HELEN BROOKS - Web Of Darkness

As he opened the front door she had the strangest feeling, for a brief moment, that she had stepped on to the set of a film. If a famous film star had suddenly glided down the huge winding staircase that dominated the far end of the massive hall she wouldn’t have been at all surprised. Dallas and Dynasty, eat your heart out, she thought with desperate humour as her eyes took in the ankle-deep cream carpet, the dark wood and obvious antiques and the glittering chandeliers overhead. And she had hit him! She had never suffered from hysteria before, but there was something flooding into her system that must be akin to it.

‘In here.’ He had guided her across the enormous expanse and through an open door before she realised what was happening, and she found herself in a room that would have graced any stately home. ‘Sit down.’ She sank gratefully into the chair, which immediately dwarfed her small shape in its vastness; her legs had been beginning to give way. ‘Would you like a drink?’ he asked expressionlessly.

‘I’m sorry?’ She dragged her eyes away from the beautifully furnished room with some difficulty and gazed vacantly at his dark face as he gestured towards a large drinks cabinet at one side of the massive fireplace.

‘A drink?’ he asked irritably.

She nodded tightly, her face chary. ‘Sherry, please, but I’m not stopping here long. I’ll get a taxi home.’

He poured a stiff measure of Scotch into a heavy crystal tumbler and what looked like half a bottle of pale cream sherry into a large schooner glass and walked over to her, handing her the drink before seating himself in the large armchair opposite which hardly looked big enough to hold his broad shape. All this wealth, all this luxury; how much of it had been obtained by wrecking people’s lives the way he had theirs? she wondered suddenly, with a surge of anger. Driving desperate businessmen to the limit, calling in creditors, withholding loans, re-fusing time extensions…The list was endless and no doubt he knew all the tricks.

‘OK, the spark is back in those brown eyes,’ he said softly. ‘Let’s have it all, and from the be-ginning, please.’

‘What’s the point?’ She took a gulp of the sherry and tried to fight back the flood of emotion that was threatening to take her over. All this money—her father’s little firm had been a drop in the ocean to him!

‘The point is you made some pretty serious accusations tonight,’ he said furiously. ‘Planned to give me maximum aggravation. Now that smells bad to me, my pretty. What are you after?’

‘After!’ She spat the word at him as she set the sherry glass down with a bang on the little table next to the chair and stood up in a jerky movement to pace over to the crackling fire. She was cold, so cold, she’d never be warm again. She shivered violently. And she hated this man.

‘Here.’ He rose quickly when he noticed the con-vulsive movement as the warmth flicked her frozen nerves. ‘I didn’t give you your coat, did I? It’s still in the car.’ As she felt the heavy material of his suit jacket slide over her shoulders she stiffened in protest. The cloth was impregnated with the clean, sensual smell of him and she didn’t want it near her.

‘I don’t want it.’ She shrugged the jacket off her shoulders and handed it back to him abruptly, her eyes dark in the whiteness of her face.

His eyes narrowed as he took the coat from her and she knew he sensed her revulsion of any contact with him. It was there in the stiffening of the hard square jaw and the faintly cruel tightening of the firm mouth. That raw, almost tangible fascination was back in full force, she noted despairingly, the wide, powerful set of his shoulders more accentuated now under the silky blue shirt he wore easily, his hard masculine body taut and still as he stared down at her without speaking for long, tight seconds.

‘You’re pushing me to the limit,’ he said at last in hard, measured tones. ‘I don’t make idle threats, Miss Gordon. I don’t want to hurt you, but——’

‘Hurt me?’ It would have been funny if it hadn’t been so painfully sad, she thought bitterly as she surveyed him through eyes misted with hot tears. ‘Hurt me? You can’t do anything to me that you haven’t already done, Mr Steel,’ she said shakily as she strove to maintain her grip on herself. ‘Your ruthless greed lost my father his business, his home and ultimately his life. Everything is gone, every-thing. You have effectively wiped out the first twenty-two years of my life. How could you follow that?’ She pushed back her heavy fold of silky black hair from her shoulders with a trembling hand as she spoke. ‘And the worst thing of all is that you didn’t even remember his name.’

The tears that had been threatening to overflow all night wouldn’t be denied any longer and, as she lowered her head blindly, her cheeks wet with the warm, salty flow, she realised, with a stab of horror, that she was going to make an even worse fool of herself than she had already. And there wasn’t a thing she could do about it, not a thing.

QUITE how she found herself cradled in the strong, hard arms Janie never did know, but the big masculine chest was incredibly comforting as she howled out her misery, in spite of it belonging to the perpetrator of all the pain.

When the tempest had ceased and her weeping had died to the odd hiccuping sob, he put her firmly to one side.

‘So your grievance is genuine,’ he stated expressionlessly. She glanced up at him quickly, noting that the hard blue eyes were guarded and there was a subtle change in him she couldn’t quite discern. His mouth was still cruel and cynical, the deep lines grooved either side of his nose still fiercely prominent and the overall impression was still one of ruthless ferocity, and yet…there was some-thing. ‘I can recognise real misery when I see it, Miss Gordon,’ he said slowly, ‘but your actions are still inexcusable. You could have made an appointment to speak with me at any time to sort out this misunderstanding——’

‘Misunderstanding!’ She reared up like a small tigress. ‘There’s no misunderstanding, believe me, and you can’t fool me like that either; I’m not stupid.’

‘I won’t make the obvious retort to that statement,’ he said coldly. ‘Your actions speak far louder than any words of mine could do. How long has it been since your father died?’ he finished abruptly.

‘Two years.’ She stared at him tightly.

‘Did you cry when he died?’ He ignored the painful tensing of her body, his face demanding an answer.

‘Well, of course…’ Her voice trailed away as her brow puckered in thought. ‘No, I suppose not, not really.’

‘That is very bad for your soul.’ She stared at him in surprise. It was the last thing she had expected from a callous, harsh entrepreneur like him. ‘It creates a darkness, like a web, that blankets everything.’

‘Look, I’m fine.’ She straightened slightly as she spoke, her chin jutting out aggressively. ‘There’s nothing wrong with me.’ The last words were full of meaning and he nodded slightly, his eyes hardening.

‘I take it we’re back to the accusations?’

‘Oh, you know what I mean.’ She brushed a strand of hair from her damp face wearily. ‘You can’t have forgotten so completely. I could see you remembered at the hotel.’

‘The name of your father’s firm, that is all.’ She was aware as they talked, in a tiny separate little compartment in her mind, that her body was still registering the feel and smell of him as he had held her in his arms. The knowledge was painful and treacherous and altogether unwelcome, but it was there. She had never met anyone like him before. She didn’t like the way he made her feel, but she couldn’t do anything about it either. Every little cell in her body seemed determined to hold on to the tingling electricity his hard male shape had induced. ‘Look, start at the beginning; humour me.’