Rome's Revenge. Sara Craven
her hands cupped round the beaker, her gaze fixed on the small blue flames leaping above the mock coals.
One day, she thought, she’d have a huge log fire in a hearth big enough to roast an ox.
In fact, if she wanted, she could have one next week. One word to Gramps, and mansions with suitable fireplaces would be laid open for her inspection.
Only, she didn’t want.
She’d found out quite early in life that as the sole heiress to the Grant building empire the word was hers for the asking. That her grandfather was ready to gratify any whim she expressed. Which was why she’d learned to guard every word, and ask for as little as possible.
And this flat, with its one bedroom and tiny bathroom, was quite adequate for her present needs, she thought, looking round her with quiet satisfaction.
The property company who owned it had raised no objection to her getting rid of the elderly fitted carpets and having the floorboards sanded and polished to a gleaming honey shine.
She’d painted the walls a deep rich cream, and bought a big, comfortable sofa and matching chair covered in a corded olive-green fabric.
She’d made a dining area, with a round, glass-topped table supported by a cream pedestal and a pair of slender high-backed chairs, and created an office space with a neat corner desk which she’d assembled herself from a pack during one long, fraught evening, and which held her laptop, her phone and a fax machine.
Not that she worked at home a great deal. She’d been determined from the first that the flat would be her sanctuary, and that she would leave Grant Industries behind each time she closed her door.
Although she could never really be free of it for long, she acknowledged with a smothered sigh.
But she used her home computer mainly to follow share dealings on the Internet—an interest she’d acquired during her time with Rob, and the only one to survive their traumatic break-up. A hobby, she thought, that she could pursue alone.
It had never been her parents’ intention for her to be an only child. Cory had been born two years after their marriage, and it had been expected that other babies would follow in due course.
But there had seemed no real hurry. Ian and Sonia Grant had liked to live in the fast lane, and their partying had been legendary. Sonia had been a professional tennis player in her single days, and Ian’s passion, apart from his wife and baby, had been rally driving.
Sonia had been playing in an invitation tournament in California when a burst tyre had caused Ian’s car to spin off a forest road and crash, killing him instantly.
Sonia had tried to assuage her grief by re-embarking on the tennis circuit, and for a few years Cory had travelled with her mother in a regime of constantly changing nannies and hotel suites.
Arnold Grant had finally intervened, insisting that the little girl come back to Britain to be educated and live a more settled life, and Cory’s childhood had then been divided between her grandparents’ large house in Chelsea and their Suffolk home, which she’d much preferred.
Sonia had eventually remarried, her second husband being American industrialist Morton Traske, and after his death from a heart attack she’d taken up permanent residence in Florida.
Cory had an open invitation to join her, but her mother’s country-club lifestyle had never held any appeal for her. And she suspected that Sonia, who was determinedly keeping the years at bay, found her a secret embarrassment anyway.
Their relationship was affectionate, but detached, and Cory found herself regarding Sonia very much as a wayward older sister. Most of the mothering in her life had been supplied by her grandmother.
Beth Grant had been a serenely beautiful woman, confident in the love of her husband and family. The loss of her son had clouded her hazel eyes and added lines of sadness to the corners of her mouth, but she had given herself whole-heartedly to the rearing of his small daughter, and Cory had worshipped her.
However, it hadn’t taken long for Cory to realise there was another shadow over her grandmother’s happiness, or to understand its nature.
The feud, she thought wearily. The damn feud. Still alive even after all these years.
It had been the only time she’d known her grandparents to quarrel. Seen tears of anger in Beth Grant’s eyes and heard her voice raised in protest.
‘This can’t go on,’ she’d railed. ‘It’s monstrous—farcical. You’re like children, scoring off each other. Except it’s more dangerous than that. For God’s sake, stop it—stop it now…’
Her grandfather’s answering rumble had been fierce. ‘He started it, Bethy, and you know it. So tell him to give it up. Tell him to stop trying to destroy me. To undermine my business—overthrow my companies.’
Arnold Grant had smiled grimly. ‘Because it hasn’t worked, and it never will. Because I won’t allow it. Anything he does to me will be done back to him. And he’ll be the one to call a truce in the end—not me.’
‘The end?’ his wife had echoed bitterly. ‘What kind of truce can there be when you’re trying to annihilate each other?’
She’d suddenly seen Cory, standing in the doorway, and had hustled her away, chiding gently.
‘Gran,’ Cory had asked that night, when Beth had come to tuck her into bed, ‘who’s Matt Sansom?’
‘Someone who doesn’t matter,’ Beth had said firmly. ‘Not to me, and, I hope, never to you. Now, go to sleep, and forget all about it.’
Wise counsel, Cory thought, grimacing, but sadly impossible to follow. And, since her grandmother’s death six years before, the enmity between the two men seemed even more entrenched and relentless.
Only last week her grandfather had been gloating because he’d been able to filch a prime piece of real estate which Sansom Industries had been negotiating for from under their very noses.
‘But you don’t even want that site,’ Cory had protested. ‘What will you do with it?’
‘Sell it back to the bastards,’ Arnold had returned with a grim smile. ‘Through some intermediary. And at a fat profit. And there isn’t a damned thing that old devil can do about it. Because he needs it. He’s already deeply committed to the project.’
‘So he’ll be looking for revenge?’ Cory had asked drily.
Arnold had sat back in his chair. ‘He can try,’ he’d said with satisfaction. ‘But I’ll be waiting for him.’
And so it went on, Cory thought wearily. Move and counter-move. One dirty trick answered by another. And who could say what damage was being done to their respective multi-million empires while these two ruthless old men pursued their endless, pointless vendetta? It was a chilling thought, but maybe they wouldn’t be content until one of them had been the death of the other.
And then there wouldn’t be anyone to carry on this senseless feuding.
Cory herself had always steadfastly refused to get involved, and Matt Sansom’s only heir was the unmarried daughter who kept house for him. There’d been a younger daughter, too, but she’d walked out over thirty years ago and completely disappeared. Rumour said that Matt Sansom had never allowed her name to be mentioned again, and in this case, Cory thought wryly, rumour was probably right.
Her grandfather’s enemy was a powerful hater.
She shivered suddenly, and got up from her chair.
In her bedroom, she tossed her robe on to a chair and unhooked her bra. And paused as she glimpsed herself in the mirror, half naked in the shadows of the lamplit room.
She thought with amazement, But that’s what he was doing—the man on the balcony—undressing me with his eyes. Looking at me as if I was bare…
And felt, with shock, her nipples