his acquaintance. He could see no reason why anyone would want to mail this one to his father, except, perhaps, as an attempt to curry favour…
Matt flipped over the other photographs and his complacent assumption exploded in his face. He stiffened, the breath hissing between his clenched teeth.
To his intense chagrin he could feel the warmth flooding into his face. Although he didn’t look up he was excruciatingly aware of Mary’s disapproving gaze as she made good her escape, closing the door behind her with a definitive snap that sealed him in with the smoking ruins of his reputation as a gentleman.
Thank God he could rely on her to keep her mouth shut!
His mouth compressed into a thin line, Matt studied the evidence of his betrayal.
In the first photograph Matt was sitting bare-chested on the edge of a rumpled bed, facing towards the camera, his smooth torso sculpted by the soft light from a bedside lamp. The woman in the strapless dress was kneeling on the floor between his splayed legs, the white sequins of her gown a glittering contrast to the black fabric of Matt’s formal trousers where his knees pressed against her flanks, trapping her in the quintessential pose of female sexual submission. He was looking down at her bent head, his palms cupping her skull, fingers threaded into her feathery, short-cropped hair, while hers were out of sight of the camera’s intrusive eye…from the position of her bent elbows, obviously busy in his lap!
God!
Matt’s flush deepened, his blood pressure spiking as he transferred his stunned gaze to the second picture. Here the roles of submission and domination were dramatically reversed. This time Matt was lying flat on his back on the bed, the muscles of his deep chest straining against the pull of his arms stretched over his head, his crossed wrists bound to the head of the brass bedstead with the narrow silk cummerbund he had been wearing in the earlier photo. Straddling his lower belly was the Valkyrie, flaunting a vast expanse of smooth, creamy skin unmarked by tan-lines, her knees digging into his lower ribcage, her spectacular breasts hovering invitingly above his pillowed head as she arched up to secure his bonds. The crowning salacious touch was the thin black leather whip which lay coiled on the bed beside them.
Matt cursed, his alcohol-hazed memories warring with the erotic images before him. His expression tightened as he shifted uncomfortably in his chair, trying to ease the treacherous tautening in another part of his anatomy.
He was furious, and aroused—and furious at himself for being aroused. He had been manipulated—his pride scraped raw, his privacy violated—and instead of being disgusted he was getting turned on!
He raked his fingers inside the empty envelope, grimly unsurprised to find that there was no accompanying message.
No message was needed. Matt knew exactly what form the blackmail would take.
The bitch had set him up!
And to think that he had sent her flowers afterwards, to thank her for preventing him from making a complete drunken ass of himself at the party…an expensive sheaf of yellow roses and a polite, handwritten note which had skilfully disguised his chagrin that she should be his rescuer and, later in that guest-house bedroom, sole witness to his humiliating weakness.
Except it was now painfully obvious that she had not been the sole witness!
Matt pinched the narrow bridge of his nose, castigating himself for his gullibility. How could he have allowed himself to trust her? He had been suspicious of her from the first day they had ever met, and even tanked to the eyeballs he had recognised the cool antipathy she had exuded when Merrilyn had anxiously thrust them into each other’s company. It had been partly the desire to smash through that frigid aloofness which had goaded him into baiting her the way that he had.
And now she thought she had it within her grasp to extract the perfect revenge.
Well, he might have been an easy target drunk, but—sober—he was going to show her how very difficult he could be!
He glanced at the smudged date-stamp on the manila envelope, his eyebrows snapping together when he realised what it meant. He leaned forward and punched in Mary’s extension number on his telephone.
‘Mr Riordan’s office—’
‘Mary, when did this envelope arrive in the office?’ he demanded, his abrupt urgency overriding any potential embarrassment.
‘The day before yesterday—in the morning,’ Mary replied, after a small hesitation to think out the sequence of events. ‘I always slit open Mr Riordan’s personal mail for him as soon as it arrives, and put the stack on his desk…but of course I never look at the contents unless he expressly asks me to—’
‘So this has just been lying around—open—on Dad’s desk for the past two days?’ interrupted Matt, sweating bullets.
‘Well, yes…but with Mr Stiller not due back from Tokyo until later in the week, only the cleaners and I have had access to Mr Riordan’s office,’ Mary pointed out.
Matt’s tension eased a notch at the reminder of his cousin’s absence. Both only children, he and Neville Stiller had spent a lot of time in each other’s company while growing up, but as adults their relationship was far from cordial.
Neville, who had worked at KR Industries ever since he’d left high school, had been appointed Chief Executive five years ago, and was generally expected to take over as General Manager when his uncle retired. Matt, on the other hand, had been actively discouraged from following directly in his father’s footsteps. Instead he had been educated, guided and groomed for the job which now consumed most of his waking hours—chairman of the family’s holding company, which controlled multimillion-dollar investments in both the local and international share markets.
Matt had long accepted that there was no place for him in the flourishing business which had been the cornerstone of his father’s fortune, but Neville remained intensely protective of the power-base he had carved out for himself, quick to resent any advice or expression of interest in the firm as an attempt to undermine his position as Kevin Riordan’s successor.
If this pivotal deal had not demanded Neville’s continuing presence in Tokyo, Matt didn’t doubt that he would have rushed back to commandeer the General Manager’s office.
Firmly ensconced in the seat of power, Neville would have had few qualms about nosing through his stricken uncle’s private correspondence, and if he had come across the photos how he would have gloated over the knowledge that his cousin had been caught, quite literally, with his pants down!
Matt cringed at the thought. As it was, Neville had had little choice but to grudgingly accept Matt’s offer to hold the fort until he had concluded his complex negotiations with a Japanese industrial waste management company with whom KR Industries was planning a joint venture.
Suddenly Matt was hit by another, even more devastating worry.
‘Do you know if Dad had time to look at his private mail before he had his heart attack?’ he grated.
Mary’s sharply indrawn breath recognised the ugly implication. ‘I suppose he may have done,’ she admitted slowly. ‘We went through the business mail together first, as usual, and he dictated a few urgent letters, but…yes—it’s possible that he started going through his own mail while I was typing up the letters. But since that envelope was the largest, I would have put it at the bottom of his pile…’
They
