Payment Due. PENNY JORDAN

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СКАЧАТЬ pounds …’ She felt sick with shock and pain.

      ‘Not enough? Well, I assure you it’s as much as you’re going to get.’

      Bewilderment gave way to shock and shock to anger as she saw the look of glittering contempt in his eyes.

      ‘Get out of here,’ she demanded furiously. ‘Just get out before … before I call the police.’

      She was speaking wildly, dangerously, her brain warned her. The man was plainly mad. Who knew what on earth he might take it into his head to do if she continued to threaten him?

      She was shaking visibly as the adrenalin-fuelled fury pumped through her veins.

      ‘Very clever, but hardly convincing. What exactly will you tell them? That I offered you ten thousand pounds to stop you breaking up my sister’s marriage? They’d think I was treating you generously. This isn’t the city where no one gives a damn how his neighbour lives. I’ll give you twenty-four hours to think over my offer. After that … Well, let’s just say one way or another I’m going to make damn sure you stop trying to wreck my sister’s marriage.’

      Speechless with shock and fury, Tania watched in silence as he opened the door and left the shop.

      She was still standing where he had left her, bathed in an icy sweat of reaction and fear when Ann Fielding walked in with Lucy a few minutes later.

      ‘What on earth was James Warren doing here?’ she asked cheerfully as she came in. ‘I know he likes to take a sort of patriarchal interest in everything that goes on locally—that comes of being born into the town’s founding family, I suppose, but I shouldn’t have thought a children’s shoe shop would be of much interest to him. Unless …’

      She shot Tania a shrewd thoughtful look, and then exclaimed in concern.

      ‘Tania … my dear. Lucy, run upstairs and get your mummy a glass of water, will you? I don’t think she’s feeling very well.’

      Through stiff lips, Tania demanded thickly, ‘Just repeat that for me, will you, Ann?’

      ‘Repeat what?’ her friend asked in concerned bewilderment.

      ‘Tell me again who it was who just left this shop.’

      Anne’s frown deepened. ‘Tell you … Well, it was James Warren, of course.’

      ‘James Warren.’ Tania’s soft mouth twisted bitterly. Well, no need to wonder now whose marriage her unwanted visitor had been so passionately defending. Although she still needed to know exactly why he should imagine that she had the slightest interest in either Nicholas Forbes or his marriage. Come to that, if he was so genuinely concerned about preserving his sister’s marriage, she was the one he ought to talk to, because it was her actions, her behaviour, her habit of publicly and pointedly underlining the differences between her stepbrother and her husband to the latter’s disadvantage which was undermining that marriage.

      ‘What’s wrong?’ Ann pressed her anxiously. ‘When I came in you looked so pale. I thought you were going to faint.’

      Quickly seizing on the excuse Ann was offering her, Tania agreed tensely.

      ‘Yes. I think it’s the heat.’

      ‘Yes, and this is an anxious time for you. I remember what it’s like, and from when Tom and I first started up our business. But I’m sure you’ll do well, Tania. And if James Warren should take it into his head to make you into one of his pet causes—’

      Tania laughed mirthlessly, her lips tight. ‘The last thing I want or need is any condescending patronage from someone who believes himself to be the local lord of all he surveys. Thanks for bringing Lucy back for me,’ she added curtly, her manner so plainly indicating that she wanted to be on her own that Ann tactfully said her goodbyes and withdrew.

      Once she had gone, Tania stood staring into space.

      James Warren. So that was Clarissa Forbes all-powerful stepbrother; a very formidable gentleman indeed, but he wasn’t going to intimidate her and the next time he came round, making false accusations against her, she was going to let him know in no uncertain terms just how wrong he was.

      How dared he imagine … ? How dared he suggest …? She frowned quickly. But how had he got the idea that she was in any way other than in a business sense involved with Nicholas?

      There was only one way she could find out, and the next time he came round here threatening her she intended to have her own ammunition fully prepared and primed. She would ring Nicholas Forbes and discover just how his brother-in-law had got the false impression that they were having an affair.

      And what was more she would do it now, before the heat of her anger cooled and she allowed rationality and caution to take the place of righteous indignation and hot-blooded anger.

       CHAPTER TWO

      HAVING settled Lucy in their small sitting-room and listened to her happy account of her day, Tania went through into the room she had designated as her ‘office’ and picked up the telephone.

      Nicholas Forbes’s secretary sounded uncertain and hesitant when she asked to be put through to him and Tania frowned over this abrupt change in the girl’s manner. Normally she sounded breezy and cheerful, and she and Tania had even got to the stage of exchanging the odd few seconds of conversation.

      Nicholas, on the other hand, was obviously pleased to hear from her. Prudence forbade her to discuss James Warren’s visit with him over the telephone and so she asked instead if he could manage to find the time to call round and see her.

      ‘It is rather urgent, I’m afraid,’ she told him.

      ‘No problem. I’ll be with you in ten minutes. I was just about to call it a day anyway. Clarissa had a dinner party planned for this evening and I promised her I wouldn’t be late. James is just back from the States and so he’ll be joining us.’

      As she replaced the receiver, Tania reflected that if she had been the one serving him the meal she would have made sure it had a good spoonful of something bitter in it.

      How dared he come round here, threatening her, accusing her … leaping to the most preposterous assumptions?

      Angrily she paced her small study while she waited for Nicholas to appear.

      She had been so looking forward to her new life, so happy about it, and now suddenly, like a dark cloud crossing the sun, that happiness had been blighted. Through no fault of her own she seemed to have fallen foul of the town’s most important and influential resident. Well, she didn’t care, she decided mentally, tossing her head. Let him do his worst. He was the one who would suffer the most if it ever came out how he had tried to bribe her, a totally innocent person, to give up a non-existent affair with a man who was nothing more than her legal adviser.

      Nicholas arrived ten minutes later. Tania let him in through the front of her shop and then led him upstairs to her study.

      They had to walk through her sitting-room to get there, and Lucy turned round, beaming when she saw him.

      Nicholas was good СКАЧАТЬ