A Very Private Revenge. HELEN BROOKS

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СКАЧАТЬ you say that?’ He was right, as it happened, but she wasn’t going to tell him so.

      ‘The French like beautiful, exotic-sounding names; the Scots are a little more conservative,’ he said with sweeping generalisation.

      She thought of Gabrielle and Olivia, and couldn’t stop herself saying, ‘I disagree. My cousins have very lovely names, for example, and both of their parents are Scots.’

      ‘Oh, yes?’ His voice was easy, and it was clearly an invitation to elaborate, but she had no intention of doing anything Jed Cannon expected of her.

      She willed herself to stand firm, a polite, social smile on her mouth as she faced him, and again the silence stretched and twanged, but this time he made no effort to break it. How long they would have stood there, locked in a strange battle of wills, Tamar didn’t know, but she gave a silent sigh of relief when the telephone buzzed after a long thirty seconds or so and defused the almost unbearable tension.

      ‘Yes?’ He had snatched up the receiver without taking his eyes off her, his voice curt as he snapped into the phone. After listening in silence for a moment, he said, ‘Put the call through in a moment, Teresa. Miss McKinley is just leaving.’

      Cue exit.

      Tamar nodded briefly, her smile fading, and turned to leave. She had almost reached the door when his voice stopped her as it said coldly, ‘You will make the necessary arrangements so that you can accompany me to Greenacres this afternoon, Tamar, and I would also like to see the other two properties tomorrow. Any time after...’ he flicked over a large diary on his desk and finished ‘...midday, so please plan your day accordingly.’

      It was an order, not a request, and everything in her rebelled. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Cannon, but I really can’t—’

      ‘The name is Jed, and, yes, you can,’ he said evenly.

      She hadn’t expected this. Her brain raced, and she stood still for a second before slowly turning to face him. This was not how it should have happened. He was supposed to have had his appetite whetted by her apparent uninterest—the proverbial sprat to catch a mackerel—and then he would do all the running while she graciously made the odd concession now and again. He wasn’t supposed to meet her head-on like a ten-ton truck. But he had. And, thinking about it, she couldn’t afford to take any risks at this early stage of the game. The prey was still a long, long way off from the snare.

      ‘Of course, if you insist...’ Her smile had all the warmth of an arctic winter, and she didn’t have to act at all.

      ‘I do.’ It was uncompromising.

      ‘Then I’ll see you later this afternoon.’ He was pure, undiluted arrogance, she told herself testily as she nodded politely and left the room. A man who was used to clicking his fingers and seeing the rest of the world jump—through hoops, if necessary. But—and here her heart stopped, before galloping on furiously—she had put out the bait and he had taken it hook, line and sinker. She was in his life—only just—but in nevertheless. Battle could commence.

      She shut the door behind her very quietly, and then stood for a few seconds willing her racing heartbeat to calm down. Control, control—it was all about control. As long as she remembered that, she would do just fine.

      She pretended to check through the papers in the file as she remained standing in Jed Cannon’s secretary’s plush office; standing was all she could manage just at that moment. Reaction had set in, walking was quite beyond her, and the thought of falling in a heap just outside his quarters did not appear.

      ‘Is everything all right? You haven’t left anything...?’ The beautiful Miss Rice-Brown looked up from her word processor after a time, and the gracious expression on the lovely face was just the spur Tamar needed to get moving again.

      ‘No, I’m just making sure,’ Tamar said evenly. ‘There’s nothing worse than getting back to the office and finding something has been mislaid, but everything seems to be here. Mr Cannon has asked me to phone later with details about a viewing I’m setting up for this afternoon.’

      ‘Right.’ The secretary clearly wasn’t overly interested, inclining her head absently before her glance returned to the screen. ‘No problem.’

      Not for you, maybe, Tamar thought with a touch of wry self-mockery as she waded through the carpet again to the outer door, stepping into the silent corridor outside and walking over to the lift with a dignity she was far from feeling.

      Had she bitten off more than she could chew, here? she asked herself nervously, the lift whisking her down to the ground floor of the Cannon Express building before she could blink. Very probably, but then, nothing ventured—nothing gained...

      The warm, sluggish air was portentous of another baking hot August day, but as Tamar stepped from the cool air-conditioned building into what resembled an oven her mind was not on the weather.

      She had vowed, all those months ago now, that one day she would have her day with Jed Cannon and confront him with the near-fatal results of his ruthlessness, and if nothing else she was a woman of her word. But she had realised very early on that she needed to do more than tell him. That would have been water off a duck’s back as far as this man was concerned, and it was doubtful if he would have given her a moment’s thought afterwards.

      No, she needed to get into Jed Cannon’s head, establish herself as a person in her own right before she let rip, and if she could make him fall for her, however carnal such an attraction would be with a man like him, it was all to the good. She would rather die than let him touch her, but he didn’t know that.

      She decided she was still feeling a mite too fragile after the encounter she had psyched herself up for for days to contemplate the push and shove of the tube, so opted for the luxury of a taxi back to the office, settling in the cavernous depths and giving the driver the address of Taylor and Taylor before she allowed her mind to transport her back to that morning in February, six months ago.

      The phone call had come when she was in the shower, and she had padded into the small sitting room of her one-bedroomed flat in Chelsea, expecting Richard or Fiona’s voice to be on the other end of the line. But it hadn’t proved to be one of the young, dynamic and recently married Taylors who had spoken.

      ‘Tamar? Oh, Tamar, thank goodness. I thought you might have already left for the office. I... Oh, Tamar...’

      ‘Aunt Prudence?’ Tamar had never heard her normally vivacious and bubbly aunt so upset, and it frightened her. ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ she asked anxiously.

      There was silence for a moment, followed by the sound of sniffling and snuffling, and then her aunt said, her whisper thick with tears, ‘It’s Gabrielle. She...she’s in hospital.’

      ‘Gaby’s in hospital?’ Tamar had hardly been able to believe it. She had only spoken to her cousin—who was more like a sister than anything else, the two girls having been brought up together from the age of five, when Tamar’s own parents had been killed in a train accident in her mother’s native France—the night before, and Gabrielle had been fine then. In fact, she’d been on top of the world—wildly, ecstatically happy... ‘What’s happened, Aunt Prudence? Has there been an accident?’ Tamar prompted urgently, her voice shaking.

      ‘Not exactly.’ And then her aunt totally amazed and bewildered her when she wailed at the top of her voice, ‘Oh, Tamar, I wish she had had an accident; I could cope with that. But this! This is awful.’

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