Penny Jordan's Crighton Family Series. PENNY JORDAN

to upset him?’

      Something to upset him? She knew perfectly well, the bitch…. The bitch! Charlotte had been grossly mistaken in her information. Well, someone was going to pay for making a complete fool of him, for lying to him … cheating him out of what was rightfully his. And he knew exactly who that someone was going to be.

      Madeleine looked startled as she opened the door to him, her surprise turning quickly to dismay as she saw his face. ‘Max, what is it, what’s wrong …?’

      ‘You know damn well what’s wrong!’ he shouted, hurling the words at her like blows. ‘Why the hell didn’t you tell me that Claudine was up for the tenancy?’

      ‘I … I thought you knew….’ Madeleine replied nervously, adding pleadingly, ‘Oh, Max, please don’t be angry. I know how disappointed you must be … how much you wanted to … to prove yourself by your own efforts, but even Daddy admits that to get into the really top sets of chambers, it isn’t enough simply … well, you just have to have the right connections and that’s why—’

      ‘The right connections! And just where the hell are her right connections, or can I guess? Did Daddy put in a good word for her? Why? He’s fucking her, is he?’

      ‘Max …’ Madeleine’s face had gone white with shock. ‘Please, I know how you must feel.’

      ‘Do you … do you …?’

      Max grabbed hold of her wrists and began shaking her like a rag doll, ignoring her frantic pleas to let her go. God, when he thought of the time he’d wasted to no purpose, when all along …

      ‘I suppose you thought it was funny, did you, the pair of you?’ he demanded as he released Madeleine so forcefully that she almost fell against the wall.

      As she struggled to keep her balance, she tried surreptitiously to ease the soreness out of her bruised wrists.

      ‘Max, it wasn’t like that…. I know you’re upset, but please, please listen to me….’

      ‘Listen to you … listen to you!’

      ‘I’ve spoken to Daddy,’ Madeleine desperately tried to tell him, ignoring the searing contempt she could hear in his voice, avoiding looking directly at him and frantically trying to pretend that everything was really all right, that this wasn’t really her Max…. Maybe once he had calmed down, things would be different and she would forget that he had ever been like this … frightened her like this….

      ‘I … he … he wants us to have dinner with him and Mummy tonight. He … he says there may be a vacancy coming up at another set of chambers.’

      She told him the name and Max stared at her in furious disbelief. It was one of the most exclusive sets of chambers in the Inn and he had as much chance of being considered for a vacancy there as he had of flying to the moon.

      ‘Daddy knows the senior member there … he’s had a word with him and … well, Daddy said, since he doesn’t have a son, it would be rather nice if he could have a son-in-law to follow in his shoes….’

      Madeleine swallowed … and then added miserably, ‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Claudine but, well, she begged me not to. Oh, Max …’ Her eyes filled with tears. ‘It’s been so horrid listening to you talking about it, knowing how much it meant to you and not being able to say anything, but I promised, and … please don’t be cross with me … I know you didn’t want me to say anything to Daddy … that you wanted to do it on your own but …’

      Max’s head was spinning. A place in one of London’s top chambers … the patronage of one of the country’s most senior judges … He looked consideringly at Madeleine, her head bent low, her eyes down-cast. It was all there for the taking … with one proviso.

      Son-in-law … That meant marriage. Marriage to Madeleine. Last night he had been anticipating the moment when he would tell her just exactly what he thought about her, the moment when he would walk away from her, and now …

      ‘Stop crying, Maddy, my sweet, devious, wonderful Maddy,’ he crooned as he took her in his arms. ‘Of course I’m not cross with you. Well, not very much,’ he amended lightly. ‘It was naughty of you to go to your father.’

      ‘I did it for you … for us,’ Madeleine whispered, her mouth trembling. ‘So that we could be together….’

      ‘Yes, I know,’ Max agreed, gentling his tone. ‘But I wanted to earn the right to tell your father I want to marry you … not to feel—’

      ‘Oh, Max, don’t,’ Madeleine pleaded. ‘I was just trying to help. I just wanted—’

      ‘I know exactly what you wanted,’ Max began murmuring silkily, his voice changing, ‘and I know exactly what I want, too….’

      ‘Oh, Max, we can’t,’ Madeleine whispered breathlessly, ‘not now. It isn’t even lunch-time and … Oh, Max …’

      ‘What time are we having dinner with your parents?’ he asked as he slid his hands under her top to caress her breasts.

      His mind was working overtime, racing ahead…. He would get his place in chambers and his grandfather’s money and if the price he had to pay was a few years of marriage to Madeleine, then so what? In three and even four years’ time he would still only be in his late twenties. He would have to secure his position financially, of course. Make sure that when they did divorce he didn’t lose out and he would have to make sure, as well, that there were no children. There was no way he was going to be forced to support a couple of brats he had never even wanted.

      ‘I’ll have to take you home to meet my family,’ Max was promising her as he guided Madeleine upstairs. ‘They’re going to love you.’ But as he took her in his arms and started to kiss her, it wasn’t Madeleine’s small round face he could see, but the amused, mocking expression in Claudine Chatterton’s eyes as she stood in the doorway of his office.

      It wasn’t over … not yet … not by a long shot …

      Caspar paused before turning the car into the drive that led to Olivia’s parents’ house.

      He had no idea how Olivia was going to react to his arrival. Initially when he had left her, his mood fuelled by a lethal cocktail of affronted male ego, hurt pride and sense of injustice, he had told himself that in ending their relationship and distancing himself from her, he was simply saving himself the bother of the pointless trauma of trying to pretend that they still loved one another when quite patently they did not.

      It had taken him a week of expecting her to contact him coupled with an emotional backlash that began with self-righteous anger and ended with the bitter realisation that she was not going to telephone to make him understand just what he had done and—even more painfully—accept why he had done it.

      It had never worked as a child, trying to bring his inattentive parents to heel or to command their attention and concern to evoke their parental love, so why the hell had he thought it would work this time and with someone like Olivia, especially with someone like Olivia?

      He could now plainly understand how she must have felt—that he had let her down by not sympathising with her need to step into her father’s shoes.

      The truth was that he had been jealous, jealous of the fact that anyone other than himself could be important. He had visited some old friends whilst he was at home and had sat politely listening to the woman complaining tiredly that her partner was jealous of their two-year-old child.

      ‘It’s ridiculous,’ she had told Caspar wearily. ‘Ricky is his son, and that’s part of the reason that I love him—because he is Gerry’s child—as well as for himself, but Gerry can’t or rather won’t see that. He only sees that Ricky is another male taking my attention away from him. I just can’t seem to make him see that the reason Ricky clings more to me is because he senses Gerry’s rejection of him. Ricky needs