Back In The Boss's Bed. Sharon Kendrick
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right,’ he agreed. ‘I don’t start my new job until next month.’
Vaughn drew himself up, his stiff body moving awkwardly. ‘I want you to make Lacey’s what it was, Adam. If anyone can do it—you can. Before I die, I want my good name to stand and I want this firm to carry on. For Kiloran’s sake. Will you do that?’
Adam’s dark eyebrows knitted together. ‘But how’s Kiloran going to feel about it? If she’s heading up your company, how’s she going to adapt to taking her orders from me? Unless.’ His eyes took on a watchful wariness. ‘Unless you want her out of the way, of course. You’re not planning to sack her, are you?’
Vaughn let out a wheezing laugh. ‘Sack her? I’d sooner take on the devil himself than risk that!’
‘But, you know—’ Adam’s grey eyes grew thoughtful and flinty ‘—if it’s as bad as you seem to think it is, and you want results, then I’m going to have to be tough with her.’
The old man smiled. ‘Be as tough as you like. Maybe I’ve been too soft with her in the past. Show her who’s in the driving seat, Adam. She needs to know—she’s a stubborn little thing.’
Adam digested this in silence, knowing that no one could match him for stubbornness. And he wondered whether perhaps it was Vaughn’s intention to use him to oust his stubborn granddaughter from her position of power. Maybe that was one of his reasons for approaching him. Get someone else to do your dirty work for you.
But he put it out of his mind. Personalities didn’t come into it and neither did other people’s agendas.
There were facts and you acted on those facts. Didn’t matter who said what, or to whom. Didn’t matter if Kiloran Lacey was a clone of her mother and started fluttering her pretty eyelashes at him, trying to get her own way. She would soon find out, just as her mother had done, that he was not the kind of man she could twist around her little finger. From now on he was going to decide what was best, and if she didn’t like it—well, that was just too bad.
Vaughn gave a satisfied nod and pressed the bell on the side of his wheelchair once more, and the door was opened to reveal a middle-aged woman, bearing a tray containing two glasses and a bottle of champagne, cooling in an ice bucket.
‘Ah, Miriam,’ said Vaughn. ‘Pour Mr Black a drink, would you?’
Adam hid a smile. So the old man had been confident he’d agree, had he? And why not? Didn’t he owe Vaughn Lacey for a favour given to a young boy in trouble, such a long time ago? He watched as Miriam deftly dealt with the drinks. She wore a black dress with a white collar—clearly some kind of uniform. He hadn’t seen such an old-fashioned set-up for years, but, admittedly, he had been living in America, which was altogether a more meritocratic society.
His eyes were drawn to an exquisite Augustus John etching, which hung on the wall, and he pursed his lips together thoughtfully. That piece of artwork alone must be worth a cool couple of million. He wondered how much else around the place was existing on past glories and how well Vaughn and his granddaughter would be able to adapt if any cut-backs were going to be necessary.
But now was not the time to start asking questions like that. He took the drinks from Miriam, and when she had let herself out he handed one to the old man and then raised his own, touching it to the other, the chink of crystal sounding as pure as the ringing of a bell.
‘To success. To the resurrection of Lacey’s,’ he murmured, raising the drink to his lips and wondering just what the hell he had let himself in for.
Vaughn gave a tight smile. ‘I’ll send for Kiloran.’
KILORAN smoothed her clammy palms down over her hips, feeling suddenly and inexplicably nervous. The corridor leading to the boardroom seemed to go on forever, a corridor which she had walked down countless times—so why the nerves?
Her grandfather had telephoned her at the house and asked her to meet him. Immediately. It had sounded more like a command than a request and he had spoken in a terse, almost abrupt way, which didn’t sound like him at all.
Was he about to tell her that he didn’t think there was any point carrying on? That they should call in the creditors? The end of the company and all that went with it?
A cold sweat broke out on her forehead as she pushed open the door of the boardroom, thrown off her guard as soon as she registered that her grandfather was not alone.
For a man stood, surveying her with a lazy, yet judgemental air. The kind of man who would make any woman’s heart miss a beat and whose expression would fill her with foreboding.
She turned to the familiar figure in the wheelchair. ‘Grandfather?’ she said uncertainly.
‘Ah, Kiloran,’ murmured her grandfather. ‘This is Adam. Adam Black. Do you remember him?’
It was like a little pebble being dropped into a pond. Slowly, the ripples of memory spread across Kiloran’s mind. She frowned.
Adam Black.
Of course she remembered him.
True, she had only been young, but some men came along who were so unforgettable that their image was scored deep in the psyche, and had been at an impressionable age. Reading stories about knights in shining armour who carried off with them the damsel in distress to some unnamed and yet pleasurable fantasy.
Adam Black had seemed to fit the role perfectly, and—judging from the female workers at Lacey’s—Kiloran had not been the only one to think so. Hadn’t groups of them found excuses to go to the loading bay, in order to catch a glimpse of the bare-chested man, as he’d effortlessly lifted great boxes of soap into the lorries? Hadn’t even her mother remarked that he was a fine-looking boy?
And so it was with astonishing and rather disturbing ease that Kiloran was able to recall Adam Black perfectly.
She turned her head to look at him.
The years had not just been kind to him, they had treated him with the deference usually only given to the chosen few.
The body was lean and lithe, his skin kissed with the faintest tan. The hair was still jet-black—thick and abundant as it had ever been with only a faint tracing of silver around his temples. The grey eyes were narrowed and watchful. He looked—not exactly unfriendly, but not exactly brimming over with bonhomie, either, and he was dressed in an immaculate charcoal-grey suit, as if he was ready for business.
She remembered the young man wearing nothing but a pair of faded denims, his bronzed back dripping with the sweat of his labours, and it seemed hard to connect him with this man, who stood before her now, a dark study of arrogant respectability.
Kiloran’s heart had begun to thunder beneath the thin silk of her dress, but the voice of reason began to clamour in her head.
Why on earth was he here?
And her childhood crush was eclipsed by the sudden crowding in of facts. She suddenly realised just why his name had sounded so familiar—and not just because he had spent one summer doing hard, manual work for her grandfather. She made the connection, and she was even more confused.
Adam Black—the Adam Black—was here in her boardroom? The man that the investment journals called ‘The Shark’ because of his cold and cutting ways? She had read about him, in the way that anyone in the business would have done. She had seen him quoted in the papers and read about him in the magazines which covered big mergers and acquisitions. And seen his regular appearances in the gossip columns, too. The camera loved him and so did women, beautiful women, invariably. He had acquired a reputation for loving and leaving—though maybe not for loving, but certainly for leaving.
So why was he here? She stared at him in confusion.
‘You remember my granddaughter?’