CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

SAUL and Cathy had picked Christie up from the airport. Saul had seen at once that something was wrong, but he waited until Cathy had gone to bed before saying anything.

‘Want to talk about it?’ he asked her, walking into the kitchen while she was making them both a cup of tea.

Her defences came up immediately, her back tensing as she went on with what she was doing, feigning ignorance as she asked him, ‘Talk about what?’

‘Whatever it is that’s upsetting you so much,’ Saul retorted. ‘Come on, Christie, this is me,’ he reminded her, taking hold of her and turning her round to face him. ‘And you never were much good at hiding your feelings. Something happened in Edinburgh.’

‘On the contrary,’ she told him brittly. ‘Nothing happened.’

Dammit, what was wrong with her? Aching like a teenager for a man who hadn’t even touched her. A man who was all the things she most loathed in the male sex. Deceiving her.

‘If you say so,’ Saul agreed. He had been working on the file on Carey Chemicals, and Christie frowned as she walked past the table and saw it.

‘Carey’s?’ she questioned him, her earlier suspicions confirmed. ‘So I was right! But why on earth should Sir Alex want to acquire Carey’s?’ She sat down, handing him his mug of tea. ‘I thought they were on the verge of going out of business.’

‘He sees its acquisition as a way of getting a toehold in the drug market,’ Saul told her carefully.

‘And drugs are big business, highly profitable business,’ Christie said bitterly.

Saul looked quickly at her. He knew how she felt about the large drug companies, but her bitterness had something new in it, something personal.

‘Well, Alex won’t get much from Carey’s. Gregory has already picked it clean, by all accounts. By rights the whole place should be closed down anyway. As I said before, their safety record is appalling; I know they’ve been in breach of the health and safety laws; they’ve got people there handling drugs without any proper form of protection. And God knows what effects the stuff they’re handling there might have on them, apart from the contact dermatitis.’

Saul frowned as he listened to her. Christie might be emotional and intense, but she was also a highly qualified professional and he knew she would not make those kind of judgements, accusations almost, without any foundation.

‘You’re sure about that?’ he asked her. ‘That Carey’s is directly responsible?’

‘Just about as sure as I can be without getting in to check on the actual stuff they’re handling, which Gregory James took damned good care I was not allowed to do. He managed to fob off the inspector by giving the place a wholesale clean-up the day he did his inspection. How he knew when he was due to visit, I’ve no idea. Someone must have tipped him off, or been paid to tip him off. It’s criminal, risking people’s health, their lives perhaps and the lives of their children, and for what? For profit. It’s worse than criminal. It’s … it’s grotesque.’

As she spoke, all the anger she had felt against Leo filled her; an anger intensified and fuelled by the bitter sharpness of her own awareness of how strong her disappointment and disillusionment had been. Knowing the truth, accepting it, had always been important to her and it hurt to know that she had actually almost wished it had not been revealed to her. Or that he had not held back from making love to her?

‘Does Davina James know yet … that Alex wants to buy her out?’

‘Not yet. I intend to approach her bankers tomorrow to arrange a preliminary discussion.’

‘Surely she’ll be only too glad to sell out? I’ve heard the company’s in danger of going bankrupt.’

‘Alex likes to drive a hard bargain,’ Saul told her.

Christie gave him a quick look. There was something in his voice that suggested an unfamiliar distaste.

‘At heart he’s a gambler, and, like all gamblers, he likes to feel he’s getting something for nothing.’

‘You don’t like him very much, do you?’ Christie commented. ‘That’s strange. I’ve always thought you rather admired him.’

‘Perhaps I did once. Before I realised I was looking at what I could too easily become. Then somehow it wasn’t quite so easy to admire him any more. Tell me something, Christie,’ he asked her, standing up to face her. ‘What would you do if you were suddenly to discover that your way of life, that all this … that conventional medicine was all a sham and that instead of helping people, curing them, you might actually have been harming them? How would you feel? How would you react?’

Christie stared at him. ‘I’d feel devastated,’ she told him uncertainly. ‘Angry … cheated. I’d feel as though everything I’d done … worked for … believed in had become totally meaningless … valueless.’

‘Yes,’ Saul agreed quietly. ‘And how would you deal with that feeling?’

She looked helplessly at him. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know how anyone could deal with it.’

‘No. Neither do I.’

‘Is that what’s happened to you, Saul? Is that how you feel about your life … your work?’

‘In a sense, yes. I don’t know what’s happened to me, Christie. I only know that the ambitions, the goals I took as mine aren’t really mine any more, if they ever were.’

‘No,’ Christie agreed sombrely. ‘They were Dad’s.’

They looked at one another, Christie’s eyes full of compassion, Saul’s dark with pain.

‘It isn’t his fault,’ he insisted.

Christie said nothing.

‘I was always free to make my own choices.’

Still she said nothing.

‘What is your choice now, Saul?’ she asked him softly after a while.

‘I don’t know. All I do know is that this is my last job for Alex. In a sense I owe him Carey’s. Payment for a debt I reneged on,’ he told her confusingly. ‘But once that debt is paid …’

‘What will you do? Find another job in the City?’

‘I don’t know … I haven’t thought that far ahead yet. I want to make time to spend with Josey and Tom. If it isn’t too late. But first I have to get this acquisition out of the way.’

As he bent down to pick up the file he told her emotionlessly, ‘I thought I had everything, and then one morning I woke up and I knew … I knew I had nothing. What is reality and what is an illusion, Christie? How do any of us ever know?’

‘By our instincts,’ she told him shakily. ‘They tell us. The trouble is, we don’t always listen to them.’

‘Perhaps with good reason. Most of us are too afraid to listen to what they have to say.’ As he kissed the top of her head he said quietly, ‘Thanks, Christie.’

‘What for?’

‘For resisting the temptation to say “I told you so”,’ he told her sardonically, and then laughed at her expression. ‘Hard work, was it?’ he mocked. ‘Well, I dare say I would have deserved it, but thanks for not saying it, all the same.’

‘You’re my brother. I love you.’

‘And love tempers righteousness with compassion and makes indulgent allowances for weaknesses and flaws. That was my biggest mistake of all, Christie … in not understanding what is and what is not real love.’

His words stayed with her for a long time after she had gone to bed, moving her to tears and filling her with an aching loneliness for which she could not find a cause.

Saul too was awake.

Once he had believed his father loved him and that all his plans and ambitions for him had been motivated by that love. If accepting that this might not have been so was hard, then accepting that his father had been human and fallible, then gently and carefully removing him from the pedestal on which he had kept him for all of his life, then accepting his reduced stature, and going on loving him as the man he had been with ordinary flaws and weaknesses, was harder.

He tried not to think that his father must have known how he felt about him, must surely have recognised how vulnerable their relationship would one day make him. Had he not, then, loved him enough to remove that pedestal himself, to show himself to his son as he really was, and in doing so to give Saul himself permission to be human and fallible? And what about his own son … his own daughter? What about the love they had every right to expect to receive from him?

He moved restlessly in his bed, wishing the acquisition of Carey’s were already behind him and that he was free to leave Alex with a clear conscience, the acquisition of Carey’s payment for preventing him from acquiring Harper & Sons.

Free to turn to his children, to show them his love, to ask them to forgive his omissions, to begin a new way of life that was his and no one else’s.

* * *

‘Has Giles arrived yet?’

Giles winced as he heard Davina asking for him. Both his mind and his body felt stupid, numb with the pressure of trying to process too much information, and as Davina walked into his office he felt guilty and uncomfortable.

Guilty for making love to his own wife?

Lucy had been up before him this morning. It had been a shock to go downstairs and find her in the kitchen, and even more of one to find that she had made his breakfast. He couldn’t remember the last time he had actually seen her in the morning before going to work; what he did know was that he had been glad when she had finally taken to staying in bed until after he had gone, because that at least meant that he could start his day without one of the arguments that seemed to erupt the moment they were together.

This morning she had been very withdrawn. She looked as though she had been crying. For Nicholas?

When he had tried clumsily to thank her for his breakfast she had shrugged his thanks away, telling him curtly, ‘I couldn’t sleep. I don’t suppose it’s up to Davina’s standards.’ Her mouth had twisted, and he had tried to stop her, but she had ignored him, adding, ‘Oh, it’s all right, Giles. I know how you feel about her. What is it you want? A nice, quiet, civilised divorce? A neat tidying up of all the loose ends? That is what yesterday was all about, isn’t it?’ she had challenged him. ‘Oh, don’t worry,’ she had told him. ‘I’m not going to make things difficult for you. Not any more. Why should I?’

He had left the house half an hour later, wondering why instead of feeling relieved he had actually felt disturbed and distressed, his emotions still raw from the emotional outpouring of the previous day.

He felt angry and cheated, as though she was denying his need to share with her his grief over Nicholas, and he felt guilty because he had never known how deep and painful her own feelings had been.

And now here was Davina, smiling gently at him, reinforcing his guilt.

He avoided looking directly at her, shuffling some papers on his desk, frowning as he responded tersely to her greeting. Immediately aware of his tension, Davina paused for a moment. He looked pale and drawn. She could see the way his hand trembled a little as he moved his papers. For some reason her presence was making him feel defensive and edgy. Hardly the behaviour of an eager lover, she reflected wryly as she calmly made a couple of mundane comments about the weather, watching as his tension eased a little.

She had learned long ago, first with her father and then with Gregory, how to project an air of calm, safe unawareness of other people’s darker moods, and she used that facility automatically now, appearing to Giles’s unaware eyes to be supremely oblivious to either his guilt or his discomfort at being with her. She was nowhere near as sensitive to his moods as Lucy, he decided. Lucy would have known immediately that there was something wrong and would have questioned him until he revealed what it was to her.

Davina had not even made any reference to the weekend. She was talking about some problem with the drains in the ladies’ lavatories, and he had to subdue a wild desire to take hold of her and tell her exactly how he had spent the previous afternoon. Anything to break through that stultifying placid calm.

Stultifying? Wasn’t it her very calm placidness that had attracted him to her in the first place?

Irritably he promised that he would get someone in to sort out the problem, his irritation increased when Davina told him sunnily, ‘Oh, it’s all right. I’ve already organised a plumber.’

Giles frowned at her. If she had already solved the problem, then why was she bothering him with it? Why was she bothering with it at all, when they had far more important things to worry about?

He failed to see the wry glint of amusement in Davina’s eyes as she left, but it was an amusement spiked with sharp self-knowledge.

Oh, Matt, what have you done to me? she asked herself ruefully as she walked back to her own office. Am I being impossibly idealistic, or just a little unfair? It isn’t, after all, Giles’s fault that his worthiness isn’t leavened by a sharper sense of humour … or a sense of the ridiculous.

What did she want in a man? she wondered as she sat down. What were the qualities that were important to her? Not ambition; not aggression; not the childish demand of an outsized ego; not a man who would demand that she step into the shadows so that he could absorb more than his fair share of the sunlight. In fact, it was easier to say what she didn’t want rather than what she did.

Certainly it wasn’t anything to do with looks—she was well beyond that stage of her life; kindness, then, compassion … yes, but with a certain amount of strength as well. Her mouth twitched a little as she acknowledged the deep-rooted feminine perversity of that. Sexual attraction and compatibility. Yes, she would want those. Laughter, friendship, mutual respect and love. All of those, but most of all she would want a man who was strong enough, sure enough of himself and of her to accept her as the woman she was; to accept that she needed her independence and yet at the same time that she would want to know he was there for her to lean on if needed; to accept that, while it gave her pleasure to be a home-maker, it was neither her duty nor her sole responsibility to single-handedly run their home; to accept that she had individual needs and desires that might not tally with his, to give her support in times of weakness and to share her joy in times of triumph; to be her partner in every aspect of their shared lives; to be her lover in bed, accepting her sexuality as the rich vein of intimacy and pleasure that it was, and perhaps most important of all to love and respect her enough to let her fully and wholly into his life, its pain as well as its pleasure.

Was there such a man? She laughed at her own fantasy. Hardly likely, and if there was she would probably reject him as being too perfect … too ideal, not really human. But enough of dream men; she had other and far more important things to attend to.

* * *

Saul judged the timing of his telephone call to Davina’s bank very carefully. It was a skill that over the years had become part of the arsenal of tactics responsible for his reputation as a man not merely capable of considerable shrewdness and machiavellian planning, but one also possessed of an almost mystical foresight. The City, like any other ancient institution, had its legends and folklore and was vulnerable to superstition, so that to its collective awe at Saul’s carefully honed human skills it had added the aura of prophecy and the status of seer, and the effects of his reputation had become self-perpetuating.

A small Cheshire town could be a long way from the City of London, especially to someone who was not part of the underground of interlinking business networks, as Davina wasn’t, and when her bank manager telephoned at half-past five, asking to speak to Giles, he was put through to her instead. When he informed her that he had been approached by someone representing a potential buyer for the company and that a meeting had been arranged to discuss the proposed purchase at the bank at nine in the morning, instead of sitting down to work out the best deal she could achieve for herself as the main shareholder, as Saul had intended she should do, what Davina did was to sit down and carefully start to prepare a list of the terms under which she would want the business to be sold; terms which had nothing to do with any financial benefits she might receive.

Saul, who had carefully timed his call to give her and her advisers the minimum amount of time to prepare themselves, suspected he knew what would happen at the meeting. It would be put to him that Carey’s was an extremely valuable acquisition, which he would counter with the fact that they were virtually on the edge of bankruptcy. From there they would negotiate down until they reached a figure that he judged would be satisfactory to Alex. He doubted that after paying off the bank and their other debtors Davina James would come out of it with anything other than a handful of loose change. She had, after all, nothing to bargain with.

Davina rang Giles at home to tell him what had happened—he had left work early for a dental appointment. She hesitated for a second before dialling the number.

Lucy answered the phone, and Davina asked if she could speak to Giles. She was glad that Lucy couldn’t see the guilty burn of colour staining her skin. Not that she actually had anything to feel guilty about. She and Giles had not been lovers and she had never actively encouraged him to leave Lucy.

But she had not actively deterred him either, had she? It had been unnerving speaking to Lucy while she remained silent, and Giles was so long in coming to the phone that she began to wonder if in fact Lucy had gone to find him.

‘Davina.’ He sounded edgy and nervous. The guilty husband, thrown off balance by his lover’s phone call to his home?

But she was not Giles’s lover, Davina reminded herself firmly as she told him what had happened.

‘A prospective purchaser … Who?’ Giles demanded sharply. He was cursing under his breath. Why the hell had this had to happen when he wasn’t there?

‘I don’t know,’ Davina told him. ‘Apparently whoever it is is not prepared to reveal their identity as yet. A meeting’s been arranged for the morning, Giles; that’s why I’m ringing you. Nine at the bank.’

‘Nine.’ Giles swore audibly this time. ‘That doesn’t give us any time at all to prepare anything. You can bet whoever it is knows to a pound just what Carey’s position is. They’ll want to get the company at a knockdown price.’

‘I don’t care how little they’re prepared to pay just as long as they’re prepared to maintain the workforce and improve working conditions,’ Davina told him sharply.

Giles sighed. ‘Look, Davina. That isn’t the way things work. You’ve got to convince these people that we’re in a hell of a lot better financial shape than we actually are, otherwise … they’ll be like sharks after bloody meat.’

‘I doubt we’ll have much chance of that if they’ve already talked to Philip Taylor,’ Davina pointed out quietly.

‘Taylor has no right to reveal our financial position to anyone else. It’s his duty to—’

‘It’s his duty to protect the bank’s interests, Giles,’ Davina interrupted him quietly. ‘I suspect that the very fact that these people, whoever they are, have gone through the bank rather than approach us direct suggests that they are well aware of our financial position. I’ve told you before, I’m not interested in getting any kind of personal profit from Carey’s. What is important to me is securing the future of our employees.’

‘No purchaser would ever take on board that kind of commitment,’ Giles warned her grimly.

‘That depends how much they want the business, doesn’t it?’ Davina countered quietly.

‘What business?’ Giles started to ask her, but Davina had already hung up.

Lucy came into the room as he cursed under his breath. ‘Lovers’ quarrel?’ she asked him, acid-sweetly.

‘There might be a buyer for Carey’s,’ Giles told her, ignoring the gibe. He was standing in the sitting-room; the flowers he had crammed into the jugs yesterday had been carefully rearranged, and he noticed something else as well.

On the small table, right where it could be seen every time anyone walked in or out of the room, was a photograph of Nicholas.

Lucy saw him looking at it.

‘I went out this morning and bought the frame,’ she told him stiffly, turning away from him, her body tense and guarded as though she half expected him to object, he recognised.

He walked over to the table and picked up the photograph, examining it silently.

Nicholas. Their son. Such a tiny baby; so obviously frail that it tore his heart just to look at him, and yet he wanted to look at him; he wanted to remember; to feel …

‘I hadn’t realised,’ he began rawly. ‘He looked so much like you.’ But when he turned round he realised he was speaking to an empty room and that Lucy had gone.

Gently he replaced the silver frame.

* * *

It wasn’t difficult for Davina to prepare an outline of the terms on which she was prepared to sell the business. What was going to be difficult, she suspected, was convincing Giles and Philip Taylor that she meant to stand by them.

How much power did the bank have to force her to sell? she wondered, chewing on her bottom lip. She was the major shareholder, but if the bank were to demand immediate repayment of their loans …

She reached for a piece of paper, scribbling down some figures. She had the house, and the money in Gregory’s bank accounts. Not quite enough, but almost. Certainly enough to hold the bank at bay if they did decide to pressure her.

She had no illusions about the view Philip Taylor would take. He would advocate selling. She couldn’t blame him really. He was under pressure from his head office to remove their debt from his books.

And Giles? Giles would want her to sell as well. And if she did it could well be an opportunity for Giles and Lucy to move away and make a fresh start together. If they did, how would she feel? She had valued Giles as a friend, and he had been a good friend, but she suspected that that friendship had been compromised by other emotions. Now it was impossible for them to go back to the relationship they had once had, and she suspected it was equally impossible for them to go on and become lovers. She wasn’t sure if that knowledge caused her relief or disappointment, and neither, she suspected, was Giles.

It was gone one o’clock when she went to bed, her mind alert and keyed up in preparation for the conflict she sensed was to come.

* * *

Power dressing; suits and shirts tailored to be as close as possible facsimiles of men’s clothes—wasn’t that what the modern businesswoman was supposed to wear? Davina reflected wryly. Well, there was nothing like that in her wardrobe. Her clothes were more inclined to be plain and useful rather than designed to make a statement about her role in life.

She frowned as she started to reach into her wardrobe for the neat skirt and jacket she had been about to put on, and instead reached deeper into the cupboard until she found the zippered suit bag for which she was looking.

Some months before Gregory’s death she had gone shopping to Chester with Lucy. Heaven alone knew why, because she wasn’t normally given to extravagant impulse, nor to allowing herself to be coaxed and chivvied into illogical decisions.

Perhaps it had been something to do with the fact that it had been a bright sunny day, or perhaps it had been because of the faintly contemptuous, understanding look the saleswoman had given her, as though she was all too aware of how unlikely a customer Davina was for the cream designer suit with its ridiculous gold embroidery forming the four-inch letters that ran round the tiny waist of the jacket, spelling out the words ‘Waist of Money’.

Well, it certainly had been that, because she had never worn it, and she had known even as she was making the fatal statement that she wanted to buy it that she never would, and what was worse and even more humiliating had been that she was sure the saleswoman had known it as well. After all, what did a woman with her lifestyle want with a suit that said quite plainly that it was designed for someone outgoing and confident, someone who couldn’t care less what the rest of the world thought of her?

Now, if Lucy had been the one buying the suit … But Lucy had bought a dress instead, bright red with shoestring straps, which ought to have looked dreadful with her hair but which didn’t.

As she unzipped the wrapper Davina acknowledged that the suit wasn’t merely unsuitable for a business meeting, but that, given the nature of the meeting, it was virtually an act of aggression.

Well, why not? She had sensed from Philip Taylor’s voice the faint condescension that warned her that her views, her requirements for the sale of Carey’s were not likely to be treated seriously, so why not play the role they had designated for her to its hilt? Let them see that she intended to be taken very seriously indeed and that she did not need to conform to their male idea of what a businesswoman should be to make them do so.

Carey’s was her company, its employees her responsibility, and she was not going to abdicate that responsibility as her father and her husband had done.

She removed the suit from its protective wrapper and held it against her.

Inappropriate. Ridiculous … yes. But it was her choice and to hell with what anyone else expected. As she put it on she thought that somewhere she could hear the echo of Matt’s approving laughter.

She reached the bank at five to nine. Giles was already there, and as she parked her car he got out of his and came across to her. She saw the way his jaw dropped a little as he saw her suit, but she ignored his quick frown, giving him a serene and apparently unaware smile.

Philip Taylor’s secretary, who eyed Davina’s suit with awe and appreciation as well as disbelief, announced that Mr Taylor was waiting for them.

When they were shown into his office Philip Taylor was alone. He gave Davina a brief look and then a second startled, unnerved one as he took in the appearance.

‘Mr Jardine isn’t here yet, so I thought we could run through one or two points first.’

‘Yes. Who exactly are the proposed purchasers?’ Giles asked before Davina could speak.

‘Why do they want Carey’s?’ Davina asked more quietly but very firmly.

‘Those are both questions I think I’ll leave to Jardine himself to answer. I must say, it’s a real stroke of good fortune that this has happened. I thought we were going to have real problems in finding any kind of buyer—’

‘I hope you haven’t told him that,’ Davina interrupted dulcetly.

He flushed a little and fiddled with the papers on his desk. ‘The company’s problems are no secret,’ he said quickly. ‘And naturally Jardine has done his homework. I think you’ll find, though, that the terms are … reasonable … given the circumstances.’

‘Let’s hope that he finds my terms as … favourable as you seem to find his,’ Davina murmured sweetly.

‘Your terms?’ Philip Taylor gave her an uncertain look. ‘My dear Davina, I’m not sure that you understand the position,’ he began.

‘Of course I understand it, Philip,’ Davina corrected him. ‘You want your loans repaid. This Mr Jardine wants Carey’s … and I want guaranteed security for my employees.’

‘Jardine will never agree to that,’ Giles protested.

Davina gave him a thoughtful look. ‘That depends, doesn’t it?’

‘On what?’ Giles asked her.

‘On how important it is to him to acquire Carey’s.’

There was a small silence, and then Philip Taylor said uncomfortably, ‘Davina, I really think it would be better if you let Giles and me handle the negotiations. I know that technically you are the main shareholder … I know you mean well, my dear, but when it comes to business—’

Ignoring his patronising “my dear”, Davina smiled pleasantly. ‘Oh, but I couldn’t do that, Philip. I think I’ve let others shoulder my responsibilities for me for too long. No, as you say, I am the main shareholder and—’

She broke off as the secretary reappeared to announce that Mr Jardine had arrived.

‘Show him in, please, Sylvia—oh, and bring us some coffee as well, will you?’

Davina was not seated facing the door, and without turning round, which she did not intend to do, she knew she would have no opportunity to assess or study Saul Jardine until he was close enough to her for him to be equally able to judge her reactions.

As Philip Taylor pushed back his chair and extended his hand, saying warmly, ‘Saul,’ she too stood up, her face composed and calm; another trick she had learned while living with her father.

He had drawn level with her now and she was at liberty to look directly at him.

In the shock of recognising him there was an unguarded split-second when her feelings showed on her face. She registered the brief mockery in his eyes as he glanced at her and her stomach churned with anger.

Why hadn’t she guessed … realised … put two and two together?

Philip was introducing her. Instead of shaking hands she inclined her head and stepped back from him. She had herself back under control now, her brief study of him assessing and measuring.

He was obviously a man who liked playing games, who enjoyed deceit and intrigue. She could guess how much pleasure his quick-thinking lie that he was a walker must have given him the night she had surprised him outside the office.

What had he really been doing there? Taking a chance on the site’s being unprotected, on being able to make an unauthorised inspection of the place? If so, he had been taking a risk. For all he had known, the premises could have been protected by guard dogs or alarmed. Was he, then, a man who liked taking risks, who enjoyed a challenge?

‘Davina has been running the company since her husband’s death,’ Philip Taylor was explaining.

‘Mrs James and I have already met. I called to see her the other day, hoping we might have an informal discussion, but she was—er—otherwise occupied …’

Giles, who had also recognised him, had gone a dark guilty red. Davina held on to her own temper … just.

‘You should have made your purpose known, Mr Jardine. I would have been pleased to discuss your proposals with you. Oh, I’m sorry, they’re not your proposals, are they?’ she added sweetly. ‘Philip did explain to me that you were acting on behalf of someone else.’

‘Yes, that’s correct.’ His voice was more steely now, and the look he gave her was sharply clinical.

Davina refused to be quelled. ‘And that someone else would be—er—a business associate … or your employer?’ She watched as his mouth thinned.

‘My employer, as it happens,’ he told her tersely.

‘And are we allowed to know the identity of this employer?’ Davina pressed gently. She could see both Giles and Philip frowning, and for a moment she thought Saul Jardine intended to refuse her request.

‘There’s no reason why you shouldn’t know, although you’ll understand that Sir Alex Davidson wishes his interest in Carey’s to be treated as confidential.’

‘In case his interest inspires a similar interest in others?’ Davina suggested shrewdly.

Saul looked at her. She was shrewder than he had expected, different as well. He wondered what had prompted her to wear such an unsuitable outfit. It was the kind of thing a sophisticated, a very sophisticated and clever woman might wear for lunch with her lover; the kind of woman with the self-confidence and the sexuality to perhaps choose to wear it over a body that was otherwise naked, and to find some subtle way of allowing her lover to know it.

Davina James simply wasn’t that kind of woman. Or was she? He frowned as he gave her another quick look, deriding himself for even momentarily doubting his own judgement as he saw the pale shadow of the bra she was wearing beneath the fine fabric.

‘Where Sir Alex leads, others do sometimes tend to follow,’ he agreed suavely. ‘However, I’m afraid, not always with his skill at avoiding hidden pitfalls.’ He gave her a brief smile, the kind of smile that Davina recognised was designed to dismiss her comments as mere badinage, and his response to them chivalrous male indulgence.

‘Let’s be frank with one another, shall we? Your company is on the verge of bankruptcy, and, while my employer …’ he smiled again as he stressed the word, as though to indicate that he had not been offended by her pointed remark, but Davina knew otherwise ‘… would like to acquire the business, he has, naturally, to take market forces into account.’

‘If you’re trying to warn me that your employer expects to get Carey’s for next to nothing, you aren’t telling me anything I haven’t been able to work out for myself, Mr Jardine,’ Davina told him crisply.

She stood up, ignoring the tension she could see in both Philip’s and Giles’s faces.

‘Let me be frank with you. I am not interested in gaining any financial benefit for myself from the sale of the company. Naturally there are the outstanding loans to be taken into account, but I am sure I don’t need to go into these with you. Philip will have supplied you with all the details if you needed them.’

She gave the bank manager a brief look, recognising his irritation and confusion.

‘What is much more important to me is what your employer intends to do with Carey’s.’

‘To do?’ Saul questioned, his eyebrows lifting slightly as though he found her question a puzzling one.

‘Yes,’ Davina asserted. ‘For what purpose does your employer want Carey’s?’

‘I’m afraid Sir Alex does not always confide wholly in me,’ he told her smoothly. ‘As you yourself remarked earlier, I am merely an employee.’

‘I see.’

The look she gave him was unpleasantly assessing. He had, he realised with a sudden shaft of sharp perception, walked on to treacherous ground. Or been skilfully coerced on to it? The thought made his eyes narrow on her face, but Davina remained calm.

‘Well, then, it seems that the wisest course for me is to discuss with you the terms on which I am prepared to sell Carey’s, so that you can transmit them to Sir Alex.

‘I have prepared a schedule. I think the best thing would be for you to study it and then perhaps we could arrange a further meeting. Preferably after you have consulted your employer.’ As she finished speaking she extracted some neatly typed papers from the small case on the desk in front of her, and handed them to him.

‘Davina … what …?’ It was the lover who spoke to her … first.

‘It’s all right, Giles,’ Davina smiled firmly. ‘There’s no point in wasting Mr Jardine’s time, is there?’ She handed him a copy of the schedule she had given to Saul and then gave one to Philip Taylor.

‘When was this prepared?’ Giles asked her in a dazed voice.

‘Last night,’ Davina told him gently. ‘My father believed that every dutiful daughter should learn to type, Mr Jardine,’ she told Saul quietly. ‘Perhaps he was right.’

Was she actually telling him that she was well aware of why she had not been informed of this morning’s early appointment until so very late in the afternoon, or was he simply imagining things?

‘Davina … you never said anything about wanting to prepare a schedule of sale terms,’ Philip Taylor was saying uncomfortably.

Davina turned to smile gently at him.

‘Didn’t I, Philip?’