SUSANNE MCCARTHY - Bad Influence

It took her only a moment to identify the Geldard Star. All appeared quiet on board—her captain would have waited, consulted with the company’s lawyers before raising a fullscale alarm. The swim-steps were down and she crept up them, keeping low.

Jake Morgan’s boat was no more than two or three hundred yards away, dropping anchor and tying up to a mooring-bouy with all the usual commotion and to-ing and fro-ing of crew—enough to distract the attention of her own look-outs for a crucial moment or two. Like a ghost she slipped across the deck and into the darkened saloon, at last reaching the safety of her own elegant state-room. Closing the door behind her, she leaned against it, sighing with relief.

There had been moments, during the past couple of hours, when she had thought she was in serious trouble. But her grandfather had taught her never to give in, to keep planning her moves—the winners were the ones who really believed they could win, he always said. And she had won; she was back on her own ground, she could get some clothes on and stroll back out on deck, and unless she gave permission no one would even dare question where she had been. It would be as if none of it had happened.

The Geldard Star was one of the biggest boats in the bay, but Jake Morgan’s boat was even bigger; from her cabin she could see straight across to it. A solitary figure stood on the fore-deck, looking out over the dark waters of the sound towards the open channel between Spanish Point and Maria Hill—as if looking for mermaids.

A small shiver of heat ran down her spine as she remembered those glittering dark eyes, sweeping down over her naked body with such mocking contempt. No, it couldn’t quite be as if those past few hours had never happened, she reflected uneasily; she wasn’t going to be able to forget those kisses.

Absently she touched her fingertips to her lips, feeling still the warm softness that had melted them so sweetly. No, she wasn’t going to be able to forget.

THE office of the chief executive of the Geldard Corporation was on the top floor of Geldard House, one of the tallest blocks in the City, with a spectacular view over London—from the silver ribbon of the Thames almost at its feet to the distant blue-grey hills of Hertfordshire, away beyond its northern suburbs.

Georgia could vividly recall the first time she had come up here with her grandfather, when the building had still been a concrete shell. Stomping around in his yellow hardhat, doling out orders right and left to the builders, he had insisted on walking almost to the edge of the open floor—the point where she was standing now—though then there had been no glass in place and the wind had been whistling through like a hurricane.

But old George Geldard had cared for nothing, not even the forces of nature—and certainly not for the fact that the costs of the building were spiralling while the prospects of letting space in it were tumbling. ‘Hold your nerve,’ he had used to say whenever she’d queried the wisdom of it. ‘Keep planning your moves. If you believe you can win, you will win.’

He had lived just long enough to see it completed—the pinnacle of his empire and very nearly its ruin. To finance it he had been forced to float a new share issue, even though it had meant losing overall control of the company; he had planned it to be only a short-term measure, until he could afford to buy back enough shares to hold a majority once again. She had been working to achieve that ever since.

The task would have been easier if it hadn’t been for the constant, bitter rivalry between her two uncles; it was ironic that in his disappointment at her birth her grandfather had settled blocks of shares on his own nephew and his wife’s, believing the management of the company would one day have to pass into their hands—they were so busy fighting each other, they couldn’t have managed a prayer meeting in a nunnery.

It had largely been their inability to agree on a compromise candidate that had enabled her to win the boardroom battle to be elected chief executive—in spite of the Old Man’s wishes, it had been no foregone conclusion. And in the three years since then she had had to fight every inch of the way to prove to the sceptics—particularly within the more conservative institutional holdings—that she was neither too young, nor the wrong gender, to shoulder such a substantial responsibility.

She knew that there were many who were watching and waiting for her to make a mistake. But she had worked damned hard, and at last she was beginning to feel that she was respected in her own right, not just as the Old Man’s granddaughter. It amused her when she heard herself described as a chip off the old block—even-the highest accolade—as George Geldard the Second.

Of course, the price of her success had been high—a single-minded ambition that could permit nothing to distract her. But it was a price she had always been willing to pay; she had every reason to be happy with her life—she had everything that money could buy. It would just be greedy to ask for anything more…

A discreet tap at the door brought her out of her reverie, and she moved back to her desk. ‘Come in.’ ‘Georgia? Sorry to interrupt—I hope you weren’t busy?’ Bernard Harrison had been the company secretary for almost fifteen years; loyal and dependable, he was one of the few people she felt she could trust. She smiled at him warmly. ‘Not at all,’ she assured him. ‘I was just daydreaming, I’m afraid.’

He frowned, studying her in some concern. ‘That’s not like you. But you do look tired, you know—you ought to take a holiday.’

‘I had a holiday in February,’ she reminded him with a touch of asperity.

‘Yes-but that was almost three months ago,’ he countered, with the bluntness of one who could remind her what she had looked like in a gym-slip, with her hair in bunches. ‘And, to be honest, it didn’t look as if it did you a great deal of good. I know you don’t want to tell me what happened that last afternoon—’

‘Nothing happened,’ she returned with uncharacteristic impatience. ‘Heavens, I was only gone for a couple of hours—anyone would think I’d been missing for a week! I just went for a walk, that’s all.’

‘Without telling anyone where you were going…’

‘So I was irresponsible for one afternoon! Good heavens, I was on holiday—I felt like being off the leash for a while,

just being like any other holidaymaker, strolling around without anyone knowing who I was…Anyway, what was it you wanted, Bernard?’ she added, quickly changing the subject before he could probe any more.

‘You asked me to try to find out a little about this holding company that’s been buying up our shares,’ he reminded her, laying a slim file on the desk; the label, neatly printed in his own square hand, proclaimed “Falcon Holdings”. ‘Not much success, I’m afraid—it’s owned by a company in New York, which in turn is owned by a private trust registered in the Bahamas.’

Georgia sighed, picking up the file. ‘I was afraid of that,’ she mused wryly. ‘I suppose there’s no way of finding out who controls the trust?’

Bernard shook his head. ‘I’ve tried, but it’s like banging your head against a brick wall when you come up against their rules of banking secrecy.’

‘Ah, well…Thank you, Bernard—you did your best. We’ll just have to watch things very carefully. If there is a bid, do you think we’ll be able to fight it off?’

‘I would hope so,’ he assured her soberly. ‘I think we’d be able to keep most of the private shareholders with us. It’s the institutions I’d be concerned about—if the offer was high enough, they’d have to think very seriously about their own sharedholders’ interests.’