The Marriage Deal. Sara Craven
was woken the next morning by the prolonged ringing of her doorbell. Groggily, she pushed back the covers and grabbed for her robe, trying through the clouds of sleep to remember if the milkman needed paying.
As she opened the door, she stiffened, her whole body taut with outrage as she recognised her visitor.
‘You again!’ she exclaimed furiously, and tried to slam the door in his face, but Jago was too quick for her. His arm clamped round her waist, lifting her totally off her feet as he stepped into the narrow hall. As he set her down again, the door was already closed behind him.
Ashley gritted between her teeth, ‘There’s really no end to your presumption! May I know how you discovered my address—or have I the same little bird to thank?’
Jago tutted. ‘You sound very crotchety, my sweet. I don’t think late nights agree with you. Are you alone, or should I lurk discreetly in the sitting room while Witham makes his escape?’
‘If there’s any vanishing to be done, you’ll do it,’ she said tersely. ‘Get out!’
‘When I’ve said what I came to say.’ The hazel eyes looked her over mockingly. ‘Or did you think last night was all there was to it?’
‘It seemed more than enough for me,’ Ashley snapped. She caught sight of the long case clock in the corner. ‘My God,’ she said falteringly, ‘it isn’t even eight o’clock yet! What the hell …’
Jago produced a carrier bag, ‘I thought we’d have a working breakfast,’ he said briskly.
‘You thought what?’ Words failed her.
‘A working breakfast,’ he repeated kindly. ‘They have a lot of them in the States. I’m supplying the food.’
‘Well, don’t expect me to cook it. I never eat breakfast anyway.’
‘Then you should.’ He gave her another more searching look, and her hands moved instinctively to tighten the already secure sash of her robe. ‘It occurred to me last night, you can’t afford to lose any more weight. Will you show me where the kitchen is, or shall I find it by trial and error?’
‘You’ll get out of here now!’ Ashley raged. ‘And take your lousy food with you!’
‘Your ways of expressing yourself don’t seem to have improved over the years,’ Jago said coolly. ‘The food is fresh—grapefruit, eggs and bacon, and bread for toast. You don’t have to lift a finger. Just eat—and listen to what I have to say.’
‘There’s nothing you have to talk about that I want to hear.’ Eyes sparkling ominously, she faced him, her head held proudly high.
‘Not even when the subject under discussion is Landons—and its questionable future?’ he asked.
‘There is no question about Landons’ future,’ Ashley denied sharply.
‘Now there we differ,’ he said quite gently. ‘I’d say that without some pretty fancy footwork on your part, Marshalls are going to snap you up, and cheap at the price. Is that what you want?’
‘Of course not,’ she said impatiently. ‘But it’s no concern of yours.’
‘It’s my concern.’ There was no amusement in his face. The hazel eyes were cold and inimical as they rested on her. ‘Silas was my good friend, remember?’
‘I’m hardly likely to forget. I’ve often thought it a pity you couldn’t marry him yourself.’
‘And I’ve often thought it a pity you weren’t smacked, as a child, until you couldn’t sit down for a week,’ Jago said bitingly. ‘Now go and get dressed, unless you want to spend the morning in that travesty of a dressing gown. I’ll call you when the food’s ready.’
She said shakily, ‘If I were a man, I’d throw you out.’
‘Don’t be silly, Ash.’ He tapped her hot cheek lightly with his forefinger. ‘If you were a man, I wouldn’t be here, period.’
She wanted to tell him not to call her ‘Ash’, but it suddenly seemed infinitely safer to go to her room, and put some clothes on as he’d suggested.
She dragged on jeans, not new, and a sweater which had seen better days, dragging a comb ruthlessly through her black hair. Cosmetics she left severely alone. Jago was not to think she had taken any trouble with her appearance on his account, she told herself vehemently.
The kitchen was full of the scent and crackle of frying bacon and percolating coffee, and in spite of her anger, Ashley’s nose twitched in appreciation as she entered. Jago was standing by the hob, slicing tomatoes. He too was wearing jeans, she noticed, the close-fitting denim accentuating the length of his legs and the leanness of his hips. The cuffs of his shirt were unbuttoned and turned casually back revealing tanned forearms. He made her trim kitchen seem cramped, Ashley thought resentfully as she unwillingly took a seat at the small breakfast bar.
‘Here.’ He poured coffee into a mug and pushed it across the worktop to her.
‘Thank you,’ she acknowledged stiffly.
‘And three bags full to you.’ He gave her a long look. ‘Unless you relax your attitude, lady, and fast, we’re going to get nowhere.’
‘Well, that suits me down to the ground,’ said Ashley coldly. ‘As I haven’t the slightest wish to make any kind of progress with you.’
‘So, hurt pride and resentment still rule, O.K. You aren’t prepared to swallow either or both for the sake of Landons?’
‘I’d give whatever I had to in order to save the company,’ Ashley retorted. ‘I’ve already given the last couple of years of my life. Apparently for some of the board, this isn’t enough. I don’t know what more they want—blood, presumably.’
‘No,’ he said, ‘I think they want the assurance that Landons will continue to be the dynamic, thrusting concern that Silas made it.’
‘You seem very well informed,’ said Ashley coldly, gritting her teeth, as she complied with his signal to start on her grapefruit. ‘Perhaps you’re also aware that Landons had a record profit last year.’
‘That’s true,’ he admitted. ‘But accrued from the projects that Silas set up. You’ve kept the company ticking over, and you’ve delivered the goods, as no one could wish to deny. But your forward planning is lousy. There’ve been a number of tenders you should have gone for—and got—but haven’t. Silas went out and sold Landons in the market place. He was the arch-instigator of all time. Those new civic buildings in town were a case in point. The council never thought on that scale until Silas sold them the idea. Now no one can imagine how they ever did without them. And you can repeat that story over and over again up and down the length of the country.’
‘We have plenty of work,’ Ashley protested indignantly.
‘For the time being—but how much of it is new? How many of your present contracts have you fought for and won?’ He shook his head. ‘This is what concerns the majority of the board, Ashley, and in their place, I’d probably share that concern.’
Ashley bit her lip, looking with disfavour at the plate he was setting in front of her. ‘I can’t possibly eat all that,’ she protested.
‘You’ll eat it if I have to hold your nose and force-feed you,’ Jago told her forthrightly. ‘You’re going to need all your strength, lady, and besides, we have other more important issues to argue about than food.’ He took his place beside her and began to eat with relish as she registered with annoyance. His presence in her flat, his intrusion into her life was an outrage, but he seemed unconscious of the fact.
‘So why are you interfering?’ she asked sulkily, cutting into her bacon, and noting crossly that it was done to a crisp, just as she liked it. ‘I suppose you’ve come here to give me some good advice. Well, let me tell you, I don’t need