His Delicious Revenge: The Price of Retribution / Count Valieri's Prisoner / The Highest Stakes of All. Sara Craven
She grinned. ‘You can practically hear the axe being ground. However, Brigid, Lisa’s predecessor, thought it would be a great idea to commission a short story from her for an equally generous payment. I think the finished product has finally arrived, well after its deadline, and well short of the required standard.’
‘I’d like to throw it back at her and tell her to start again,’ Lisa was saying savagely. ‘But she’s pushed off to some Caribbean hideaway with someone else’s husband, and is, according to her agent, incommunicado.’
She slammed the pages down on her desk. ‘And we need this. It’s already been announced—”Annetta—Fiction’s Latest Find.”’ She snorted. ‘Fiction’s greatest disaster if this is anything to go by.’
‘What’s wrong with it?’ Tarn asked.
‘You mean apart from a poor beginning, a boring middle, and a hopeless ending?’ Lisa gave a groan. ‘It needs an instant re-write, but it’s my little boy’s birthday today and I swore to my husband that I would be back in plenty of time for the celebrations. I should have known something would crop up and ruin things.’
Tarn hesitated. ‘Would you like me to take a look at it?’ she asked diffidently. ‘I have done stuff like this in the past, and it would give you a chance to get off as planned.’
Lisa stared at her in open surprise. ‘Are you serious? Because anything you could do—even if it was just sorting out her spelling and grammar—would be a tremendous help.’
Back at her desk, Tarn gave a silent whistle as she looked through the pages. Everything Lisa had said was perfectly justified, she thought grimly. It was a genuine horror.
But she remembered all the endless reams of frightful autobiography, and the rambling taped reminiscences that she’d transformed into readable—and saleable—prose in the recent past.
This at least had the benefit of being short. And, buried inside, were the actual bones of a story.
I’ve never ghosted fiction before, she thought. This will be a challenge. But I’ll have the new draft done when Lisa arrives tomorrow.
The offices were beginning to empty as she began. By the time she’d completed the story to her own satisfaction, boosted by regular visits to the coffee machine, the building was dark and still, with only the occasional security patrols to disturb her concentration.
She printed off the new version, clipped the sheets together and took them to Lisa’s work station.
She returned slowly to her seat, tucking her white blouse neatly back into her grey skirt as she went, then sat down to finish her final cup of coffee.
She was tired and hungry too, having eaten nothing since her mid-day sandwich. But she felt a curious sense of satisfaction all the same.
Just as if I was a bona fide employee, she thought wryly.
But then, she reflected, she’d had little opportunity to be anything else. Since she’d manufactured that meeting in the executive lift two weeks earlier, she hadn’t managed to set eyes on Caz Brandon, even in passing.
She’d been aware, without conceit, that he’d again found her attractive, but there’d been no follow-up on his part, and office gossip said that he and TV presenter Ginny Fraser were a serious item.
Besides, she’d also been told, he never played around at the office. Which just showed, she’d thought angrily, how little they knew. But which also demonstrated that he must have wanted Evie very badly. And if he’d betrayed his own dubious principles once, he could surely be induced to do so again.
However, it was all a bit like the old recipe for Jugged Hare, which began ‘First catch your hare…’
It was also time to visit Evie again, but she would have preferred to wait until she had something positive to report. And heaven only knows how long that will take, she told herself with a sigh.
She slipped on the black jacket hanging on the back of her chair, picked up her bag, and went to the double glass doors, using her security code to activate them.
As she walked down the corridor to the lifts, a man’s familiar voice said, ‘Doing overtime, Miss Desmond?’
Tarn whirled with a gasp, her bag crashing to the floor, as startled as if a ghost had suddenly materialised in front of her.
Only moments before, she’d been asking herself quite seriously if she was wasting her time, and should jettison all thoughts of revenge and simply resume her own life. Now here was Caz Brandon appearing out of nowhere in this otherwise deserted building, as if her thoughts had conjured him up out of thin air.
She said huskily, ‘You frightened me.’
‘I got a hell of a shock too when I came back to pick up my briefcase and saw there were lights on this floor,’ he returned tersely. ‘What are you doing here at this time of night?’
‘As you said—overtime.’ Tarn dropped to one knee and began to retrieve the objects that had fallen out of her bag. ‘But don’t worry. It’s the voluntary, unpaid kind. I had a project I was keen to finish.’
‘Keen isn’t the word,’ he said drily. He picked up a lipstick that had rolled to his feet and handed it back to her. ‘Aren’t there enough hours in the working day for you? And haven’t you got better things to do with your evenings than hang around here?’
‘Most of the time, yes,’ Tarn told him coolly as she rose and fastened her bag. ‘This was a one-off.’
She was playing it all wrong, she knew, but his unexpected arrival had flustered her badly.
Also she felt scruffy in the clothes she’d been wearing all day, and wished she’d put on some more lipstick or at least freshened her scent.
He, on the other hand, looked unruffled and elegant in a dark suit and crimson silk tie.
This is my golden opportunity, she thought. Another one may never come my way and I’ll have simply wasted the last weeks of my life. I’ve rehearsed this scenario so many times, yet suddenly, ridiculously, I can’t think what to say. What to do.
He said abruptly, ‘You look tired. When did you last eat?’
‘I had lunch.’ That should have been a come-on, but all she sounded was defensive.
‘Then I’ll take you out for some food, and a drink. There’s a little Italian place I use that stays open till all hours.’
‘No—please. I’m fine.’ Dear God, this was a Rubicon moment but her brain didn’t seem to be working properly. She rallied. ‘I really can’t put you to so much trouble.’
He shrugged. ‘You’re not.’ His tone was laconic. ‘If you like, consider it a reward for loyalty above and beyond the call of duty.’ He paused. ‘So, shall we go?’
And she heard herself say, in a voice she hardly recognised, ‘In that case—yes—please.’
THIS was what she had wanted, had tried so unavailingly to plan for, Tarn realised with a kind of wonderment as she walked beside him down the lamplit street. Yet now it had so unexpectedly fallen into her lap, every instinct she possessed was telling her to run away. Fast.
As they approached the kerb, she stumbled slightly and his hand shot out and took her arm.
‘Be careful,’ he cautioned as he steadied her, the warmth and firmness of his clasp seeming to penetrate the fabric of her jacket.
She muttered a word of thanks, longing to wrench herself free but not daring to, furious at her own clumsiness and bitterly aware of the harsh inner tensions which had caused it. Conscious too that, in spite of