A Delicious Deception (11 page)

He couldn’t forget though how fiercely she had defended Grant Hardwicke, standing up for him with all the loyalty and determination of a loving daughter. Nor could he forget the emotion in her face when she had asked him if she could come here today and he had point-blank refused to let her. After she had helped his father, too. After she could so easily
have turned away and not got involved. Although she hadn’t, he reflected, even though only minutes before she had been accusing Mitch of committing the worst possible corporate crime against her father. And in that, he thought, with his big body stiffening, she had been right … ‘King?’

The weak appeal had him reluctantly turning to regard the semi-reclining form on the bed, the tension so gripping in his shoulders that he thought his spine would snap.

‘Why?’ he demanded of his father, his strong features ravaged by a complexity of emotions. ‘Why did you do it, damn you? Why, Mitch?’

Amazingly, there was contrition and sadness too, King noted, in the watery blue eyes looking out of his father’s loose-skinned, rather florid face. ‘Do you—of all people—really need to ask?’ He looked away, towards the ceiling and the metal curtain track that ran around his bed, sighing heavily. ‘You
know
why.’

T
HE
sky was changing from molten gold to burnished crimson.

In the grounds surrounding the house and on the forested hillside the crickets had struck up their shrill evening chorus, while in the distance, way below, Monte Carlo was waking up for the night.

From the terrace, her hand on the sun-warmed stone of the balustrade, Rayne watched the lights gradually come on in the hotels and apartments, and in the cafés and bars along the coast.

A thousand stars shining almost as brightly as the planet whose light seemed to be winking at her above the dark pointed spear of a cypress tree. One lonely star in a flaming universe, Rayne thought, which was how she felt right at that moment since Hélène had taken herself off to her rooms at least an hour ago, and Rayne hadn’t heard anything from King since he’d left with his father and the paramedics that morning.

A sharp breath escaped her as she heard the low growl of a car turning in through the gates, which she couldn’t see from the house as it was hidden by trees, and the next second saw the Lamborghini coming along the drive. The car drew up and her heart leapt when she saw King get out and hand his keys to a member of staff to garage it for the night.

She heard their muffled voices, King’s low and congenial, the other man’s infused with courtesy and yet genuine respect
for his mega-rich, mega-influential employer. King was his employer, she had no doubt about that, since Hélène had told her that he oversaw most of his father’s affairs these days.

She had tried ringing his cellphone several times to find out how Mitch was, but if it wasn’t engaged it had been on voicemail. The one message she had left around lunchtime, asking King to call her, hadn’t been answered, and Hélène hadn’t been able to tell her anything beyond the fact that Mitch was still having tests.

Watching King’s dark head disappear under the portico, she waited, breath held, for him to come into the house. A few moments later she swung round with her heart leaping absurdly as she caught the sound of his light footsteps moving towards her over the terrace.

‘How’s Mitch?’ she asked without any preamble.

Bracing herself for some sarcastic response about her caring, his appearance, nevertheless, made her whole body go weak.

He was still dressed in the white shirt and dark suit trousers he had been wearing that morning, but his jacket was hooked over one shoulder. He was tie-less now and his shirt with the two top buttons unfastened was unusually crumpled. His hair looked as if he had been raking it back all day, but now there were dark strands falling loosely across his forehead as if he had finally given up trying to control it. His strong jaw was darkened by a day’s growth of stubble and there were dark hairs curling over the open V of his shirt.

Never had she seen him look so dishevelled, Rayne realised. Nor so utterly and sensationally male.

‘He had an angina attack. It wasn’t a coronary.’ The relief with which he informed her of that was almost tangible.

‘So he’s going to be all right?’

His eyes tugged over the golden slope of her shoulders beneath the shoelace straps of her dress, and Rayne felt as if
the fine white chiffon would melt beneath the searing steel of his eyes.

‘Do you truly care?’ he murmured, so softly that she might have misheard him as he tossed his jacket unceremoniously down onto one of the heavily cushioned dining seats.

‘Of course I care. I left a message,’ she told him a little sharply, ‘but you didn’t answer.’

Because he hadn’t known what to say to her after their antagonised scene this morning. Hadn’t known then—when he was at the hospital—or now—when he was faced with the reality of telling her—exactly how to deal with the things his father had told him.

He merely dipped his head in acknowledgement of what she had said.

‘They’re keeping him in for observation, but hopefully he’s going to be all right.’

He looked so weary—devastated, almost, Rayne would have said—that she had the strongest urge to go over and put her arms around him in the way he’d done with her the other day. Tell him that she understood the anguish in having a sick parent—of losing a parent, even—but she held back. This was King Clayborne, after all. Hard. Impervious. Impenetrable. And he had found her out in the web of deceit she’d been weaving ever since she’d been here. He’d have no sympathy for her. Or any member of her family.

Steeling herself against that imperviousness with her head held stiffly, she enquired, ‘Have you come back to ask me to leave?’

‘No.’

No?
Surprise pleated her forehead. ‘I thought you wouldn’t be able to get rid of me fast enough.’

‘That’s what I thought,’ he admitted with a heavy sigh.

Rayne’s frown deepened. ‘What’s changed your mind? Or do you just want to keep me here to extract some sort of payment from me for lying to you?’

He came over to lean on the balustrade, looking out towards the sea beyond the twilit city. He chuckled softly, an almost self-derisory sound. ‘What sort of man do you imagine I am, Lorrayne?’

She couldn’t answer at first because all the replies that sprang to mind weren’t very complimentary. And because he was so near that she could feel the power of his masculinity emanating from him, smell the faint hint of his animal scent beneath the lingering traces of his cologne.

‘Tough. Determined. Implacable.’ Her mouth pulled slightly as she finished reeling them off.

He made another self-deprecating sound down his nostrils as he angled his body towards her, his forearm resting on the still warm stone. ‘Why do I get the impression that those adjectives were carefully chosen from the best of a bad bunch?’

Because they were,
she thought, but remained silent this time.

‘You also thought I was grossly unscrupulous in being party to some treacherous and probably very unlawful act against your father,’ he stated, straightening up, ‘but I want you to know categorically now that I wasn’t.’

Strangely, she believed him, Rayne realised, shocked. But there was no room for anything other than truth in the deep intensity of his voice, nor, she accepted with a pulse-quickening heat stealing through her as she brought her head up, in the disturbing clarity of his eyes.

‘And Mitch?’ She looked quickly seaward to avoid his penetrating gaze, fixing hers on the light-spangled silhouette of a cruise ship moored way out in the distant harbour. ‘Did you tell him who I was?’

Her voice was infused with resentment, King noted. Something she had held against Mitch—against
him
—for years. ‘He knows who you are,’ he disclosed.

‘And what did he say?’ She looked up at him again now, her lovely face pained and accusing. ‘Did he admit that
MiracleMed was Dad’s? And that he snatched it from under his nose?’

King took a deep breath. ‘It wasn’t quite like that, Lorri.’

‘No?’ Her head was tilted in rebellious challenge and her hair was as fiery as the Monte Carlo sunset. ‘How was it?’ she bitterly invited him to tell her.

King glanced away, way down across the scintillating Principality, watching a stream of red tail lights form a blur of colour along the highway following the curve of the coast.

This day had wreaked havoc on him, if any day could. First finding out that Rayne was Lorri Hardwicke. Then Mitch’s suspected heart attack. And, to add to all that, those soul-sinking moments at the clinic when he’d believed his father was the worst kind of criminal. But Mitch’s sin had been a moral one, rather than anything illegal. Even so, it still offended King’s sense of propriety to realise that Grant Hardwicke had been treated so unfairly. And it wasn’t going to be easy telling his daughter the truth when, either way, she wasn’t going to want to hear the answer.

‘Your father signed an agreement with Mitch just after they went into partnership together, to the effect that any work done for the company while they were directors of the company would be to the benefit of the company. I know. I’ve read the clause in that agreement. I had my secretary email it through to me today. Your father was the technical whiz-kid, but was lax when it came to business dealings or keeping vital records. If he hadn’t been, he would have registered his right in that software prior to signing that agreement, but he didn’t, which was a pity,’ he said, sounding as though he meant it. ‘And much to his cost, as it turned out.’

‘And that’s it?’ she queried in protest. ‘He signed his rights away and it’s a pity! Why? Because it made Claybornes so much money!’

‘Lorrayne, stop,’ King advised gently, understanding her pain, her justified anger and bitterness. He wished he hadn’t
learned from Mitch today that he could have acknowledged the other man’s concept of that software and that he had chosen not to. It had been an act of vengeance against a man who had been his friend and whom he had wound up hating. ‘No one could have quite foreseen the impact that MiracleMed would make after it was launched.’

‘But it did!’ she complained. ‘And Dad never received any credit for it!’

‘And, believe me, no one regrets that more than I do,’ King said somberly.

He didn’t add that, for what it was worth, Mitch now regretted it too. That would be like openly admitting his father’s wrongdoing, and if Mitch wanted to apologise to her then it was up to Mitch to do it himself.

He didn’t know why his father had suddenly burdened him with this today, unless it was because he’d feared he was going to die and wanted to get it off his chest. But at least he could understand now why his father had become so bitter, and how shouldering such a weight of remorse could have contributed to making him ill.

‘OK. So there’s nothing I can do about it now,’ she accepted grudgingly, ‘because it was all signed, sealed and delivered legally! But that doesn’t alter the fact that your father came by that software immorally and very conveniently, after that quarrel he obviously instigated, which made Dad walk out. And I know it wasn’t Dad’s fault, because Dad never quarrelled with anyone!’

‘For heaven’s sake, Lorri, stop being so naïve!’

‘Naïve?’ She gave a brittle little laugh. ‘You think I don’t know my own father?’

‘Apparently not.’

She sent a sidelong glance up at him. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ she bit out with her eyes narrowing.

‘It means that, much as I believe my father exercised his rights under that agreement—whether ethically or otherwise—I
also believe that it’s time you, my misinformed little kitten, heard a few home truths about what really broke up their partnership.’

‘I already know that,’ Rayne tossed back assuredly. ‘It was professional jealousy. He knew what Dad had created was going to be worth a fortune and he wanted to reap all the rewards for it himself!’ She couldn’t believe she was saying things like this about Mitch Clayborne. The man who had taken her in. Offered her food and shelter and a safe haven to get her affairs sorted out when she’d found herself virtually stranded so far from home.

‘Jealousy, maybe. But not so much professional as deeply personal, I imagine,’ King was saying with a grim cast to his features. ‘My father quarrelled with yours because of the affair Grant was having with Mitch’s wife.’

‘You’re lying!’ She couldn’t believe King could dream up something so despicable.

‘Am I? Then why do you think there were never any proper claims made by your father to try and secure the rights to his software?’

‘Because you threatened him! I was there when you did it!’ she reminded him passionately.

‘And you think that was enough to stop him pursuing any claim against the company if he thought he could have, unless he hadn’t something to hide?’

She wanted to protest, but his words rang with something so akin to the truth that they left her speechless. There were times when she had wondered why her father hadn’t fought harder to try and get the rights to MiracleMed into his name. Sometimes she had begged him to, but he hadn’t, and she’d thought it was because he just hadn’t had any fight left in him.

‘I came round that night—rightly or wrongly—to tell him to stay away from my father. I had very little else on my mind except that my stepmother had been killed and that Mitch was more than likely to be in a wheelchair for life. He’d known
about the affair for weeks, which had led to Grant leaving the company. But it was the shock of being told by Karen that she was leaving Mitch to run away with your father that caused him to lose control of the car that night and swerve into that tree. He was going to leave you, Lorrayne. You and your mother. The dear, devoted husband and father.’ The censure which dripped through his words was evidence of just how little respect he had for Grant Hardwicke—or the institution of marriage. ‘Did you really not know?’

Mortified, Rayne could only stare up at him. Finally she made a small negative gesture with her head.

How could it be true? Her parents had loved each other, she reflected achingly. Or had King been right in calling her naïve? Had Cynthia Hardwicke known? Been aware of her husband’s infidelity? But no, she couldn’t have been!