CEO.
‘Do you two know each other?’ Grace wasn’t sure where the question came from, only half aware that one or two of the older men had risen to their feet when they had realised who she was. She could feel everyone’s eyes skimming over her crumpled and totally inappropriate clothes.
The dynamo at the opposite end of the table raised an eyebrow in mocking query. He was waiting for her response, which she was too dumbfounded to give.
‘Oh, I think Ms Tyler will tell you—we go way back.’
She was still standing there near the door, unable to think properly, unable to speak; her only coherent thought was that Corinne obviously hadn’t had the courage to speak to her until Grace had found out for herself what had happened.
‘Can I have a word with you?’ She couldn’t believe how squeaky her voice sounded.
The subtle lift of a broad shoulder was the action of a man who couldn’t be fazed. ‘Fire away.’
In private, her eyes demanded.
The new man in charge glanced around at the others members of his team.
‘Would you excuse us?’ There was no disputing the depth of command in Seth Mason’s voice.
Chair legs scraped over the polished floor as everyone complied. To Grace it seemed like for ever before they had all filed out.
‘You had something you wanted to say?’ he prompted when the door closed behind the last of them, leaving her alone with him in the room where all the major decisions were made.
Yes, she did, she had a lot to say to him! But his smouldering sexuality was something she hadn’t reckoned on being so disturbed by, now that there was no one else around.
Images swam before her eyes of the way he had been eight years ago—of the feel of warm leather as he’d drawn her back against him where she’d sat astride that bike; of the warmth of his breath on her throat as one sure, strong hand had slid up to cup her breast, already too sensitive from his attentions…
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ she challenged angrily, dumping her jacket and bag down on the table and trying not to let his raw masculinity affect her. ‘You must have known about this two weeks ago, that night you turned up at my gallery! Why didn’t you say anything about this then?’
‘And spoil the surprise?’
Of course. That was the whole point of takeovers like this—so the company being taken over wouldn’t have time to organise any opposition to it. Grace gritted her teeth, her breathing shallow, breasts rising and falling sharply beneath her T-shirt.
‘You led me to believe…’ That he was still working in that boatyard. That he was…She couldn’t think clearly enough to remember exactly what he had said. ‘You let me think…’
‘I did nothing of the sort,’ he denied coldly. ‘You jumped to your own conclusions with that discriminating little brain of yours.’ A humourless smile curved his mouth as he came around the long table. ‘What is it they say about giving someone enough rope?’
Grace raked her fingers agitatedly through her hair. It must look a mess—she looked a mess, she thought, standing there like a street urchin in her own boardroom. The hasty clean-up she had managed in the cramped washroom on the plane did nothing to make her feel adequately groomed beside his impeccable image.
‘Well, you’ve come a long way, haven’t you?’
‘Not nearly far enough yet. Not by a long chalk.’ Hostility seemed to emanate from every immaculately clothed pore.
‘What do you mean?’ Grace challenged, eyeing him warily.
He uttered a soft laugh. ‘I mean I’ve waited a long time for this moment, and I intend savouring every satisfying minute.’
Unconsciously, she moistened her lips. ‘Is that what this takeover’s all about? Revenge?’
He laughed again, a harsh, curt sound this time. ‘I prefer to call it making the most of one’s opportunities.’
‘What? Vindictively buying up enough shares so that you could steal my grandfather’s company from under my nose?’
‘Vindictive? Possibly. But not stolen, Grace, acquired—and quite legitimately. And hardly from under your nose. You’ve been enjoying yourself in New York for the past week or so, I understand, so you can hardly expect a man in my position not to salvage the spoils when you go off designer shopping—or whatever it is a woman like you does alone in the Big Apple—while your ship is sinking.’
‘I didn’t desert. And Culverwells isn’t sinking.’ If only it wasn’t! she thought despairingly. Nor was I ‘designer shopping’! she wanted to fling at him. But she decided that it wouldn’t be worth the time or the effort, any more than it would be to tell him that she had sorely needed any free time she might have had in New York, as it was the first real break she had taken in the past eighteen months. ‘OK. We’d hit a slump. But we would have pulled ourselves out of it eventually. We were surviving.’
‘A pity your shareholders didn’t share your confidence. It’s clearly that bury-your-head-in-the-sand attitude that has put Culverwells into the state it’s in today. Or have you been too busy with your rich boyfriends and your fancy little gallery that you didn’t recognise disaster when you saw it?’
There was a glass of water on the table by the note pad in front of a vacated chair, the back of which she hadn’t realised she was clutching. She had to restrain the strongest urge to pick the glass up and fling the contents right into his smug and incredibly handsome face.
‘Don’t even think about it,’ he warned softly, disconcertingly aware.
‘I’ve never buried my head in the sand. None of us has!’ she retaliated fiercely, ignoring his pointed reference to the company she kept. ‘It’s been down to global forces and the dropping off of sales because the market’s been depressed. It still grates, doesn’t it? That I was born to all this when you—you were…’
‘What? Not good enough to tread the same ground you walked on?’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘You didn’t have to.’
No, she had made her opinion of him quite clear with those disparaging comments she hadn’t meant him to hear before simply ignoring him in the street!
She couldn’t deal with thinking about that right now. In fact, she could only deal with the shame of it by tossing back, ‘So you think my team and I are just going to lie down while you sit at that table, lording it over us and throwing your weight around?’
‘I don’t actually care what you do, Grace,’ he assured her, his body lean and hard as he moved purposefully towards her, as hard as those grey eyes that didn’t leave hers for a second. ‘And may I remind you that there was a time—however short—when my weight wasn’t something you were totally averse to?’
A rush of heat coursed through Grace’s veins, bringing hot colour up over her throat into her cheeks. Unbidden, those images surfaced again, and she saw him as
