The Costarella Conquest Part 9

The taxi pulled up outside Eddie's apartment. Laura pulled herself out of her mental torment enough to thank the driver and step out onto the pavement. A glance at her watch showed almost eleven o'clock. She hoped Eddie was having a Sunday brunch with his friends somewhere because she wasn't up to chatting normally with him, not when her mind kept running on this awful emotional treadmill.

No such luck!

He was seated at his dining table in the living room, a cup of coffee to hand as he perused the newspapers. The moment she let herself into the apartment he looked up to shoot an opening line at her. 'Hi! Had another great night with Dad's golden boy?'

'Yes. A great night.' Even to her own ears it was a hollow echo of Eddie's words. It was impossible to work any happy enthusiasm into her voice.

He looked at her quizzically. 'Tetsuya's up to your expectations?'

'Yes. Absolutely.' That was better, more emphatic.

'Are you sick or something?'

'No.'

He sat back in his chair and gave her his wise look. 'Then why do you look like death warmed up, Laura?'

She sighed, accepting the fact there was very little she could hide from Eddie. He had a very shrewd talent for boring straight through any camouflage she put up. 'I think Jake said goodbye to me this morning and I'm not ready to say goodbye to him,' she said, shrugging in an attempt to minimise her dilemma.

Eddie grimaced and rose from his chair, waving her to the table. 'Come and sit down. I'll get you a cup of coffee. It might perk you up a bit.'

She slumped into a chair, feeling weirdly drained of energy.

'Why do you think he said goodbye?' Eddie asked as he poured coffee from the percolator.

Laura relived the scene in her mind. 'He put me into the taxi at the hotel, touched my cheek and said, "It's been good. Thank you." Usually he shares the taxi with me and tells me where we'll meet next week, but this morning he shut the door on me and waved me off.'

'It's been good,' Eddie repeated, musing over the past tense. He shook his head as he brought her the shot of caffeine and resumed his seat across the table from her. 'If he'd said was good...'

'No, it was been good. I'm not mistaken about that, Eddie.'

He grimaced. 'Got to say it sounds like a cut-off line to me. Do you have any idea why?'

'No. None. Which is why I'm so...in a mess about it.'

'No little niggles about how he was responding to you? Like maybe getting bored with the routine you'd established?'

'I'm not stupid, Eddie. I'd know if he was bored,' she cried, though right now she didn't feel certain about anything.

'Okay. He wasn't bored but he was saying goodbye regardless of the pleasures you both shared. That only leaves one motive, Laura,' Eddie said ruefully.

'What?'

'You've served your purpose.'

She shook her head in helpless confusion. 'I don't understand. What purpose?'

'You can bet it's something to do with dear old Dad.'

'But we've kept our whole relationship away from him,' she protested.

'You have, but how can you possibly know that Jake has?'

'He promised me...'

'Laura, Laura...' Eddie looked pained. 'I warned you from the start that this is a guy who plays all the angles. He's not our father's right-hand man for nothing. He's obviously worked at winning Dad's trust. He's worked at winning yours. But let me remind you, James Bond plays his own game and I think you've just been treated to one of them-love 'em and leave 'em.'

James Bond... She'd stopped connecting Jake to the legendary 007 character. He was the man she wanted, the man she loved, the man she'd dreamed of having for the rest of her life. Had she been an absolute fool, getting so caught up with him? Hadn't Jake felt anything for her beyond the desire to take her to bed? How could the strong feelings he'd stirred in her be completely one-sided?

The intensity of his love-making last night and this morning had made her believe he felt a lot for her. Eddie had to be wrong. She couldn't think of any purpose Jake could have in loving her and leaving her. He might very well have somewhere else he had to be this morning-somewhere he wished he didn't have to go because of wanting to be with her-and that past tense he'd used could have been simply a slip of the tongue. Maybe she'd worked herself into a stew for nothing and he would call her during the week.

Eddie shook his head at her. 'You don't want to believe it, do you?'

'I guess time will tell, Eddie,' she said flatly. 'Let's leave it at that. Okay?'

'Okay.' He gave her a sympathetic look. 'In the meantime, chalk up the positives. You've had the experience of dining in some of the finest restaurants, staying in very cla.s.sy hotels, plus a fair chunk of great s.e.x. Not a bad three months, Laura.'

She managed a wry smile. 'No, not bad at all.'

But I want more.

Much more of Jake Freedman.

And I desperately hope I get more.

CHAPTER TEN.

THE rest of Sunday went by without a call from Jake.

No contact from him on Monday, either.

It would probably come on Friday, Laura told herself, doing her best to concentrate on her uni lectures and not get too disturbed by the lack of the communication she needed. Regardless of the situation with Jake, she still had to move on with her life, get the qualifications necessary for her chosen career. Yet all her sensible reasoning couldn't stop the sick yearning that gripped her stomach when her thoughts drifted to him. And telling herself he would call soon didn't help.

It surprised her to see her father's car parked in the driveway when she arrived home on Tuesday afternoon. He never left work early and it wasn't even five o'clock. A scary thought hit her. Had something bad happened to her mother? An accident? Illness? She couldn't imagine anything but an emergency bringing her father home at this hour.

She ran to the front door, her heart pumping with fear as she unlocked it and rushed into the hallway. 'Mum? Dad?' she called anxiously.

'Get in here, Laura!' her father's voice thundered from the lounge room. 'I've been waiting for you!'

She stood stock-still, her heart thumping even harder. He was in a rage. No distress in that tone. It was total fury. The only concern she need have for her mother was being subjected to his venom again.

The double doors from the hallway into the lounge room were open. Laura stiffened her spine, squared her shoulders and forced her feet forward, knowing that her mother would be spared the full-on brunt of savage remarks when he turned them onto her. It didn't matter how much she hated these vicious scenes. Better for her to be here than not here.

On entering the war zone, she found her mother cowering in the corner of one of the sofas, white-faced and hugging herself tightly as though desperately trying to hold herself together. Her father was standing behind the bar, splashing Scotch into a gla.s.s of ice. His face was red and the bottle of Scotch was half-empty.

'Are you still seeing Jake Freedman?' he shot at her.

No point in trying any evasion when her father was in this mood. He'd dig and dig and dig.

'I don't know,' she answered honestly.

'What do you mean "you don't know"?' he jeered, his eyes raking her with contempt. 'Don't pretend to be stupid, Laura.'

She shrugged. 'I was with him on Sat.u.r.day night but he made no plans for us to meet again.'

Her father snorted. 'Had a last hurrah, s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g my daughter.'

'Alex, it's not Laura's fault,' her mother spoke up, showing more courage than she usually did. 'You introduced him to her.'

It enraged him into yelling, 'The b.l.o.o.d.y mole played his cards perfectly! Anyone would have been sucked in by him!'

'Then don't blame Laura,' her mother pleaded weakly, wilting under the blast.

What had Jake done? Laura's mind was in a whirl as she crossed the room to where her mother was scrunched into as small a s.p.a.ce as possible and sat on the sofa's wide armrest next to her. 'What's going on, Dad?' she asked, needing to get to the crux of the problem.

He bared his teeth in a vicious snarl. 'That b.a.s.t.a.r.d has taken all my business to the Companies' Auditors and Liquidators Disciplinary Board and had me suspended from any further practice in the industry, pending further investigation.'

'Suspended?' This was why he was home, but... 'Investigation of what?'

His hand sliced the air in savage dismissal. 'You've never been interested in my work, Laura, so it's none of your concern.'

'I want to know what Jake is accusing you of.'

He shook a furious finger at her. 'All you have to know is he was h.e.l.l-bent on taking me down every minute he was supposedly working for me. Rolling you was icing on the cake for him.'

'But why? You're making it sound like a personal vendetta.'

'It is a personal vendetta.' His eyes bitterly raked her up and down. 'How personal can you get with his hands all over you, exulting in taking every d.a.m.ned liberty he could.'

'Alex!' her mother cried in pained protest.

She was ignored.

'And you let him, didn't you? My daughter!' her father thundered.

Laura refused to answer.

He sneered at her silence. 'He would have revelled in every intimacy you gave up to him.'

'This isn't about me, Dad,' she said as calmly as she could. 'I'm obviously a side issue. Why does Jake have a personal vendetta against you?'

'Because of JQE!' The words were spat out.

'That doesn't mean anything to me,' Laura persisted.

He glared at her contemptuously as though her ignorance was another poisonous barb to his pride.

Her chin lifted defiantly. 'I think I have the right to know what I've been a victim of.'

'JQE was his stepfather's company,' he finally in formed her in a bitterly mocking tone. 'He believes I could have saved it and chose not to. The man died of a heart attack soon after I secured the liquidator's fee.'

Stepfather! 'Was his surname different to Jake's?'

'Of course it was! If I'd had any idea they were related, he would never have been employed by me.'

'How long has he been working in your company?'

'Six years! Six d.a.m.nable years of worming his way through my files, wanting to nail me to the wall!'

A man with a mission...James Bond... Dark and dangerous...

Her instincts had been right at their first meeting, but she hadn't heeded them, hadn't wanted to.

'Could you have saved his stepfather's company, Dad?' she asked, wanting to know if the mission was for justice or some twisted form of vengeance. Jake had loved his stepfather, possibly the only father he had known.

'The man was an idiot, getting in over his head,' her father snarled. 'Even with help he was in no state to rescue anything. His wife was dying of cancer. Trying to hang on was stupid.'

A judgement call. Had it been right or a deliberate choice for her father to make a profit out of it, charging huge fees to carry out the liquidation process?

What was the truth?

Laura knew she wouldn't get it from her father. He would serve his own ends. Always had.

As for Jake, he must have been totally torn up with grief when the seeds of his mission had been sown-his mother dying of cancer, his stepfather driven into bankruptcy and dying of a heart attack. It must have been a terribly traumatic time, having to bury both parents in the midst of everything being sold up around him. She had sensed the darkness in him, seen signs of it, heard it in his voice that first day in the garden when he'd described the terrible downside of bankruptcy, but hadn't known how deep it went, hadn't known that she was connected to it by being her father's daughter.

The bottle of Scotch took another hit. A furious finger stabbed at her again. 'Don't you dare take his side in this b.l.o.o.d.y whistle-blowing or you are out of this house, Laura! He used you. Used you to show me up as even more of a fool for trusting him with my daughter.'

Had that been Jake's intention behind tempting her into an affair? An iron fist squeezed her heart. He'd controlled every aspect of their meetings, kept their involvement limited to Sat.u.r.day nights. Had he been secretly revelling in having her whenever he called? Because of who she was?

'What there was between us is over,' she said flatly.

'It had better be, my girl!' Threat seethed through every word. 'If he contacts you...'

'He won't.' Laura was certain of it. He had been saying goodbye on Sunday morning.

'Don't bet on it! It would be an extra feather in his cap if he sucked you in again.'

'He won't,' she repeated, sick to her soul. She'd loved him, truly deeply loved him, and the thought of having been used to drive a dagger further into her father was devastating.

'You be d.a.m.ned sure of it, Laura, because if I ever find out otherwise, you'll pay for it!'

'I'm sure.'