LITMIR.BIZ

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air in savage dismissal. ‘You’ve never been interested in my work, Laura, so it’s none of your concern.’

      ‘I want to know what Jake is accusing you of.’

      He shook a furious finger at her. ‘All you have to know is he was hell-bent on taking me down every minute he was supposedly working for me. Rolling you was icing on the cake for him.’

      ‘But why? You’re making it sound like a personal vendetta.’

      ‘It is a personal vendetta.’ His eyes bitterly raked her up and down. ‘How personal can you get with his hands all over you, exulting in taking every damned liberty he could.’

      ‘Alex!’ her mother cried in pained protest.

      She was ignored.

      ‘And you let him, didn’t you? My daughter!’ her father thundered.

      Laura refused to answer.

      He sneered at her silence. ‘He would have revelled in every intimacy you gave up to him.’

      ‘This isn’t about me, Dad,’ she said as calmly as she could. ‘I’m obviously a side issue. Why does Jake have a personal vendetta against you?’

      ‘Because of JQE!’ The words were spat out.

      ‘That doesn’t mean anything to me,’ Laura persisted.

      He glared at her contemptuously as though her ignorance was another poisonous barb to his pride.

      Her chin lifted defiantly. ‘I think I have the right to know what I’ve been a victim of.’

      ‘JQE was his stepfather’s company,’ he finally in formed her in a bitterly mocking tone. ‘He believes I could have saved it and chose not to. The man died of a heart attack soon after I secured the liquidator’s fee.’

      Stepfather! ‘Was his surname different to Jake’s?’

      ‘Of course it was! If I’d had any idea they were related, he would never have been employed by me.’

      ‘How long has he been working in your company?’

      ‘Six years! Six damnable years of worming his way through my files, wanting to nail me to the wall!’

      A man with a mission…James Bond… Dark and dangerous…

      Her instincts had been right at their first meeting, but she hadn’t heeded them, hadn’t wanted to.

      ‘Could you have saved his stepfather’s company, Dad?’ she asked, wanting to know if the mission was for justice or some twisted form of vengeance. Jake had loved his stepfather, possibly the only father he had known.

      ‘The man was an idiot, getting in over his head,’ her father snarled. ‘Even with help he was in no state to rescue anything. His wife was dying of cancer. Trying to hang on was stupid.’

      A judgement call. Had it been right or a deliberate choice for her father to make a profit out of it, charging huge fees to carry out the liquidation process?

      What was the truth?

      Laura knew she wouldn’t get it from her father. He would serve his own ends. Always had.

      As for Jake, he must have been totally torn up with grief when the seeds of his mission had been sown—his mother dying of cancer, his stepfather driven into bankruptcy and dying of a heart attack. It must have been a terribly traumatic time, having to bury both parents in the midst of everything being sold up around him. She had sensed the darkness in him, seen signs of it, heard it in his voice that first day in the garden when he’d described the terrible downside of bankruptcy, but hadn’t known how deep it went, hadn’t known that she was connected to it by being her father’s daughter.

      The bottle of Scotch took another hit. A furious finger stabbed at her again. ‘Don’t you dare take his side in this bloody whistle-blowing or you are out of this house, Laura! He used you. Used you to show me up as even more of a fool for trusting him with my daughter.’

      Had that been Jake’s intention behind tempting her into an affair? An iron fist squeezed her heart. He’d controlled every aspect of their meetings, kept their involvement limited to Saturday nights. Had he been secretly revelling in having her whenever he called? Because of who she was?

      ‘What there was between us is over,’ she said flatly.

      ‘It had better be, my girl!’ Threat seethed through every word. ‘If he contacts you…’

      ‘He won’t.’ Laura was certain of it. He had been saying goodbye on Sunday morning.

      ‘Don’t bet on it! It would be an extra feather in his cap if he sucked you in again.’

      ‘He won’t,’ she repeated, sick to her soul. She’d loved him, truly deeply loved him, and the thought of having been used to drive a dagger further into her father was devastating.

      ‘You be damned sure of it, Laura, because if I ever find out otherwise, you’ll pay for it!’

      ‘I’m sure.’

      ‘You’re looking sick around the gills. He got to you all right.’

      The savage mutter was followed by another hefty swig of Scotch.

      ‘I’m not feeling well,’ her mother said shakily. ‘Will you help me up to my bedroom, Laura?’

      ‘’Course I will.’ She quickly moved off the arm-rest to give support.

      ‘Running away as usual,’ her father said scathingly. ‘We’ll be living with this hanging over our heads for months, Alicia. No escaping it.’

      ‘It’s just the shock, Dad,’ Laura threw back at him. ‘Mum needs some recovery time.’

      ‘Recovery! I’ll never recover from this! Never! That bastard has me hamstrung!’

      Not for nothing, Laura thought as she helped her mother from the room. Jake must have presented a considerable body of hard evidence against her father for him to be suspended from practice. And had still been gathering it while he was seeing her on the side.

      She needed recovery time, too.

      Her mother felt terribly frail. Laura put her to bed and tucked the doona around her. ‘It’s not your fault, either, Mum,’ she said gently.

      The pale blue eyes were teary and fearful. She grasped Laura’s hand. ‘I don’t think I can bear it if your father is home every day.’

      ‘You don’t have to. Eddie would take you in. You have only to ask.’

      She shook her head fretfully. ‘It wouldn’t be fair on him. You don’t understand, Laura. Your father wouldn’t tolerate my leaving him. He’d…do something.’

      Laura hated the fear but she knew there was no reasoning against it. She and Eddie had tried many times. ‘Well, I don’t think Dad will be at home all the time. He’ll be out networking with people, fighting this situation with everything in his power.’

      ‘Yes. Yes, he will. Thank you, Laura. I’m sorry…sorry that Jake…’

      ‘Let’s not talk about him. You just rest, Mum.’

      She kissed the slightly damp forehead and left the room before her own tears welled up and spilled over—tears of hurt and shock and grief that pride had insisted she hold back in front of her father. And her mother.

      In the safe haven of her bedroom she wept until she was totally drained of tears. Her mind was wiped blank for a long time as she lay in limp misery, but gradually it began to turn over everything that had happened between her and Jake in the light of what she now knew and it kept coming back to the one line that felt critically important—the line he’d spoken after their first kiss in the garden.

      I don’t want to want you.

      But he had.

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