploded, ‘Or I’ll wrap that silky black hair around your throat and drag you there!’

‘Bully!’ she slashed back, not quite certain that he wouldn’t do it. She moved with defiant slowness towards the open back door of the limousine. Her feet in the borrowed too-tight black stilettos were almost as painful as her hand, her crushed toes raw with blisters that chafed with every step.

‘Stubborn bitch!’ he said, climbing in opposite her. ‘At least now you’ll live for me to bully you another day.’

‘Oh, yes, you like to draw the agony out, don’t you? You probably could have destroyed Sherwoods in weeks instead of stringing it out for nearly two years,’ she accused wildly, anything to take her mind off the pain that was turning into a burning nausea in her stomach.

‘I could,’ he said coolly, lounging back on the luxurious white leather. ‘But it wouldn’t have given me half so much satisfaction.’

His frank admission took her breath away. She collapsed back against the seat, hardly noticing as the limousine pulled smoothly into the sparse flow of traffic.

She thought of all the times over the past couple of years when she had been certain that she was going to triumph over his bitter adversity, only to be hit by another financial blow that tumbled her down into the dumps again.

But there had never been a chance that she was going to win, she realised numbly. Those brief periods of euphoric hope had been as much a part of his strategy as the devastating body blows, designed to encourage her to fight, to blind her to the ultimate futility of her struggle. And the competitiveness drilled into her by her father had ensured that she had played right into Ryan Blair’s hands. In a sense, she had created her own torment.

‘But Sherwood’s wasn’t just me,’ she said through white lips. ‘There were other people involved, people who lost their jobs because of you—’

His swollen mouth curved cruelly. ‘No, they lost their jobs because of you.’

‘My God, you’re callous,’ she said, shaken by the depth of hatred revealed by the comment. She had known that he despised her but she hadn’t realised how much. If she had, maybe she would have been better equipped to predict the pattern of his revenge.

He shrugged. ‘I expect to be able to pick up what’s left of Sherwood’s for a song... I’ve no doubt I can make it a viable enterprise again in a very short time and reemploy most of the staff.’

‘Those who aren’t already in your employ, you mean,’ she said bitterly. ‘If you hadn’t been getting inside information you wouldn’t have found it so easy to destroy my company.’

‘Precisely. But all’s fair in love and war, isn’t it, Miss Sherwood? As it happens, your staff’s loyalty was pathetically easy to suborn... Did you know you weren’t a very popular employer? Too much of a chip off the old block, I understand. “Arrogant and intolerant”, “incapable of delegation”, “rigid and unapproachable” were some of the more flattering opinions of your management style.

‘You’re looking rather pale, my dear. Perhaps you need a whiskey to wash down the unpalatable truth.’ He opened a compact drinks cabinet and began to pour amber fluid from a silver flask into a crystal glass.

‘I don’t want anything from you.’

‘So you said. But there’s no gallery here to play martyr to, no one to care whether you show a glimpse of human weakness.’ He thrust the glass towards her.

‘I said no.’ She turned her head haughtily away. She hadn’t had anything to eat since breakfast and, even if she could bring herself to take anything from his hands, the alcohol would probably hit her like a freight train. She didn’t want to be any more helpless in front of him than she was already.

Had she really come across to her staff like an unfeeling robot? No, he was just saying those things to hurt her. They weren’t true. She had wanted Sherwood’s to be the best, and in striving to achieve her goals she had expected a lot from her employees but no more than she demanded of herself. Far from being a carbon-copy of her dogmatic father, she had wanted to stamp her own personality on the company, but real-estate was a dog-eat-dog business and the relentless pressure she had been under had necessitated her putting aside her new ideas in order to concentrate on the fight for sheer survival.

‘Suit yourself. Ah, well...here’s to the sweet taste of victory,’ he toasted her, and drank with robust pleasure, not flinching as the raw alcohol flowed over his split lip.

Everything about him was big and brash. There was an offensive vitality about him that contrasted with her own wilted state.

Jane remembered how uncomfortable Ava had been with his restless volatility, his constant need to be challenged, the natural aggressiveness which charged his character and made him a dangerous man to cross. Being engaged to him had been acceptable when they saw little of each other, but when he had started winding down his business activities closer to the wedding Ava had found herself unable to cope with the everyday reality of his forceful nature.

Jane had understood her fear, even though she didn’t share it. She had disliked Ryan Blair for reasons of her own but she had never been afraid of him. Even now she was more furious than fearful, for she knew that her own strength of character would carry her through this crisis, as it had through previous tough times in her life.

He lowered his glass and stretched out his long legs so that they brushed insolently against hers. ‘So...what are your plans now that Daddy’s little heiress is broke and unemployed?’

‘Do you think I’m going to tell you?’ she said, swivelling her hips so that her legs were no longer touching his, resenting the implication that she had been a spoilt brat for whom life had been cushioned by privilege.

His blue eyes glinted in the passing slash of a streetlight. ‘I’ll find out anyway.’

She didn’t answer, merely gave him the icy look of contempt with which she habitually bid her fears and insecurities.

‘Of course, your options are rather limited, aren’t they?’ he mused silkily. ‘The word is already out that anyone who offers a helping hand to Jane Sherwood could find themselves in the same mire. I think “unemployable” rather than “unemployed” is a better description, don’t you?’

She had already discovered the extent of his influence in her fruitless journey around the banks. With his connections she didn’t doubt that he could extend the threat to every city in New Zealand...and probably Australia, too.

She shrugged as if she didn’t care, her expression coolly unrevealing. ‘Whatever makes you happy.’

He leaned forward so sharply that the whiskey nearly slopped out of his glass. ‘You trashed my wedding without warning, without apology, without even an explanation,’ he said harshly. ‘What would make me happy is some expression of regret.’

She hesitated a fraction of a second too long and he leaned back again, his blunt features grim. ‘But of course you don’t regret anything, do you? Why should you? As far as you’re concerned you got away with your lies.’

‘I don’t regret what I did,’ she said bravely. ‘Maybe how I did it, but not that it was done. Ava was my friend; I knew you weren’t right for her—’

‘So you lied. In church. In front of my family. My friends. The woman I intended to spend the rest of my life with. You said that my vows would be a lie before God but you were the one committing an act of desecration!’

Jane flushed and looked blindly down at her throbbing hand. She couldn’t deny the searing accusation. Her guilty knowledge was a burden she would carry to her grave, and beyond—for she had not dared seek advice or absolution for her sin. She had done this man a grievous wrong in the very house of truth. Her only excuse was that he was strong and Ava was weak. He had survived—thrived, even—in the aftermath of disaster, as she had known that he would...

‘You told your lies and then you disappeared before anyone could ask you for proof,’ he said, with the pent-up savagery of years. ‘But you knew you wouldn’t need proof, didn’t you? You knew that Ava was highly strung, you knew that the shock of your words would be enough to send her into hysterics. You were her best friend, she trusted you, and you used that trust to humiliate her and her parents to the extent that she never wanted to see me again.

‘You were sick with jealousy of your best friend’s happiness so you smashed it to smithereens by publicly announcing that you and I were lovers!’

Jane’s flush deepened as she recalled the brazen words that she had flung down the aisle:

‘This man doesn’t love this woman enough to forsake all others. He hasn’t even honoured her with his faithfulness during their engagement I’m sorry, Ava, but I can’t let you do this without knowing what’s been going on behind your back—Ryan and I have been having an affair for months...’

‘Why didn’t you instantly deny it?’ she choked, defending the indefensible. ‘You just stood there...you didn’t even try to denounce me—’

‘I was as stunned as everyone else. It was such a flagrant lie I didn’t think anyone would believe it for a moment...especially Ava. She knew that I loved her—’

‘How can you say that?’ said Jane fiercely. ‘You hardly spent any time together...you certainly hardly knew her when you proposed. It was more of a business arrangement with Paul Brandon than a love-match—’

‘Is that how you justified yourself?’ He grated a bitter laugh and watched her flinch. ‘I loved her, dammit! From the first moment we met I knew that she was the one for me...she was so beautiful, so gentle and sweet and womanly. The business deal was just the icing on the cake as far as I was concerned; my feelings for Ava were separate—private and precious.

‘And that’s what you just couldn’t stomach, isn’t it? That Ava had someone to love her and you didn’t— because you’re a hard-faced, cold-hearted, selfish bitch who always has to be the centre of attention—’