CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

‘WHAT are you doing here? Or need I ask? I suppose Ma sent for you, did she?’

Saul watched, reading the storm signals flashing from the blue eyes that were so like his own, and also reading behind them a misery and fear that made his throat tighten with anguish and his muscles tense with the effort of restraining himself from reaching out to Josey and taking her in his arms.

In her eyes she was already an adult, her life and any decisions affecting it hers to make and not his, not even her mother’s any more; in his she was still a child, precious, vulnerable and very dearly loved.

All the way down the motorway he had been thinking about this moment; about how she would react; what she would say. What had he hoped for—that she would fling herself into his arms with a glad cry of ‘Daddy’?

Not even her bedroom was familiar to him any more; it wasn’t a child’s room, but a young woman’s; a stranger’s. This same stranger who was already distancing herself from him physically and emotionally and letting him know that he had no role to play in her life—that he had abdicated that position years ago.

‘I don’t know why she bothered wasting her time. Or yours.’ The sneer he knew so well was in evidence now. ‘After all, not even you, the great Mr Wonderful of the Davidson Corporation, can make them take me back. Being caught in possession of drugs carries a penalty of instant expulsion, you know.’

‘No, as a matter of fact I didn’t,’ Saul said evenly. ‘But, since you obviously did, it rather begs the question as to why you allowed yourself to be found with them, doesn’t it?’

Abruptly she focused on him, astonishment widening her eyes, and something else as well, something that came as a blessedly soothing and cool swell of hope after the heat and steam of his ex-wife’s hysterical fury.

It was all his fault, Karen had told him. He had never shown any interest in the children, never taken any responsibility for them, leaving everything to her … everything.

Everything bar paying the bills, he had been tempted to say, but he had restrained himself just in time. The last thing he wanted now was to get involved in a slanging match with Karen, and oddly, as he held on to his temper and tried to convince himself that her hysterical denunciation of both him and their daughter sprang more from maternal shock and concern than any real belief that Josey was actually guilty of any of the crimes she was now attributing to her, he could almost feel Davina at his shoulder; almost hear her quiet, calm voice steadying him, counselling compassion and the offering of an olive branch rather than a resumption of hostilities.

A little to his surprise, it had worked and he had been allowed upstairs to talk to Josey in private.

‘Although I doubt she will actually listen to you,’ Karen had told him ungraciously. ‘Still, I suppose the shock value of your actually turning up might do something to make her realise just what she’s done.’

‘You did know you would be caught, didn’t you, Josey?’ Saul pressed now, following his instincts more than any real knowledge of the situation.

She turned her head away from him, giving a shrug, which might have been an affirmation of his comment, or there again might not.

‘I know this other girl was a friend,’ Saul persisted, trying another tack.

‘Do you?’ She was instantly scornful. ‘How exactly do you know that? You don’t know the first thing about me.’

‘I know you’re intelligent,’ Saul retorted grimly. ‘Far too much so to be caught out openly carrying drugs …’

Suddenly she flushed, the hot colour making her seem heart-rendingly vulnerable to Saul. Again he was overwhelmed by his need to reach out to her and touch her, to draw her into his arms and tell her that somehow he would make everything all right, but he knew that that was the last thing she wanted him to do … the last thing she wanted to hear him say.

‘This friend … of yours—’

‘She isn’t my friend,’ Josey told him shortly. ‘I don’t have any friends.’

Saul frowned. Accordingly to Karen, Josey was an extremely popular girl. Karen was always boasting about the social set in which they moved, the friends Josey had made among them, normally using these friendships and the social events that resulted from them as a means of demanding more money from him. Josey played tennis; Josey skied in the winter; she went abroad to friends’ family villas in the summer.

The whole family had a membership at an exclusive local country club. Both Karen and Josey attended an up-market dance and exercise studio. Saul knew all this because he paid the bills.

Something warned him now to tread carefully … he felt helplessly lost, caught so off guard by her comment that he wasn’t sure how to deal with it. Was it just a wild emotive statement of the kind that teenagers made? ‘I haven’t any clothes …’ ‘Everyone else is allowed …’ ‘Everybody else’s parents let them …’ ‘No one else has to do as much homework,’ et cetera, or was there something deeper and far more important underlying her angry denial of his remark?

Before he could marshal his thoughts and say anything she suddenly burst out, ‘They all hate me at school. They laugh at me and call me a social climber; they say that everyone knows that Ma and Richard don’t have much money and that they’re just hangers-on.

‘They even knew that Ma had to get me a second-hand blazer from the school’s “good as new” sale last year.’

Saul’s frown deepened, anger welling up sharply inside him. He had paid for new items of school uniform for both children less than twelve months ago … new, not second-hand … or at least he had thought he had. Karen’s compulsion to keep moving in the right circles had obviously over-reached Richard’s income and had taken most of her ex-husband’s financial support, too.

‘Ma doesn’t see it. She thinks everyone accepts us … that no one notices that she and Richard never pay for anything … that they always have to angle for invites everywhere. Last winter she practically asked the Conrads outright to take me skiing with them. I could tell they didn’t want me along. Fiona Conrad loathes me. She didn’t speak to me once the whole time we were away … I’m sure it’s her who told everyone about my blazer.

‘I hate that school. I hate being there. They’re all snobs.’

‘Is that why you wanted to be expelled?’

Saul’s quiet question seemed to stun her, as though she had actually forgotten he was even in the room with her. She flushed again, her body tense and defensive.

‘What do you care, anyway?’ she muttered bitterly. ‘You’re only here because Ma sent for you.’

‘That’s not true, Jo.’

He saw the way she looked at him … a quick, wary look that made his whole body ache.

‘Your mother didn’t send for me … I came because I wanted to. Because you’re my daughter.’

‘And you didn’t want me disgracing you … right?’

‘Wrong,’ he told her equally equably.

Slowly, cautiously he felt he was beginning to make his way on to firmer ground, but she was still very wary of him, and he doubted she would have let him this far into her confidence or into her life if she had not been so obviously shocked and distressed.

‘I came because you’re my daughter and I love you,’ he told her softly.

For a moment he thought she was going to walk out on him. He held his breath, knowing that if she did there was nothing he could do, but to his relief she stayed, her acid, ‘Yeah, sure you do,’ so full of contempt and anger that it made his eyes burn with the weight of his own guilt for all the years and all the ways he had failed to do enough to show her that what he had said was true.

An hour later he left, to book himself into a local hotel and to ring Alex to warn him that he still could not say when he would be able to return to work.

‘Why the hell not?’ Alex demanded savagely.

‘Because my daughter … my children need me,’ Saul told him.

‘What? Look, let’s get one thing straight, Saul: you work for me, and when I say jump, you damned well jump, otherwise—’

As he listened to him suddenly Saul knew that he had had enough. ‘Not any more, Alex.’

He said the words so quietly, so calmly, that it was several seconds before the other man picked up on their meaning.

When he did he exploded into a volley of angry curses, accusing Saul of trying to manipulate and threaten him, of overvaluing himself and his importance, but Saul wasn’t really listening. When he had said those fatal quiet words, he had actually experienced an almost physical sensation of sliding free of an enormous burden.

He felt, he realised, almost light-headed … euphoric … as dizzy with relief and wonder as a child.

Alex was still cursing him, still threatening him with what he would do to him and the revenge he would take on him, when Saul quietly replaced the receiver.

* * *

Over the next few days he put the skills he had learned as a negotiator and arbitrator to good use, persuading Karen to reserve judgement and to allow Josey a little breathing-space, asking Josey to question whether she actually wanted to hurt her mother by revealing to her the gossip she had picked up at school.

‘I had to be hurt by it,’ Josey told him bitterly.

‘But you have other things in your life, Jo. Other goals,’ he had told her gently. ‘Your mother doesn’t. Her social standing—or what she believes to be her social standing—is very important to her.’

‘Very important! It’s her god,’ Josey had told him bitingly.

He had been to Josey’s school and had seen the headmaster, who had unwillingly confirmed much of what Josey herself had told him.

‘We try to discourage that kind of attitude, but when one child is so very obviously in different circumstances from the majority of her peers … We do have other pupils from more modest financial backgrounds, but you see, they don’t—or rather their parents don’t …’ He had broken off, looking both embarrassed and irritated.

‘Their parents aren’t trying to push themselves into a world where they aren’t welcome, is that it?’ Saul had offered grimly.

‘I could perhaps overlook what happened and take Josephine back.’

‘No,’ Saul told him decisively.

He had a shrewd idea that the man had known quite well that the drugs hadn’t belonged to Josey, and he had been forced to admit that her academic work was excellent; that she was, in fact, Oxbridge material.

Saul had no idea whether or not his daughter wanted to go on to university, nor indeed what she wanted to do with her life, but one thing he did know, and that was that she needed to be with people who accepted her as their equal, and she was not going to find it here in this school.

‘I’m awfully sorry,’ the headmaster began uncomfortably.

‘So am I,’ Saul agreed. ‘For you. It doesn’t matter how much information you manage to cram into their brains, does it? Their hearts, their emotions, their souls will always remain small and mean.’

The other man flushed. ‘We live in a very materialistic society. There isn’t a lot I can do. They copy the attitudes and morals of their parents.’

‘Who all worship the great god money?’ Saul asked. ‘Well, I want more for my children than that. Much, much more. I’m only sorry that Josephine had to go through this to make me realise what was happening.’

‘This is a very good school,’ the headmaster protested, flustered and starting to lose his self-control.

‘No,’ Saul corrected him drily. ‘It’s a very expensive school.’ As he stood up he gave the other man a thin smile.

* * *

Karen protested, of course, as he had known she would, when he insisted that he wanted to talk to Thomas about his schooling and when he told her that he intended to allow Josephine to choose for herself where she would continue her education.

‘You can’t do that. She’ll probably end up at one of those dreadful comprehensives,’ she had wailed, but Saul had refused to listen.

He had also been cynically amused at the speed with which both Karen and Richard had acceded to his request that he be allowed to take both children away on holiday with him for a month.

‘But what about your work?’ had been Karen’s only comment.

Saul didn’t tell her that he no longer had any ‘work’. He didn’t want to have to deal with another fit of hysterics.

Josephine was still holding him at a distance; still wary of him, but he had a gut feeling that he was making some progress, even if all he had managed to do was to arouse her curiosity about him; even if the only reason she had agreed to go on holiday with him was simply that it was another means of escape from a situation which had plainly become intolerable to her.

He was taking them to Provence, to a small out-of-the-way village where he had hired a small house.

He rang Christie to tell her about it and to warn her that, since the cottage had no telephone, she would not be able to contact him there.

‘Did you give my note to Davina James?’ he asked her, and then wondered if she would pick up on the tension he himself could hear so clearly in his voice.

If she did it was not obvious to him.

‘Yes. I gave it to her.’

It was only his pride … that and the knowledge that it would be totally ridiculous for a man of his age to start behaving like a besotted teenager, craving possession of every detail of the minutiae of his beloved’s most mundane actions, that stopped him from demanding to know what she had said, how she had reacted … how she had looked, and Christie herself sounded rather preoccupied, as though her mind was on other things, he recognised as he said goodbye and hung up.

* * *

Davina leaned back in her chair, stretching her spine and trying to ease the tension out of her neck. The whole of her desk was covered in papers, most of them containing columns of figures.

She closed her eyes and then opened them again, wincing at the pain in her neck as she studied the figures she had just finished working on.

If she used all the funds in Gregory’s accounts, if she got a good price for the house, if Leo had really meant what he had said about making her a loan, if the bank could be persuaded to continue with their overdraft facilities, if by some miracle they could just hang on until this legislation Saul had described to her became a reality, maybe … just maybe there was a chance that the company could keep going.

But for how long, and as what? Davina shook her head. She dared not even think about beginning to look that far ahead; the thought of Carey’s continuing in its present form, the knowledge of what the company was founded on revolted her; but for the sake of those who depended on the company for their living she could not afford the self-indulgence of that revulsion.

He shouldn’t have told her, Leo had said remorsefully, but she had shaken her head and had told him honestly, ‘No, I’m glad you told me.’ And she was glad.

She pushed her chair back from her desk and stood up.

As she did so, the phone started to ring. She picked it up automatically.

‘I have a call for you,’ a girl announced, ‘from Sir Alex Davidson.’

‘Ms James … Davina?’

Davina tensed, instinctively disliking and mistrusting something in his voice.

‘I thought it might be opportune for you and I to have a little chat. I’ve already taken the liberty of speaking with your bankers. Sensible chaps on the whole, bankers, don’t you find?’

Davina’s tension increased as she listened. Beneath the outward good humour she could easily sense his contempt and hard-edged determination.

‘Obviously you’ll have taken their advice on our offer for your shareholding in Carey’s.’

‘I have listened to it,’ Davina agreed and then bit her lip, angry with herself for falling into the trap of betraying the fact that the bank had advised her to accept his offer. Still, she comforted herself, he probably already knew that from Saul Jardine, if no one else. ‘However, as I told Mr Jardine, there are certain conditions I would want to see fulfilled before I could agree to any sale.’

Sir Alex laughed. ‘My dear girl, this is real life, not a fairy-story. Naturally, none of us wants to put people out of work, but I’m afraid …’

As she stared at the figures in front of her and listened to the oily self-satisfaction, the gloating almost, she could hear oozing from his voice Davina made up her mind.

‘Sir Alex, I think I could save us both a lot of wasted time if I told you now that I am not prepared to sell out to you,’ she interrupted him.

Her voice might sound calm, but she was most definitely not, she recognised as her hand suddenly started to tremble with the enormity of what she had done.

‘As I explained to Mr Jardine—’

‘Saul Jardine is no longer employed by Davidson’s,’ Sir Alex told her grimly. ‘And by the time I’ve finished with him he’ll be lucky if he manages to find a job sweeping roads. You’re dealing with me now, Ms James, and, let me tell you, I know exactly what state your company is in. You can’t trade for another week without help; you’re virtually bankrupt and we both know it.’ Davina could hear the menace in his voice; her hand felt slippery with sweat where she was holding the receiver.

Saul had warned in his letter,

Davina clung tightly to that life-raft of information now, trying not to let herself be panicked by the shock of discovering that Saul had been sacked, trying not to feel pain and guilt at being instrumental in that dismissal.

‘Yours isn’t the only company wishing to acquire Carey’s,’ she heard herself saying. She could hear the sharpness of his indrawn breath and knew she had caught him off guard.

‘Hessler Chemie? My dear girl, what would they want with a company like Carey’s?’

Davina gritted her teeth against his condescension and said sharply, ‘Much the same as you, I would expect, Sir Alex.’

Silence.

Davina closed her eyes. Oh, God, what had she done? Now he would guess that Saul had told her about the new legislation. Quick … she must think of something … anything to stop him from guessing that. She owed that much to Saul at least.

‘Yes. Like you, I expect they’re in the market to snap up as many small companies as they can. You’re like vultures, really, aren’t you … both of you? Using the misfortunes of others to your own advantage, picking off those businesses which have become vulnerable through the recession, knowing their owners have no other choice.’

‘That, I’m afraid, is business,’ she heard him saying. ‘How much have Hessler’s offered you?’

‘I’m not prepared to divulge that information,’ Davina told him coldly. ‘My mind is made up, Sir Alex. Hessler Chemie’s offer is superior to yours. There’s no point in us discussing this any further.’

She could hear him starting to say something, sense his rage almost across the distance that separated them, and as she said goodbye and replaced the telephone receiver she shivered, wondering what it must be like to be Saul Jardine and to be constantly at the mercy of such a man. Only Saul no longer was, was he?

She shivered again, recalling the gloating satisfaction in Sir Alex’s voice when he told her that he had sacked Saul. It had sounded almost as though a part of him had disliked and resented the man whom he had publicly proclaimed as his right-hand man, his natural and chosen successor.

Saul. She closed her eyes and swallowed hard. It would only be good manners to get in touch with him and warn him what had happened, wouldn’t it? But how was she going to do that? His sister! Christie Jardine would have his personal address and telephone number.

* * *

Twice on her way over to Christie’s Davina almost turned back. She had a perfectly logical reason for wanting to get in touch with Saul, she reminded herself, and if she felt a certain awareness of the cloudiness surrounding her real motivation, well, it was merely a cloudiness and that was all.

She wasn’t so ridiculous, surely, to really believe she had actually fallen in love with the man, was she? He was aggressive, dictatorial, a bully—all the things she most disliked in a man.

And he was one of the most charismatic males she had ever met, certainly the most complex and confusing, and beneath that outer aggression … Well, if he had demonstrated personally to her the very dark side of his male nature, then he had also equally demonstrated to her that there was another milder, more caring, loving side to him as well.

No man who did not experience those emotions would have dropped everything … risked everything, as he had done, to be with his daughter when she needed him so desperately.

She had a moment’s unease when Christie was so obviously surprised to see her, but she was pleased at the calm way she managed to explain the purpose of her visit.

Christie’s daughter, Cathy, was watching her, Davina noticed. She liked children, and, more importantly, she respected them, and Christie, who was listening frowningly to her request, noticed absently how quickly Davina established a rapport with Cathy.

Some people … some adults were like that, she acknowledged; they seemed to know exactly how to reach out to children, and that knowledge had nothing to do with whether or not they had offspring of their own.

‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised. ‘I can’t give you Saul’s number. You see, he’s in Provence with the children; the house he’s renting doesn’t have a phone. I can give you the number of his London flat, of course, and his address, but … It will be several weeks before he’s back in this country.’

‘It doesn’t really matter,’ Davina assured her quickly. ‘I only wanted to acknowledge his note … to thank him for the advice he gave me.’

She gave Christie a quick, tense smile, and Cathy, who was still watching her, gave her a curious look.

‘Look, while you’re here, why not stay and have a cup of coffee?’ Christie suggested. Instinct warned Christie that it would be stupid to get involved with Davina. She was having enough trouble pushing Leo out of her thoughts without allowing herself the surreptitious link of maintaining contact with him through Davina.

‘I’m sorry, I can’t,’ Davina apologised with genuine regret. She had to telephone Leo to check that he had meant what he said about making her that loan and to confess that she had used the von Hessler name to ward off Sir Alex.

She had started to turn away when she heard Christie asking casually, ‘Do you hear much from Leo von Hessler? I ran into him myself at a conference we were both attending.’

Davina stopped. ‘I haven’t heard from him recently,’ she told her openly. ‘But by coincidence I have to ring him this evening. I’ll mention to him that you were enquiring about him.’

‘No … No … don’t do that.’ Christie cursed herself under her breath as both Davina and Cathy stared at her, obviously surprised by her vehemence. ‘What I mean is that he’s hardly likely to remember me,’ she fibbed. ‘I know how expensive these long-distance calls can be … you won’t want to waste time describing a woman he met casually months ago … and whom he’s probably forgotten ever having met anyway.’ Davina, Christie realised to her consternation, was watching her very thoughtfully and assessingly.

‘I’m sure he won’t have done that,’ she said quietly. ‘After all, you haven’t forgotten him, have you?’

Forgotten him. If only she could have, Christie wished savagely after Davina had gone.

Only last night she had woken in her sleep and had actually been reaching out for him before she came fully awake and realised what she was doing.

How had it happened that she had this subconscious, intense awareness within her body, burned into her flesh and her bones almost, of how it would feel had they been lovers, this aching sense of loss and malaise for an intimacy they had never actually shared? It was as though they had physically been lovers; as though in her sleep, when her subconscious mind was anaesthetised, her senses ached and longed for what they had once known and what was now denied to them.

And she knew whom they blamed for that denial … whom they punished. It wasn’t her fault that she had never even once physically assuaged that ache for him. She had been willing enough for them to be lovers. He was the one who—

‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ Cathy asked her anxiously now.

Angry with herself for allowing her own emotions to be so visible to Cathy, Christie forced herself to smile. ‘Nothing,’ she fibbed. ‘Nothing’s wrong. I was just thinking about your uncle Saul and wondering how they’re getting on.’

‘Tom wrote on his card that Provence is ace,’ Cathy informed her. ‘He said that the house is mega and that they’ve got real peaches growing on trees in the garden.’

Christie had to laugh. ‘Real peaches—mm. Well, shall we go and see if the birds have left us any real raspberries for our tea?’

Dwelling on what might have been did no good. There was no future for Leo and herself. There couldn’t be. And, if she thought this was pain and self-denial now, then how much more would she be suffering if she had actually allowed any real kind of intimacy to develop between them? She could not sacrifice her values and her beliefs to be with him any more than he could sacrifice Hessler Chemie to be with her.

At least the wounds, the pain she was suffering now were clean and would eventually heal; those they would inflict on one another if they came together, only to have to part because they could not reconcile their different lives, would never heal; they would become infected and gangrenous with the bitterness and corruption of all that they would do to one another … in the name of love.

* * *

So Saul was in Provence with his children. Why did she feel so dismayed, so deserted, almost, by that knowledge? Davina asked herself. Why should she feel such a surge of emotion; such an intense mingling of anger and resentment, as though he had no right to go without first telling her? After all, what was she to him … or he to her? Nothing. Nothing at all.

Leo tensed as he heard the phone ring. He had just lived through three of the most exhausting, draining and demanding days of his whole life, and now he needed time to recoup, to replenish himself, to revitalise himself before he moved on.

There had been protests, of course, shock, anger, and, amazingly in the circumstances, it had been Wilhelm who had protested the most vociferously when he made his announcement. Wilhelm, who was now, on the face of it at least, to get what he had always wanted and to step into Leo’s shoes.

His talks with the government had been the most difficult and intense; there were so many loose ends to be tied up, so many safeguards to be made, so much legal paperwork to be got through, but now at least it was done. This afternoon he had put his signature to the documents that would transfer control of Hessler Chemie to a managing board of directors who would be monitored and advised by a specially appointed board, containing representatives from each of the major political parties, from the judiciary, from the church and from the academic world, and this august body would oversee the future moral and financial progress and development of Hessler’s.

On their shoulders would now fall the heavy weight of monitoring the corporation and of advising on the decisions that would govern its future.

Wilhelm would be the corporation’s figurehead, the chairman, but a figurehead was all that he would be—Leo had seen to that: he would have no real power, no real control.

And at the back of Leo’s mind lay the knowledge that, should he ever need to do so, should Wilhelm try to break through the restraints he had placed around him, he could always use the final, the ultimate deterrent and reveal to Wilhelm the truth about his birth.

Not that that could ever be anything other than a last resort. Wilhelm was not a compassionate man; there was no softer, gentler side to his nature, but Leo still feared what it could do to him to learn that Heinrich had not been his father, and it was because of this that he had not used that knowledge against him, acknowledging as he did so that, had their positions been reversed, Wilhelm would not have had the slightest qualm about using it against him, would have relished doing so, in fact.

But then, he was not Wilhelm. Thank God.

Like the fabled Gnomes of Zurich, the newly appointed advisory board would work behind the scenes to control the corporation, to control Wilhelm; and they would also make sure that neither of them transgressed life’s moral laws; that they did not use their power in ways that worked against rather than for humankind.

The chancellor had refused to believe him at first, had thought that what he was suggesting was merely a joke, but eventually Leo had managed to convince him. Being the majority shareholder of such a powerful company did possess some advantages, Leo had discovered, and for the first and last time in his life he had used the power that conferred on him to force through his plans.

There had been objections, of course. What he was proposing was unheard-of … And to announce that he himself would henceforward receive no profits from the corporation, that his shareholding would be held in trust for the benefit of others …

He didn’t need any more money, he had said quietly.

There was to be no official announcement in the Press until the end of the month, by which time all the small investors in the corporation would have been reassured that their money was not at risk, but by then he …

He reached for the receiver. It would probably be Wilhelm … again.

To hear Davina’s voice instead of his brother’s startled him. She sounded uncertain and hesitant, and once he had recovered he was quick to reassure her that she had not rung at a bad time and that he was pleased to hear from her.

‘In fact, your call is extremely fortuitous. I was intending to ring you.’

What he had actually been intending to do was to fly over to Cheshire, and he had on his notepad a reminder to call the airport and book himself a seat on the first convenient flight.

There were things he needed to talk over with Davina. Things that affected them both, and besides …

Besides what? Besides … Christie was in Cheshire. Christie … He fought down the fierce surge of urgency and need that invaded his body at the thought of her and tried to concentrate instead on what Davina was saying.

He picked up on the word ‘loan’ and the tension in her voice, and interrupted her quickly. ‘Davina … I am still prepared to give you a loan, but before we discuss it I have a proposition I’d like to put to you. I’ll outline it briefly to you now, and if you’re interested I could fly over to England so that we can discuss it in more detail.’

Two hours later, when she finally replaced her receiver, Davina could still hardly believe what had happened. She stared at the wall and blinked slowly, trying to steady her racing heartbeat.

What Leo had suggested was so revolutionary and unexpected that at first she had thought she must have misheard him.

He wanted to use Carey’s as the vehicle through which the two of them together would establish a new company, but, unlike Hessler Chemie and unlike Carey’s, the drugs this one produced would not have a chemical base but would be based instead on properly researched natural remedies.

‘Where we can we will develop the means to produce synthetic copies of these natural drugs; especially where the life-forms that give rise to them are in danger of extinction will we do so, but we will always follow where nature leads rather than seeking to “improve” on her work by producing drugs which are more powerful and consequently more dangerous than hers.

‘We will not be an organisation devoted to the making of obscenely huge profits; that will not be our goal. Our goal will be to aid humanity, to provide what relief we can for its pains and ills.

‘It won’t be easy,’ he had warned her when Davina expressed enthusiasm and delight at his suggestions. ‘We shall initially face antagonism from the general public as well as the established drug industry; it is in the nature of human beings to fear change and to treat it with suspicion and derision, but with perseverance it can be done.’

It was only after she had calmed down a little that it actually occurred to Davina to wonder why Leo had chosen to site his new venture here in Cheshire. She frowned a little. That was something she could ask him when she saw him.

Sleepily, she yawned. She wasn’t sure what the bank was going to think of Carey’s transformation. It had startled her how closely Leo’s plans had followed the guidelines Saul had outlined in his note to her. Saul …

What was he doing now? Enjoying the balmy heat of a Provence evening, breathing in the scented dusty air? Was he alone, or …?

She gave a tiny shiver. She hadn’t experienced this kind of intensity, of longing, of needing to know what another person, the other person, was thinking, feeling, doing, ever before, not even with Matt.

* * *

‘You should have seen the fish I caught this afternoon. It was this big,’ Tom boasted noisily to Josey.

‘So where is it now?’ Josey demanded derisively.

‘Dad made me throw it back …’

Saul saw the brief assessing look Josey gave him. He and Tom had spent the afternoon together fishing before joining another British holidaying family for an impromptu barbecue supper.

Josey had declined to join them. She had some studying to do, she said. Evidence of it now lay scattered over the kitchen table together with the remnants of the meal she had made for herself. Saul hadn’t argued with her or tried to persuade her to change her mind.

She was still very wary with him, he recognised, still in many ways testing him, and who could blame her? He had yet to prove himself to her as a father, to earn her respect and her trust. And her love?

He was beginning to recognise that, while Tom possessed a solid, untemperamental, easygoing nature, Josey was very much his child. Very much.

She was also a teenager, a girl on the brink of womanhood, touchily self-conscious and vulnerable one moment, and fiercely self-defensive the next. Like him, she had a deep-rooted need to be able to retreat into herself occasionally, and Saul had been aware of the quick, sharp look of surprise she had given him earlier when he had accepted her decision not to accompany them without trying to persuade her to change her mind.

‘Get much done?’ he asked her now, watching as she flipped her hair back off her face, awed by the way the womanliness within her was developing and terrified at the same time because of it. She was growing up so fast. He had lost so much time already. He went cold with horror at the thought of how easily he could have left it too late. As it was …

‘Mm … a fair bit. I thought I might have a break tomorrow and go into Aix. There’s a train …’

‘The Baileys have invited Tom to spend the day with them tomorrow,’ Saul told her. ‘They’re off to the coast. Why don’t I drive you into Aix, and then perhaps later we could meet up somewhere for lunch?’ He watched her out of the corner of his eye, preparing himself for her rejection, tensing against it as she gave a small, apparently dismissive shrug.

‘If you like.’

Saul released his pent-up breath. The casual pose did not quite mask the brief flush of pleasure that stained her skin, the emergent woman momentarily eclipsed by the child.

It would be a long time before she accepted him fully, before she tucked her arm through his with the same easy, loving confidence he had seen the teenage Susan Bailey display towards her father, rubbing her head against his shoulder, laughing up at him as she coaxed some small favour out of him.

But at least it was there, the tentative beginnings of the relationship, the trust, the love he believed they would one day share.

Oh, she would make him pay for the past, make him earn their future, test him and go on testing him until she was sure, until she felt safe, but that was his fault, not hers.

Inwardly he thanked God and fate that he had been given this second chance with her, with both of them. God, fate, and Davina.

Davina … When he’d left England he had told himself that he was not going to think about her, not going to allow himself to become full of self-pity and yearning, but the ache, the need, the love he felt for her was always there; would always be there, he recognised.

‘Dad … I’m hungry …’

‘Don’t you ever think about anything but your stomach?’ he heard Josey responding to Tom’s complaint with sisterly disgust.

Hunger. One of man’s most basic instincts, Saul reflected as he dutifully headed for the fridge. In all its many forms.

* * *

Tiredly Leo stretched his muscles, trying to ease their tension. Davina had welcomed his proposals with an enthusiasm that had made him reflect again how closely attuned they were in their outlook and values, how in a way, like two orphans, they turned instinctively and needfully to one another for support and reaffirmation of all that they believed in, clinging together as they tried to blot out the dark shadows.

‘By the way,’ she had told him apparently casually, ‘I saw Christie Jardine the other day. She mentioned meeting you at a conference. She asked if I’d heard anything from you recently.’

She didn’t say any more, but it was enough. More than enough to ease the doubting ache that had been tormenting his heart, making him ask himself if, after all, all that he was doing would mean nothing to her … if it was, after all, him she had been rejecting and not, as she had told him, his role within Hessler Chemie.

And if she did reject him, would he have any regrets about the decision he had taken?

He smiled to himself. No. He had known the moment he had realised that Anna was right and that there was always a way, that he could no longer go on playing a role which had been so onerous to him.

Duty was one thing; self-sacrifice was another, especially when there was no need for that sacrifice.

He flew into Manchester at lunchtime the next day, and drove straight to Christie’s.

She had woken up with the beginnings of a migraine and had gone straight back to bed.

The sound of someone ringing her doorbell brought her abruptly out of her drugged sleep. Blessedly her head felt clear, although her body was lethargic and heavy.

It had been a hot, sultry morning, and she had been feeling too ill to do more than remove her clothes and slide into bed. Now she quickly pulled on a loose T-shirt and hurried down to answer the door. Being a doctor meant that she was always aware that the unexpected impatient summons could herald more than merely an unwanted caller.

As she opened the door she pushed the heavy weight of her hair back off her face, blinking in the brightness of the sunlight, so dazzled by it that at first all she could see was Leo’s outline and the golden halo of his hair.

And then she felt the warmth of his touch on her skin, heard the familiar softness of his voice, drowned in the physical and emotional responses of her senses to him as he pushed her gently inside and then took her in his arms, his back against the door as he pushed it closed.

In her imagination she had pictured them as lovers, savoured all the intimacies of their relationship, all its nuances and passions many times, and yet strangely she had never actually imagined the innocence of them sharing a kiss.

And yet now that they were doing that, she recognised with a sharp leap of her heart that she had been foolish in not doing so. Because if she had done she might have been better guarded, better protected against the actuality of Leo’s kiss.

It was slow, thorough, gentle, demanding, tentative and knowing, giving and taking, and she was drowning helplessly in the sharply sweet pleasure of it, clinging to him like a teenager to her first real love as she pressed herself against him, so that they were locked closely together, body to body, mouth to mouth, and she could feel the suddenly urgent change in his heartbeat as his body reacted to hers.

And then she did something she would never in a hundred lifetimes have imagined herself doing. She panicked and reacted to his arousal like a virgin with her first real experience of a man’s sexuality, breaking the kiss and pushing frantically against his chest, her face and body hot with tension as she demanded huskily, ‘Leo. No … please … I don’t …’

She wouldn’t have blamed him if he’d shown either disbelief or irritation. She was sure she would have done in the same circumstances, but instead he released her immediately, watching her with concerned eyes, gently tucking her hair behind her ear and touching her hot face with cool fingers.

‘It’s all right,’ he told her gently. ‘Christie, it’s all right.’

She had to turn her back on him so that he wouldn’t see her emotion; her weakness.

‘No, it isn’t,’ she told him savagely. ‘How can it ever be all right for us, Leo? You know it can’t. You know—’

‘I know that I love you,’ he interrupted her. ‘And I know that I believe you love me.’

Christie swung round. ‘Of course I love you, damn you,’ she raged at him. Her body was aching tautly now for all that she had denied it and all that Leo’s touch had promised it. She was having to fight herself as well as him, she recognised as she battled to save herself the added anguish and humiliation of begging him to take her to bed, of telling him she wanted to ignore … to forget everything but the need to at least once experience the intimacy of sharing her body, her desire, her need … her love with him. ‘But what the hell does that mean? I love you, Leo … but I can’t live with you. You know that. We both know that.’

‘I thought it was Hessler Chemie you couldn’t live with.’

The words were quiet, casual almost, but he was watching her intently, his body held stiffly, as though he was half expecting to have to ward off a mortal blow.

‘You … Hessler’s … what’s the difference? You’re one and the same thing,’ she retorted bitterly, angry with him and with herself because his tension and her awareness of it weakened her, made her ache to touch him, to hold him … made her want to weep for having made him so vulnerable.

‘No, we aren’t,’ Leo corrected her. ‘Not any more.’

It took several seconds for what he had said to actually sink in. When it did, her face lost all its colour, her body swaying slightly.

‘You don’t mean that,’ she whispered drily. ‘You can’t. It isn’t possible. You are Hessler Chemie.’

‘I was,’ he corrected. ‘I’m not any more.’ He watched her gravely and then told her, ‘There isn’t time for any more pretence between us, Christie. I love you. I want us to be together. Hessler Chemie is no longer a part of my life. If you want me …’

‘Of course I want you.’

She was laughing and crying at the same time, unable to deal with her own emotions, her own shock.

‘But what are you going to do?’ she protested as he took hold of her. She heard him laugh.

‘What I am going to do is what I should have done in Edinburgh. I’m going to take you to bed and make love to you—unless, of course, you’ve got any better ideas.’

‘I didn’t mean that. I meant …’

Leo knew what she meant, but there would be time enough later to tell her about his plans. Right now …

He kissed her as he picked her up, and Christie, who had never considered herself the kind of tiny, fragile woman who would ever be idiotic enough to enjoy that kind of male drama, was astonished by the fierce frisson of pleasure that went through her.

* * *

Leo was a sensual lover, more so than, perhaps, she was herself, Christie recognised as her body relaxed into postcoital torpor.

His self-control had surprised her as well; a tiny satisfied feminine smile curled her mouth. But she had very quickly shown him that she was more than able to demolish that control. He had protested at first at the warm touch of her mouth against his body, as she had caressed him intimately, but then he had allowed her to have her way, groaning softly under his breath as she alternately stroked him with her tongue and whispered to him that she had ached to know him like this, to know his scent and taste, to know the shape and texture of his flesh.

He had had his revenge, though, if it could be called revenge. She smiled ruefully to herself, remembering how in the end her own self-control had broken and she had begged him, pleaded with him to let her feel his mouth against her body. Her breasts still ached a little now from that loving, were still vaguely tender.

‘I’m never going to let you go now. You know that, don’t you?’ Leo murmured against her ear.

She had thought he was asleep, and she gently punched him, warning him, ‘I’m not someone who can be owned, Leo. I’m an individual.’ But inwardly she knew she was committed to him now and that she would never want him to let her go.

It humbled her a little to know what he had done. In his shoes, would she have been able to make that decision … to put her love for him first?

‘Where’s Cathy?’

Christie smiled. ‘She has tennis practice today. She won’t be home until six … Of course, if you’ve had enough …’

Leo laughed. ‘Never,’ he told her. ‘Never, never, never …’

* * *

There were things to be discussed, of course, arrangements to be made, following Leo’s and Davina’s future plans for Carey’s.

When Davina approached Giles to tell him what was happening her manner was so businesslike and matter-of-fact that Giles knew immediately that whatever might once have been on the verge of happening between them was now very firmly in the past.

‘I’d like to stay on,’ he told Lucy when he explained to her what was happening. ‘It will all be quite different, of course. Nothing like the old Carey’s, and there’s no guarantee that it will be successful, although von Hessler seems to know what he’s talking about.’

‘If it’s what you want then I’m quite happy to stay,’ Lucy told him, and then added quietly, ‘besides, we could hardly leave Nicholas’s tree, could we?’

* * *

‘I can take charge of the research and development side of things,’ Leo told Davina one evening as they discussed the finer points of how the new company would be run. ‘You say you’re happy to take over staff personnel from Giles, and he will handle the day-to-day running of the place. But we need someone else, someone who can have an over-view of the whole thing, someone well enough versed in the business world to sell our ideals to it, to make it treat us seriously.

‘We need someone who can bridge the gap between the establishment and industry, someone whose word carries weight in both worlds. I can’t do it,’ he frowned. ‘I’m a biochemist, not a negotiator, and, besides, the fact that I’ve left Hessler Chemie is bound to cause an adverse reaction in certain circles, initially at least. No … what we need …’

‘I think I know what we need,’ Davina told him quietly. ‘And I know where to find him.’

Davina wrote to Saul that night, explaining what was happening.

‘There is a place here for you, if you want it,’ she told him, and wondered as she wrote the words if when he read them he would also read what she had not said and know that it was not just a job that waited for him.

She waited for a week, her heart in her mouth every morning when the post arrived, every time the phone rang, but there was no response from him.

She knew from Christie that he was back from Provence and making arrangements for Josey to transfer to another school. She had only spoken briefly to him by telephone, Christie told her casually when Davina had enquired about him. Christie was too wrapped up in Leo and what was happening between them to be aware of anyone else’s emotions, Davina recognised thankfully. A warm relationship was beginning to develop between the two women.

She was not going to marry Leo, Christie had told Davina positively. Relationships changed when lovers married, expectations, even feelings were somehow altered. She was an individual, a woman, a person with her own needs and goals, which she could not, would not subordinate to those which would be involved in being Leo’s wife. She marvelled at the sacrifices he had made to be with her, admired all that he was doing, was interested in it and excited by it, but she still had her own life to lead, her own career path to follow.

‘But you do love him?’ Davina had asked her.

‘Yes, I love him,’ Christie agreed. ‘Too much, I sometimes think,’ she added ruefully. ‘And Cathy adores him.’

‘Yes,’ Davina acknowledged, laughing. But when she was on her own she didn’t feel much like laughing.

There had been no response from Saul, and she simply didn’t have the courage, the forcefulness she suspected Christie would have exhibited. She could not take things any further by phoning him, or even writing to him a second time.

She had made her offer. He must know that it had not only been the job that was waiting here for him; that she too … She bit her lip and told herself stoically that it was perhaps, after all, all for the best, but her rebellious heart refused to accept it.

* * *

All the way from London Saul had been rehearsing what he intended to say—that he didn’t need her job, didn’t want her charity or her pity—but when Davina opened the door to him and he saw the look on her face he reacted instinctively and emotionally rather than logically, and simply opened his arms to her.

The few seconds for which she hesitated seemed like the longest space of time he had ever known. He wondered if he had been wrong after all, if he had misinterpreted the message in her eyes, and then she smiled at him. Not her normal controlled, grave smile, but one that wobbled slightly and revealed a vulnerability that made him ache as she took one step towards him and then another, while he waited, hardly daring to breathe until she was close enough for him to lock his arms around her and hold her, rocking her gently against him as they kissed and then kissed again.

‘I still can’t believe this is really happening,’ Davina told him shakily some time later.

They were in her sitting-room, her body tucked snugly into his as they sat together on the settee.

Saul slid his hand against her throat, breathing in the warm scent of her skin and hair. ‘Do you wish it weren’t?’ he asked, watching her.

‘No,’ she told him positively. ‘Do you?’

‘No.’ He paused, and then said quietly, ‘I’ve never done anything like this before.’ He saw the quick startled glance she gave him and grinned. ‘No, not this,’ he corrected, kissing her briefly. ‘I meant I’ve never allowed myself to act like this before … never even allowed myself to think of acting like this … spontaneously, naturally, following my own needs … my own path.’

They had been talking for hours, exchanging information with one another. Davina knew about his childhood, his father, and he knew about hers. She touched him gently now, love and compassion mingling in her eyes.

‘I want you,’ he told her softly. ‘I want you so much, but if you’d prefer to take things more slowly … to wait … to—’

‘No,’ Davina told him swiftly, cutting through his hesitant speech. ‘No … I … I want to celebrate what we have, Saul. I want us to … to take each other on trust. To have faith that—’

‘That we aren’t wrong in allowing our emotions, our instincts, our feelings to govern us. Both of us have had to repress those feelings and instincts for too long, haven’t we? It’s time to give up those lingering shadows from the past and look to the future.’ He touched her gently. ‘I’m so afraid of disappointing you. I’m only human, Davina. If you find I’m not the man you want … if it doesn’t work out … then what?’

His own humility hurt her more than she could bear. ‘Then at least we shall have had this,’ she told him fiercely, lifting her head and placing her hand against his jaw as she kissed him.

He wasn’t sure what he had expected. He knew he desired her, and how much. Her letter had shown him that she was prepared to acknowledge that she desired him, but her kiss took his breath away. It was so sweet with promise and trust, so open in its ardour, so giving and generous in its warmth that it was seconds before he could do anything other than simply passively wonder at everything she was giving him.

He had had no idea that there could be a woman like this one, strong enough to cast aside her own defences and to come to him without their protection, soft enough to tremble when he touched her; sure enough of herself, of her sensuality to want him to share its potency with her and so honest in her admission of her needs and fears that she made him ache to wrap her in tenderness and love.

Love.

‘We hardly know one another yet.’ He said the words against her mouth.

‘Not yet, but we will.’ It was a statement and not a question.

‘Oh, yes,’ he agreed huskily. ‘We will.’

Her lovemaking was a revelation and a joy, her sensuality a deep, deep pool in which he could totally submerge himself, totally lose himself and yet still feel safe.

She watched him gravely as he studied her naked body and then studied his with equal gravity plus an open appreciation he had not expected.

‘Nice,’ she told him with a smile that was almost a grin, and then she leaned forward and kissed him, first at the base of this throat and then along his breast-bone; then the flat plane of his belly.

‘Davina,’ he protested as he hauled her away.

‘I want you,’ she told him quietly.

‘I want you as well.’

‘Show me. Show me so that I can show you how much you can please me, and how much I want to please you.’

No, there had never been a woman like her before and he knew there never would be again. She was unique, special, rare, precious. He told her so in between kisses and caresses while she laughed a little and then fell sharply silent as her body responded to his touch.

She had no artifice, no coy mock-shyness, no hesitation about showing him what she liked and how much his touch pleased her.

‘Here … kiss me here, Saul,’ she whispered to him, pulling him down against her breast and then shuddering as he did so.

‘Like this?’ he asked her thickly as he caressed her nipple gently. ‘Or like this?’ He stroked her with his tongue, his touch a little more rough so that she shivered in a paroxysm of frantic pleasure.

He recognised with a sense of wonder that he had never actually know what it was to make love before. To have sex, yes … but to make love, no, and this was making love, and it was Davina who showed him how, who touched and held him, who kissed and caressed him, who was woman enough and who loved him enough to ask him openly and lovingly what it was that pleased him best, and who told him what it was that would most please her.

She was seductive, uninhibited, tender, giving, sensual, openly showing him her desire and her need in a way he had never envisaged.

And when the time finally came she abandoned her self-control and gave herself so easily and so completely to him that the feel of her body, the sound of her small cries of pleasure made his throat ache with emotion.

‘I love you,’ he told her emotionally as he kissed her mouth and then the damp place between her breasts. ‘I love you. I love you. I love you.’

Davina smiled as she held him. She had him now. He was hers. As she held him close silently she thanked Matt for all he had given her that had made it possible for her to find the courage to leave the shadows behind, to love Saul and to show him that she loved him.

‘Thank you,’ she whispered. Saul looked curiously at her and hugged her, and she didn’t tell him that her thanks were not just for him—not even for the fate which had brought them together, but also for the man who had made it possible for her to recognise what fate was offering her, and to have the certainty to reach out and take hold of it.