if she doesn’t want to stay—’
‘No!’ Ruby wheeled her head around, blue eyes clashing with seething brown. ‘Mr Finlayson is right. Laurence wanted this. He wanted me to stay. I’m not about to walk away from my responsibility to the business or to the employees. And there’s just no way I’m going to let Laurence down!’
Derek Finlayson’s lips pulled into an unfamiliar smile as he pounded the table with his fist. ‘That’s the ticket! Laurence would be proud of you, my dear. As for you, Zane, how long do you think you’ll need to hand over your businesses? That is…’ He regarded him through shrewd eyes, his eyebrows arched ‘…if you do intend to return to Broome to co-manage the business?’
‘Oh, I’ll be back,’ he said, looking at Ruby, his hostile eyes incinerating the air between them. ‘Make no mistake about that.’
‘How did you manage that?’
The lawyer had gone, the room was empty of everyone except her and Zane, yet the atmosphere still felt too crowded, too thick with tension, too thunderous with his snapped words.
Her mind a whirl, Ruby barely registered his question over her own panicked second thoughts. She was trapped. She’d been so close to walking away, just twelve short weeks away from being free, and now she was locked into the Bastiani Corporation, effectively shackled to a man she despised. Shackled by pearls. Had Laurence had any concept of what he’d done to her?
“Look after Zane,” his father had begged. She wanted to laugh. From what she’d seen, Zane needed nobody to look after him. But she’d look after the company, she had no problem with that. But as for Zane, Zane could look after himself.
‘What an extraordinary coup.’
‘What do you mean?’ She responded absently as his words finally filtered through, more intrigued right now that he saw things so differently to her. Why on earth would he think this was what she wanted? The concept that she was now suddenly worth a very large fortune, in addition to what her own family connections provided her with, was no compensation for her growing fears.
Laurence had done her no favours.
This was no beneficial bequest.
This was a sentence.
‘It’s not like you’re family. You’re merely an employee. So how did you manage to convince my father to leave you forty-five per cent of the company?’
She dragged her eyes away from the bookshelves she’d been staring through and looked up at him, trying to blink away her confusion.
‘I did nothing to “convince” him. I had no idea your father decided to frame his will that way. Why would I?’
‘No idea?’ He snorted his disbelief. ‘You lived with him and you make out you didn’t know? Surely you can understand that’s just a little difficult to believe.’
She shook her head. ‘Of course I didn’t know! I told you I was resigning. You knew I was leaving. Why would I have made those plans if I’d known anything about Laurence’s bequest?’
‘Don’t play the innocent. You never had any intention of leaving! Not while you had a chance of benefiting in my father’s will. Saying you’d stay till the launch safely covered you there.’
She sighed, raising both her hands to the ceiling. What was the point of trying to convince him? What did it matter what he thought? ‘It doesn’t matter what you believe,’ she acceded. ‘The fact is, Laurence has given me no choice. I have no option but to stay.’
He laughed, harsh and bitter, seizing on her admission. ‘Funny how quickly a few hundred million dollars can make you change your tune. Of course,’ he mocked, disbelief dripping from his words, ‘we know it’s not really the money.’
‘I don’t care about the money! Not for me. But if I leave, what happens to the employees? You’ll be gone for how long? Who would manage the company? How is that going to carry on Laurence’s vision? I can’t do that to people I worked with, that Laurence wanted to be looked after. I can’t do that to people like Kyoto, after all his years of service.’
‘You’ll stay for the sake of the employees? How noble of you.’ He leaned up close. ‘Pardon me if I don’t believe there isn’t just a smattering of self-interest involved.’
‘No pardon necessary,’ she hissed back. ‘I wouldn’t expect you to believe anything, let alone the truth. You’ve shown a marked absence of that ability ever since you arrived back in Broome.’
‘And you’ve shown a remarkable inability to admit to the truth! Why do you pretend to be something you’re not? Why do you pretend not to understand what is so obvious to everyone else?’
She put her hands on her hips. Damn the man for his constant slurs and sordid innuendoes. ‘So what is it that’s so obvious to everyone else, Zane? What exactly do you mean? Maybe you should get it right off your chest.’
‘You need it spelt out? Okay! Why the hell would my father leave you such a huge share of the company? Forty-five per cent! You’ve already admitted my father was special to you. So why would he leave you a fortune if you weren’t something very much more than special?’
A rush of blood surged and crashed in her ears, urging her to fight.
‘You’re saying your father settled a fortune on me for living with him—for being his mistress. Is that right?’
‘Got it in one.’
‘Why is it with you that everything has to come down to sex?’
‘Doesn’t it?’
She wanted to disagree, but then, wasn’t this exactly what she wanted him to think? If he hated her for sleeping with his father, then he wouldn’t want to touch her, and if he didn’t touch her, then she’d have a chance of resisting this bizarre magnetism of his, she’d have a chance of not falling victim to his power.
So instead of giving in to the inciting jungle beat of her heart and lashing back a reply in the negative, she embarked on a different course. Arching one eyebrow provocatively, she pasted on a sultry smile and pushed her chest out conspicuously. He liked her breasts, he’d already made that more than clear. And then, as if on cue, his eyes followed the movements of her bustline, his gaze hot and hungry, and her smile widened. She knew she was baiting him, but it was no more than he deserved. He’d already made his mind up about her and it suited her purposes. Why not go with his prejudices? Why not play them for all they were worth?
‘Well, you’ve sure got me there, Zane,’ she said, her voice intentionally husky as she ran one hand slowly down the curve of her hip. ‘You know damn well I was special to him. Obviously our relationship meant a lot more to him than I realised. I never expected him to be quite so generous in return.’
The scarlet hue to his skin deepened as his throat corded and kicked out a pulse.
‘You know,’ she said in mock understanding, placing a flirty finger along her cheek as her tactics bore such luscious fruit. ‘I know what your problem is. I suspect maybe I was even more special to him than his own son. That’s what really gets your back up, isn’t it Zane? He loved me, and not you. That’s what you can’t abide. That’s
