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Merger By Matrimony
CATHY WILLIAMS


After living all her life in the jungle of Panama, Destiny is on her way to London to claim her inheritance - a business worth millions!Flung into a city jungle, Destiny feels lost, self-conscious and out of her depth in the world of international business. Especially as her company has a predator - handsome, ruthless tycoon Callum Ross.He's determined to own her company; she won't sell. So he has a proposal for her - merger by matrimony!









“We need never stop this, you know,” he said gravely.


Wasn’t this what she’d wanted to hear? Some talk of commitment? Of permanence? What else could he mean? They’d spent a wonderful night together and at least as far as she was concerned, it was much more than that.

“What, not even to eat or have a bath?” she asked lightly, while her heart pounded like a steam engine inside her.

“I’m being serious.” He lay flat on his back with his hands folded behind his head. “We could get married,” he said. “I mean it makes sense, don’t you think? We’re compatible in bed, more than compatible, and it could sort out every niggling area of all this bargaining over the business that we’ve been trying to do over the past few weeks. I can’t personally think of a better arrangement than marriage.”







Getting down to business

in the boardroom…and the bedroom!

A secret romance, a forbidden affair,

a thrilling attraction…

What happens when two people work together

and simply can’t help falling in love—

no matter how hard they try to resist?

Find out in our new series of stories

set against working backgrounds.

This month in

Merger by Matrimony

by

Cathy Williams




Merger by Matrimony

Cathy Williams















CONTENTS


CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

EPILOGUE




CHAPTER ONE


THE grey-haired man was looking lost and bewildered. From her vantage point in the classroom, and looking over the heads of the fifteen pupils who had shown up for school, Destiny Felt could see him staring around him, then peering at the piece of paper in his hand, as if searching for inspiration which had been lost somewhere along the way. Rivulets of perspiration poured down his face, which was scrunched up in frowning, perplexed concentration, and his shirt bore two spreading damp patches under the arms.

He was ridiculously attired for the belting heat, she thought. Long trousers, a long-sleeved shirt which had been ineffectively rolled to the elbows. The only sensible thing about his clothing was the broad-brimmed hat which produced at least some shade for his face, even though he looked ridiculous in it.

What on earth was he doing in this part of the world? Visitors were virtually non-existent—unless they were photo-happy tourists, which this man didn’t appear to be—and as far as she was aware they were not expecting any new medics or teachers to the compound.

She continued viewing his antics for a few minutes longer, watching as he shoved the paper into the briefcase which he’d temporarily stood on the scorching ground at his side before tentatively making his way to the first open door he saw.

Her father would not welcome the intrusion, she thought, continuing to eye the stranger as he knocked hesitantly on the door before pushing through. She fought down the temptation to abandon her class and hotfoot it to her father’s research quarters, and instead she reverted her attention to the motley assortment of children.

All would be explained, and sooner rather than later. In a compound comprised of a mere fifteen working adults, nothing was a secret, least of all the appearance of a foreigner obviously on a mission of some sort.

The overhead fan, which appeared to be on the point of total collapse from old age, provided a certain amount of desultory, sulky relief from the heat, but she could still feel the humid air puffing its way through the open windows. No wonder the poor man had looked as though he’d been about to faint from heat exhaustion.

By the time she was ready to dismiss her class, she too was feeling in desperate need of a shower, not to mention a change of clothes.

In fact, she was heading in the direction of her quarters when she heard the clatter of footsteps along the wooden corridor of the school house.

‘Destiny!’ Her father’s voice sounded urgent.

‘Just coming!’ Damn. She hoped she wasn’t about to be palmed off with the hapless man. This was her father’s famous ploy. To offload perfect strangers, when they showed up for whatever reason, on her, and whenever she complained about it he would cheerfully brush aside her objections with a casual wave of the hand and a gleeful remark along the lines of how blessed he was to have an obliging daughter such as her.

The three of them very nearly catapulted into one another round the bend in the corridor.

‘Destiny…’

She glanced at the man, then turned her full attention to her father, who favoured her with an anxious smile. ‘Just about to go and have a shower, Dad.’

‘Someone here to see you.’

Destiny slowly turned to face the man whose hand had shot out towards her. She was at least six inches taller than him. Not an unusual occurrence. She was nearly six feet, and in fact there were only four people on the compound taller than her, including her father, who looked positively towering next to the stranger.

‘Derek Wilson. Pleased to meet you.’

‘Don’t you speak Spanish?’ Destiny asked politely, in Spanish.

‘Now, don’t start that, darling.’ Her father remonstrated with her absent-mindedly, and removed his spectacles to give them a quick clean with the corner of his faded, loose shirt.

‘Well…people come here expecting us all to speak their tongue…’

‘He’s from England. Of course he’s going to come here speaking English.’ There was a lazy, affectionate familiarity to their debate, as though they’d been down this road a thousand times before but were nevertheless more than happy to tread along it once again, through sheer habit if nothing else. ‘Apologies for this child of mine,’ her father said in impeccable English. ‘She can be very well behaved when she puts her mind to it.’

Derek Wilson was staring at her with a mixture of alarm and fascination. It was a reaction to which she’d grown accustomed over time. Nearly every outsider who set foot on the compound regarded her in the same manner, as if, however bowled over they were by her looks, they still suspected that she might target the next blow-dart in their direction.

‘What do you want?’

‘Social niceties, darling? Remember?’

‘It’s taken me for ever to track you down.’

The man glanced between the two of them, and her father obligingly capitulated, ‘Perhaps we should discuss this somewhere more comfortable. Get some refreshment for you…you must be done in after your trek to get here.’

‘That would be super.’

Destiny could feel his eyes on her as the three of them strode through the school house, attracting curious looks from the pupils in disarray as they gathered their scant books and bags together to go home. The noise was a babble of tribal Spanish, a beautiful, musical sound that seemed very appropriate to the beautiful, coffee-complexioned children with their straight black hair and expressive black eyes.

It was why she’d always stood out, of course. Not just her height, but her colouring. Fair-skinned, choppy sun-streaked fair hair, green eyes. And of course, in the depths of Panama, a white face was always a novelty.

‘In case you hadn’t guessed, this is our local school,’ her father was saying, much to her astonishment. Playing the tour guide had never been one of his chosen pastimes. He’d always left that to her mother, whose death five years previously was still enough to make her feel choked up. ‘We have a fairly static number of pupils. Of course, as you might expect, some are more reliable than others, and a great deal depends on the weather. You would be surprised how the weather can wreak havoc with day-today life over here.’

Derek Wilson’s head was swivelling left to right in an attempt to absorb everything around him.

‘Just to the right of the school house we have some medical facilities. All very basic, you understand, but we’ve always lacked the finance to really do what should be done.’

This was her father’s pet topic. Money, or rather the lack of it, to fund the medical facilities. He was a researcher and a gifted doctor and had a complete blind eye to anyone who couldn’t see that money should be no object when it came to questions of health.

They’d reached the little outer room that served as an office for her father, and he settled the man in a chair then bustled to the stunted and rusting fridge in the corner of the room so that he could extract a jug of juice. A small breeze fluttered through the two large, open windows which were opposite one another so as to maximise air draft, and Derek Wilson attempted to ventilate himself by flapping his shirt at the collar.

Poor man, Destiny thought with a twinge of sympathy. For whatever reason, he’d probably left behind a family in England and all mod cons so that he could tramp halfway across the world to Panama, still a mysterious and unfathomable land virtually behind God’s back, and deliver a message to her.

What message?

She felt a little stirring of unease.

Her father handed her a glass of highly sweetened fruit juice, and she attempted to catch his eye for a non-verbal explanation of what was going on, but he was in a strange mood. Nervous, she thought, but trying hard not to show it.

Why?

Another flutter of apprehension trickled along her spine, defying her attempts to laugh it off. ‘Well.’ Derek cleared his throat and looked in her direction. ‘Very nice place you have here…’

‘We think so.’ She narrowed her eyes on him.

‘Brave of you to live here, if you don’t mind me saying…’

She shot a look at her father, who was staring abstractedly through the window and providing absolutely no help whatsoever.

‘Nothing brave about it, Mr Wilson. Panama is one of the most beautiful countries in the world. Every day there’s something new and wonderful to see and the people are very gentle and charming. So you needn’t be scared of being captured and tortured or chopped up into little loin steaks and eaten.’

‘I never imagined that for a moment…’ he protested, and this time when he looked at her his eyes were shrewd and speculative.

‘What did you come here for?’ she asked bluntly, at which her father tore his attention away from the scenery of grass and dirt and beyond the compound the dense forest that housed the people who seemed as familiar to them as the Westerners who lived and worked alongside them in the compound.

‘I’ve brought something for you.’ He rifled through his briefcase and extracted a thick wedge of cream, heavy-duty paper, covered with small type, which he handed to her. ‘Have you ever heard of Abraham Felt?’

‘Felt…Abraham? Yes, vaguely… Dad…?’ she said slowly, scanning the papers without really seeing anything.

‘Abraham Felt was my brother, your uncle,’ her father interjected tightly. He took a few deep breaths. ‘Well, perhaps I’d better let the professional do the explaining.’

‘What explaining?’

‘Abraham Felt died six months ago. He left a will. You are the main beneficiary.’

‘Oh. Is that all? Couldn’t you have put it in writing? Post might take a while to get here, but it arrives eventually.’

‘No, Miss Felt, you don’t understand.’ He gave a small laugh which he extinguished by clearing his throat. ‘His estate is worth millions.’

The silence that followed this statement was broken only by the sound of birds and parrots cawing, the muffled voices of people criss-crossing the compound, and the distant rush of the river which provided the only form of transport into the heart of the forest.

‘You’re joking.’ She smiled hesitantly at her father, who returned her smile with off-putting gravity. ‘Aren’t you?’

‘I’m a lawyer, Miss Felt. My line of business doesn’t include jokes.’

‘But what am I supposed to do with all that money?’ Her laugh was a bit on the hysterical side. ‘Look around you, Mr Wilson. Do you see anything to spend money on here? We all get a government grant, and some of the locals make things for the tourist trade, but as for spending millions…no shops, no fast cars, no restaurants, no hotels…no need.’

‘It’s not quite as easy as that.’ He rested his elbows on his knees and contemplated her thoughtfully. He’d removed a handkerchief from his pocket and proceeded to give his face a thorough wipe with it. She could see the beginnings of sunburn. In this heat, sunblock was only partially successful. She’d always used it but, even so, at the age of twenty-six, she was as brown as a nut—a smooth, even brown that the average sun-seeker would have killed for.

‘Aside from a multitude of small interests, his country estate and a collection of art work, there’s his major holding. Felt Pharmaceuticals. It has offshoots in some six European countries and employs thousands of people. I have the precise figures here if you want. And it’s in trouble. Big trouble. Now there’s a takeover in the offing, and who’s to say how many jobs will be lost globally? As the main beneficiary, nothing can be done without you.’

‘I don’t know a thing about business,’ she said stubbornly, willing her father to chip in with some much needed support.

‘Your father says that you were a child prodigy.’

Destiny shifted uncomfortably in her chair and sat on her hands. ‘Dad! How could you?’

‘You were, my darling, and you know it. Even that boarding school didn’t know what to do with you…and perhaps the time has come for you to spread your wings a bit. It’s all well and good working out here and…’

‘No!’

‘Listen to me, Destiny!’ Her father’s voice cracked like a whip and startled her. She stared at him open-mouthed. ‘At least go to England and see what this is all about. You’ll have to go there anyway to claim this inheritance…’

‘But I don’t want any inheritance! I don’t want to go anywhere!’

The heat in the room began to feel suffocating and she stood up, agitated, lifting her face to the fan so that it whirled her hair back and soothed her hot skin. Her baggy dress seemed to cling to her even though she knew it wasn’t. Under it, she could feel perspiration trickle from beneath the heavy folds of her breasts down to the waistband of her sensible cotton underwear.

‘If you hate it, you can always come back here,’ her father was telling her in a gentler voice, ‘but don’t turn your back on an experience just because you’re afraid. We’ve always taught you to see the unknown as a challenge and not as a threat.’

‘And besides,’ Derek chipped in slyly, ‘think of the benefits to your father’s research, should you have your hand on the steering wheel of an important pharmaceutical company. Your father has told me that he’s working on a cure for certain tropical diseases using special tree saps and plant derivatives. Funding would cease to be a problem. You could help these indigenous tribes far more than you ever could by staying put.’ He crossed his legs and began to fan himself with his hat, exposing a balding head that was at odds with his reasonably unlined face. ‘Come to England, Miss Felt, for your father if nothing else…’



And that had been the carrot, as the wretched man had known it would be.

Even so, one week later, and sitting bolt upright on an aeroplane which had taken her two days of long-distance hiking to get to, she still couldn’t fathom out whether she was doing the right thing or not.

She looked around her furtively and surprised a young tourist staring at her, at which she assumed an expression of worldly-wise disdain.

Ha! If he only knew. She and any form of worldly-wise experience had never so much as rubbed shoulders. Her life had always been a peripatetic journey on the fringes of civilisation, swept along by parents whose concerns had never included the things most normal people took for granted. Occasionally, when one of the members of their team took a trip into Panama City, they would return with a few magazines. She knew about microwave machines and high-tech compact disc players, but only from the glossy pages of the magazines. Firsthand, her experience of twenty-first-century living was lamentably undeveloped.

From Panama City they’d moved gradually onwards and downwards, to more and more remote towns, until they’d finally taken root amidst the wilderness of the Darien forest some eight years previously. In between her education had been erratic and mostly home-grown, aside from one tortuous year at a boarding school in Mexico and then a further three at the Panamanian university, from which she’d emerged, in record time, a qualified doctor and desperate to return to her family and the jungle she had come to love.

She’d hated the veneer of sophistication that seemed an obligatory part of twentieth-century city life. She’d hated the need to wear make-up and dress in a certain way at the risk of being thought freakish. She’d hated the envy she’d encountered from other girls who’d thought her too good-looking and too stand-offish for her own good, and the barely developed young men with their boorish, laddish manners who’d seemed hell-bent on getting her into bed. She’d had no real interest in shopping for clothes whenever she could, and neither school nor university had been able to cope with her prodigious talent at nearly everything she put her hands to.

So what was she going to now?

More of the same, and this time with the horrendous task of walking into a company about which she knew nothing, to attempt to speak to people about whom she knew nothing and all because of an inheritance from an uncle whom she had not known from Adam.

As she stepped off the plane and allowed the unfamiliarity of Heathrow Airport to wash over her like a cold shroud, she felt a wave of terror assault her.

Even her two disreputable cases rolling past on the belt looked small and scared next to the bigger, brasher items of luggage being snatched up by the horde of weary travellers.

She was to stay at her unknown and now deceased uncle’s Knightsbridge house which, Derek Wilson had assured her, was beyond plush.

Right now, all Destiny wanted was to be back home where she belonged.

She had to force her feet forwards, out through the line of watchful uniformed custom officers, past the heaving banks of friends and relatives waiting for their loved ones back from holiday and then, with a surge of gratitude, towards the familiar face of the man who had succeeded in turning her uncomplicated life on its head.

‘Got here safe and sound, then,’ Derek greeted her, assuming control of the trolley with her bags even though she was more than capable of pushing it herself. ‘Did you have a chance to read all the company reports I left with you? Details of your inheritance? My driver’s waiting for us outside. You’ll probably want to relax after your trip—’ he grimaced at the memory of his own ‘—so I thought I’d drop you straight to your house, let you sort yourself out, have a rest. I’ve made sure that it’s fully stocked with food and you can give me a ring in the morning so that we can start sorting out this business.’

‘Where are all these people going?’ There was barely room to manoeuvre their trolley. In her brightly woven dress, which had been her only item of clothing suitable for long-distance travel, Destiny felt gauche, out of place and utterly lost.

‘All over the world.’ The man at her side cast a critical look at his companion. ‘You’ll have to do some shopping, you know. Especially for when you go into the offices…’

‘Why? What’s wrong with what I’ve got on?’

‘Nothing! It’s very charming, I’m sure. Just…not quite suitable…’

‘Suitable for what?’

They had now cleared the interminable confines of the airport terminal, but outside things were no less frantic. Destiny felt as though she’d been catapulted onto another planet, where everything operated on the fast-forward button. Black cabs rushed past them; buses were pulling up and pulling away; cars were spilling out their contents of travellers and cases. She allowed herself to be led to a long sleek car quietly purring at the end of the drop-off kerb. It was a far cry from the communal four-wheel-drive Jeep she’d become accustomed to, with its unreliable windows, cracked plastic seats and coughing engine noises.

‘Suitable for what?’ she resumed, as soon as they were in the back of the car.

Derek coughed apologetically. ‘Suitable for the board meeting you’ll be attending tomorrow afternoon.’

‘Board meeting? Me? Attending?’ She spoke four languages, had taught any number of subjects over the years, and knew more about medicine and how to deliver it than most doctors, yet the thought of a board meeting was enough to send her into a panic attack. She was only twenty-six! She shouldn’t be here!

‘Well, perhaps board meeting is a bit of an overstatement…the directors just want to meet you, actually…’

‘Can’t you go? Or perhaps tell them that I’m ill? Jet lag…?’ She could feel her heart lurching about inside her and had to take deep breaths. Inoculation, delivering babies, tending to the ill seemed a faraway excursion to Paradise.

Derek swept past her objections with practised ease. ‘Their futures are at stake. Naturally they want to meet the person now in charge of the show…’ He cleared his throat and she looked at him, aware that some other piece of not quite so innocuous information was about to come.

‘There’s also one other person I feel I ought to mention…’

‘What other person…?’

‘I’m sure you’ll be able to handle him…’ His voice failed to live up to any corresponding conviction.

‘Handle him? Is he violent?’

At which Derek allowed himself to chuckle. ‘Not violent, my dear girl. Not in the sense you think. His name’s Callum Ross…his name crops up in the Company Report I left for you…’

‘Sorry, I fell asleep on the plane.’

‘He’s…how to describe him?…he’s a household name over here in the world of high finance and business. Quite a legend, in fact. He’s managed to accumulate quite a number of companies in a remarkably short space of time…’ He sighed and nervously patted his receding hair. ‘The man’s quite formidable, Destiny. Some have even described him as ruthless.’ His expression conveyed the impression that he included himself in this number. ‘When he wants something, he’s reputed to go after it, no holds barred.’

‘I’ve met types like that,’ Destiny said slowly.

‘Have you? Really?’

‘Yes. They live in the jungle and they’re called cougars. They don’t hesitate to go for the kill.’

Derek didn’t smile as she might have expected. Instead he nodded and said musingly, ‘It’s a more fitting description than you might think… At any rate, Callum Ross has wanted your uncle’s company for some time now, if gossip in the City is to be believed, and he was very nearly there. Papers had been drawn up, waiting for the signature of your uncle—who had the poor timing to die before he could validate anything. He’s engaged to—well…you could say your stepcousin…’

‘I have a cousin?’ She felt a sudden flare of excitement at the thought of that.

‘No. Not quite. Your uncle was married four times. Stephanie White was the daughter of his most recent ex-wife by her previous marriage. Stephanie’s surname became Felt at the time when her mother married your uncle. At any rate, she has some shares in the company, along with the directors, but the majority of the shares are now under your control. What I’m saying, Destiny, is that Callum Ross badly wants what is essentially your company now. He’s seen his opportunity slip away from him through a blow of chance and he’s going to be a very disappointed man. Disappointed enough to be a thorn in your side.’

‘I don’t understand any of this.’ She hadn’t been following the progress of the car, but she was now aware that they were pulling up outside a gated crescent. A guard approached them, nodded at something Derek held out for him to see, and the impressive black wrought-iron gates smoothly glided open, like a pair of arms stretching out to reveal a tantalising secret. ‘All these people! I just…’

‘Want to go home…?’

She nodded mutely at him, dully taking in what she knew, without really having to be told, was an expensive clutch of houses. They curled in a semi-circular formation around a small, impeccably manicured patch of green. All white, all three storeys tall, all sporting black doors and tidy front gardens sectioned off with more black wrought-iron gates. A few cars were parked here and there and they were all of the same ilk as the one she was currently in. Sleek, long and shiny. She felt a little ill at the sight of all the structured precision.

‘You can’t. At least not quite yet. Not until the business with the company is sorted out once and for all.’

‘Why don’t I just sell to this Callum man? Wouldn’t that be the easiest thing to do?’ She tore her miserable eyes away from her prospective neighbourhood and looked at Derek.

‘If you do, there’s a good chance he’ll split the company up to maximise his profits if he decides to sell. The other thing is this—there’s almost no way that he’s going to invest in the work your father’s doing.’

‘But wouldn’t I be able to fund it all myself? With whatever I make from the company?’

‘After all debts have been cleared? Without the backup of the facilities over here in the Felt labs? Unlikely. Anyway—’ he assumed a tone of bonhomie ‘—enough of all that. You’ll be meeting the man himself soon enough. Here’s your place! Number twelve. Lucky twelve. In case you haven’t noticed, there’s no number thirteen. Superstition. Guess there’s a lot of that from where you come? Folklore, superstition, etc?’ He pushed open his door as soon as the car had stopped, then skipped around to open hers before bounding merrily up three steps to black door number twelve.

‘Meeting the man soon enough?’ Destiny repeated, as he opened the front door and stepped back to let her pass. ‘When?’ The driver had followed them with her cases which, on the highly polished black and white flagged entrance hall, looked even sadder and more forlorn than they had on the conveyor belt at the airport.

‘Shall I do the guided tour?’

‘When am I going to be meeting this man, Derek?’

‘Ah, yes. Tomorrow, actually.’

‘You mean with all the other…directors?’

‘Not quite. Tomorrow morning. After you’ve seen me, as a matter of fact. Thought it might be best to size up the enemy, so to speak, before you meet the rest…’

The enemy. The enemy, the enemy, the enemy.

She hoped that Derek Wilson had been exaggerating when he’d said that, but somehow, she doubted it. Whoever Callum Ross was, he was obviously good at instilling fear. It was a talent for which she had no respect. In the compound, she’d become accustomed to working alongside everyone else to achieve the maximum. How could they ever hope to help anyone else if they were too busy playing power games with one another? Only the big cats in the jungle inspired fear, and that was all part of nature’s glorious cycle.

For a man to stride around thinking that he could command other people into obedience was anathema to her.

By the time she’d explored the house, unpacked and investigated the contents of the superbly stocked fridge and larder, she had managed to distil some of her apprehension at what lay ahead.

If her father could see her now, she thought, he would probably faint. Before she left to return to Panama, she would make sure that he did see her. In these grand surroundings. It would give them something to chuckle about on those sultry, whispering evenings, with the sounds of wildlife all around.

And if Henri could see her, sitting at the kitchen table, with a delicate china cup of coffee in front of her—proper milk! Proper coffee! She smiled. Dear Henri, her soul-mate, just a handful of years older than her, who still flirted with her and jokingly proposed marriage every so often.

Her mind was still sabotaging all her attempts to concentrate on what had to be done before travelling back to Panama, when there was a sharp buzz of the doorbell.

It took a few seconds for her to realise that the buzz corresponded to someone at her door, then several seconds more to find herself at the door. Derek, who obviously now saw himself as her surrogate father, had warned her of sharks in the big city which were more lethal than the fishy variety, but she pulled open the door anyway.

It was an impulse which she instantly regretted.

The man standing in front of her, angled in shadows, was taller than she was. Tall and powerful with a sharply contoured, unsmiling face. He was wearing a lightweight suit in a dark colour, appropriate for the mild summer weather, but even his suit did little to conceal the aggressive, muscular lines of his body. She felt her pulses begin to race.

She should have looked through the peephole in the door, a small device pointed out to her through which she could determine whether any unexpected visitors were welcome or not. Despite security, not all visitors were welcome, Derek had told her. Naturally she’d forgotten all about the wretched thing.

‘Yes?’ She placed her body squarely in the entrance so that the man couldn’t brush past her, although, judging from his size, he would have had little difficulty in doing just that if he wanted to.

For a few disconcerting seconds, the man didn’t say a word. He just looked at her very thoroughly, lounging indolently against the doorframe, one hand tucked into his trouser pocket.

‘Who are you and what do you want?’ Destiny said tensely. ‘The security guard is within shouting distance so don’t even think of getting up to anything.’

‘What sort of thing do you imagine I might be getting up to?’ he asked coolly. ‘A bit of forcible entry, perhaps? Some looting and pillaging?’ His voice was deep and smooth.

‘Goodbye.’ She stepped back and began closing the door to find his hand placed squarely on it. An immovable force.

‘Are you Destiny Felt?’

The question froze her, allowing him the opportunity to push the door back and step into the hall, where the overhead light revealed an even more intimidating face than she’d gleaned from the semi-obscure darkness outside. His features were perfectly chiselled and his eyes were a unique shade of blue, midnight-blue. Cold blue eyes fanned by thick black lashes. Lashes that matched the colour of his hair and which, combined with the sensual lines of his mouth, lent him a powerfully masculine attraction. She took a step backwards and glared belligerently at the man standing in front of her.

‘What business is it of yours?’

‘Destiny Felt, fresh from the Panamanian wilderness? Heir to an unexpected fortune? My, my, my. Lady Luck certainly chose to shine forth on you, didn’t she?’ He looked around him. ‘So this is good old Abe’s place. Quite the change for you, wouldn’t you say?’

‘If you don’t tell me who you are, this instant, I’m calling the police.’ She folded her arms, unconsciously defensive, and stared at the man. When he returned his wandering gaze to her, it was to inspect her with a thoroughness that bordered on intrusive. It didn’t help matters that he was formally dressed while she was in a way too short faded shift, one of the few items of clothing she possessed. Her long legs were too exposed for comfort and, without the reassuring barrier of a bra, her heavy breasts pushed against the dress.

He narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. ‘Can’t you guess? Surely Wilson must have mentioned my name in passing?’

‘You’re Callum Ross, aren’t you?’ she said with dawning comprehension. ‘You’re Callum Ross, who arrogantly assumes that he can push his way into this house and take control. Am I right?’ Her hands shifted from chest to hips and she outstared him with an expression of hostility that matched his own. ‘The great and powerful Callum Ross who thinks…what? That he can troop in here uninvited and scare me senseless into doing whatever it is you want? Is that it? Terrify the poor half-witted Destiny Felt because she’s all the way from the middle of nowhere and probably doesn’t know how to use a knife and fork properly, never mind argue back with the formidable Mr Ross and his reputation for scaring his adversaries senseless?’

‘Not quite,’ he snarled, but he had flushed darkly in response to her hurled accusations.

‘Well, it won’t work, Mr Ross. I’m not intimidated by you and I don’t intend to be scared into selling you the company if I don’t choose to sell. Now, get out of this house before I call someone to throw you out.’

Instead of leaving, though, he moved towards her, and she fought to stand her ground. ‘Very fiery,’ he murmured, in a change of tone that was much, much more destabilising. He lifted one hand and casually toyed with a few strands of hair, rendering her even more immobile than she had been. ‘My mother always told me never to play with fire,’ he breathed silkily, ‘but I feel on this occasion I might be forced to disregard her advice.’ He laughed under his breath. ‘Till we meet tomorrow…’




CHAPTER TWO


‘AH, MISS FELT. So we meet again. In the light of day.’

Destiny had spent the previous two and a half hours in Derek Wilson’s office, prey to stomach-cramping nerves at the prospect of seeing Callum Ross again, whilst trying to grapple with the complexities of her inheritance. His entrance had been preceded by only the most perfunctory of knocks, and now there he was, looming in the doorway like a dark predator in search of some easy prey. Her, in other words.

Derek had half-risen from his seat. ‘Mr Ross. Good of you to come.’ He looked at both their faces in consternation. ‘What do you mean by we meet again? Do you two know each other?’

‘Mr Ross saw fit to pay me an unexpected visit last night,’ Destiny said tightly.

‘That, Mr Ross, was quite unorthodox, as you must well know. I have all the relevant papers here and I object to you using intimidation to try and manipulate my client. This matter needs to be discussed in a rational, civilised—’

‘Intimidation?’ The dark eyebrows rose expressively as he said this and he made his way to the chair next to Destiny, settling into it without bothering to wait for an invitation to take a seat. ‘Whatever makes you think that I would resort to intimidation to get what I want, Derek?’

She could feel his presence next to her like a strong, electrical current, hot and lethal, radiating out towards her.

‘I didn’t intimidate you, Miss Felt, did I?’

‘Actually, it would take more than you to intimidate me, Mr Ross.’ She reluctantly glanced sideways to him and met his eyes with as flat an expression as she could muster.

‘Callum. Please. If we’re to do business together, we might as well be on a first-name basis. Destiny…’ The insolence was there again, softly underlining his slow, velvety pronunciation of her name. She’d dealt with all manner of danger in her life. Real danger. Danger from animals on the many occasions when she’d accompanied her father along the dark river in their piragua, to get deep into the heart of the forest to tend to someone. Danger from illnesses with the power to kill. She would not allow him to get under her skin now.

‘It has not yet been established that you will be doing business with my client, Mr Ross. Whilst I appreciate that your plans to take over Felt Pharmaceuticals were dashed by Abe’s untimely—’

‘Perhaps I could have some privacy with…Destiny, Derek?’ He tore his eyes away from the tall, striking blonde incongruously dressed in her multicoloured frock—if it could be called a frock—and briefly focused them on the man ineffectively glaring in his direction.

From the minute he’d heard about the existence of a woman who had landed her unexpected prize catch, the catch that he had worked ruthlessly to secure for himself only to see his efforts reduced to rubble, he’d been looking forward to meeting her. Looking forward to a seam-free, ludicrously easy deal. He’d had no doubts that a woman plucked from the wilds of a Panamanian forest would readily agree to the terms and conditions meticulously drawn up for the sale of the company. He had been curious, but not unduly worried by the temporary hitch in his plans.

Having met her the evening before, he was really still not unduly worried, but his curiosity, he’d discovered, now exceeded his original expectations.

Despite his resolve to talk business in as restrained a manner possible, he found that he was itching to be rid of Derek and his patter. Destiny Felt had unexpectedly stirred something inside his jaded soul and he wanted her to himself. Alone.

‘I don’t think that that’s a very good idea, Mr Ross.’ Valiant words, Destiny thought, but Derek was looking very twitchy. ‘My client needs protecting…’

‘Do you need protecting?’ Once more the blue eyes enveloped her.

‘I think what Derek means is that I’ve only skimmed the surface of the proposal you had in effect with my uncle. He doesn’t want to see me taken advantage of.’

‘I should think not!’ Derek sounded horrified.

‘Oh, nothing could be further from my mind.’ His low laugh was not reassuring. In fact, it just upped the tempo of her already skittering pulses. ‘So now we all understand each other. I’m not about to take advantage of your client, Derek, so you can leave us alone for a while to discuss matters in privacy.’ There was a hard edge to his voice now, although his body was still relaxed and his smile didn’t falter.

‘It’s all right, Derek,’ she said, releasing him from his state of nervous tension before he exploded all over his pristine mahogany desk. ‘I can take care of myself. If I need you, I can always give you a shout.’

‘This is all highly unorthodox,’ he faltered, fumbling with his tie and frowning disgruntledly but standing up anyway.

Callum shot him a soothing look from under his dark lashes. At least Destiny, watching him covertly, suspected that it was meant to be soothing. In reality, it just seemed to make Derek even more jittery. Or maybe that was the intention. She’d never had any opportunity to see first-hand how power, real power, worked. She was learning fast.

Her body was rigid with tension as the door closed behind her buffer and Callum slowly positioned his chair so that he was completely facing her now.

She looked at him steadily. For the second time in as few days, she felt utterly disadvantaged in what she was wearing. It had never really occurred to her that the highly coloured clothes she’d brought over with her would make her stand out like a sore thumb in a country where everyone—certainly everyone in the Wilson legal firm—seemed to be attired in shades of black, brown or navy blue. No wonder the man thought that she was a push-over.

‘What’s Derek told you about me?’ he drawled, linking his fingers together on his lap and stretching out his long legs in front of him, so that they were very nearly touching hers, which she had tucked protectively under her chair.

‘That you were on the verge of consolidating a bid for my uncle’s company. That it all fell apart when he died.’

‘That all?’ He cocked his head to one side, as though listening for something she couldn’t hear.

‘What more is there?’ she asked politely.

‘No character assassination?’

‘I’m not in the habit of repeating other people’s personal opinions,’ she said calmly.

‘No, I can understand that. It would be a disaster in a compound of only a handful of people.’

‘How do you know…?’

‘I made it my business to find out before you came over here. Forearmed is forewarned, as the saying goes.’ Actually, he had done nothing of the sort. His mention of a compound had been an inspired guess and he wasn’t quite sure what he’d been hoping to achieve with his distortion of the truth. He suspected, darkly, that it was a desire to provoke some sort of reaction from her. He was accustomed to people responding to him, focusing on every word he had to say. He could feel niggling irritation now at his staggering lack of success in that department. She looked back at him with those amazing sea-green, utterly unreadable eyes.

‘I hadn’t expected you to have such a good grasp of English,’ he said bluntly, veering away from the topic, watching as she tucked some hair behind her ears.

Destiny hesitated, uncertain at the abrupt ceasefire. ‘My parents certainly always spoke to me in English, wherever we happened to be. They always thought that it was important for me to have a good grasp of my mother tongue. Of course, I speak Spanish fluently as well. And French, although my German’s a bit rusty.’

‘Isn’t that always the case?’ he said drily, and she glanced at him, surprised at his sudden injection of humour. With a jolt of discomfort, she realised that, although he had not chosen to display it, there was humour lurking behind the sensual lines of his mouth and she hurriedly averted her eyes.

‘There are a number of French workers on the compound, but our German colleagues have been more sporadic so I haven’t had the same opportunity to practise what I’ve learnt.’

‘You’ve studied?’

That brought her back to her senses. Just when an unwelcome nudge of confusion was beginning to slip in. Did the man think that she was thick? Just because her lifestyle had been so extraordinary?

‘From the age of two,’ she said coolly. ‘My parents were obsessive about making sure that my education didn’t suffer because of the lifestyle they had chosen. Sorry to disappoint you. Now, getting back to business, I’m not qualified to agree to anything with you. I still have to see the company, meet the directors…’

‘Do you know why Felt Pharmaceuticals has been losing money over the past five years?’ he cut in, and when she shook her head he carried on, with no attempt to spare her the details. ‘Shocking mismanagement. Cavalier and ill-thought-out overinvestment in outside interests with profits that should have been ploughed back into the company, interests that have all taken a beating…’

‘How do you know that?’

‘I made it my business to know.’

‘Just like you made it your business to find out about me before I came over here?’

He didn’t like being reminded of that little white lie and he uncomfortably shifted in his chair. ‘Unless you’ve taken a degree course in business management, you might not be aware that taking over a company requires just a touch of inside knowledge on the company you’re planning to take over.’

‘That’s common sense, not business management know-how,’ Destiny informed him, riled by the impression she got that he was patronising her.

He swept aside her input. ‘For the past five years old Abe, miserable bastard that he was, was bedridden and had more or less been forced to hand over control to his directors—who are good enough men when being told what to do, but on their own wouldn’t be able to get hold of a pint of beer in a brewery.’

‘What was the matter with him?’

‘What was the matter with whom?’ One minute mouthing off at him with cutting efficiency, the next minute looking like a vulnerable child. What the hell was this woman all about? He had known enough women in his lifetime not to be disconcerted by anything they said, did or thought, for that matter, but Destiny Felt was succeeding in throwing him off balance. How could someone be forthright and secretive at the same time? He nearly grunted in frustration. ‘He had a stroke and never really recovered,’ Callum said. ‘Of course, he remained the figurehead for the company but his finger was no longer on the button, so to speak.’

‘At which point you decided to break into the scene, once you’d checked out where the weak spots were,’ she filled in, reading the situation with the same logical clarity of thought that she’d inherited from both her parents.

‘It’s called doing business.’

‘Business without a heart.’

‘The two, I might as well warn you, in case you’re foolhardy enough to stick around, don’t go hand in hand.’ He hadn’t felt so alive in the company of a woman for as long as he could remember. He sincerely hoped that she stuck around, just long enough for him to enjoy the peculiar sparring they were currently establishing that was so invigorating, but not long enough to thwart his plans. His eyes drifted from her face to the swell of her breasts jutting out against the thin dress and he drew his breath in sharply.

Dammit, he was engaged! He shouldn’t be looking at another woman’s breasts, far less registering their fullness, mentally stripping her of her bra. The thought felt almost like a betrayal and he glared at her with unvoiced accusation that she had somehow managed to lead his mind astray.

‘Why did you call him a miserable bastard?’

‘You won’t be able to revive the company, you know,’ he said conversationally, standing up and prowling through the office, casually inspecting the array of legal books carefully arranged in shelves along one wall, then moving behind the desk to the picture window and idly gazing through it. ‘You haven’t the experience or the funds. My offer is wildly generous, as Abe would have been the first to admit.’ He turned around to look at her, perching against the window ledge. ‘Wait much longer and you’ll end up having to sell anyway, for a song, so it’s in your interests to give it up sooner rather than later. And then you can get back to your jungle, where you belong. It’s a different kind of jungle here. One I don’t imagine you’ll have a taste for.’

‘This is more than just business profit for you, isn’t it?’ Destiny said slowly. ‘You speak as if you hated my uncle. Did you? Why? What was he like?’

‘Use your imagination. What sort of man wills his fortune to someone he’s never met?’

‘I was told that it was because I was his only blood relation. I gather he had no children of his own. He and my father weren’t close, but I was his niece.’ It had been a straightforward enough explanation from Derek, but Callum’s words had given her pause for thought. Abraham Felt, after all, had never met her. He and her father had maintained the most rudimentary of contact over the years. Surely in all that time he should have filled his life with people closer and dearer, to whom his huge legacy would have been more fitting?

‘He left it all to you because Abraham Felt was incapable of sustaining friendships.’

‘He had hundreds of wives, for goodness’s sake!’

‘Four, to be exact.’

‘Well, four, then. He must have shared something with them.’

‘Beds and the occasional conversation, I should imagine. Nothing too tricky, though. He was noted for his contempt for the opposite sex.’

‘How do you know that? No, don’t tell me, you made it your business to find out. I’m surprised you have time to do any work, Mr Ross, since you seem to spend most of it ferreting out information on my uncle and his company.’

For a split second, Callum found himself verbally stumped by her sarcasm. Oh, yes. He had to confess that he was enjoying himself. How on earth the depths of a Panamanian forest had managed to satisfy this woman, he had no idea. She was sharp. He wondered what life on this compound of hers really was like. Having spent his entire life in concrete jungles, he wondered whether a close community in the middle of nowhere might not be a hotbed of conversations stretching into the wee hours of the morning. Not to mention sizzling sex. After all, what else was there to do? For years and years on end? Cut off from civilisation and surrounded by hostile nature?

‘Actually, your dear uncle was always very vocal on most things, including his short-lived romances.’

‘He left some shares to Stephanie Felt, your fiancée,’ Destiny pointed out. ‘What about the rest of his step-children?’

‘There were none.’

She could feel unanswered questions flying around in her head like a swarm of bees. There was something more personal to his desire to gain control of her company. What? And was her stepcousin all part of his plan? A useful arrangement because she brought shares with her? Not enough to enable him to gain downright control of the company if he married her, but enough to ensure that he remained active in whatever was happening within it. Active and, through Stephanie, with a voice.

Or was her bond to the company simply a coincidence? Was he in love with her?

She realised that intrigue was something she had so rarely encountered it was a job grappling with it all now.

‘What is Stephanie like?’ she asked guilelessly.

‘You’ll meet her soon enough. This afternoon, in fact. With the rest of the fools.’

What kind of a non-answer was that? she wondered.

The door was pushed open and Derek’s face popped around it. ‘Had enough time, Mr Ross?’ He didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, he walked in and quietly shut the door behind him.

Not nearly enough, Callum felt like saying, but in fact he was already running late. Stephanie would be at the restaurant in under fifteen minutes. He felt an irrational surge of irritation rise to his throat, but he swallowed it and smiled politely at Derek.

‘We’ll need to continue this conversation after you’ve met your people,’ he addressed Destiny, pushing himself away from the window and almost throwing the little Derek into shadow as he strolled past him towards the door. ‘My offer still stands, but, like I said, don’t leave it too late or you might find that I’m forced to reduce it.’

At which he saluted them both and left, not bothering to shut the door behind him and affording Destiny the sight of Derek’s personal assistant, a woman in her mid-fifties, hurriedly half-rising as Callum swept past her, the expression on her flushed face one of addled confusion.

By the time she arrived at the company, Destiny was feeling addled and confused herself. Over lunch—an intricately arranged fresh tuna salad, the sight of which had nearly made her burst out laughing, so remotely had it resembled anything edible—she had tried to find out a bit more about the much-maligned directors she was to meet. But Derek had not been a source of useful information. His friendship with her uncle stretched back a long way and there was a debt of gratitude to him which ensured his unswerving loyalty. Fighting hard not to be distracted by the comings and goings in the restaurant, she’d discovered that Abraham Felt had helped Derek when he had first struck out, decades previously, on his own. No wonder he was so protective of her and so unofficially antagonistic towards Callum Ross!

Walking into the glass monument to wealth further shredded her nerves.

‘You’ll get used to it,’ Derek murmured staunchly at her side, as they got into the elevator and glided up to the third floor. Destiny doubted it.

‘You wouldn’t say that if you were in my shoes,’ she murmured back, thinking that in my sandals would have been a more appropriate description. Three months previously she and her father had made the nine-hour trek to Panama City and had spent two days shopping for essentials, but somehow London was a great deal more daunting than the country she had learnt to love. However, come hell or high water, she would buy some clothes in the morning. Derek had established a bank account for her and she had arrived in England with more money than she had seen in a lifetime at her immediate disposal. Whether she liked it or not, she would have to get rid of her ethnic garb and conform.

‘You don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to,’ Derek told her, as the elevator doors slid open. ‘Just get a feel for the people, for the company. You already know what the state of their profit and loss column looks like, so to speak, but you can put it all into real perspective once you’ve met the people in charge.’

Four hours later, Destiny thought that that was easier said than done. All the directors had been there, except the one she was most curious to meet, her stepcousin, and their reactions had run the gamut from suspicion, to relief that she had not summarily announced that she would be selling, to wheedling as they brought out their individual reports and regaled her with why she shouldn’t abandon the ship.

They were all men in their late fifties, on the verge of retirement, and she’d inappropriately recalled Callum’s scathing description of them as a pack of old fools when Tim Headley had patted her hand and attempted to excuse four years of misguided management under the heading of ‘going through a bad patch.’

‘I shall go home and read all this,’ she had said wearily, as three o’clock had rolled into four, then five, then six. It had been a further hour and a half before she had finally managed to leave and had been told by a beaming Derek that she had done really well. Buoyed them up. Given them that little injection of hope they needed.

Her head was throbbing when she at last made it back to her house, for which she felt an inordinate rush of fondness as it contained the two things she wanted most. A well-stocked fridge and a bed.

She’d not managed to attack the first when her telephone rang and she heard a breathless, girlish voice down the end of the line.

‘Who is this?’ she demanded, cradling the telephone between shoulder and head as she fumbled to undo the front fastening buttons of her dress.

‘Stephanie. I should have been at the meeting this afternoon, but…somehow my appointments overran…’

Destiny stopped what she was doing and held the telephone properly.

‘Anyway, I thought that perhaps we could meet for supper this evening? You could come to my apartment—actually, I only live about ten minutes’ drive away from you…?’

‘Well…’ The thought of slotting in one more piece of the jigsaw puzzle that had become her life was too enticing to resist. ‘If you tell me where you are…can I walk to you? No?… How do I get a taxi?… Yes, right… Well, give me about forty-five minutes and I’ll be there… Right, yes, that’s fine… Yes, I do know what Chinese food consists of… Okay, fine, bye.’

As she inspected her wardrobe, selecting the least colourful of her dresses, she wondered what her stepcousin would be like. Her gut feeling warned her that a disaster lay ahead. Callum Ross was made of steel and any fiancée of his would more than likely be made of similar stuff. She was fast developing a healthy streak of cynicism in this bewildering world where scheming seemed to be part of an acceptable game and exploitation was part and parcel of the same game. The healthy streak of cynicism was now telling her that Stephanie Felt had probably been primed by her lover to use every trick in the book to get what she wanted. Her healthy streak of cynicism was going one step further and warning her that the other woman had probably avoided the meeting on purpose, simply so that their first meeting could be on her own territory. Alone. Destiny stared back dejectedly at her reflection in the bathroom mirror and discovered that, despite her lifelong predilection for all things logical and scientific, her imagination was scrabbling frantically now to make up for lost time.

She left the townhouse nervous, but grimly resolved to face down yet one more enemy. The taxi carried her out of Knightsbridge and into the heart of Chelsea, and then stopped in front of a Victorian house, one in a row of many, all of which were as impeccably maintained as the one she had just left.

She sighed involuntarily as she rang the doorbell. Her nervous system couldn’t take much more. She longed with a physical ache for the simplicity of her compound, with its heat and wild beauty and unthreatening routines.

From Callum Ross to Stephanie Felt in the space of a few short hours. She wondered what else could hit her. There must be some evil, as yet undisclosed relation somewhere in the background, clutching a potion, a broomstick and a book of spells.

The woman who answered the door almost made her gasp in surprise.

‘Hiya.’ More of a girl than a woman, just out of her teens from the look of it, with wavy brown hair and huge blue eyes. Even in her heels, she was still small. Small and slender, her heartshaped face smoothly unlined by time.

‘Have I come to the right house?’ Destiny blustered, trying to peer at the plaque on the door to see whether she had made a mistake with the numbers. ‘I’m looking for Stephanie Felt.’

‘That’s me.’ When she smiled, her face dimpled and she stood back to let Destiny walk past. ‘I’ve been dying to meet you, you know. A stepcousin! I never even knew you existed until Callum told me! Can you believe it? Abraham never mentioned his family, not even to Mum!’ Her voice was light and excited as she led the way to the sitting room. ‘You’ll have to tell me all about where you lived. I’ve never been to your part of the world—never. Can you believe it? Callum says it’s really primitive where you come from. Gosh!’ She turned around and looked at Destiny with glowing curiosity and awe. ‘This must all seem very strange to you! I love your dress, by the way. Neat. All those swirly colours. Is that what the people over there wear? Is it, like, their native costume, so to speak?’

‘No, not really.’ Destiny smiled. For the first time since she had set foot on English shores, she felt unthreatened and relaxed. ‘Most of the women in the Indian tribes I come into contact with walk around bare-breasted…’

‘Which would never do,’ came a familiar drawling voice, ‘so I should practise that mode of dress only in the privacy of your own house.’

Sure enough, Callum was sprawled in a chair strategically positioned so that Destiny was afforded a full-frontal of the man at leisure. It was the first time she had seen him without the formality of a suit and she was taken aback to realise that he looked younger. Younger yet no less off-putting. His cream trousers made his legs seem longer and the short-sleeved shirt with the top two buttons undone revealed masculine forearms and a sneak preview of dark hair shadowing his chest.

Her mouth felt disconcertingly dry and she almost shrieked her, ‘Yes, please!’ when Stephanie offered her something to drink. ‘Beer, please.’

‘Beer?’ they both echoed in unison, with varying degrees of surprise on their faces.

‘Perhaps not.’ She faltered and looked to her stepcousin for support.

‘Perhaps some wine?’ Stephanie suggested, grinning. ‘It’s nice and cold.’

‘Yes, thank you, that sounds fine.’ She breathed a sigh of relief and sat down in the chair facing Callum, more because of its relative proximity than for any other reason, although the badly chosen seating arrangement now guaranteed an uninterrupted vision of him.

‘You were talking about your national costume—or, rather, the lack of it,’ he said, crossing his extended legs at the ankles and linking his fingers together on his lap.

‘What are you doing here?’ Destiny surprised herself by asking. This man, like it or not, made her say things and behave in ways that were alien to her. And her skin felt hot and itchy under the intensity of his blue eyes. Was that possible? Could someone make someone else feel hot and itchy just by looking at them? It had certainly never happened to her before.

His eyebrows shot up in exaggerated astonishment at her question. ‘Stephanie’s my fiancée. Naturally I wanted to be by her side when she met her stepcousin for the first time. She’s a very gentle soul.’ He lowered his eyes when he said this but there was a tell-tale smile tugging the corners of his mouth. ‘I didn’t want you to terrify her.’

‘Me? Terrify her?’ Her protesting voice was more of a furious splutter.

‘With your aggression.’

‘My aggression? How can you talk about my aggression?’

She reduced the volume of her voice at the sound of approaching footsteps, but the rankled feeling managed to stay with her for the remainder of the evening. Even more infuriating was the fact that her fulminating looks did very little more than provide him with a source of barely contained amusement.

Only Stephanie’s cheerful banter, as she dragged out details of Panama from her guest, besieging her with interested questions, squealing with delight when Destiny talked about the children she taught and gasping with little cries of horror at her stories of the jungle and what it contained, saved the evening. Destiny wondered if her stepcousin knew that she would be marrying someone who made the most ferocious jungle animal pale in comparison.

They had spoken not one word of business by the time eleven-thirty rolled around and she stood to leave, feeling woozy from the wine, to which she was in no way accustomed, and exhausted by her jet lag.

‘So, what did you make of the buffoons at the company?’ Callum asked, standing up as well and shoving his hands into his pockets. ‘I suppose they pulled out all the stops? Made you pore over cobwebbed reports of how great and good the firm used to be years ago? Played down what a shambles it’s in now?’ Despite consuming what had seemed, to Destiny, prodigious amounts of wine during the evening, the man still looked bright-eyed, alert and rearing to attack.

She threw him a wilted looked and stifled a yawn.

‘Mmm. That interesting, was it?’ A wicked glint of humour shone in his eyes.

‘I wasn’t trying to make a comment on what the meeting was like,’ Destiny said with lukewarm protest in her voice. ‘I’m tired.’

‘Leave her alone, Callum,’ Stephanie said sympathetically.

‘Business has to be discussed, Steph.’

‘Why now? It’s so boring.’

‘Boring for you perhaps, but you want to remember that your finances are tied up with what happens next in this little exciting scenario. I buy the company, play with it a bit until it’s running along smoothly, and your shares go up. Our Panamanian heiress keeps the company and—’

‘Do you mind not talking as if I wasn’t here?’

‘Have you ever been to London before, Destiny?’ Stephanie linked her arm through her stepcousin’s and ushered her to the front door, pointedly turning her back on her fiancée.

‘No. It’s all new and—’ she glanced over her shoulder and her eyes clashed with Callum’s ‘—a little scary.’

‘It would be. You’re just so brave to come all this way, on your own. I’d never dream of doing it!’

‘No.’ Callum’s voice behind them was silky. ‘It takes a certain type of woman to do that. Some might call it brave, darling; others might just call it—well, let’s just say that it’s a very masculine response.’

At which Stephanie flew around to face him with her hands on her hips and a simmering look in her baby-blue eyes. ‘Don’t be horrible!’

‘Me?’ He raised both his hands in innocent denial, but the blue eyes that locked with Destiny’s were unrepentant. ‘Horrible? It was meant to be a compliment! A glorious example of how far the women’s movement has got!’

‘What women’s movement?’ Destiny asked, her body language echoing Stephanie’s. ‘I’ve never been a part of any movement in my life before!’

‘No?’ He tried to stifle a grin and failed miserably. ‘Well, let’s just say that feminism has missed out there.’

‘Meaning what?’

‘Meaning that I’ll give you a lift back to your place.’ He bent over to give Stephanie a gentlemanly peck on the cheek and a pat on the back. ‘That all right with you, darling?’

‘Don’t badger her, Callum.’

‘I wish people wouldn’t constantly stereotype me.’ He pulled open the front door and gave Destiny an exaggeratedly wide berth to exit ahead of him into a clear night that was considerably more bracing than it had been earlier on in the evening.

‘What about tomorrow?’ Stephanie asked him, standing in the doorway to see them off, an angelic, diminutive shape that made Destiny feel like an Amazonian hulk in comparison. ‘The Holts have invited us to supper. Did you remember? Daisy and Clarence are going to be there as well. Oh, and Rupert.’

Callum paused and frowned, appearing to give the matter weighty thought, then he said with a shrug,

‘Meeting. Sorry, darling. You go, though. Don’t stay in because of me.’

‘You’re always at meetings,’ Stephanie said in a childish, sulky voice. ‘He’s always at meetings,’ she addressed Destiny in an appeal to sisterhood, which Destiny took up with sadistic relish.

‘If he loved you, he’d cancel, I’m sure.’

‘If you loved me, you’d cancel.’

There was a brief silence. ‘I’ll do my best.’ He sighed and Stephanie’s face radiated at this unexpected victory.

‘Oh, goody!’ She blew them both a delighted kiss and shut the front door on them.




CHAPTER THREE


‘THANK you. Thank you very much,’ he grated sarcastically, as the engine of his powerful car purred into life. He pulled away from the kerb unnecessarily fast and Destiny clutched the car door handle to steady herself.

In the shadows of the car, his averted profile was hard and unsmiling and she had to stifle a desire to burst out laughing. Suddenly, sleep was no longer beckoning at her door. In fact, she felt surprisingly revived, and wondered whether her body might not just have been craving some fresh air.

Not that the London air was particularly fresh. Back in Panama, when she breathed in, she could smell everything. The musky aroma of hot, hard-packed dirt, the rich fullness of the trees and the bushes, the distant freshness of the snake-like river coiling its way lazily into the heart of the jungle. At certain times during the day she could smell the fragrance of food being cooked. Sometimes, when she closed her eyes, she could almost seem to detect the smells of the sky and the clouds and the stillness.

Here, she felt stuffy. Pollution, of course. Not as severe as she had seen in Mexico years ago, where the pollution bordered on contamination, but there nevertheless, unseen but ever-present.

‘Thank you for what?’ she asked innocently, playing him at his own game, and his mouth turned down darkly at the corners.

‘You know what for,’ he accused, looking away briefly from the empty road to glare at her. ‘I’d hoped Stephanie had forgotten all about that damned dinner party. Now I’m going to have to go and spend at least three agonising hours being bored to death by Rupert and his cronies.’

‘Oh, dear,’ she said unsympathetically, which provoked another blistering look.

‘Where,’ he asked, ‘did you get that?’

‘Get what?’ Her voice was genuinely surprised.

‘Your sarcasm. I always thought that missionaries were supposed to be glucose-sweet.’

Destiny bristled. ‘I am not a missionary, actually. If you’d done your homework properly, you might have discovered why we’re on a compound in the heart of Panama, and it has nothing to do with converting anyone to any kind of religion. We’re there to help educate people in desperate need of education, and I’m not really talking about reading, writing and arithmetic.’

‘What, then?’ He could feel himself reluctantly being drawn in, like a fish on the end of a line, curious to find out details of the background that had produced the creature sitting next to him. It felt peculiar to find himself hanging on to a woman’s conversation when normally he was the one playing the conversational game, digging into his reserves of wit and charm without even realising it. He wasn’t sure whether he liked it or not. He felt himself relax his foot on the accelerator so that the car meandered along.

‘We teach them how to use the land they have to maximise their crops—how to be self-sufficient, in other words. We help them with distributing crafts. Some of them make things for the tourist market in the city. And naturally we teach them the usual stuff.’

‘We?’

‘Yes. All of us. We work together. I’m a qualified doctor, but I’m also responsible for the formal classes. Of course, we have specialists on the compound as well. Not just the children need education; so do the adults. How to use their resources to their best advantage, how to rotate certain crops so that the land is never unused. How to take advantage of the rains when they come. Our agricultural expert is responsible for that side of things, but we all chip in.’

‘Like one big happy family.’

Destiny narrowed her eyes on him, but she couldn’t read his expression and his voice was mild.

‘Something like that.’

‘Cosy.’

‘Yes, it is. Why are you driving so slowly? I want to get back.’

Callum pressed his foot marginally harder on the accelerator and muttered something inconsequential about speed limits, fines and points on a driving licence.

‘What points?’

‘Never mind. It doesn’t matter.’ He felt his jaw begin to ache and realised that he was clenching his teeth. ‘So what do you do on those long, balmy evenings, anyway? On your compound?’

‘Long, balmy evenings? It’s not a seaside resort.’

‘No, of course not.’ Clenching again. He relaxed his jaw muscles and realised, with a twinge of disappointment, that her house was now within view. The guard barely glanced at them. He just waved them through and he pulled up very slowly in front of her house.

‘Thank you very much,’ Destiny said, fiddling with the seat belt and finally releasing it. ‘It was lovely to meet Stephanie. I’m sorry if you think that it’s my fault that you’re going to have dinner with some boring friends tomorr—’

‘Oh, forget it.’ He waved aside her apologies irritably and watched as she walked up to the front door. For a tall girl, she was surprisingly agile, graceful even. She’d never answered his question about what she spent her evenings doing, he realised. He waited, watching as various lights were turned on and switched off, tracing her progress through the house, even though he couldn’t see a thing because the curtains were all drawn. When the place was in darkness, he impulsively got out of his car, sprinted up to the front door and insistently buzzed the bell, keeping his finger on the button until he heard the sounds of shuffling behind the door.




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