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And there he was, sitting so proudly behind his desk, in control as always.
“You bastard! You worthless piece of swine. Clive Darcy you are the devil’s henchman!” She charged in his direction.
He might have been amused if there weren’t three men sitting with him discussing important matters with sensitive international repercussions.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Ryan, I don’t have time for you now,” he said.
“Oh, but you will take time for me, Clive,” she countered directly.
His voice got deeper, the sound of it memorably terse. “You’ll have to wait.”
“No, I will not wait,” she refused to budge, “and if they” she referred to the three stunned men in suits – “are not out of here in fifteen seconds they can hear what I have to say too.”
Darcy turned to his visitors. “If you’ll excuse me, gentlemen,” he said without missing a beat, “I think I need to take care of this right now. I’ll have Miss Jenner show you into the conference room. She’ll have some coffee and snacks available.” With an open arm, he showed them to the main office door and nodded to his secretary. The pretty blonde was shiveri
ng in fright, still recovering from the last two minutes.
“I’m sorry, sir,” she rushed on, obviously in fear of the man. “I didn’t know—”
“Please, Elaine, just show these gentlemen into the conference room,” he said kindly. “A few refreshments, if you will?”
“Yes, sir.”
With that handled, he turned back, closed his door and gazed into Shelby Ryan’s steaming eyes.
“I see you’re back safe and sound, but I can’t see that it gives you the right to barge in here unannounced.”
“Don’t talk about ‘rights’ to me, Clive. You had no right to send me on that trip. No right. None.”
“I’m sorry if it came down the way it did. But I couldn’t afford to tell you in advance.”
“You couldn’t afford to tell me! What kind of BS is that? You couldn’t tell me that you planned to have me arrested? Interrogate and shipped off to become the target of a ruthless sadist? You put my life at risk. I can’t believe you’d stoop this low.” Her eyes flared again. “You are the most detestable being on the planet.”
“Am I really?” he laughed, and sat back down behind his desk.
“I could have been killed!” She leaned over the desk, her attempts to remain cool having failed miserably.
“You’re being far too dramatic, Shelby. They wouldn’t have killed you. Your life was never at risk.” He was calm, as clipped in his tone as she expected him to be, and maybe just a little bit ruffled by what he saw before him. “Besides, we had you tracked every hour.”
“Oh, yes, the chip you planted in my shoulder. As if that would have kept me alive when Col. Jessup and his thugs started beating me. They were men without souls, they didn’t care whether I lived or died. And they certainly would have killed me if they believed for a second that I was planted in their operation to bust up their slave ring. Don’t tell me I was safe, Clive. You were not there.”
“Sorry. I still can’t see why you’re so steamed,” he dismissively rattled off, “you completed your mission; the nasty slave ring has been destroyed. My team in the area has been trying to shut them down for years. And you, you, Shelby Ryan managed to infiltrate their system and tear it up by the roots. You should be proud of what your little incarceration won for the free world.”
“Proud? Oh, damn you!” She fought back the tears. “You had me systematically tortured, fearing for my life, and I should be proud of enduring that?”
He sat back, a little bewildered. “Oh, c’mon now. You’re telling me that you didn’t even wager a guess as to what was happening? All that time, not a guess at all?”
She looked at him stunned. “No, Clive, I didn’t wager a guess,” she was as much bewildered as she was angry now. “I couldn’t fathom that you would do this to me. It might have crossed my mind, the disk and all that stuff about it, but it was all so vague. No, not until that chopper lifted me away from the brothel and my rescuer was telling me that I’d ‘done my part,’ did it cross my mind that you would place me in harm’s way, having no idea how your treacherous game would play out.” Weakened by the emotion, she stepped back, shaking her head, befuddled as ever, “There was no way you could control the outcome. What’s just as bad is thinking you had the right to use me without my consent.”
“You are more naïve than I figured, Shelby. You actually think that you were in control of your life, that I wouldn’t use you as I used you before? That you weren’t just one easy trip away from the big one? I’m finding that hard to believe.”
“I’ve always been naïve, Clive. What I wanted when I left you was a normal life. That’s all I wanted and you knew that.”
“So why didn’t you make a clean break? Why did you go to Greystoke month after month; why did you keep being my mule, letting me send you to foreign cities with those little packages?”
“You know why I went to Greystoke. And you know that I wanted nothing to do with his kind of sex games once it was over.”
“But still you couldn’t stop yourself. All those trips abroad…”
