For Revenge or Redemption?

Chapter Three

‘WHAT do you have to say about the dawn raid on Culverwells, Ms Tyler?’ A microphone was thrust in her face and cameras flashed in a bid to capture the slim young blonde in the scooped-necked black t-shirt, combat trousers and trainers whose arm, draped with a casual jacket, was already reaching out to the revolving door.

‘No comment.’ She’d come straight in from New York and she couldn’t deal with the press now, not while she was tired, jet-lagged and wondering what the hell had been going on while she had been away. She would deal with them later, she decided, when she had had a chance to speak to Corinne. But her grandfather’s widow hadn’t been answering her calls, either at home or on her mobile. Grace knew that the only way anything could have happened to Culverwells was if Corinne had been behind it.

‘Surely you must have some statement to make? There will be changes in management—redundancies—surely?’

‘I said, no comment.’

‘But you can’t really think…?’

Their persistent questions were mercifully cut off by the revolving door. She was inside the modern, air-conditioned building, the head office of the company that still bore her grandfather’s name, even though it was in public ownership.

The silver-haired, moustached features of Lance Culverwell gazed down at her from the huge framed portrait in the plush reception area and, grabbing a moment to steady herself, Grace gazed back at it with tears of anger and frustration biting behind her eyes.

Oh, Granddad! What have you done?

It had been a shock to everyone when he had died last year and left everything he had, including his company shares, to his bride of two years. Not that Grace had begrudged Corinne anything; she’d been Lance Culverwell’s wife, after all. But her grandfather had been so smitten by the ex-model that he couldn’t have—or wouldn’t have—even contemplated anything like this happening, Grace thought despairingly.

A dawn raid, that journalist outside had called the takeover, giving rise to a picture in Grace’s mind of masked men on horseback brandishing rifles, intent on plundering the company’s safe.

If only it were that simple! she thought giddily, clutching her bum bag—which was the only piece of luggage she hadn’t instructed the taxi driver to drop off at her flat—as she took the executive lift to the top floor.

‘Grace! I tried and tried to reach you…’ The portly figure of Casey Strong, her marketing manager, rushed forward to meet Grace before she had barely stepped out of the lift. Greyhaired and due for retirement any day, he was flushed and out of breath. ‘Your phone was off.’

‘I’ve been in the air!’ She had come straight from the airport, having spent most of her time in New York trying to persuade one of their best customers not to take their business away from Culverwells. It was a PR job that hadn’t yet produced the result she wanted, as the company’s governing body was taking time to consider what its future action would be.

‘Grace! You’re here at last!’ It was Simone Phillips, her PA, who knew the problems that Culverwells was facing as well as anyone. It was the middle-aged, matronly Simone, who had finally managed to get hold of her with the shocking news of the takeover just as Grace had been coming through customs.

‘It’s Corinne. She’s sold out!’ the woman declared, confirming Grace’s worst suspicions. ‘And so has Paul Harringdale—your ex.’ Paul had had a big enough stake in the company to give him and Grace an equal share with Corinne. Which was why Lance Culverwell had probably thought his company would be in safe hands and his granddaughter well provided-for, Grace realised bitterly; he would never have dreamed she would terminate her engagement as she had amidst a good deal of adverse publicity.

‘We’ve got a new CEO, and there’s already talk of a massive shake-up in upper management so he can get his own board up and running, like, yesterday!’ she told Grace dramatically. ‘The only up side is that he’s gorgeous and single, which means he’s probably as ruthless as hell and will probably be ousting us all at the first opportunity!’

‘Over my dead body!’ Grace resolved aloud, pushing wide the door to the board room which had been standing ajar. To meet a sea of new faces all swivelling in her direction as her fighting words intruded on something the new CEO had been saying.

‘If that’s the way you want it,’ a deep voice, ominously familiar, told her from the far end of the table. ‘But it’s usually my method to do these things without anyone’s actual blood on my hands.’

As the tall, impeccably dressed man in the dark suit and immaculate white shirt stood up, Grace’s mouth dropped open.

Seth Mason!

‘Hello again, Grace.’ His deep, calm tones only emphasised the vortex of confusion that her mind had suddenly become.

It was Seth Mason. But how could it be? How could he have made the leap from a boat-fitter, or whatever he had been, to this international business-mogul? Because that was what Simone had called the man who had taken over when she had reached Grace so desperately on her mobile phone just after she’d stepped off that plane. And there was no doubt that Seth was the new CEO.

‘Do you two know each other?’ Grace wasn’t sure where the question came from, only half aware that one or two of the older men had risen to their feet when they had realised who she was. She could feel everyone’s eyes skimming over her crumpled and totally inappropriate clothes.

The dynamo at the opposite end of the table raised an eyebrow in mocking query. He was waiting for her response, which she was too dumbfounded to give.

‘Oh, I think Ms Tyler will tell you—we go way back.’

She was still standing there near the door, unable to think properly, unable to speak; her only coherent thought was that Corinne obviously hadn’t had the courage to speak to her until Grace had found out for herself what had happened.

‘Can I have a word with you?’ She couldn’t believe how squeaky her voice sounded.

The subtle lift of a broad shoulder was the action of a man who couldn’t be fazed. ‘Fire away.’

In private, her eyes demanded.

The new man in charge glanced around at the others members of his team.

‘Would you excuse us?’ There was no disputing the depth of command in Seth Mason’s voice.

Chair legs scraped over the polished floor as everyone complied. To Grace it seemed like for ever before they had all filed out.

‘You had something you wanted to say?’ he prompted when the door closed behind the last of them, leaving her alone with him in the room where all the major decisions were made.

Yes, she did, she had a lot to say to him! But his smouldering sexuality was something she hadn’t reckoned on being so disturbed by, now that there was no one else around.

Images swam before her eyes of the way he had been eight years ago—of the feel of warm leather as he’d drawn her back against him where she’d sat astride that bike; of the warmth of his breath on her throat as one sure, strong hand had slid up to cup her breast, already too sensitive from his attentions…

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ she challenged angrily, dumping her jacket and bag down on the table and trying not to let his raw masculinity affect her. ‘You must have known about this two weeks ago, that night you turned up at my gallery! Why didn’t you say anything about this then?’

‘And spoil the surprise?’

Of course. That was the whole point of takeovers like this—so the company being taken over wouldn’t have time to organise any opposition to it. Grace gritted her teeth, her breathing shallow, breasts rising and falling sharply beneath her T-shirt.

‘You led me to believe…’ That he was still working in that boatyard. That he was…She couldn’t think clearly enough to remember exactly what he had said. ‘You let me think…’

‘I did nothing of the sort,’ he denied coldly. ‘You jumped to your own conclusions with that discriminating little brain of yours.’ A humourless smile curved his mouth as he came around the long table. ‘What is it they say about giving someone enough rope?’

Grace raked her fingers agitatedly through her hair. It must look a mess—she looked a mess, she thought, standing there like a street urchin in her own boardroom. The hasty clean-up she had managed in the cramped washroom on the plane did nothing to make her feel adequately groomed beside his impeccable image.

‘Well, you’ve come a long way, haven’t you?’

‘Not nearly far enough yet. Not by a long chalk.’ Hostility seemed to emanate from every immaculately clothed pore.

‘What do you mean?’ Grace challenged, eyeing him warily.

He uttered a soft laugh. ‘I mean I’ve waited a long time for this moment, and I intend savouring every satisfying minute.’

Unconsciously, she moistened her lips. ‘Is that what this takeover’s all about? Revenge?’

He laughed again, a harsh, curt sound this time. ‘I prefer to call it making the most of one’s opportunities.’

‘What? Vindictively buying up enough shares so that you could steal my grandfather’s company from under my nose?’

‘Vindictive? Possibly. But not stolen, Grace, acquired—and quite legitimately. And hardly from under your nose. You’ve been enjoying yourself in New York for the past week or so, I understand, so you can hardly expect a man in my position not to salvage the spoils when you go off designer shopping—or whatever it is a woman like you does alone in the Big Apple—while your ship is sinking.’

‘I didn’t desert. And Culverwells isn’t sinking.’ If only it wasn’t! she thought despairingly. Nor was I ‘designer shopping’! she wanted to fling at him. But she decided that it wouldn’t be worth the time or the effort, any more than it would be to tell him that she had sorely needed any free time she might have had in New York, as it was the first real break she had taken in the past eighteen months. ‘OK. We’d hit a slump. But we would have pulled ourselves out of it eventually. We were surviving.’

‘A pity your shareholders didn’t share your confidence. It’s clearly that bury-your-head-in-the-sand attitude that has put Culverwells into the state it’s in today. Or have you been too busy with your rich boyfriends and your fancy little gallery that you didn’t recognise disaster when you saw it?’

There was a glass of water on the table by the note pad in front of a vacated chair, the back of which she hadn’t realised she was clutching. She had to restrain the strongest urge to pick the glass up and fling the contents right into his smug and incredibly handsome face.

‘Don’t even think about it,’ he warned softly, disconcertingly aware.

‘I’ve never buried my head in the sand. None of us has!’ she retaliated fiercely, ignoring his pointed reference to the company she kept. ‘It’s been down to global forces and the dropping off of sales because the market’s been depressed. It still grates, doesn’t it? That I was born to all this when you—you were…’

‘What? Not good enough to tread the same ground you walked on?’

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘You didn’t have to.’

No, she had made her opinion of him quite clear with those disparaging comments she hadn’t meant him to hear before simply ignoring him in the street!

She couldn’t deal with thinking about that right now. In fact, she could only deal with the shame of it by tossing back, ‘So you think my team and I are just going to lie down while you sit at that table, lording it over us and throwing your weight around?’

‘I don’t actually care what you do, Grace,’ he assured her, his body lean and hard as he moved purposefully towards her, as hard as those grey eyes that didn’t leave hers for a second. ‘And may I remind you that there was a time—however short—when my weight wasn’t something you were totally averse to?’

A rush of heat coursed through Grace’s veins, bringing hot colour up over her throat into her cheeks. Unbidden, those images surfaced again, and she saw him as he had been on that beach, those long fingers marked with grease as he’d worked on his dinghy. She smelled the salt of the sea air, felt the sun’s warmth caress her skin, and then felt the thrill of that hard, masculine body pressing her down, down into the sand.

‘That was a mistake,’ she said shakily.

‘You’re darn right it was. On both our parts. But, as the saying goes, None of our mistakes need ever be permanent.’

‘Meaning?’ He was so close now that her breath seemed to lock in her lungs.

‘Meaning you taught me a lot, Grace. I should be eternally grateful to you.’

‘For what?’

‘For showing me exactly how to handle women like you.’

A sharp emotion sliced through her, piercing and unexpected. Evenly, though, she said, ‘You don’t intimidate me, Seth, if that’s what you’re trying to do. And, as for salving that macho ego of yours, I think you managed that quite adequately eight years ago.’

Grace wasn’t sure if he needed to be reminded, but those heavy eyelids drooped and a cleft deepened between those amazing eyes.

Seth felt momentarily uncomfortable at the reminder of having said something that, even then, was beneath his usual code of ethics. He couldn’t even remember the exact words he had used, only that they had been a flaying retaliation for the way she had treated him.

‘Yes, well…’ He was regaining his cool, reclaiming the upper hand—which was what he needed to do, he reminded himself, with this calculating little madam. ‘No man appreciates being snubbed by someone who only forty-eight hours before was sobbing with the pleasure of having him inside her.’

A deep throb made itself felt way down in her lower body. Surely she couldn’t still be attracted to a man who with one swoop had just seized all that her grandfather had worked for—and whose only motive, where she was concerned, was to seek revenge?

‘So this is how it’s going to be.’ His abrupt return to business put her off-balance to say the least, before he went on to give her a brief résumé of his plans for Culverwell’s. ‘I shan’t make any unnecessary redundancies, unless I see areas of overstaffing or anything that will be detrimental long-term to the company and its other employees if I desist. I’ll keep you on as my assistant—I can’t deny that your expertise in the field of textiles will be invaluable. If you co-operate and accept my leadership, you won’t have anything to worry about where your job is concerned. If you don’t…’

‘You’ll have me fired, right?’

He didn’t affirm or deny that statement. His narrowing eyes, though, resembled hard chips of steel, and harsh lines suddenly bracketed his mouth.

‘Like your grandfather was instrumental in doing to me?’

Grace frowned. ‘What are you talking about? You didn’t work for my grandfather.’

‘Directly, no, but he had interests in that boatyard, and enough clout with its owner to see that I was swiftly dispatched for even daring to breathe on his precious granddaughter, let alone lay my rough, rude hands on her supposedly chaste little body.’

His derision at the kind of girl he thought she was stung more than she wanted to admit. He didn’t know she’d been a virgin. It had all been so easy; how could he have known?

‘I—I didn’t know.’ She was shaking her head now in horrified rejection at Lance Culverwell ever stooping to do what Seth was accusing him of—and because of her. ‘Really, I didn’t.’ But it would explain Seth’s driving motive all these years, she realised—to get even with her family.

‘Is that contrition I see in your eyes, Grace? Surely not! It really doesn’t become you.’

‘Why? Because you think I’m not capable of any feeling?’ Surprisingly, the notion that he could even consider that cut deep—but it was just her pride that hurt, she convinced herself. Nothing else. ‘Anyway…’ Her reluctant gaze swept over the thick, black hair, which even an expensive cut hadn’t altogether tamed, over the designer suit and exclusive black shoes. Ignoring the sudden quickening of her heart-rate that just looking at him produced, she said waspishly, ‘It doesn’t seem to have hurt you any.’

‘Not so much as my mother who was already struggling to make ends meet. But, hey! What’s a man’s job when you live in a nice, comfortable mansion with more food than you could ever eat and servants to fetch and carry for you at the snap of your fingers?’ His hostility and resentment burned in him like an eternal flame. ‘And you complain that I think you aren’t capable of any feelings? I’m quite sure that you and your kind don’t have any regrets about trampling on others to get what you want, particularly those worse off than yourself.’

She flinched from his continual need to verbally flay her.

‘You don’t know my kind, Seth Mason. You haven’t the first idea what sort of woman I am.’

‘Haven’t I?’ he grated. ‘Then all the more reason why I should keep you around to discover this new Grace Tyler for myself—and I think it’s going to be a very enlightening journey.’

‘Get lost!’

‘As much as you’d like that, Grace, I’m afraid that this time that isn’t going to happen. I’m calling the shots now. Take it or leave it, but I don’t think you’ll walk away with your tail between your legs like a disciplined little lap-dog because you’re way too proud and you’ve got far too much to lose. No. You’ll take it, and, before I’ve finished with you, lying down!’

His innuendo was obvious. But he had her just where he wanted her, she realised, because as he had already made clear he knew she’d stick it out. It was the only way she would have any say in, or be able to hang on to, even a part of all that her grandfather had spent his life working for, she thought. She despaired at how the woman he had been so besotted by could have thrown her on the mercy of a man like Seth Mason. Nevertheless, that pride that he had spoken off a moment ago had her flinging back recklessly, ‘You reckon?’

‘Don’t present me with a challenge, Grace. I think it only fair to tell you that I thrive on them.’ Which was obvious, she thought, shuddering from the determination in him, otherwise he wouldn’t have got to where he was today.

‘That’s big of you,’ she retorted, knowing she was playing with fire but unable to let him have the last word. ‘Well, let me tell you, I haven’t worked my butt off getting where I have in this firm to be walked over by an arrogant, overbearing, jumped-up boatyard worker from the back of beyond! I’ll work alongside you for the sake of the company, but let’s get one thing clear—you might have pulled yourself up out of the next best thing to the gutter…’ Angrily, she snatched up her jacket and bag. ‘But you’ll never, ever, get me into bed with you again!’

The walls seemed to shake as she slammed the boardroom door behind her.

‘Wow! What, already? He’s a fast worker!’ That dry comment from Simone, who was just coming along the corridor, fell onto the deafening silence that followed.

‘That isn’t funny, Simone.’ Hot and shaking from her outburst, Grace felt uncomfortably sticky beneath her travel-creased clothes.

‘No, I can’t say amusement was the overriding emotion coming out of that boardroom. Care to tell me where you know him from?’

‘No.’

Her PA pulled a knowing face. ‘That memorable, was it?’

‘I’m sorry, Simone,’ Grace apologised, not meaning to have spoken so sharply to her assistant. ‘I guess I’m suffering from a chronic case of jet lag.’ She shook her head to try and clear it. ‘Among other things,’ she exhaled, her eyes swivelling towards the room she had just so dramatically vacated. She couldn’t believe that this wasn’t some farcical nightmare that she would wake up from any minute. An inner anguish pleated her forehead as she tagged on, ‘It was a long time ago.’

‘Not long enough for him to bring out a side of your nature I’ve never seen—or heard.’ This with a roll of her eyes towards the ceiling. ‘Are you all right? Can I get you something?’

‘Yes. Enough Culverwell shares to give me a majority holding.’ So that I won’t lose all that was precious to my grandfather—to me—to a man hell-bent on revenge!

Simone grimaced sympathetically. ‘No can do, girl. I think all we can do is co-operate with him and the new management and pray that we’ve still got jobs this time next week.’

‘How can I co-operate—?’ The boardroom door suddenly opening left Grace’s words hanging in mid-sentence.

Seth Mason emerged, appearing more dynamic and commanding in the narrower confines of the corridor, if that were possible. He sent Grace a stripping glance. She had been way too rude in there, and something told her he wasn’t going to let her get away with it.

‘Simone, I’d like you to bring your note pad in here. But first will you have a word with whoever it is you need to see about having self-closing hinges fitted on all principal doors?’

‘Certainly, Mr Mason,’ Simone responded with what seemed to Grace like annoying deference to the new CEO, before she caught the covert glance her assistant sent her. It conveyed the message already obvious from Seth’s instructions; he isn’t going to take anyone slamming doors in his face!

‘I see,’ she said, rounding on him as the other woman tripped off towards the lift. ‘So she’s your PA now, is she?’

‘No,’ he surprised her by answering, ‘But I thought you wouldn’t mind my making use of her until my own arrives.’