His Delicious Revenge: The Price of Retribution / Count Valieri's Prisoner / The Highest Stakes of All. Sara Craven
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corded velvet, facing each other over the custom-made, polished oak coffee table. The bookcase, also in oak, the first of three ordered from the same craftsman. The thick cream rug, circular and luxurious that fronted the carved wooden fireplace.
A fairly minimal selection, yet all things they had chosen together, planning to add to them—over time.
Only there was no time. Not any more.
His throat muscles tightened to the point of agony, and he dug his nails into the palms of his clenched hands to dam back the cry that threatened to burst from his lungs.
And down the hall, behind the closed door of that other room—the bed. Memories he could not allow himself to think about.
He wasn’t even sure what he was doing here. Why he’d come back. God knows, it hadn’t been his original intention.
Brendan and Grace had pressed him anxiously to go back and stay with them, but he couldn’t face the thought of their shocked sympathy, however genuine and well-meant. Couldn’t stomach the prospect of being treated as walking wounded. Or feeling the complete fool he undoubtedly was.
His mouth tightened as he remembered the barrage of cameras and shouted questions waiting for him outside the registry office as he walked alone down the steps. He’d been spared nothing, and tomorrow the papers would be full of it. The tabloids would probably feature him front page.
But there were issues that mattered far more than the destruction of what had become his cherished privacy.
Decisions would have to be made, of course. The furniture disposed of. The flat put back on the market. That was the easy part. It could be done at a distance by other people, in the same way that flights and reservations for a suite in an exclusive resort hotel in the Bahamas had already been cancelled. The special orders for flowers and champagne rescinded. The plans to charter a boat in order to visit some of the other islands shelved.
However, retrieving himself from the wreckage of his life would be a very different matter. But there he could at least make a start.
He turned and walked swiftly down the passage, to the room he’d designated as his working space. Not to be confused with the similar room next door, although both had been rudimentarily equipped with a desk and chair, a filing cabinet and a shredder.
He reached into his jacket pocket and extracted the crumpled sheet of paper which he’d carried with him since that morning. He did not attempt to read it again. There was no need. He could have recited its contents from memory—something else that must stop right here and now.
He unfolded the letter, put it down on the desk, smoothed it flat with his fist, then fed it into the shredder, which accepted the offering, reducing it to fragments with its swift high-pitched whine.
It was done. Now all he had to do was erase it from his brain. Not so simple a task. But, somehow, he would manage it. Because he must.
He glanced at his watch. There was nothing more to keep him here. But then, there never had been. Waiting for him now was a different hotel suite, this one bland and anonymous. No intimate dinner for two to be anticipated, no vintage champagne on ice or rose petals on the pillows. And, later no eyes, drowsy with shared fulfilment, smiling into his.
Just a bottle of single malt, one glass, and, hopefully, oblivion.
At least until tomorrow when, somehow, he would begin his life again.
The previous April…
‘BUT you don’t understand. I’m meeting someone here.’
As the sound of the girl’s voice, husky with desperation, reached him across the room, Caz Brandon turned from the group he was chatting to at the bar, and looked towards the door, his dark brows raised in faint annoyance. Only to find his irritation changing in a flash to interest as he surveyed the newcomer.
In her early to mid-twenties, he judged, medium height, slim, and rather more than attractive, with a mass of auburn hair falling in gleaming waves past her shoulders. Wearing the ubiquitous little black dress, sleeveless and scoop-necked, like many of the other female guests, but setting her own stamp upon it with the slender skirt split almost to mid-thigh, revealing a black velvet garter set with crystals a few inches above her knee.
An intriguing touch, Caz decided with frank appreciation. And one that offered grounds for speculation. Although, admittedly, this was hardly the time or the place to let his thoughts wander, however agreeably, when he was entertaining the European and Southern hemisphere editors who worked for his company, prior to the strategy meetings which would begin in the morning.
‘I’m afraid this is a private function, madam, and your name is not on the list.’ Jeff Stratton, who was handling security for the reception, spoke quietly but firmly.
‘But I was invited.’ She took a card from her evening purse. ‘By this man—Phil Hanson. Look, he even wrote the place and the time for me to meet him on the back. If you’ll just get him, he’ll confirm what I say.’
Jeff shook his head. ‘Unfortunately there is no Mr Hanson listed among those attending. I’m afraid someone may have been having a joke with you. However, I regret that I must still ask you to leave.’
‘But he must be here.’ There was real distress in her voice. ‘He said he could get me a job with the Brandon Organisation. It’s the only reason I agreed to come.’
Caz winced inwardly. The situation seemed to be morphing from a simple security glitch into a public relations problem. If someone had been making free with his company’s name in order to play an unpleasant trick on this girl, he could hardly shrug and turn away. It had to be dealt with, and he, rather than Angus, who headed his PR team, was the one on the spot.
He excused himself smilingly to the rest of the group and walked purposefully across the room.
‘Good evening,’ he said. ‘Miss…?’ And paused interrogatively.
‘Desmond,’ she said, with a slight catch of the breath. ‘Tarn Desmond.’
Seen at close hand, she was even lovelier than Caz had first thought, her green eyes over-bright as if tears were not too far away, and her creamy skin flushed with embarrassment. While her hair had the sheen of silk.
‘And whom did you come here to meet?’ he prompted gently. ‘A Mr Hanson, you said? Did he claim a connection with the Brandon Organisation?’
She nodded. ‘He said he worked for a Rob Wellington in Personnel. That he’d introduce me to him.’
Caz swore under his breath. This was getting worse all the time. He sent a silent signal to Jeff who melted unobtrusively away.
‘I’m afraid we have no employee called Hanson.’ He paused. ‘How well do you know this man?’
She bit her lip. ‘Not very. I met him at a party a few nights ago. We got talking and I mentioned I was looking for a job. He said he might be able to help, and gave me this card.’ She added with faint weariness, ‘He seemed—nice.’
Caz gave the card a brief glance. It was a cheap mass-produced thing, with the name Philip Hanson printed in ostentatiously flowing letters, but no other information, not even a mobile phone number. But the time and place of this reception was written quite unmistakably in capitals on the back.
The deception was quite deliberate, he thought, if inexplicable. Tarn Desmond had been sent here.
He said easily, ‘Well, this is an awkward situation, Miss Desmond, but it doesn’t have to become a crisis. I’m sincerely sorry that you should have been misled like this but there’s no need for us to add to your disappointment.’
He paused again. ‘You must allow me to make amends. May I get you a drink?’
She