‘Paul Jordan,’ he said, his voice hardening, and Caitlin knew the result for him would not be the same as it was for Jenny.
The salesman was summoned.
The conversation was short.
‘You’re finished here,’ David said tersely to him. ‘I have it in my power to break you financially and professionally. You have broken the duty of fidelity that you owe to this company. If you want to associate with scum like Crawley, then you’re welcome. Remember this, though. Until the Statute of Limitations runs out in seven years, I hold your fate in my hands. That’s near enough to twenty-five thousand days and I hope every one of those days you’ll reflect on that.’
Jordan left a broken man.
Cold, hard and ruthless. That was what his competitors thought, Caitlin reflected. ‘Are you going to take any further action against him?’ she asked.
‘No,’ said David. ‘To a man like Jordan, what he is about to go through is punishment enough.’
It also restricted the punishment to the man who deserved it. His wife and three children would not be innocent victims of his perfidy, provided, of course, Jordan could talk his way into another job. Caitlin admired David’s restraint. In the circumstances, he could have been forgiven if he had taken a merciless course. People who saw him as cold, hard and ruthless were wrong.
‘Where does that leave us?’ Caitlin asked.
‘As soon as Jeremy Anderson gets here, and I can brief him and hand the reins over,’ he smiled at Caitlin, ‘it leaves us with time on our hands to do the little essentials of life.’
The smile was enough to scramble her brains and send a surge of warmth through Caitlin, but she determinedly collected enough wits to find out what she needed to know. ‘Spell that out specifically, David,’ she said, trying her utmost to sound firm and in control of herself.
‘I thought we’d already agreed.’ The smile turned into what could only be called a wickedly tantalising grin. ‘We have to buy a horse. And a nice little property to put it on.’
Caitlin took a deep breath, held it for a few moments before she released it. In a way nothing had changed. It was the same as when she’d first started working for him. When David started to move, it was always with breathtaking speed.
He wasn’t pr
omising her anything except a horse, she warned herself. If she went along with him, she would be dancing with the devil again.
But she couldn’t help it.
She loved David Hartley and she had to give that love a chance to lead somewhere good.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
‘WHY can’t you decide?’ David was showing increasing signs of restlessness as he drove the Ferrari along the tortuous country roads.
‘It’s impossible to find a replacement for a horse like Dobbin on the spur of the moment,’ Caitlin replied logically.
‘We’ve looked at ponies. That took two days,’ David reminded her. ‘We looked at Galloways. That took the most part of one day. We’ve looked at Arabian horses and racing thoroughbreds.’
‘I had Dobbin for thirteen years,’ Caitlin said matter-of-factly.
‘Do you think it will take that long to find an adequate replacement?’ David sounded quite distraught.
‘I won’t know until I find one,’ Caitlin said reasonably.
‘It’s very hard,’ David muttered.
It wasn’t that he was bored, Caitlin assured herself. What David found ‘hard’ was her insistence that there be no physical intimacy between them for at least one week. His stress level was rising with each succeeding day...six of them since they had last made love on the morning of St Valentine’s Day.
Caitlin found it rather difficult, too. Still, she was not going to let on to David how much she missed and wanted that intimacy with him. In the last few days they had done a lot of talking. This not only helped to ward off the desire for more physical needs, it had given Caitlin a far more rounded and filled-in picture of David’s life.
She now knew he was an only child. After many miscarriages his father had insisted that his mother give up trying for more children. He couldn’t bear her to go through any more pain.
His father had made and sold quality furniture. Owing to the influx of cheaper mass produced furniture, his father’s business had been on the verge of bankruptcy by the time David went to university to do an engineering degree. David had suggested revolutionising the business along the lines he later developed himself. His father had invested heavily in the change, but before it could begin to be profitable he had been killed in an industrial accident.
David had stepped in to rescue the situation. It was his responsibility to make the business viable. He not only owed it to his father, but his mother had to be provided for. That was all he would say upon the subject of his mother, but he had talked quite freely about the difficulties he’d faced and overcome along the road to his present success.