Mistress Of The Groom. Susan Napier

don’t have a private relationship,’ she ground out, giving up and wrenching out the rest of the hairpins, tossing her head so that the raven-black waves rippled down her back. She knew she looked nothing like the cool, controlled, fearless woman who had confronted him in the restaurant a few minutes ago. Now she was flushed and crumpled and thoroughly kissed, demoted to the rank of a frivolous sexual object.

      ‘Tell that to them.’ He nodded towards the press of fascinated faces on the other side of the glass wall. ‘By tomorrow morning it’ll be all over town that you and I conducted a messy lover’s quarrel in public. The gossip columns’ll be speculating as to how long our secret affair has been going on, and whether we’re as competitive in bed as out. They might start wondering whether our business rivalry was a smokescreen that only turned into the real thing when the relationship started going sour.

      ‘Some people might even suggest that the real reason Sherwood Properties crashed was because its managing director fell in love and lost all sense of perspective, a classic case of a female letting her hormones rule her brain...’

      Oh, yes, the creaking male chauvinists who inhabited the upper echelons of the business establishment would be only too delighted to bandy that theory around their executive men’s rooms, Jane thought furiously. Because she was young and a woman she had had to work long and hard for her success. Her driving determination to show everyone that she was more than capable of filling her father’s shoes had made her a formidable competitor in the field of commercial property dealing in the past five years...and put many older and more experienced masculine noses out of joint. The old boy network would enjoy the chance to dismiss her past achievements by turning her into a washroom joke.

      ‘You bastard,’ she hissed, stricken anew by the savage injustice of his actions. ‘Why are you doing this to me?’

      He gave a bitter, incredulous laugh. ‘You know why. Because it’s pay-back time...’

      Jane wrapped her arms around her waist, shaking her head in bewilderment. ‘Isn’t what you’ve already done to me payment enough? Thanks to you, I’ve lost everything. How long are you going to keep on hounding me like this?’

      He thrust his face close to hers, his voice as smooth as exposed steel as he unsheathed his malice and gutted her of any expectation of mercy.

      ‘Oh, you haven’t lost quite everything, my dear; that comes later... You wrecked my marriage—now I’m going to wreck your life just as thoroughly. So say goodbye to all your hopes and dreams, Jane Sherwood, because your future is going to be very different from the one you had planned!’

      CHAPTER TWO

      JANE slumped in the driver’s seat of her two-door car, her forehead resting on the steering wheel. The keys were in the ignition but she wanted to get control of herself before she drove home. She knew changing gear was going to be wretchedly difficult.

      The agony in her left hand had settled down to a dull throbbing that flared into hot needles of pain whenever she flexed her fingers. It was probably going to be as swollen and bruised tomorrow as Ryan Blair’s jaw. But it was worth it, she thought bitterly.

      She had wrecked his marriage?

      He had never even been married!

      Halting a wedding ceremony was not the same thing as splitting up a husband and wife. When Jane had stepped in to prevent Ryan Blair and Ava Brandon from taking their final vows she had truly believed that the dramatic, last-minute intervention was the only way to save the bride and groom from making a miserable mistake.

      A dynamic, self-made man like Ryan Blair wouldn’t have been happy with someone as passive and retiring as Ava, and her gentle, sensitive friend would have had her quiet individuality crushed by his dominating personality. If Ava had been madly in love with her future husband Jane would have wholeheartedly supported the match, despite her own serious doubts about the couple’s compatibility, but she knew that, far from being in love, Ava was intimidated by the man her ambitious, old fashioned, overbearing parents had pushed her into agreeing to marry.

      Ava had said that Ryan claimed to love her when he had swept into her life and proposed, but the announcement, shortly after their engagement, of a Brandon/Blair financial joint venture and his hectic work schedule, which allowed them little time together during their six month engagement, had deepened Ava’s misgivings.

      However, as usual, instead of confronting the problem, Ava had taken the path of least resistance until the last possible moment, only to have her belated attempts to assert herself ruthlessly dismissed as bridal jitters.

      The first Jane had known of the depths of despair to which her friend had sunk was the day before the wedding, when Ava had invaded her office in tears. In between her friend’s savage draughts of Mr Sherwood’s eight-year-old Scotch, which still stocked the office drinks cabinet, Jane had dragged out the sorry details, realising with a shock that it had been months since she and Ava had sat down and talked together. No...since she had taken time to really listen to what her friend was saying.

      Although she had ostensibly taken over Sherwood Properties when her father had been forced into premature retirement by a heart attack, Jane had only been a figurehead. Mark Sherwood had remained the real power behind the throne, as ruthless, demanding and critical as ever, constantly questioning her performance and countermanding her decisions, never letting her forget who was in ultimate charge. His sudden death when she had been still only twenty-two had made it critical that Jane prove as quickly as possible to competitors, clients and employees alike that she was as good—if not better—than her father.

      So she had started putting in twelve-hour days at Sherwood Properties’ downtown office, constantly pushing to improve the business, and had felt vindicated when the company’s profits had begun to burgeon in response to her ambitious plans. Vindicated but not satisfied. Success had been like a drug. The more she achieved, the higher the goals she set herself.

      In the process, Jane’s social life had dwindled to virtually nil. It had given her a strange chill to realise that Ava was not only her best friend, she was virtually her only real friend—the rest qualifying merely as acquaintances or colleagues. The guilt over her neglect of their friendship had made Jane boldly assure her sobbing friend that of course she’d help her think of a way to escape the imminent marriage, a way that wouldn’t result in an irrevocable family breach.

      Secretly, Jane had thought Ava’s self-confidence might improve if she were temporarily estranged from her manipulative parents, but she had known that her insecure friend would go through with a marriage she didn’t want rather than risk permanently alienating herself from her mother. Having lost her own mother at six, Jane had no wish to be responsible for depriving anyone else of their maternal bond.

      Jane cradled her injured hand in her lap, swamped by the memory of that awful wedding.

      It had been almost exactly three years ago, on a beautiful, sunny spring afternoon. The graceful old inner-city church had been bursting at the seams with society guests when Jane had squeezed nervously onto the end of the back pew on the groom’s side, resisting the usher’s attempt to seat her further forward. She had had the feeling she might need the fast getaway, whether her hastily conceived plan worked or not.

      Although, as giggling schoolgirls, she and Ava had vowed to be bridesmaids at each other’s weddings, Jane hadn’t been surprised when Kirstie Brandon had excluded Jane from the official wedding party by insisting that family take precedence. Ava had been upset but, as usual, quite incapable of standing up for herself. Mrs Brandon was an extremely possessive mother and had never liked the influence that strong-minded Jane had exerted over her precious only child during their time at school together. Not that she had been overtly rude; she had merely made it clear, whenever Jane visited, that she was a guest rather than a family friend.

      Mrs Brandon set great store by appearances, and Jane was too tall, too plain, too outspokenly intelligent to conform to her view of a proper lady. If her father hadn’t been a wealthy businessman Jane suspected that the friendship would have been squelched altogether, rather than merely tolerated, but Kirstie Brandon’s