Penny Jordan - Power Games

Nonplussed, Jay had stared at him, but when he got home he had asked his mother, ‘Where’s my daddy?’

She had burst into tears and cried so much that his grandmother had come to see what all the fuss was about. His mother’s tears and his grandmother’s consequent anger frightened Jay so much that when his grandmother had insisted he repeat his question for his grandfather when he came home later, he had stammered so badly he had hardly been able to get the question out.

‘Where’s your daddy…? A father is something you haven’t got. Your father doesn’t give a damn about you or about anyone just so long as he—’

‘Daddy, please…’ Jay’s mother had intervened, but his grandfather had overruled her.

‘No. If he’s old enough to ask questions then he’s old enough to learn the truth. To be told how his precious father ruined our lives.’

It was years later when Jay learned the complete truth. After one of his quarrels with Helena, she had turned on him and told him fiercely, ‘You ought to be damn glad you’ve got a father like Bram. When I think… He was fourteen when you were conceived. Fourteen. Under age still, while your mother…well, of course Bram’s far too much of a gentleman to say so, but it’s obvious that she must have been the one to…

‘Your grandfather, her father, wanted her to have a termination when he found out she was pregnant, but it was too late. Bram’s parents offered to adopt you, but her parents wouldn’t hear of it. No. Bram was to agree to have nothing whatsoever to do with either her or you, ever again, and in return for that they’d actually allow Bram’s parents to give their precious daughter ten thousand pounds to help to bring you up.

‘If you want my opinion,’ Helena had added viciously, ‘the chances are that Bram isn’t really your father at all. Your mother had been involved in a relationship with someone else, and it was when that ended that she turned to your father for consolation. That was when you were conceived, according to her. Personally, I would be surprised if…’

Jay hadn’t wanted to hear any more. He had walked away from her in the same way he had walked away from Nadia tonight. He had been thirteen then. Now he was twenty-seven—old enough to know that walking away from a problem never solved it.

No one else had ever suggested to him that Bram might not be his father, least of all Bram himself, and physically they were so much alike. Knowing Helena, her comment was probably something she had made up on the spur of the moment, driven by the frustration of her resentment of him and her belief that he came between her and his father.

She would undoubtedly have denied it, but Jay knew that her feelings for his father went far deeper than those of mere friendship, and while she might have forgotten the taunt she had thrown at him in the heat of the moment, Jay himself had not.

The sharp, angry blare of a car horn brought him out of his reverie. He wasn’t a child any more, but an adult male; it had been a stupid piece of self-betrayal to let Nadia get so deeply under his skin.

‘You’re too hard on Nadia, Jay,’ his father had once rebuked him gently after witnessing them quarrelling. ‘Can’t you see how much she loves you?’

Love…what was it? Jay wasn’t sure that he knew—or that he wanted to.

As he waited for the lights to change at the intersection, he was frowning, suddenly anxious to get back to his hotel and ring his father.

‘You’re seconding me to work with Bram Soames? But what about my work here?’ Taylor asked sharply, her forehead pleating in a frown as she confronted Sir Anthony across his desk, and fought to conceal from him the shock his announcement had given her.

‘You’ve said yourself that since we installed this new computer system you’ve got time on your hands,’ Sir Anthony reminded her.

‘To a point, but there are things…surely someone else…’ Someone else, anyone else, Taylor thought as she fought to control her panic. It had never occurred to her when her boss had asked her to spare him a few minutes, what he intended to say to her. The very thought of working closely with an unknown man filled her with anxiety. Her fear of anyone guessing what she was feeling was almost as strong as the anxiety itself.

‘There isn’t anyone else,’ Sir Anthony was saying now. ‘At least no one with your experience. I appreciate that what I’m asking falls outside your normal field of operation, but if Bram can produce a viable working program—’ He gave a small lift of his shoulders.

‘ If he can produce a working program,’ Taylor countered. ‘It’s been tried before without any real success.’

‘Yes, I know that and so does Bram, but since he’s prepared to give up his time free of charge—’

‘Free of charge? There’s no such thing as a free lunch,’ Taylor commented cynically. ‘He must be expecting to get something out of it.’

‘Not Bram,’ Sir Anthony denied.

‘Why? What makes him so different?’ Taylor asked the question almost reluctantly, unwilling to be drawn into discussing a man she had already decided she didn’t want to like.

‘Well, Jay, for a start,’ he told her, explaining when he saw her frown.

‘Jay is his son. Bram had to take full responsibility for him when his mother was killed in a car accident. He was still at university at the time. Bram’s parents did offer to adopt the boy, but Bram wouldn’t hear of it. He said that Jay was his son. His responsibility. A lot of men would have let them go ahead, ducked out…. Bram’s tutors did their best to dissuade him. They were forecasting a brilliant future for him. He had a first-class brain. But he wouldn’t listen. Jay came first.’

‘And that makes him a candidate for sainthood?’ Taylor asked sharply. ‘Women…girls in their thousands make that kind of sacrifice every day of the week without getting any praise for it. Far from it.’

‘Maybe so,’ Sir Anthony allowed, ‘but it’s their choice to become mothers. Bram had no choice. No say in whether or not he became a father.’

‘Rubbish,’ Taylor retorted angrily. ‘He had every choice. Presumably his son’s mother didn’t tie him to the bed and force him to impregnate her.’

Taylor could tell from Sir Anthony’s expression that her sudden forthrightness had surprised him. It had surprised her as well. Any kind of discussion that touched upon sexual matters, even in the mildest way, was normally something she avoided like the plague, but her boss’s comments, his attitude, had angered her so much that she had felt impelled to speak out.

‘Bram was only fourteen when Jay was conceived,’ Sir Anthony told her quietly. ‘It isn’t a subject that he ever liked discussing….’

‘But he made sure, all the same, that everyone knew he wasn’t to blame,’ Taylor remarked bitterly.

She knew she was overreacting, but she just couldn’t withhold the words or control the emotions that lay behind them, even though she knew she would regret her outburst later.

‘It wasn’t actually Bram who told us,’ Sir Anthony answered her. ‘It was his father. He was very bitter about the way the girl’s family had treated Bram, and about the way he felt Bram’s life had been blighted by what happened. Bram has always put others’ needs before his own.’

Taylor realised that she was wasting her time continuing to protest about being seconded to work with Bram, little though she liked the idea.

Little though she liked it? Loathing was a closer description to what she was actually feeling. Loathing, fear, panic, anger, but most of all fear… Fear at the thought of working closely with a man she did not know. Fear at the thought of being subjected to his will, his domination, fear at the thought of having to be alone with him, fear at its most basic and damaging level, fear in its most humiliating and degrading form; fear of a woman for a man simply because he was a man.