* * *
Mark frowned as he looked down at the papers in front of him. He was supposed to be studying the accounts of the French company Stephanie was planning to buy, not wasting his time doodling.
As he looked at the letter ‘D’ he had meticulously made out of a series of figures he grimaced and pushed the papers away.
The French firm was quite a large one, almost as large as Stephanie’s, although nothing like as profitable. A disastrous venture, trying to grow flowers for the perfume industry, had resulted in years of heavy losses, although, as Stephanie had said, potentially the scope for the company was very good. ‘It will extend the range of flowers I can supply and the growing season.’
‘And it could also leave you very vulnerable to a takeover bid,’ Mark had warned her. ‘In fact… it isn’t unheard of, you know, for a company to be lured into over-committing itself to make it more vulnerable for a takeover…’
‘My biggest rivals at the moment are Dutch and not French,’ Stephanie had told him.
He was due to fly out to France with her later in the month to see the French business at first hand.
‘I could do with you working for me full-time,’ she had commented half jokingly to him. ‘Not to handle the day-to-day wages and general finances—I have someone to do that—but to act more as a financial-adviser-cum-PA…’
She hadn’t mentioned it a second time and Mark hadn’t taken her up on it; it was the kind of work that would appeal to Deborah far more than it did to him—a real highflying job. Deborah… He looked down at his doodling again. The remarks Stephanie had made about her own ex-husband and her marriage had caught him on a raw nerve. Listening to her, he had immediately been filled with indignation on her behalf and contempt for the man, any man who could treat a woman who loved him so generously and genuinely that badly, who could hurt her so much simply to salve his ego.
And then it had come home to him that she might just as easily have been talking about him.
But the two situations were completely different. Stephanie had made no secret of the fact that she had loved and needed her husband, that the business success was something set apart from their relationship.
Deborah did not need him, and their personal and professional lives were so closely entwined that they could not be kept separate.
Stephanie had been compassionately aware of her husband’s feelings; Deborah had totally ignored his.
And yet the picture Stephanie had unwittingly drawn for him of her husband as a spoiled, selfish man behaving like a child, punishing his wife for his own failings, and the uncomfortable feelings it raised in his own conscience, would not go away.
He had had no option other than to do what he did… If he had stayed…
Was he more like Stephanie’s husband than he wanted to admit? Had he only been able to handle Deborah’s success just as long as it did not overtake his, as she had accused? He had denied that accusation vehemently and angrily then.
Too vehemently? Too angrily?
He closed the file he was studying and walked over to stand in front of the window of the small cottage he was renting.
It was one in a series of three just outside the town; originally farmworkers’ cottages, they had been modernised by the farmer who owned and rented them out.
Their peace and relative isolation suited Mark. He had never liked city life as much as Deborah had. A country practice like this one would suit him down to the ground, he admitted… and drive Deborah crazy with boredom.
His eyes burned drily in their sockets, his throat felt raw with emotion.
He might have stopped wanting her, but he sure as hell hadn’t stopped caring about her… loving her.
He glanced across at the telephone and then turned back to the window.
She probably wouldn’t be in anyway… There was no way Ryan would have lost any time in offering her comfort and solace.
A car went down the lane, its windows open, its radio blasting out pop music. Cher sang raunchily about wishing she could turn back time, and Mark closed his eyes against the pain he could feel welling up inside him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
‘RICHARD, do you remember that woman you operated on for breast cancer, the one whose operation you timed to coincide with her menstrual cycle? Well, there’s an article here about it in the Gazette.’
Richard put down his toast.
‘They’ve given it a full-page spread as well,’ Elizabeth told him. She passed the paper over to him. ‘They’re running a women’s health awareness campaign. It’s a very complimentary article, good publicity for the hospital…’
‘I doubt David will see it that way,’ Richard told her grimly. ‘He already thinks I’m past it; when he sees this he’ll probably try to get me certified. He hasn’t got any time for any kind of holistic approach. Samuel Tozer was complaining the other day because he’s refused to authorise funds for massage therapy for his geriatric patients. It’s a proven fact that massage provides emotional as well as physical benefits for elderly patients, but David virtually accused him of trying to run some kind of seedy massage parlour aimed at corrupting his patients. Samuel was livid.’