Across the room, on a wide black leather sofa, a third figure was seated, the eyes in his narrow face flicking between his chairman and Diego Saez.
It hardly seemed yesterday that his chairman had despatched him to sound out Saez when he’d first appeared in London, yet in that time there had been a whirl of activity surrounding him. Piers Haddenham could have named half a dozen deals that had been set in motion between various City institutions and corporations, but the one that irritated him most of all was the Loring Lanchester takeover.
His mind flipped back to that bankers’ dinner, and Saez looking over Tom Lanchester’s iceberg sister. He hadn’t shown his hand then as to whether it was the bank he was after or Portia Lanchester’s frozen assets.
And all along it had been both.
Piers’s mouth tightened. Typical of Diego’s type to get them both—the bank and the cold-hearted bitch! Not that anyone knew about the latter—not here in London, anyway. If it hadn’t been for someone he knew out in KL mentioning that Saez had turned up to a reception with the ice queen on his arm he’d never have known what was going down.
The meeting drew to a close.
Piers glanced at his chairman’s face. He was not pleased, he knew. Saez was being evasive, and he’d brought up a whole load of time-wasting rubbish about insisting on running an environmental audit of Tencorp’s proposal before signing up to any joint venture. It was just a tactic, obviously. Piers knew the deal being offered would make money hand over fist—what the hell were a few native settlements and some mangy animals in comparison with that level of profit to be made?
He watched Saez stand up and take his leave. As his gaze ran over the other man’s tall, powerful frame, a familiar flush of envy went through him. The bastard had everything! Money, looks, and women throwing themselves at him. You’d have thought, mused Piers sourly, that he could have looked a bit more cheerful! As it was, his expression could have sunk a ship.
He stood dutifully aside to let Saez leave the office first, then followed him down the wide corridor towards the bank of executive lifts.
On the way down he attempted various pleasantries appropriate to the situation, but drew a blank response. As the lift doors sliced open, and they walked out into the huge, echoing lobby of the Tencorp reception area, Piers could not resist an unwise jibe. He felt like riling that self-contained bastard.
‘So, turned up any golden nuggets in the empty coffers at Loring Lanchester?’ he remarked.
His shaft got him nothing more than a silent look of unsmiling derision. Stung, Piers let fly another arrow. He hadn’t sweated blood sucking up to this get-rich-quick merchant to get him to bite at the Tencorp proposal just so he could go back up to his chairman’s office and get an earful about not having talked Saez out of that environmental audit garbage!
‘Of course,’ he went on smoothly, quickening his pace to keep up with Saez’s long stride across the marble floor, ‘you did get a personal sweetener, so I’m reliably informed. Tell me, was it worth buying a failing bank just to get inside Portia Lanchester’s iron knickers—?’
He did not even see the fist coming. One moment he was taunting Diego Saez, the next he was sprawled flat on his back, blood pouring from his broken nose, hand clutching his dislocated jaw.
Without even pausing in his pace, Diego kept on walking to the door.
Rage consumed him. Cold, hard rage.
It snarled in him like an angry jaguar.
Not just at that loathsome piece of ordure he’d left groaning in agony on the floor.
At everything—the whole world.
But most particularly at two people.
Himself.
And Portia Lanchester.
His anger at himself was absolute. Unforgiving.
As he got into the chauffeur-driven car waiting for him at the entrance to Tencorp, his face darkened.
How could he—how could he be in this condition? How the hell had it happened?
He’d tried other women. They were never hard to come by. The ones he’d already had were always eager to come by for more, and every mixed-company social event he went to inevitably had a selection happy to make themselves available to him. Since returning from China and touching base with his European headquarters in Geneva he had deliberately run through half a dozen—old and new, in a variety of physical types—but every time, every time, he’d either sent them home or walked out himself.
They had done nothing for him. Nothing.
No woman did.
Only the memory of one.
Rage spurted in him again.