“I was in Victor’s office only last week, and what should I see on his secretary’s desk?”
The pause was loaded with malicious triumph.
Sally gritted her teeth even harder, refusing to bite.
“The title deeds of the property at Yarramalong,” her mother rolled out with the glee of lighting a fuse that was bound to lead to a destructive conclusion. “Now why do you suppose those deeds would need current attention? Could it be that Blackjack Maguire has a buyer for the property and he’s about to transfer ownership, I asked myself?”
Sally felt the hot blood that had rushed to her face earlier drain from it just as fast, leaving her skin cold and clammy. It couldn’t be true. Jack wouldn’t sell off her home without telling her, would he?
“So I inquired of Victor if the property was on the market, pretending an interest in buying it,” her mother went on merrily.
Sally’s heart stopped. Her lungs suspended all activity. Her very life was hanging on the answer.
“‘Not to my knowledge,’ Victor said, but his eyes flickered evasively and I knew something was going down. No doubt a private deal. As private as the bankruptcy rescue Jack Maguire perpetrated on Leonard. All done behind doors so that devious bastard can deliver the coup de grace with maximum shock. As he did to me.” She leaned forward, her eyes boring into Sally’s as she venomously added, “And will do to you when your time is up.”
“No!” The word exploded from her lips as the breath she’d held was finally expelled from her chest.
“Yessss,” her mother hissed back at her. “Unless you do something to win.”
The goad was in her voice, in the stabbing intensity of her eyes, and Sally mentally reeled back from it. She would not live her mother’s way. Never! No matter what Jack did or didn’t do. Maybe she’d been living in a fool’s paradise, but she’d rather be a fool than a snaky gold-digger.
“This is all speculation. Your kind of speculation, Mother,” she grated out, denying it any weight.
The repudiation earned a mountain of disgust. “Then stay blind, you idiot child! If the truth hurts you, it’s a hurt well deserved for not listening to me.”
Her eyes raked Sally with blistering scorn.
“Lady Ellen…”
Jack’s voice, cold and challenging…Jack stepping up to Sally’s side, giving her the comfort of his support, his arm sliding around hers, deliberately hooking them together. Flaunting their relationship in front of her mother? Winner of everything he’d set out to take? Sally stiffened, unable to shake off the barbs that were dripping their poison into her mind.
Lady Ellen disdained any reply to the man who had wreaked his vengeance on her. With a haughty toss of her beautifully styled and coloured blond hair, she turned her back on both of them and headed off to her trophy husband, who provided all the evidence needed that she was a winner, despite her stepson’s plotting to make her a loser.
“What was that all about?” Jack demanded in a taut voice, probably aware of her tension and not liking it.
Sally forced herself to turn and look straight into the face of the man she had loved so unreservedly. His sharp blue eyes scanned hers with laser-like intensity, wanting to pinpoint whatever problem needed fixing. Did he really care about her, or was he simply ruthlessly intent on maintaining the status quo until he was ready to end it?
“Am I your callgirl, Jack?” she asked searchingly. “Is that how you think of me?”
“No!” The denial was instant and strongly voiced. His brows lowered into a dark frown. Anger flashed from his eyes. “Is that your mother’s interpretation of our relationship?”
No more head in the sand. “I’d like you to give me yours,” she insisted unflinchingly.
“You can scrub out callgirl for a start,” he answered tersely. “Not once have I ever thought of you as taking that role in my life.”
“Yet I have, haven’t I?” she said wryly. “You call and I do whatever you want.”
“Because you want to,” he retorted with conviction, though for a moment the conviction wavered. “You do know you’re not obliged to please me? I never pressed you to, beyond putting out the welcome mat whenever I visit the property, which was part of our contract.”
“No. You didn’t press me. It’s been my choice to have you as my lover.” Perhaps a blind choice, a foolish choice, but hers nonetheless.
“And you’ve been happy with me,” he pushed.
“Yes.”
“Then don’t let that bitch erode what we have together,” he said forcefully.
“What do we have, Jack?” Her eyes pleaded for the absolute truth. “I know you warned me not to expect a relationship with you to last a long time, but I did think I’d sense when you were losing interest.”
“I haven’t lost interest,” he declared without hesitation. “Why would you even think it?”
She shook her head. There was no denying the desire she felt pouring from him—the same physical desire he drew from her. It couldn’t be deception on his part. The sexual connection they shared was a natural force and it hadn’t been diminished by the familiarity of being together all these months.
Just last night it had been as white-hot as ever, and her body was reacting to it right now, her heart pounding, her stomach contracting, little quivers of excitement running down her thighs. Nevertheless, she couldn’t quite wipe out the doubts her mother had so insidiously planted in her mind.
“Why would Victor Newell be looking at the title deeds to the property, Jack?”
It jolted him. The blast of desire for her receded, swiftly overtaken by narrow-eyed calculation, chilling the heat he’d generated a moment ago.
“Are you in the process of selling it?” she asked point-blank, and in her anxiety to get the truth, quickly added, “My mother saw the file on his secretary’s desk, which suggested some current business was in hand.”
“I see,” he muttered, his mouth thinning into a grim line.
Fear stabbed at Sally’s heart. Was her mother right? “We haven’t talked about the future, Jack. I…” She swallowed hard, trying to reduce the thickening lump in her throat. “I trusted the…the sense that you were satisfied with…with our arrangement.”
“More than satisfied,” he slung at her vehemently, his gaze slicing around the crowd of guests, intent on finding the source of threat to his pleasure. Anger pulsed from him. When he spotted her mother, re-attached to Clifford Byrne, his whole demeanour changed, as though he was bracing himself to go into battle—a battle he relished. “Come…” His hand gripped hers, fingers inter-lacing with iron-fist strength. “We will address these concerns to the woman who raised them.”