Penny Jordan - Cruel Legacy

‘All right, so I finally got tired of waiting for you to do the asking, but I don’t recall ever hearing you say no.’

They were both laughing as he leaned over to kiss her. Last night had been good between them, Deborah reflected happily as she finished getting dressed. Very good! She loved it that their sexual relationship was so harmonious; it made her feel complete, wholly, fully alive and fully a woman. She would hate to have the kind of lover who bullied or domineered her … the kind of lover that a man like Ryan would be, or the kind Emma complained that Toby had become.

‘So … you’re looking very pleased with yourself today … good night last night?’

Deborah smiled vaguely, tucking a strand of her sleekly bobbed chestnut hair behind her ear. ‘Yes, as a matter of fact it was; we had dinner with some old friends.’

She knew what Ryan was trying to do, but she wasn’t going to be tricked into playing that game.

He had brought her to one of the area’s most exclusive and expensive restaurants for lunch and it hadn’t escaped her notice that the majority of the other lunchers there were very obviously couples.

‘Nice place, this, isn’t it?’ he asked her. ‘You should see the bedrooms, all four-poster beds and the fabrics all silk and velvet … very sensual … very tactile … very romantic.’

Deborah refused to respond. She knew from experience that sooner rather than later he would lose interest and stop baiting her. And halfway through their main course he did.

‘I like you, Deborah,’ he told her, ‘and I like the way you work. You’re intelligent and ambitious and you know how to get the best out of people … how to handle them, and that’s something that’s very important in our line of work. We’re dealing with people at their most vulnerable and volatile and therefore at their most dangerous … It’s just as well Andrew Ryecart committed suicide before we were appointed and not after. It wouldn’t do the firm’s reputation a lot of good to have that kind of thing splashed all over the papers. You’ll know that we’ve been appointed to handle the liquidation?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s going to be a tricky one; there are no assets to speak of, and there is some suggestion of misuse of company funds before he killed himself. The bank are reasonably securely covered; there’s a fairly large equity in the house, plus the value of the site—we’ll never be able to find a buyer for the business as a going concern, of course, and the trade creditors won’t get much.’

‘And the workforce?’

‘Preferred creditors.’ He gave a small shrug. ‘That will be the first thing you’ll have to do, of course: issue them all with redundancy notices. Then it will be a matter of going through the books and …’

Deborah’s heart had started to thump heavily with excitement but she fought to control it, asking carefully, ‘Does that mean that you’re putting me in charge of the liquidation?’

Ryan put down his cutlery. ‘Is that what you want?’ he asked her quizzically. Deborah laughed. Even now he still could not resist flirting with her.

‘It’s certainly a step in the right direction,’ she agreed demurely.

‘Mmm …’ he agreed softly. ‘I thought it might be.’

Careful, Deb, Deborah warned herself as she caught the undertone in his voice, but before she could make any comment he had started outlining what he planned to do, the staff he intended to put under her authority.

‘This one might seem easy, but that doesn’t mean it will be,’ he warned her. ‘There’s going to be a lot of bad feeling stirred up locally; the widow doesn’t have a clue about what’s going on or the fact that she’s virtually going to be out on the street. Luckily there’s family money there.’

They discussed the procedures involved over the rest of their lunch and when they finally got up to leave Deborah’s heart was singing with excitement. She couldn’t wait to get home and tell Mark her good news. They had made a rule not to have any contact with one another at work of a personal nature, and she knew what he would say if she broke it, even for something as important as this. Unlike Ryan’s, Mark’s ethics were fixed and wholly reliable.

‘There will be an increase in salary, of course,’ Ryan told her as they left the restaurant. ‘Oh, and a new company car. What’s Mark got?’ he asked casually. Absently Deborah told him, cars were not something that interested her very much.

‘Ah, well, yours will be the more upmarket model, but I’m sure you’ll be able to find a way of soothing any hurt male pride.’

Deborah looked at him. What on earth was he talking about? Mark simply wasn’t that kind of man. No, Mark would be as thrilled for her as she would have been for him if their positions had been reversed. She and Mark had a totally equal and loving relationship in which neither of them competed with the other, but supported and protected one another instead.

Mark … Mark. Oh, she couldn’t wait for tonight … They would really celebrate … not at some expensive restaurant, but at home, together … in bed. She hugged the anticipatory pleasure of what she was thinking to herself as Ryan drove them back into town.

‘IF DAD’S really dead does that mean that we can come home and live with you and go to school there?’ Daniel said to her.

Philippa closed her eyes as she felt the weakening rush of relief surge inside her. All the way on the drive up here to their school she had been worrying about the boys’ reaction to Andrew’s death, but now as she stood with her arms around both of them, her face resting protectively against Daniel’s head, she was forced to recognise that the distance and uninterest with which Andrew had always treated his sons was reciprocated in their calm acceptance of his death.

She had gently urged Andrew repeatedly to spend more time with them, to involve himself more in their lives, but he had dismissed her fears about the gulf she could see between them as typical feminine over-reaction.

‘Boarding-school will be good for them,’ he had insisted. ‘It will teach them how to be men. You’re too soft with them. Always kissing and cuddling them.’ The rest of the family had supported his decision.

‘Boys need discipline,’ her elder brother had told her, adding disapprovingly, ‘You’re far too over-indulgent with your two, Philippa. If you’re not careful you’re going to turn them into a pair of——’

‘Of what?’ she had challenged him quietly. ‘A pair of caring, compassionate human beings?’

She had regretted her outburst later, especially when she had walked past the open study door and heard Robert telling her husband, ‘That’s the trouble with Philippa; she’s always been inclined to be over-emotional; but then that’s women for you, bless ‘em.’

The condescension in her brother’s voice had made her grit her teeth, but years of being told as a child that girls did not argue or lose their tempers, and that pretty girls like her should be grateful for the fact that they were pretty and not go spoiling themselves by being aggressive and argumentative, had had their effect.

She often wondered what her parents would have said if she had ever turned round and told them that she would cheerfully have traded in her prettiness for the opportunity to be allowed all the privileges of self-expression and self-determination that her brothers possessed. That her blonde hair and blue eyes, her small heart-shaped face with its full-lipped soft mouth, her slender feminine figure and the fact that by some alchemic fusing and mixing of genes she had been given a set of features that combined to make her look both youthful and yet at the same time alluring were not in fact assets which she prized but a burden to her. People reacted to the way she looked, not the person she was, and she found this just as distressing; it made her feel just as vulnerable and undervalued as it would have done a girl who was her complete physical opposite. People only saw her prettiness; they did not see her; they did not, she suspected, want to see her. It had been her father who had been the strictest at forcing on her the role model of pretty, compliant daughter, praising her when friends and family commented on the way she looked and curtly reprimanding her when her behaviour did not conform to that visual image of sweet docility.