Mistress Of The Groom. Susan Napier

a rustle, and suddenly Ryan Blair was plucking her out of the car and setting her down on the pavement.

      ‘Get your hands off me!’ she hissed, struggling belatedly.

      ‘You really don’t know when to give up, do you?’ he said grimly, stepping out of range of her flailing arms. ‘What did you think you were going to do, sit there and argue all night? Let the man do his job.’

      ‘Let him do your dirty work, you mean!’ she snapped, remembering how, barely more than a month ago, she had been escorted off the premises of her own company by a security guard to ensure that she took nothing from the office, not even her personal effects. Sherwood’s was not a limited liability company, so literally everything she owned was forfeit.

      Ryan Blair folded his arms across his broad chest. ‘It’s standard practice for a mortgagee to request that all assets be sequestered when a company goes out of business.’

      ‘What about my evening bag? I suppose you’re going to demand that be sequestered as well?’ Jane said sarcastically, pointing to the small black beaded drawstring bag which lay on the passenger seat.

      He picked it up and handed it to her. ‘Come on, there’s my car.’

      A black limousine was creeping across the entrance to the long cul-de-sac. The driver must have orders to follow his boss wherever he went, thought Jane contemptuously.

      ‘I’m not going anywhere with you,’ she said.

      ‘Are you asking me to give you cab fare?’

      ‘I’d rather beg in the streets!’

      Her defiant statement was punctuated by the roar of her car engine as it was driven smartly away.

      ‘It might come to that,’ he pointed out softly. ‘A woman dressed like you...expensive, displaying a lot of flesh, obviously alone....you’re bound to attract plenty of attention from the kerb-crawlers. Only they’ll expect you to earn your taxi fare.’

      Her throbbing hand tightened on her bag. ‘Why, you—’

      ‘Temper, temper, Miss Sherwood,’ he said, stepping back and lifting his hands in mock fright. ‘You’re not going to hit me again, are you? I always thought you were as cold as ice, but you have quite a volcano seething under that chilly exterior, don’t you?’ He dropped his hands and his voice acquired a bored impatience that suggested he didn’t care one way or the other. ‘Now, do you want a free ride home or not...?’

      Pride warred with expediency and pride won.

      ‘Not!’

      Head high, she skirted the limousine and began to walk up the hill in the opposite direction to the hotel, away from the centre of the city. All she wanted to do was get away from Ryan Blair as quickly as possible, then she would decide what was best to do. She was well past the theatre centre, and even though the night wasn’t very far advanced there were few people on this section of the street and no stores open, but she knew she had to come across a phone box soon.

      Her sense of isolation rapidly intensified as she hurried on her way. Her heels sounded very loud against the concrete pavement and she shied at a shadowy couple in a shop doorway. Deciding that it might be more prudent to walk nearer the streetlights, she had barely got a few hundred metres when a car-load of young toughs cruised noisily past and then backed up, the scruffy youths leaning out of the window and crooning invitations and suggestions that burned her ears.

      Her lack of reaction finally caused them to tire of their sport and the car roared away, spewing howls of raucous laughter, but almost immediately another one slowed to a crawl beside her. This time the suggestions from the lone driver were a great deal more sophisticated, but no less persistent and stomach-churningly graphic. At the end of her tether, Jane bent and rested her good hand on the open car window and delivered a blistering tirade to the sweaty, middle-aged man behind the wheel.

      An obscene smile split his rubbery lips and he reached over and clamped his fat hand around her wrist. ‘Yes, I know. I’ve been very bad and I must be punished. I knew when I saw you striding haughtily along that you were a woman capable of the most delicious cruelty. I look forward to your discipline—’

      ‘Sorry, the lady’s already booked up for the night!’

      For the second time in half an hour Jane found herself the object of an unwelcome rescue. Ryan Blair’s limousine was riding the bumper of the kerb-crawler as the man himself put his arm through the driver’s window and hauled the culprit up by the shirt-collar to utter a few sibilant phrases in his ear. As soon as he was released the unfortunate man rammed his car into gear and took off, burning rubber in the process.

      Ryan Blair, still standing on the road, hands on his broad hips, said through his teeth, ‘Get into the limo, Jane.’

      Jane opened her mouth.

      ‘Get in the car, dammit!’ he exploded, ‘Or I’ll wrap that silky black hair around your throat and drag you there!’

      ‘Bully!’ she slashed back, not quite certain that he wouldn’t do it. She moved with defiant slowness towards the open back door of the limousine. Her feet in the borrowed too-tight black stilettos were almost as painful as her hand, her crushed toes raw with blisters that chafed with every step.

      ‘Stubborn bitch!’ he said, climbing in opposite her. ‘At least now you’ll live for me to bully you another day.’

      ‘Oh, yes, you like to draw the agony out, don’t you? You probably could have destroyed Sherwoods in weeks instead of stringing it out for nearly two years,’ she accused wildly, anything to take her mind off the pain that was turning into a burning nausea in her stomach.

      ‘I could,’ he said coolly, lounging back on the luxurious white leather. ‘But it wouldn’t have given me half so much satisfaction.’

      His frank admission took her breath away. She collapsed back against the seat, hardly noticing as the limousine pulled smoothly into the sparse flow of traffic.

      She thought of all the times over the past couple of years when she had been certain that she was going to triumph over his bitter adversity, only to be hit by another financial blow that tumbled her down into the dumps again.

      But there had never been a chance that she was going to win, she realised numbly. Those brief periods of euphoric hope had been as much a part of his strategy as the devastating body blows, designed to encourage her to fight, to blind her to the ultimate futility of her struggle. And the competitiveness drilled into her by her father had ensured that she had played right into Ryan Blair’s hands. In a sense, she had created her own torment.

      ‘But Sherwood’s wasn’t just me,’ she said through white lips. ‘There were other people involved, people who lost their jobs because of you—’

      His swollen mouth curved cruelly. ‘No, they lost their jobs because of you.’

      ‘My God, you’re callous,’ she said, shaken by the depth of hatred revealed by the comment. She had known that he despised her but she hadn’t realised how much. If she had, maybe she would have been better equipped to predict the pattern of his revenge.

      He shrugged. ‘I expect to be able to pick up what’s left of Sherwood’s for a song... I’ve no doubt I can make it a viable enterprise again in a very short time and reemploy most of the staff.’

      ‘Those who aren’t already in your employ, you mean,’ she said bitterly. ‘If you hadn’t been getting inside information you wouldn’t have found it so easy to destroy my company.’

      ‘Precisely. But all’s fair in love and war, isn’t it, Miss Sherwood? As it happens, your staff’s loyalty was pathetically easy to suborn... Did you know you weren’t a very popular employer? Too much of a chip off the old block, I understand. “Arrogant and intolerant”, “incapable of delegation”, “rigid and unapproachable” were some of the more flattering opinions of your management style.

      ‘You’re looking