Wife in Public (8 page)

‘Don’t worry. I
will
take care of you, Ivy. In every sense there is.’

That was a big promise. Ivy wasn’t sure she believed it. But she was willing to take this journey with him. It was probably an
Alice in Wonderland
kind of adventure and one day she would wake up from it. She hoped she would be able to treasure the good, shake off the bad and remember it as a risk that had been worth taking.

A
T
the first red traffic light Jordan whipped out his mobile phone, making a quick call to his handyman who promptly answered.

‘No need to come, Ray. I’m heading home now in Ivy’s car. Would you please tell Margaret it will be dinner for two tonight. Maybe a late lunch, as well.’

‘Will do. And…uh…congratulations, boss.’

‘Thanks, Ray,’ Jordan said dryly, aware that his campaign to make contact with Ivy was well known to his household staff, with conflicting degrees of support. Ray had been rooting for him to win while Margaret reserved judgement on the outcome.

He closed the phone and slid it back into his shirt pocket, throwing a glance at Ivy to check all was well with her before turning his attention back to the bank-up of traffic waiting for the light to change. ‘Why are you frowning?’ he asked, wanting to wipe the tense expression from her face.

She heaved a sigh and shot him an anxious look. ‘Your housekeeper…I guess she’s seen a lot of women come and go in your life, Jordan. It’s just kind of embarrassing. I know I shouldn’t care what she thinks, but…’

‘Don’t worry.’ He grinned as he reached across and
gave her hand a quick reassuring squeeze. ‘Margaret likes you. In fact, I have a strong suspicion I’ll be damned to perdition if I don’t treat you right.’

‘How could she like me?’ Ivy queried in amazement. ‘I only spoke to her for a few minutes. And that was when…well, it was obvious I’d spent the night with you.’

‘Oh, I got the blame for that…having my wicked way with a nice girl.’

‘How does she know I’m a nice girl?’

‘According to Margaret, you have beautiful manners. Believe me, as long as you treat her with respect, you’ll get the same respect back. Respect and honesty are Margaret’s prime standards. Cross those lines and you’re in her black books. An honest bit of sex between a man and a woman does not worry her one bit. Okay?’

Ivy relaxed, a happy relief in her smile. ‘Okay. She sounds like quite a character.’

‘She is. Hiring her was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.’

And Jordan had the strong feeling that pursuing Ivy had been one of his best decisions, too.

The car behind them honked—a warning that the light had turned green and the traffic was moving again. Satisfied that he’d removed any fretting from Ivy’s mind, Jordan drove on, revelling in the anticipation of having her to himself for the rest of the weekend, which gave him plenty of time to sort out any other concerns she might have about being involved with him.

It was highly vexing to find his sister’s silver Porsche parked in the driveway of his Balmoral home. Apart from the fact that he didn’t want any visitors taking his attention away from Ivy, Olivia was a self-centred snob whose manner could be very off-putting to anyone who
wasn’t used to her. Besides, she wouldn’t be here unless she wanted him to
fix
something for her, which meant she’d want his undivided attention.

‘Damn!’ he muttered as he brought Ivy’s car to a halt behind the Porsche.

‘You have a visitor?’ Ivy enquired, a wary look on her face.

‘My sister, who only drops in on me when she has some problem to unload, so I won’t be able to get rid of her until I hear her out.’

‘If it’s a private problem, Jordan, she won’t want a stranger listening in.’

‘No, she won’t.’ He grimaced an apologetic appeal. ‘Would you mind very much chatting to Margaret while I deal with it? I’ll ask her to make you some lunch. Or you could browse through the newspaper. I’m sorry. This is an awkward start, not what I…’

‘It’s okay,’ she quickly assured him. ‘Family should come first, especially if there’s a problem.’

He heaved a sigh of frustration. ‘Olivia makes trouble for herself. My father spoiled her terribly…his little princess. Don’t be upset if she’s dismissive of you. It won’t be personal. She’ll just be so full of herself, no one else counts.’

The green eyes filled with wry self-mockery. ‘Well, I don’t count for anything in her life.’

‘You do in mine,’ he said emphatically, feeling the question mark over his involvement with her and hating it. He turned in his seat to reach out and cup her cheek, his eyes boring into hers with forceful intensity. ‘You do in mine, Ivy. Give me time and I’ll prove that to you.’

He kissed her, wanting their desire for each other to obliterate everything else, leave no room for doubts. Excitement surged through him at her fierce response.
She didn’t want to doubt him. She wanted to lose herself in the same passion he felt. It was hell having to restrain himself to a kiss when he was so hungry for her. He men tally cursed his sister for being an obstacle to the ram pant urge to sweep Ivy straight up to his bedroom. A month of waiting and still he had to wait.

‘Later,’ he promised, breathing the word against her lips as he forced himself to break the kiss. ‘You have to meet my sister now, Ivy.’

‘Yes,’ she whispered huskily.

He had to fight down his reluctance to separate himself from her, move away. It took an act of will to curb the rebellious needs of his body and alight from the car, taking the steps demanded by Olivia’s unwelcome presence in his home. Ivy swayed a little as he helped her from the passenger seat. He tucked her arm around his for the walk inside, governed by the strong instinct to support and protect his woman.

His…

Strange…he couldn’t remember feeling actually possessive of a woman before. Probably it was the long waiting that had made him uncertain of having Ivy again. And
that
was yet to happen. Olivia had better behave herself, he thought grimly. If she gave Ivy any cause to skip out on him…

‘There you are!’

The words were flung at him the moment he and Ivy entered the foyer—Olivia emerging from the lounge, a highball glass in hand, obviously in a state of intoxication, her usual perfect grooming having taken a slide today: eye make-up smudged, her shoulder-length hair dishevelled, silk blouse crumpled, linen trousers badly creased.

She had the same blue eyes and black hair he did.
Tall and voluptuously curved, she could and usually did make a striking impact on people, but she was not about to make a good impression on Ivy at this meeting. He closed the front door behind him, eyeing his sister with stern displeasure. Getting drunk didn’t fix anything, and driving a car while over the alcohol limit was downright irresponsible, let alone illegal. Not acknowledging Ivy’s presence and addressing him as though he’d put her out by his absence was more than he could tolerate.

‘Why are you here, Olivia?’ he threw back at her.

She ignored the question, eyeing Ivy up and down with a supercilious look on her face. ‘Who is this? Taking up with Cinderellas now, are you, Jordan? Been through the whole socialite pack?’

‘Keep a civil tongue or go,’ he said cuttingly. ‘I don’t have any patience for your rudeness today.’

‘Sorry. I just haven’t seen her before,’ she rolled out with a shrug. ‘Will I recognise the name?’

‘Ivy. Ivy Thornton. Unfortunately, I have no pleasure at all in introducing you, Olivia.’

‘Tough!’ She sneered. ‘I’m family and you can’t get rid of family. The good old tie of blood is always there. Whereas Ivy…no doubt she will turn into Poison Ivy in due course. They invariably do, don’t they?’

She was right, but due course hadn’t been run yet, and he wasn’t about to let Olivia spark off another bout of resistance from Ivy when he’d just brought her to the starting line. ‘You’ve been warned!’ he threw at his sister, stepping back to open front door. ‘I’ll call Ray to drive you home.’

‘Oh, for pity’s sake! Why take offence when you carry on about being honest and calling a spade a spade?’ She flicked another look down her nose at Ivy. ‘I have to concede you have the good sense not to marry any of
them. I, on the other hand…’ The jeering spite suddenly crumpled into tears and the eyes she turned back to Jordan were wretched pools of despair. ‘…was fool enough to hitch myself to a sleazy, cheating scumbag who plans on blackmailing me for all I’m worth.’

‘Blackmail?’ This was serious business. Jordan frowned over it as he quietly closed the door again. ‘What does your husband have to blackmail you with, Olivia?’ Her
third
husband, who fell in the toy-boy range—twenty-three years old to her thirty-four—sweet, loveable Ashton whose gym-toned body promised sex on legs and had obviously delivered it beyond the marriage bed, which had always been predictable. But what had Olivia done to put herself in a blackmailing situation?

She shook her head, choking out words between sobs and shuddering intakes of breath. ‘You’ve got to help me, Jordan. You’ve got to. Daddy would have fixed it.’

Jordan gritted his teeth. His father had always freed his darling daughter from the consequences of her follies, which, of course, meant Olivia had never learnt any hard lessons from experience. His own upbringing had been designed to teach him the strong hand required to run a business empire, to anticipate the consequences of any decision and make careful provision for them before acting.

Although well aware of why Olivia was the way she was, he was sorely tempted to let her stew in her own juices this time, make her count the cost for once, but blackmail was a dirty criminal act, and he couldn’t allow anyone to stick his sister with it. Nevertheless, some lessons had to be hammered home right now.

‘Okay, you want something from me, Olivia. I want something from you,’ he said in a hard relentless tone,
totally unsympathetic to her blubbering tears in the face of the insults she had flung at Ivy—a woman she didn’t know and didn’t care about knowing—putting his win at risk.

‘What?’ Olivia asked sulkily.

‘Firstly you will apologise to Ivy for your ignorant remarks about her. Take a deep breath now and do it with some grace, please, or you can take your trouble to the cemetery and tell it to Dad’s tombstone.’

Her jaw dropped in shock. She goggled at him and then at Ivy who hadn’t said a word, despite the nastiness that had been directed at her. God only knew what she was thinking! Probably that any connection with him was fast losing its desire-power!

‘Sorry,’ Olivia finally mumbled at Ivy in a woebegone fashion. ‘I’m just so upset. I wanted you to go so I could have Jordan to myself. I…I shouldn’t have said those things.’ She dashed the tears from her eyes with her hand, lifted her chin and looked belligerently at Jordan. ‘Is that enough?’

‘No, but it will do for the present. The next time you meet Ivy, you’d better take the trouble to make her acquaintance in a decent fashion. You could learn good manners from her for a start.’

‘All right! All right!’ She snapped, throwing up her free hand, then dropping it into a plea for him to stop browbeating her. ‘I’m sorry. Okay?’

‘None of this is okay, Olivia. Go back into the lounge and wait for me. Don’t drink another drop of alcohol. If you have a serious problem we need to talk about it seriously. Soberly. Without any more theatrics. I’ll take Ivy to Margaret, who I’m sure will make her feel more comfortable, and I’ll bring you some strong black coffee.’

She flounced off into the lounge, slamming the door behind her in protest at being treated to some discipline instead of oodles of indulgence. Jordan reined in the angry resentment stirred by the whole scene with Olivia and turned quickly to draw Ivy into his embrace, searching her eyes for reactions to it, anxious to erase any damage done.

‘I apologise for my sister’s behaviour. It’s beyond my control, Ivy. She just lashes out indiscriminately when she’s upset. Not that that’s any excuse…’

To his intense relief she gave him an ironic little smile. ‘I thought you did a fairly impressive job of taking control.’

He heaved a rueful sigh. ‘My parents spoiled Olivia rotten. All she had to do was throw a tantrum and she was given anything she wanted. It used to drive me around the bend. Still does. But she could be in real trouble with this blackmail business. I’ll have to deal with it.’

‘Of course you do,’ she said sympathetically, reaching up to smooth the frown from his brow. ‘What your sister said to me doesn’t matter, Jordan. I know I’m not a Cinderella and I’ve never been poisonous to anyone. It seems to me it’s your family wealth that’s the poison.’

True, but…he needed to find out how profitable Ivy’s rose farm was, whether it was on shaky ground, check that she wasn’t a Cinderella in hiding as Biancha had been, because he knew only too well that it was the Cinderellas of both sexes who brought poison to his family’s wealth.

‘It does attract con-artists and fortune-hunters and Olivia invariably falls for them,’ he replied with an unguarded touch of bitterness.

‘That must be really nasty for her when she finds out she’s been fooled.’

Being fooled was always nasty. Only once had he fallen into that trap, and not even the promise of fantastic sex forever would blinker his eyes to it again.

‘It’s about time she exercised some judgement,’ he said grimly. ‘At least testing the waters before blindly wading in.’

‘Like you do?’

Her eyes reflected a mental reviewing of his many brief affairs in a different light. Not so much the playboy but the billionaire with a cynical part of his brain alert to anything false.

‘Ivy, we can continue this conversation later. We should move on now. I don’t trust Olivia not to hit the bottle again.’

‘Yes. Better get the coffee coming.’

He was grateful for her quick understanding. No selfishness, no sulky pouts at being put aside for a while, just a fair assessment of the situation and a reasonable reaction to it. He liked her all the more for it. He hoped she spoke the truth about not being a Cinderella.

They found Margaret in the kitchen. As usual, she had anticipated what would be needed and already had the coffee brewing. Margaret was no fool. She was always aware of everything in this household. Regardless of her former reservations about his pursuit of Ivy, she welcomed her with a smile and instantly offered to take care of her needs, too. The Saturday newspaper was spread out on the island bench, the travel section uppermost, and Ivy slid straight onto a stool, obviously prepared to wait for him and acquaint herself with his housekeeper.