Bought for Revenge, Bedded for Pleasure. Emma Darcy

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ Her very safe world suddenly felt very shaken.

      “Have you been up to the house?” she asked in a burst of panic, feeling that everything she’d thought she’d known was about to change.

      “Not yet.”

      “Does my mother know you’re here?”

      “She knows I’ve come. Lady Ellen was not inclined to put out the welcome mat for me. In fact, she had me turned away at the gate. What do you think of that, Sally Maguire?” He cocked his head to one side, mockingly assessing her reaction to this information. “Here you are on prime horseflesh, revelling in having your love of riding indulged and completely catered for—” he gestured towards the stables, obvious evidence for his viewpoint “—and I am turned away from setting foot on my father’s land.”

      It wasn’t fair.

      It wasn’t right.

      A sense of guilty shame sent a gush of heat flooding into her cheeks. Yet she had only this man’s word that what he was telling her was true. She had no idea of what had happened with these relationships in the past, before she was born and adopted into this family. Maybe her mother had good reason to block his entry to this property. Hadn’t she just felt her own world being threatened by him?

      “What do you want?” The words spilled out of the fear that was curdling her stomach. He wouldn’t have come if he didn’t want something.

      “I had my father for seven years. You’ve had him for fourteen. Wouldn’t you say there should be a better balance to be struck?”

      “Like what? You’re grown up now. There’s no way of getting back years that are gone,” she argued anxiously. He knew her age. It felt all wrong that he had information about her and she had none about him.

      “True,” he agreed. His eyes went flint hard. “But there’s the future to be reckoned with.”

      He was going to make trouble. “What about your mother?” Sally threw at him, trying to mitigate the situation he’d spelled out. “She must have taken you with her. Where is she now?”

      “Dead,” he stated bluntly, his voice flat, showing no emotion at all.

      Somehow that was more frightening than anything else. “I’m sorry,” she said defensively. “Sorry you feel—” Her mind sought frantically for the right word “—displaced.”

      Which was what she would have felt if she hadn’t been adopted. Having no parents, no sense of belonging to a family…it would be awful, an empty life. She’d been so lucky, while he…

      “I wasn’t displaced,” he corrected her savagely. “I was replaced by you and the other adopted daughter.”

      “I didn’t know. Jane doesn’t know, either,” she pleaded.

      It wasn’t her fault. Yet he was making her feel horribly guilty.

      “I’ll go and talk to my mother,” she offered, feeling too churned up to stay talking to him, and needing to know why he had been turned away.

      “That should be an interesting conversation,” he mocked. “Pity I can’t be a fly on the wall.”

      The taunt spurred her into nudging Blaze into a canter. She rode quickly to the exit from the enclosure, intensely conscious of those laser-blue eyes boring into her. Forced to pause while opening the gate, she couldn’t stop herself from looking back at him. He hadn’t moved. His gaze was fixed on her. It felt hard, relentless, accusing.

      “You haven’t told me your name,” she called out, wishing he could be more…brotherly.

      “It’s Maguire,” he reminded her with derisive emphasis. “Jack Maguire. Commonly known as Blackjack in some circles. It’s a name that darkens other people’s dreams.”

      It was a name that would haunt Sally for a long time to come. Ten years would pass before she would meet him again—ten years before he would once more set foot on this land, bringing with him the bitter harvest of the wrongs that were being enacted today.

      Jack watched her go. She didn’t stable her horse. She galloped straight up the hill as though the hounds of hell were at her heels. The sun was starting to set, burning the clouds in the sky, spreading a haze of red around the big white house. He hoped Sally Maguire would spread some heartburn around with her questions about him.

      Time to return to his car, leave this property before Lady Ellen sent a posse to run him off. He probably shouldn’t have said so much to the girl, venting his anger at how he’d been treated, but the urge to set a cat amongst the pigeons had been irresistible.

      And she was so damned beautiful, he’d wanted to claw her off her complacent perch, make her aware of a darker side to her world of privilege. He’d revelled in the troubled worry reflected in her fascinating sagegreen eyes, in the scarlet flush that had stained her flawless, pale skin.

      She’d been given too much and he’d been given too little.

      That was the core of it.

      He’d come on a scouting mission to feel out the lay of the land. Once he knew precisely what he was dealing with, he’d work out how to achieve what he wanted.

      One certainty burned in his mind.

      Whatever it took, somehow, some day, the scales would be balanced.

      CHAPTER ONE

      Ten Years On…

      SALLY stared at the coffin which held her father. It was still difficult to believe he was dead, that a sudden fatal heart attack could steal his life away. No warning. Never a day’s illness that she knew of. He’d always radiated such a powerful life force, the shock of its being ended so abruptly was still numbing any sense of grief. Which was just as well since her mother had instructed her and Jane to maintain absolute dignity during this funeral service.

      They were on public show.

      They had to do their father proud.

      Sir Leonard Maguire was being honoured today.

      There’d been television crews outside the cathedral, shooting their arrival, not to mention all the powerful people who’d come to pay their last respects: politicians, captains of industry, the horseracing fraternity. She could hear them taking their places behind her, shuffling into the pews, greeting each other in muffled tones.

      On the other side of the aisle were the major figures in her father’s work force—his other family—who had shared his dreams of a transport empire and been closely involved in carrying out his grand plans. He’d spent much more time with them than with us, Sally thought. They were probably devastated by his death, not only grieving for their leader but wondering what would come next. Who would fill the huge shoes of the man who was no longer with them?

      She had no grasp of her father’s business. Neither did Jane who was studying to become a nurse. Her mother had dedicated her life to being the perfect wife, certainly the CEO of their home, but not interested in anything beyond maintaining the social status that was all important to her. They’d been cocooned in the protection of great СКАЧАТЬ