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In any case, her chin jutted mutinously, he could fire her—that was his prerogative—but he couldn't stop her going out and finding another job!
He had waited for her to protest, to comment. That much was evident from the arching of one black brow. But Cleo couldn't trust herself to speak, not just yet. And then, as if he could feel her bewilderment, her quick instinctive mutiny, his eyes softened, understanding making them warm as he watched her go back to her chair with the stiff movements of a tautly held body.
'I shall miss you,' he told her quietly. 'Miss your quick mind, your unfailing tact, the flick of dry humour you produce when you want to put me in my place.'
So he had noticed that! And all the time she had imagined she was quietly and unobtrusively manipulating him into making slightly less than impossible demands on himself, on the rest of the staff! And if he would miss her, why then should he fire her? It didn't make sense!
'There are two reasons why I want you to make a move,' he answered the question posed by the puzzled grey eyes. 'In the first place, I don't think it's a particularly good idea for a husband and wife to work so closely together.
And secondly, in view of the board's interest in the possibility of a takeover, you'd be far more useful at Slade Securities.'
She hadn't thought of that, but now her mind reluctantly began to follow his.
'Are they in trouble?' Grace had said that her husband had been fretting about the business. Cleo had put that down to his general ill health, but obviously there was more to it than that. And Mescal Slade had started to take a serious interest. Shaky finance houses did well to keep looking over their shoulders, because there were always rock-solid merchant bankers only too ready to swallow them up.
'Some,' Jude replied evenly, shifting, stretching out long, immaculately clad legs, the dark fabric pulled taut across his thighs. 'Since John had to retire, Luke's been overreaching himself. It's a high-risk-capital game, as we know, but recently he's been risking too much— especially in the entrepreneurial section; high flyers with no real and solid grounds for success. The City is getting to know it by now, but if I could persuade the board to back off, forget we ever contemplated a takeover bid, then the other big fishes would have to rethink. If they find out, which I shall make sure they do, that Mescal Slade's interest in Slade Securities has cooled, then they're going to hold off while they sniff the air. You understand?'
She did. She understood, but could do nothing about the game of financial chess Jude was outlining. He had seen her offer of her block of Slade Securities shares as a means of taking personal control of the finance house Mescal Slade were interested in controlling. With her at the helm of the company, no doubt with strong guidance from him, he could become the major shareholder in a newly prosperous concern. Little wonder he'd decided to take up her offer of marriage after she'd told him she'd give him those shares!
'And if you are there,' he leaned forward in his chair, his eyes holding hers intently, 'with your brain, your grasp of what makes the City tick, your financial common sense, then you should have enough time to get Slade Securities back into a position of strength before anyone realises what is happening. Interested?'
'You don't need to ask that,' Cleo replied, her throat tightening. If it were within her power to rescue Slade Securities then she had no choice but to do her damnedest. And that would be what Jude was counting on. The shares she had brought to this marriage would be worth so much more if the company was sound. He was manipulating her, making sure the assets she had brought with her were worth as much as possible. It hurt, like nothing else had hurt before, because in spite of her earlier optimism about the state of their marriage he was no nearer loving her than he had ever been. He was using her. In bed or out of it, he was simply using her.
'When you told me you were firing me I thought it was because you were the type of man who meant to keep his wife at home, looking after the children.' No way was she going to let him know the way she really felt—betrayed, used, as far as ever from having his love. Her role was to be the amenable, totally sensible wife, pulling with him, never against him, never letting him know by word or action how desperately she craved the commitment of his love.
'But I do.' His soft answer left her gasping, but he amended, 'But not quite in the way you imagine. When the children do arrive we'll turn a room here into an office for you, install a computer link-up with Slade's head office, and you can do most of your work from home. No problem. You'll have a nanny, of course, but we'll both make time to be with the children—that's where the house in
the country will come in. A place for holidays, weekends, that sort of thing. Fair?'
She nodded, unable to meet his eyes in case he saw the pain there and wondered... Oh, he was being fair, doing everything possible to make their life together a success, and if she didn't love him she might feel the marriage was perfect. But she did love him, more than life, and his calculated manipulation of their future, of the assets she'd brought to this marriage, made her feel cold, cold and lonely.
But she nodded, 'Very fair,' and finished her drink. 'I hope Uncle John and Luke approve our intentions,' she added drily, flinching when he told her,
'I've already consulted them.' She had been living in a fool's paradise, the last person to know of his intentions. His brain must have been working overtime ever since she'd mentioned those shares in conjunction with her proposal of marriage.
She hardly heard him when he elaborated, 'Your uncle's firmly behind the idea of your joining Slade. So is Luke—but only, I must warn you, because he can't see any way out of the near shambles he's created.'
'Then there seems nothing further to say,' she told him, surprising herself by the equable tone she achieved, and he countered,
'I've often wondered—why didn't you join Slade when you got your degree?'
'Luke.' She shrugged minimally, containing her misery. 'I couldn't stomach the idea of him treating me like a backward junior clerk. Apart from being pompous, he's the type who thinks that being male automatically makes him superior in every degree to a mere female.' And I've discovered that he hates me, which will make working with him almost intolerable, she thought. But Jude wasn't ever going to hear about that, so she added, 'Not to worry, you now own as many shares as he and his father between them, and that, if nothing else, makes me his equal.'
And to her astonishment Jude grinned lazily, stretching, cat-like, in his chair. 'You have a finer mind by far, determination and guts, not to mention all that exquisite packaging. The poor guy's going to have to resign himself to taking a very inferior back seat indeed!'
Almost, she felt flattered. But he was simply seeing her as a brain, a means of pulling Slade Securities—in which, of course, he had a vested interest—together again. He wasn't seeing her as a wife, a woman to be loved.
'I think I'll go up, I'm very tired,' she excused herself, hoping to get out of there before her misery began to show through, and she had reached the door before his voice stopped her, and she turned to see him leave his chair, come over to her.
'You don't mind? It might not seem so from where you're standing, but I don't want to push you into doing something you don't want to do.' The character lines on either side of his mouth indented wryly and he touched the side of her face with a slowly moving finger, his eyes sober. She almost flinched away from his touch because the meaning behind it was shallow.
She craved the depths of emotion, not the shallows. But she smiled, shaking her head.
'Of course I don't mind. It's the sensible thing to do.' And she watched his face change, assume the blank poker player's mask again.
That mask always worked well in his business dealings, and had always amused her because she knew how the mind behind the mask was working.
But now, when he said, 'And you always do the sensible thing. Quite right, Cleo,' she didn't know whether to take it as a compliment or not. It was one thing to understand how his mind worked in his dealings in the City, quite another to understand his motives, his feelings, in the arena of their marriage.
