Mistess of the Groom Page 4

  She ignored him, trying to hide her growing panic as she fumbled for the door handle with her uninjured hand. The letter she had received the previous day had literally been the last straw. She had figured that she had nothing left to lose from one last, futile act of defiance.

  Big mistake.

  Ryan Blair evidently thought otherwise.

  To date their battle had been conducted publicly, their poisonous exchanges filtered through clients, employees, lawyers, banks, formal letters, contracts and writs. Personal contact had been minimal. But, having won their public war, it seemed he was now preparing to transfer the battleground to the private arena, where Jane was frighteningly vulnerable.

  'I understand the poor man has been having a bit of trouble with council inspectors...something about fire regulations, I believe?' he said, catching her by the left hand as she finally got the heavy door open and at­tempted to slide past him to the dubious freedom of her new and soon to be former neighbourhood. Jane almost screamed at the pressure of his iron fingers, vaguely aware of the chauffeur standing by the open door, a wit­ness to Ryan's oozing sympathy.

  'That's something they're very strict about, so I sup­pose your landlord has told you he won't be able to give you the usual two weeks' grace to find somewhere else to live. You don't seem to be very lucky in your search for permanent accommodation since the bank sold up the old man's pride, do you? Most places you enquire about you miss out on and those you do manage to get... Well, this is-what?-the third time in just over a month that you've had to move due to unforeseen circum­stances arising with landlords or flat mates-'

  Jane's head whipped round, her hair swirling like a black storm around her pale face. The fact that the coun­cil inspections had been conducted on a secret tip-off and that her flat was the only one that couldn't be oc­cupied while being brought up to 'complying standard' had clearly borne the mark of Ryan Blair's influence. But all those other times, when she had presumed she'd been simply unlucky...

  Damn him!

  'Are you beginning to feel you might be jinxed, Jane?' he enquired silkily. 'That maybe you're on a slip­pery downward slope to nowhere?' He raised her throb­bing hand to within a hair's breadth of his mouth in a parody of polite salute. 'It's a long, dark, dirty, danger­ous way... but perhaps someone'll catch you before you hit rock bottom. Who knows? If I'm feeling generous, it could even be me...'

  Jane twisted her hand away and stumbled out of the car on unsteady heels, his dark laughter following her into the ill-lit street.

  'Goodnight. Sweet dreams.'

  Her dreams that night were anything but sweet. It took her ages to undress, and by the time she was ready for bed her hand was hurting so much that she had to take the last two aspirins in her medicine cabinet.

  They didn't seem to help much and she tossed and turned for hours on the hard sofa-bed that had come with the partly furnished apartment, worried about the stack of bills that she could only afford to pay if she used the bond her landlord was obliged by law to return. But that would mean she wouldn't have the money to offer as bond on another flat. Even in shared accommodation one was expected to pay a lump sum up front

  Worse, her small reserve of cash was dwindling alarmingly fast, and the company was continuing to ac­cumulate debts against her name even though it was no longer operating. Since she was directly responsible for all monies owed by Sherwood Properties, and lawyers' and accountants' fees had already eaten a huge hole in the surplus from the sale of the house and unhindered personal assets, the threat of bankruptcy loomed ever closer. Without a car it was going to take longer to get around the sprawling city, hampering her search for a job, but at least she would no longer have to contemplate skipping meals to pay for petrol!

  When she finally fell into a troubled sleep Jane was tormented by lurid monsters who gnawed at her fingers, and when she woke in the morning she was horrified to find that her left hand had swollen like an overripe piece of fruit The blade of her hand was blue and pulpy, her skin feeling as if it was stretched to bursting point and the fingers almost impossible to straighten. Moving care­fully, she showered and searched her wardrobe for a dress that didn't have a back fastening.

  Unfortunately there wasn't a lot of choice. Her former lifestyle had dictated very few casual clothes, and most of her custom-designed business suits and high-fashion dresses had been forfeited, along with her jewellery and extensive collection of shoes, when the bank's valuers had swept through the Sherwood residence, spiriting off everything that was considered saleable. What was left would have fitted into two suitcases--except the matching leather luggage had gone too, and Jane had been forced to leave the house with her remaining possessions packed into plastic supermarket bags.

  The black dress had fortunately been out for cleaning at the time and the valuers had been so ruthless in the execution of their duty that when Jane had later found the dry-cleaning receipt in her purse she had had no qualms about claiming it for herself. She looked on it as a symbol of hope, a small victory over the forces of darkness: a reminder that, even when the odds were stacked wildly against you, you could sometimes still win.

  The black dress now hung shoulder to shoulder with off-the-peg skirts and blouses and the subdued dresses that the all-male valuers had considered 'of insufficient interest' to turn the quick profit the mortgagee was de­manding. At least she had got to keep all her underwear, despite the famous French and Italian labels, but they had only left her three pairs of shoes, all of them flats.

  Jane struggled into a simple shirt-waister with large buttons that were easy to do up one-handed and didn't even bother trying to put up her hair.

  Ever since she had moved in two weeks ago she had walked three blocks to a tiny pavement cafe where, for the price of a cup of breakfast tea, she could read the morning newspaper and copy out all the likely prospects from the Situations Vacant columns. Then she would return to the flat and write her application letters before starting the rounds of interviews and enquiries at the various employment bureaus. But today there didn't seem to be much point. With her hand the way it was she wouldn't present the image of flawless competence that she had glowingly described in her CV.

  In an effort to relieve the swelling Jane tried bathing her hand in water chilled with ice-chunks chipped off the sides of the tiny freezer compartment of her fridge, but although the pain was numbed for a while it only seemed to get worse when the cold wore off, and by mid-morning she knew she was going to have to see a doctor.

  When she returned the borrowed black high-heels to the girl who lived in the even pokier flat next door, Collette-she had admitted it wasn't her real name but 'guys think it's sexy'-offered some gratuitous advice.

  She shook her bleached head at the sight of the man­gled hand, her crystal earrings clacking with outrage. 'God, did that guy you were meeting last night do that? One of those, eh? Been there, done that, honey. Take my advice-dump him! And ignore any sob stuff-bas­tards like that never change...a few drinks and pow! They thump you and make you think it's your fault.'

  Jane smiled weakly. For all his ferocious temper Ryan Blair wasn't a physically violent man. He was an expert at more sophisticated forms of intimidation ... like kiss­ing!

  'You should have used the shoes,' Collette advised. 'We don't wear them just 'cos they make our legs look miles long, you know. A stiletto in the groin can give a man a whole new perspective on life, know what I mean?'

  Jane nodded hastily, suspecting that the 'we' to whom Collette referred was a loose street-sisterhood engaged in a profession much more venerable than her own.

  Having cheerfully targeted a few more choice portions of the male anatomy where application of a stiletto could produce instant indifference to the idea of violence and or sex, Collette gave Jane the address of the nearest emergency medical clinic. On the back of a dog-eared medical centre card, prominently promoting its SID clinic, she wrote down the numbers of the buses that Jane would have to catch there and back.

&
nbsp; It was the first time Jane had been on a bus since her schooldays, but she was in too much pain to appreciate the novelty. The clinic's crowded waiting room was also a first for her, and after a long, enervating wait Jane was relieved to be ushered into a bare office where a de­pressingly bouncy young doctor examined her and di­agnosed a broken bone before sending her off to the X-Ray department 'just to make sure I'm right' .

  'What does the other guy look like?' he chirped forty­-five minutes later, when Jane had come back with the X-Ray and he had clipped it to the light box to show her the thin, pale line unevenly bisecting one of the five long bones of her hand.

  A fleeting vision of a dark, handsome face, inky hair and piercing blue eyes made her heart give a nervous skip. Thank goodness the doctor wasn't taking her pulse. 'I beg your pardon?'

  'See this?' He tapped the image. 'You've broken the fifth metacarpal bone-the one that joins your wrist to your little finger-broken it right in the middle. Well, as far as I know there's only one way to break this particu­lar bone like that-with a blow. Ergo, you hit someone or something with real enthusiasm!'

  'Someone,' admitted Jane, looking at the skeleton of her hand and wondering how such a tiny fracture could cause so much pain.

  'Any other injuries?'

  'No-I think I just split his lip. He roared like a wounded bull so I don't think his jaw was broken or anything...’

  'I mean to you,' the doctor said wryly. 'Was it your husband? What did he do?'

  'Oh.' Jane flushed at his assumption. 'No, nothing like that...I mean, we hardly know each other. We're just...'

  The doctor's grey eyes suddenly sparked with recog­nition. 'Just good friends? Hang on a minute.' He spun aside and walked over to pull a broadsheet newspaper out of the waste-paper basket beside his desk-a national daily. He leafed through the crumpled sections until he found the one he was looking for and smoothed it out.

  'I thought I recognised you when you walked in.' There were two long photographs side-by-side---one a slightly blurred shot, obviously taken the moment after impact, showing Jane's left arm at full extension and Ryan Blair, head snapped back, arms flung out, toppling across the restaurant table; the other, horribly crisp and clear, was a close-up of their seemingly steamy kiss in the street.

  Some wag of a sub-editor had headlined the pictures:

  SHE'S A KNOCKOUT!

  And the story underneath was wittily couched as a boxing match ... 'Weighing-in', 'seconds out', 'round one', 'the final bell’…

  Thank God the reporter obviously hadn't bothered to go very far back in the files, for it was very much a 'once-over lightly' piece, dealing only with the tail-end of the Sherwood Blair feud and too full of deliberate boxing puns to be taken seriously.

  As Ryan Blair had predicted there was much sly speculation about business turning into pleasure, but there was no mention of Jane being the veiled woman who had aborted his wedding-probably thanks to the Brandons, whose damage control at the time had consisted of smothering the intriguing, 'disappearing mistress in the hat' story with urgent bulletins on the life-threatening viral infection which had caused Ava's untimely collapse and subsequent withdrawal from so­ciety for a lengthy period of convalescence.

  Looking at the picture of herself wrapped in Ryan Blair's bear-like embrace, her neck arched by the ap­parent passion of his kiss, her half-open eyes suggesting a dreamy bliss, Jane felt an unwelcome frisson of ex­citement.

  'Right, well ... let's fix that up, shall we ... ?' The doc­tor became all efficiency again, directing her to sit on the edge of the examination table, drawing a wheeled trolley up beside him.

  'Do I have to have it in plaster?' she asked, her heart sinking at the prospect.

  'Nope. Not this baby.' He delicately lifted her hand. 'It's a fairly straightforward break so I'm just going to strap it to your ring finger to pull the bone straight while it heals.'

  'Just strap it up?' It sounded too easy. 'For how long?'

  'Probably three weeks.' He touched her little finger and she winced. 'Have you taken anything for the pain?'

  'Only a couple of aspirin last night...it was all I had in the flat.'

  His eyebrows rose. 'You'll definitely need something stronger than that by the time I've finished with you. You're going to have an uncomfortable few days until the local inflammation eases and the healing process starts. I'll give you an injection of local anaesthetic now and a prescription for painkillers that you can have filled at the clinic pharmacy. They're fairly strong, so don't mix them with anything else.'

  The anaesthetic was fast-acting, and Jane could watch in detachment as he tucked cotton wool between her little and ring fingers and firmly strapped them together, covering the adhesive with a short crepe bandage that encompassed her hand, leaving her thumb and other two

  fingers free. .

  'That'll protect the strapping and remind you and everyone else that you have an injury. Try to keep it dry and use the hand as little as possible. Don't drive or do anything that puts a strain on the blade of your hand, ­the more you promote movement in the area the longer the bone'll take to heal. And if the pain gets worse, or you're worried for any reason, come back.'

  Jane frowned. Her father had been a stoic, but she was a weakling when it came to physical suffering. Perhaps it was something she had inherited from her mother, who had walked out on her husband and child when Jane was only six because-according to Mark Sherwood-'She didn't have the guts to make a go of it. Typical woman-would rather snivel and run away than stand up for herself when the going gets tough.'

  'Why should the pain get worse?' she asked the doctor warily.

  'The most likely reason is because the strapping is too tight. But, sometimes, if there are complications and the bone doesn't heal properly, we might have to ask an orthopaedic surgeon to operate. But it's highly improb­able in your case-unless you intend to try for another knockout!'

  Jane ignored this tactless attempt at a joke and studied her hand with its bulky wrapping. 'Three weeks...' she said gloomily.

  'Look on the bright side-at least it's your left hand,’ he said.

  Jane looked up at him. 'I'm left-handed.'

  'Oh. Bad luck. What kind of work do you do?'

  'At the moment, none at all.'

  He quickly recovered his irritating bounce. 'Good. That's good! It means you can rest that hand-'

  'It means I can starve,' she corrected him. 'If I don't find a job soon I won't be able to pay for food and rent, let alone medical bills.'

  He put his hands up. 'Hey, don't shoot-this is covered by Accident Compensation; you'll hardly have anything to pay. What kind of job are you looking for? What sort of qualifications do you have?'

  If Jane hadn't been tired, hungry and scraped raw by the previous night's encounter she might have been amused at being patronised by an earnest young man no older than herself who was probably scarcely out of medical school.

  'Managerial,' she said tersely. 'But the sort of posi­tions I'm interested in seem few and far between these days.'

  Especially with Ryan Blair handing her the modem equivalent of the Black Spot-a red-flagged credit ­rating.

  'So I've lowered my sights and lined up a few inter­views for office jobs, sales, temping ... the kind of thing that requires a certain manual dexterity, or at least an ability to write .. .'

  'You can still use a keyboard-'

  'Not very efficiently.' She shrugged. 'If I was doing the hiring I probably wouldn't give me a job. You don't take on someone if there's a chance they'll be applying for sick leave before they even get started!'

  'What about Social Welfare; will they help?'

  She sighed, beginning to think that pride was another luxury she would have to learn to do without. 'I'm in­volved in some heavy-duty financial wrangling ... I'm not eligible for any government assistance until it's straight­ened out.'

  'You're certainly eligible for support payments if your injury prevents you from working,' said the doctor,
scribbling on his pad. 'They'll pay you a percentage of your weekly earnings averaged out over the past year. I'll get the receptionist to give you an application form before you leave .. .'

  Jane muttered an agreement as she accepted the pre­scription he had scrawled out, not wanting to get into a prolonged discussion of her depressing situation. The problem was she hadn't earned any income in the last twelve months. So desperate had been the situation at Sherwood Properties that she had waived her salary and ploughed it back into the business, living off her various platinum credit cards in the expectation of better times ahead.

  Over the next few days Jane saw several opportunities that she had managed to set up slip out of her bandaged grasp, just as she had predicted to the young doctor. She had done everything right - dressing smartly, if incredibly slowly, getting Collette to put her hair into its cus­tomary sleek roll, checking out the buses to make sure she wouldn't be late for the widely dispersed interviews and presenting a pleasant, quietly confident demeanour no matter what the provocation. From her shrewd ob­servations two of the rejections were genuine declines, the other three were because of her identity.

  On the way back to the city bus terminal one lunch­time, aware of an empty afternoon stretching ahead of her, Jane impulsively called into the first employment bureau she had registered with, and the owner-a bluff, straightforward woman whom Jane knew slightly from her former life-was quietly blunt.

  'I'm telling you this, Jane, because I think it's unfair for you to waste any more of your time ... but I'll deny every word I say outside this office. A bureau like mine depends on a lot of repeat business from the big com­panies. If we don't deliver what the clients want and cater to their every whim someone else will get the busi­ness. The truth is, if I place Jane Sherwood in a job right now I risk losing several lucrative contracts, and I'm not prepared to do that. It's probably the same at other agen­cies. There's a lot of influence at work. I'm afraid you're very much on your own...'