Beyond All Reason

‘You’re right,’ Abigail said nervously. ‘I was, am, whatever. I really must leave now.’

Fiona ignored her. ‘I want you to tell Ross once and for all that whatever you had between you is finished. I want you to leave the company immediately! Ross will come back to me once he’s rid of you! I know it.’

‘And if I don’t?’ Abigail asked, fed up with being threatened, fed up with the accusations, in fact fed up with just about everything.

‘If you don’t,’ Fiona said, taking another alarming step towards her, ‘I’ll make sure that his career is ruined. I’ll go to the Press with all sorts of things about him, and the name I use will be yours. You’d be surprised at how greedy newspapers can be when it comes to destroying someone as eligible and successful as Ross Anderson. Especially the less scrupulous newspapers. So you’d better back off, or else I’ll feed them stories that will——’

Neither of them heard approaching footsteps, but then the thick carpeting would have muffled the sound anyway, and they were both so intent on the drama taking place between them that Ross’s voice from the doorway was as unexpected as a roll of thunder on a bright summer day.

‘That will…? Stories that will do what, Fiona?’ He strolled into the room and smiled at Fiona, a cold smile that sent a sudden chill down Abigail’s back. ‘I’m all ears.’

Fiona was staring with him with the stunned look of someone who had suddenly found a snake curled in the folds of her dressing-gown. Her face was white, her mouth parted in an exclamation of wordless surprise.

‘I’m waiting,’ Ross said conversationally, his voice silky but his eyes hard like granite.

She closed her mouth and edged backwards, then she began to stammer nervously. ‘You didn’t believe all that, did you, darling?’ She hazarded a smile but what emerged was the shaky caricature of one. ‘I only said that because…because I was prompted into it by her.’

‘Her’ had stepped back and was trying to fade into the background.

‘Really.’ Ross moved closer to Fiona’s white-faced figure. He looked dark, dangerous and quite terrifying. ‘Carry on. You’ve already done a fine job of explaining how you lied about Abigail. You have yet to inform me what exactly you were going to tell the Press about me and I’m waiting with bated breath.’

‘Nothing! I told you, it was all for effect. I wouldn’t do anything like that to you.’ Her voice was sinking fast to a whisper and Abigail almost felt sorry for her.

‘I wish I could believe you.’ He shook his head sadly, but his eyes were still like granite. ‘But kiss-and-tell stories are so popular with the newspapers, aren’t they?’

Fiona had been rendered speechless. There was a thick silence, during which Abigail cleared her throat and said that if they didn’t mind, she would be on her way, that her coat and her escort were probably getting restless.

Fiona didn’t even glance in her direction, and Ross looked at her briefly and said, ‘You’re not going anywhere.’

He reverted his attention to Fiona, who looked as though she would dearly have loved to make a bolt for the door, but couldn’t because he was blocking the exit.

‘You disappoint me, Fiona,’ he said, strolling towards her and smiling as she cringed back against the wardrobe in the corner of the room.

‘Don’t blame me,’ she defended. ‘I only did it because I thought we had something going, something that that woman was intent on destroying!’ That seemed to ignite a spark of self-righteous anger, and she clung to it as a drowning man clung to a lifebelt. ‘I know you told me that you weren’t interested in settling down, but we got along well together, and everyone expects us to get married!’

‘You thought that I was a fish worthy of being caught.’

‘What’s wrong with that?’ Fiona demanded defensively. There were two bright patches on her cheeks and the cowering was slowly being replaced by outrage. Outrage that she was having to justify herself to him, outrage at being sneered at. She was a woman who had probably got her own way with men from the minute she stepped into adolescence, and she was not accustomed to having to fight for anyone.

‘Plenty,’ Ross said economically.

‘There are a lot of men who would give an arm and a leg to have me!’ she stormed furiously, still, Abigail noticed, being very careful not to get too close to Ross.

‘Fine. They’re welcome to you.’

Her mouth thinned, but she still dared not move too close.

‘I would have made you a perfect wife,’ she said through bared teeth. ‘I’m beautiful, I’m clever. You don’t think that that——’ she shot a brief, scathing look at Abigail ‘—nobody will do anything for you, do you? A secretary! Not that I believe for an instant that you intend to marry her! But if you think that I was out to catch you, then you’d better be careful, because she——’ another jerk of the head in Abigail’s direction ‘—has marriage on her mind and you’re blind if you don’t see it. I may have lied about her past but it was no lie when I told you that she’s after you!’

The speech, spoken so quickly and with such heat that the words tripped over one another, was a huge error of judgement. Ross walked towards her and when he spoke it was slowly, clearly, and in a voice that would reduce the strongest person to a quivering wreck.

‘I won’t ask you to apologise to Abigail for that slur on her character,’ he said, and Fiona looked at him with the resentment of a woman spurned. He gripped both her arms. ‘Because,’ he continued in a voice that could cut glass, ‘an apology from you would be worth very little. But I’ll give you a little word of advice, Fiona. We’re finished and we were finished a long time ago, whether you choose to accept that or not. I suggest you get on with your life, and——’ he paused and gave her a humourless smile ‘—don’t even think about going to the Press or anyone else with stories about me, because that would make me very angry indeed. You wouldn’t like to see me angry, would you, Fiona?’

‘Believe me, you’ve seen the last of me,’ she said cuttingly, taking time off to throw Abigail a look of malicious spite. ‘Go to the Press? You’re not worth it. You and that secretary of yours!’

‘I feel sorry for you, Fiona,’ he said acidly, and she gave him a look that could have frozen a charging bull,

‘Don’t, I won’t leave here heartbroken, believe me. Oh, yes, I fought for you, but I fought because you were a good catch. Rich, good-looking, confident. There are other rich, good-looking, confident men out there, though, so don’t think that I shall hibernate and pine over you.’

‘Poor Fiona,’ he mocked, although Abigail could hear a certain sadness in his voice, ‘unable to love. Never mind money, that’s one thing no amount of cash can ever buy for you.’

Fiona didn’t answer. She turned to Abigail and said coldly, ‘You got him. Well, enjoy him while you can, because if I couldn’t hook him, then you, my dear, don’t stand a chance in hell.’

‘Run along, Fiona,’ Ross said and this time the rage in his voice was all too apparent, ‘you are beginning to try my patience.’

And she did. Very quickly, slamming the door behind her, and Abigail said into the silence, with some incredulity, ‘This is her room!’

‘So it is,’ Ross agreed, turning to look at her.

Her emotions, which had been in a state of suspended animation while Fiona had been in the room, now returned with full force, and she said in a small, desperate voice, ‘Well, I think I’ll be getting along myself.’

‘Oh, no, you don’t,’ Ross murmured, moving over to her. ‘You’re not running out on me this time.’

His face was grim and she looked at him nervously.

‘I wasn’t about to run out on you,’ she began; ‘it’s just that…’

‘Just that what?’

‘Just that I’m tired and——’

‘I don’t care if you’re about to drop. I have a few things to say to you and I intend to say them.’

‘Why? What’s the point of all this?’ She moved and he stepped forward so that he was standing in front of her.

‘I’m in no mood for games, Abby.’

‘Nor am I! So why don’t you leave me alone? Haven’t you done enough? You don’t own me, you know!’

‘I do, you know.’ His voice was husky and she looked away, not trusting herself to keep hold of her emotions. ‘Is that why you walked out on me?’ he asked. ‘Because of Fiona?’

‘Of course not!’

‘Was tonight the first time that she’d warned you off me?’

‘No,’ Abigail said reluctantly, glancing at his taut face from under her lashes. ‘But that’s not why I ended our relationship.’ She laughed and it was a dry, bitter sound. ‘I suppose you’d like to believe that, wouldn’t you? But it isn’t true.’

‘Look at me when I’m talking to you,’ he told her roughly, catching her face with his fingers and turning her to face him. ‘Tell me, then.’