his utter and complete self-disgust, his body had told him in no uncertain terms that she did indeed have the same intoxicating effect. The minute he’d seen her. And yet now he’d made them all pay. So why didn’t he feel satisfied? Why was her image burned on to his retina? And how the hell did he think he was going to survive in Dublin for two months, knowing she was in the same city?
As if to dampen the desire, he thought back to that night, when she had done everything exactly as he had suspected. Even down to having a room booked at the hotel. She’d brought him up there and seduced him. Exactly as he’d known she would.
But yet she didn’t sleep with you…a small voice reminded him mockingly.
Maybe that was it? He’d never walked away from a woman he desired before and yet he’d walked away from her that night. He still wasn’t sure why he’d left, when he knew he could have had her…without force. Her attraction had been undeniable, it was in every breathless gasp, every eye-dilating look she’d given him. But when she’d refused him herself at the last moment…somehow he couldn’t…He cursed and halted uncomfortable memories. All he knew now was that the unsatisfied ache he remembered had taken up residence again. The ache that had never really gone away if he was brutally honest with himself.
He would have to take a mistress. And soon. He’d been without a woman for too long and that was just what he needed to redirect his wandering attention. And erase Maggie Holland from his thoughts once and for all.
CHAPTER TWO
THAT evening Maggie prepared a light supper and woke her mother up. When they were sitting in the kitchen afterwards she finally asked the question Maggie had been dreading. ‘How did it go with Michael?’
She steeled herself. ‘Not great. I’m afraid I have some bad news.’
Her mother’s fingers clenched around the mug, her knuckles white. ‘What is it?’
Maggie could have wept at the familiar stoic look in her eyes. She drove down the lump. ‘Mum…someone took over Tom’s business…Just the day after he died it became apparent that he had lost everything. Effectively we’re bankrupt. It was…’ she quashed the potent image of Caleb from her mind’s eye ‘…someone who he had tried to take over.’
‘I always knew a lot of people had grievances against him…There was bound to be someone…So what does it mean?’ her mother asked.
‘Well…’ Maggie desperately fought against saying the house just yet ‘…it means that we don’t get anything; it’s all gone.’
Her mother gave much the same reaction as Maggie had earlier. ‘Well, that’s not the worst thing, is it? I mean, what have we ever had?’ She smiled a watery smile at her daughter and looked around the kitchen. ‘At least we have the house…Honestly, love, I don’t know what I’d do if we didn’t have this; it’s all I have left of your father and now I’ll be able to live here in peace.’ Maggie’s mother reached across the table and took her daughter’s hand, ‘Don’t look so worried, pet, everything will work out. I’ll get a job…you’ve got your painting; we’ll be okay.’
She hadn’t figured it out yet, Maggie knew with a sick horror. Somehow, her mother hadn’t equated signing over the house as collateral with Tom losing everything.
‘Mum…you don’t realise. We’ve lost everything…’
Her mother still looked at her blankly.
‘Mr Murphy said you signed the house over to Tom before we left London…’
‘Yes, love, but that was just…he just said it was…that it was only to…’ She stopped talking.
‘Oh, dear God, what did I do?’
Maggie held her hand. ‘It’s gone too. It was included in the rest of his assets.’
Her mother didn’t move for some time and then pulled her hand away slowly and got up to rinse out her cup. Maggie followed her, worried about her lack of reaction.
When her mother turned to face her she felt real fear, her eyes were dead, any sign of life or spark gone.
‘Mum…’
‘Margaret, I can’t…don’t make me think about this…I can’t bear it.’
She watched helplessly as the bowed woman walked out of the kitchen and knew that she was struggling with all of her might to keep herself together. That night she heard the muted sobs through her wall and knew that her proud mother would hate her to witness the awful grief. She couldn’t bear to hear her pain. What could she do? There had to be some way out…some solution.
The next morning, as the weak dawn light filtered through the curtains, Maggie lay with eyes wide open after a sleepless night. A night where demons had invaded every thought. Demons that had a familiar severely handsome face. She knew with a fatal certainty what she had to do. What the only option was.
When she walked into the kitchen a short while later any doubts in her head about her plan fled. Her mother was sitting there listlessly. She looked up briefly with shadowed eyes, her face a grey mask of disappointment and weariness. Maggie went and sat down beside her. ‘Mum, look at me.’ She waited until her mother brought her head around, slowly, as if it were a heavy weight.
‘I’m going to go into town for a while…I have something to do, but I’ll be back later or first thing in the morning.’
Hopefully with good news…
She didn’t want to say too much in case she got her mother’s hopes up, but right then and there Maggie vowed with everything in her heart that she would do whatever it took to get the house back in her mother’s name. She cooked a light breakfast and forced her mother to have some, relieved to see a slight bloom return to her cheeks before she left.
Once in her small, battered Mini, she stopped by Michael Murphy’s office in the main street to find out where Caleb’s offices were. He didn’t ask any questions, just said as he handed her the address, ‘He’s not going to be easy to see; everyone in Dublin is begging an audience…’
‘I know, but I’ll camp outside his door if I have to,’ Maggie replied grimly.
She hit the rush hour traffic on the way into town and the journey, which might normally take thirty minutes, took three times as long.
Finally she was in the city centre and parked near the building in the financial district where Caleb’s offices had been set up. She was dressed smartly in her one and only suit. She wanted to look as businesslike as possible. It was dark blue—a skirt and short jacket with a matching cream silk shirt. She wore sheer stockings and high heels and had tied her unruly hair back in a severe bun. She wanted to feel armoured against Caleb’s scathing looks and condemnation. Even if she was shaking like a leaf on the inside.
The spring air was deceptively mild, yet she shivered. At reception they directed her up to the top floor, which Caleb had taken over in its entirety for his sole use. Her stomach churned as she ascended in the lift, the thought of seeing him face to face again more daunting than she had thought possible.
Any illusion of ease in getting to see him was swiftly dashed on her arrival on to the opulently
