Power Games. PENNY JORDAN

Nadia cursed him.

      He laughed again. ‘I thought you always claimed that was where our relationship took you. What exactly is it you’re hoping to get from me, Nadia?’

      ‘Nothing. I’ve already got what I wanted,’ she told him fiercely, and it was true. ‘You see, the reason I agreed to have dinner with you wasn’t because I wanted to relive old memories by going to bed with you.’ She gave him a cold smile. ‘It was simply because I wanted to remind myself of all the reasons why I’m glad that it’s a man like Alaric I’m going to marry, and not a man like you.’

      Jay’s eyebrows rose.

      ‘You mean you needed reminding?’ His smile wasn’t a kind one. ‘Is that all you wanted to remind yourself of, Nadia? Are you sure?’

      ‘Positive,’ she told him firmly. ‘And besides, I want a man who is completely mine, completely adult…not one who’s so obsessed with his father that he can hardly bear to let him out of his sight. No, I pity the woman you marry, Jay…if you ever marry. She’ll always come a poor second to your obsession with your father.

      ‘What would you do, by the way, if he ever did remarry? He isn’t like you. He is capable of love… real love.’

      ‘My father won’t marry.’

      Several of the other diners looked up as Jay’s harsh denial rang out across the quiet room.

      ‘You mean, you won’t let him,’ Nadia retaliated. ‘But how could you stop him if that was what he wanted to do? He’s still a relatively young man, Jay. Only in his mid-forties…if that. Plenty young enough to father a family…a second son. It’s a well-known fact that older men tend to dote on their children, especially when they’re their second family…to give them the time they didn’t give their first children. How will you like that, Jay?’

      ‘My father will not marry. The last thing he wants is another child, another son!’

      ‘Oh, really? Has he told you that? Is he afraid that he might turn out like you?’

      Nadia was on a roll now, confident that she had got Jay on the run, that her sharp little darts were reaching the vulnerable tender heart of him.

      What he couldn’t know was that they were piercing her heart as well, reminding her of the pain she had experienced when she first realised that with Jay she could never come first. His father held that place in his emotions; she did not even come a poor second.

      Thank God for Alaric, with whom she would always come first. Alaric, who adored and worshipped her. Alaric, who shrugged off his family’s dislike and disapproval of her. Alaric, who would move mountains for her if she wished it. Alaric, whose methodical, earnest lovemaking might satisfy her physically but could never, ever transport her to the intense emotional heights to which Jay’s touch had once taken her. And could take her again.

      Immediately she shut down on the thought. She had made her decision…her choice. And even if Jay had wanted her…loved her…

      The thought of Jay loving anyone, abandoning himself to such a need of anyone, made her smile bitterly to herself.

      ‘He doesn’t need to tell me,’ Jay exploded, ignoring the second part of her taunt. ‘It goes without saying that a man of his age…’

      He stopped speaking as Nadia started to laugh.

      ‘A man of his age… Oh, come on, Jay. How old is he exactly?’

      ‘Forty-two,’ Jay told her brusquely, his dislike of her questions on the subject colouring his voice.

      Nadia could vividly remember his reluctance, his anger the first time she had questioned him about his father, his reluctance to reveal the small age gap between them, his obvious insecurity about his whole relationship with his father.

      ‘Forty-two—that’s nothing,’ Nadia taunted.

      ‘More than old enough for him to have married well before now, had he wanted to do so,’ Jay retaliated.

      ‘Could he have done that, Jay?’ she asked softly. ‘Could he have married…? Or would you have found some way of preventing him from doing so?’

      ‘My father lives his own life and—’

      ‘Does he? Or does he live the life you’ve restricted him to?’

      ‘He’s an adult…mature…the founder of a multimillion-pound business. He makes his own decisions, Nadia.’

      ‘Oh, I’m not questioning your father’s abilities nor his intelligence. They’re obvious for anyone to see. Nor am I suggesting that he’s the kind of man who’s too weak to control his own life. I have met him, remember, Jay. I know exactly how much of a man your father is—and how much of a father, a very compassionate father…. If I was a woman looking for a man to be a good father to my children, your father would be the kind of man I’d choose…that any woman would choose. But then you already know that, don’t you, and that’s one of the reasons you’re so possessive about him. You don’t want the competition of sharing him with any little half-brother or -sister, you don’t—’

      ‘You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,’ Jay interrupted her furiously, pushing back his chair and standing up.

      He was going to walk out on her, Nadia recognised, stunned, shocked as he removed some money from his wallet and flung it down on the table.

      There was a tight white line of anger around his compressed mouth, the bones in his face starkly sharp beneath his skin as he fought for self-control. As he turned on his heel and left her, Nadia acknowledged that there had never been anything in their relationship, intensely physical and passionate though it had been, that had come anywhere near matching the inferno of white-hot emotions his relationship with his father provoked.

      Would any woman ever be allowed to produce that kind of emotional reaction in him? If one did, it certainly wouldn’t be her, Nadia acknowledged mentally as the waiter came up to the table.

      ‘My friend had to leave,’ Nadia told him crisply, firmly making sure that the calm eye contact she exchanged with him reinforced her statement.

      Half an hour later, on her way back to her apartment, she acknowledged that this was not precisely how she had envisaged ending her evening.

      So what had she wanted…? Sex…a final fling before she settled down? A nostalgic trip back into the past to a world when her whole universe had been bound by Jay’s arms, when all she had wanted or needed was her love for him…? Her whole world… Not his…never his—which was why she had ended their relationship in the first place.

      Why would any woman ever be stupid enough to love such a man…? Why…? Because she was a woman, and because Jay, for all his faults, possessed that dangerous brand of masculinity and maleness that women, even grown-up, adult, mature, intelligent women like her had been programmed to ache for in a way they could never ache for a nice, kind, worthwhile man like Alaric.

      Damn Jay. Damn him. Damn him, damn him…! She was, Nadia recognised, crying.

      As Jay strode out of the restaurant a cruising taxi pulled to a halt alongside the kerb, but Jay dismissed it with a curt shake of his head.

      Human company or conversation, no matter how mundane, was the last thing he felt like, right now. He was not a physically violent man, and certainly had never felt even remotely tempted to strike a woman, but if he had stayed in that restaurant much longer, listening to Nadia’s taunts… She had always been good at getting under his skin, trying to dig too deeply into his most personal thoughts and feelings. What the hell had she meant, suggesting that his father might want to marry, have children?

      Just for a moment he closed his eyes, the noise of the traffic becoming a muted, distant roar as he was swept back into the past, to a memory of his seven-year-old self saying angrily to his father, ‘You don’t love me.’

      ‘Of