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      THE RUTHLESS MARRIAGE BID

      by

      Elizabeth Power

      For Alan – as always

      CHAPTER ONE

      HE WAS standing at the kerbside waiting to cross the road. It was him! Taylor thought chaotically, battling through the gathering dusk and the sheer volume of rush-hour traffic to catch another glimpse of that proud, dark head, of the striking height and self-assured stance that were unmistakably his.

      She heard the rear door of the taxi slam behind her, heard Craig issuing instructions through the driver’s window. But her mind and body were in turmoil, and as the taxi shot forward she swivelled round on her seat, scanning with blood-pumping anticipation, the busy street through the rear window.

      The man was nowhere to be seen.

      So she had just imagined him there, or been totally mistaken, she realised. As always.

      Nervous tension dissipated beneath the familiar disappointment, the desolation that spread through her veins, as chilling as the late-winter afternoon. Beneath the thick grey overcoat she shivered, and was only warmed by the murmur of the infant waking in his car seat beside her, as the little starfish hand curled tightly around the finger that she readily proffered.

      ‘You’re a scamp,’ she cooed at the appealingly chubby face beaming up at her from its knitted blue bonnet, but her finely drawn features, framed by a bob of gleaming brown, were etched with obvious tension.

      She had been so sure it was him. She had even neglected to wave to Craig, she berated herself, still trying to shrug off the unsettling aftermath of mixed emotions fifteen minutes later when the taxi dropped her in the lamp-lit suburbs.

      Still clutching her purse, with the baby seat suspended from her other hand, she started walking towards one of the high, Victorian villas.

      A shadow fell across her path, large and ominous, and she gasped, dropping her purse, fear for the child she carried tightening her fingers around the handle of the little chair as the tall dark figure loomed from out of the shadows.

      ‘Jared!’

      ‘Hello, Taylor.’ With one fluid movement, he stooped to pick up her purse, the long, dark overcoat he hadn’t bothered to fasten spreading to remind her of a raven swooping to its prey, the hair that waved over his collar gleaming ebony beneath the streetlamp.

      ‘So it was you.’ Jared Steele. A leader in enterprises covering everything from finance to the highest technology. Thirty-eight years old, now, she calculated—twelve years older than she was. Rich, powerful and, as she had found out to her cost, unscrupulous.

      Too stunned to thank him, her fingers closed around the rectangle of black leather he had retrieved for her. Her hands were shaking and she had to swallow to try and moisten her uncomfortably dry throat. ‘Outside the studios. Crossing the road…’ But he hadn’t used the crossing. He must have flagged down a taxi… ‘You followed me!’ she breathed, annoyance surfacing with the over-riding excitement that made her pulses race, her legs go weak, which owed more to coming face to face with him like this than her first, initial dread of being mugged.

      ‘I wanted to see you.’

      ‘Why?’

      He didn’t answer and following his gaze to the little baby seat, she realised suddenly what was going through his mind.

      ‘You’ve been busy since I saw you last.’

      Of course. What other conclusion could he have drawn?

      ‘When was that?’ she enquired pointedly, ignoring his hard unspoken question. In the eighteen months since that last bitter row he had never come looking for her. She wondered why he had decided to now.

      He shrugged and, ignoring her in turn, said, ‘I must confess this was the last thing I expected.’ His mouth appeared chiselled out of granite as he dropped another glance to the sleeping infant. Those deep-set eyes were shielded by his dark and enviably long lashes, eyes that could reduce one to pulp with just one withering look, Taylor remembered, or evoke the most thrilling and dangerous thoughts in any woman under eighty. ‘After all your protestations about having babies. What was it? An accident?’ His voice, which had always had the power to arouse her with its smoky sexuality held a derisive edge and his breath rose in a warm cloud on the frosty air. ‘We both know maternity wasn’t on your agenda. Or perhaps it was just me you weren’t partial to, not having children. That’s one conclusion my ego’s going to have to deal with, isn’t it, Taylor?’

      ‘Why?’ His comments stabbed at her, opening old and painful wounds. ‘Because I was so obviously instrumental in losing yours!’

      His head seemed to jerk back as though she had laid a whip across his face. But if he was recoiling from such frank and blatant words, she thought, pushing angrily past him, perhaps he would know what it was like—how it had felt—when he had used them—and so mercilessly—on her.

      ‘I must congratulate you. You’ve done well for yourself. Make-up artist—and with a top production company.’ His voice lacked praise, his remarks only serving to let her know that it was no accident—this meeting; that he had actually been checking up on her. ‘But then you always were ambitious, weren’t you?’ he said.

      A little shiver ran through her from his chilling tone because, of course, they had argued about that too.

      ‘And lover boy outside the studios.’ He was right behind her, his deep voice insistent, taunting. ‘Might I hazard a guess that he’d be the child’s father?’

      So he had seen her with Craig; noticed that affectionate kiss the man had given her as he had handed her into the taxi. Some deep emotional pain stopped her from immediately putting him straight.

      ‘How terribly astute of you,’ she breathed,

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