Loe raamatut: «The Magnate's Tempestuous Marriage»

CHAPTER ONE

Sydney, fifteen months later...

SCOTT STOOD AT the window behind his desk, staring blindly out at the view. Not that there was much of a view. The office block that housed the head office of McAllister Mines stood in the southern end of Sydney’s CBD, not down at the more picturesque harbour end of town. There was no soothing water to look at. No sparkling Opera House. No beautiful parks or gardens. Just traffic-clogged streets and rather boring buildings.

Not that anything would soothe Scott that Monday morning. Never in his life had he felt such emotional upheaval. He’d been distressed when his father had died. But death, Scott decided, was easier to cope with than betrayal. He still could hardly believe that Sarah would do this to him. They’d only been married a year, yesterday their first wedding anniversary. And whilst Scott harboured a degree of distrust in the female sex, Sarah had been different from the women responsible for his cynicism. Very different. That she would cheat on him seemed...incredible.

The text—with photos attached—had arrived on his business phone last Friday afternoon, shortly after he’d finished meeting with a Singapore billionaire who was staying on the Gold Coast, and whom Scott hoped would help solve his current cash-flow problems. Fortunately, he’d been alone at the time, as his first reaction had been utter shock. Followed by total disbelief. Gradually, however, he was forced to accept the evidence before his eyes. The incriminating photos, after all, had been crystal-clear, all of them stamped with the time and the date when they’d been taken. At lunchtime that very day.

And then there had been the accompanying message.

Thought you might like to know what your wife is getting up to when you go away.

It had been signed, ‘A friend’.

Hardly, Scott thought bitterly. More likely a business enemy of his, or a jealous female colleague of Sarah’s. His wife was the sort of girl who would inspire jealousy in other women. And in her husband. Not that that meant Sarah was innocent. His father used to say that if something looked like a duck, waddled like a duck and quacked like a duck, then the odds were pretty high that it was a duck. It didn’t take Scott long to accept that his wife was having an affair with the superbly dressed, very handsome bastard who featured in those damning photos.

Scott would never have thought himself capable of the kind of black jealousy—and almost uncontrollable fury—that had seen him abandon his PA, Cleo, on the Gold Coast to finish his business negotiations for him, making the excuse that Sarah had been taken ill, then flying straight home to confront his adulterous spouse.

But he hadn’t confronted her straight away, had he?

A measure of guilt—or was it shame?—curled in his stomach at what he had done.

He’d meant to have it out with her immediately, still harbouring some vain hope that there might be a logical explanation to this nightmare. But when he’d strode into their apartment that evening, she’d literally thrown herself at him, seemingly overjoyed by his cutting his business trip short to be with her. Her kisses had been wildly passionate, more so than usual. Whilst their sex life up till now had been more than satisfactory, Sarah was not an aggressive partner. She always left it up to him to make the first move; to take the lead in bed matters. Not that night, however. She’d been quite bold with her actions, touching him intimately as she’d kissed him.

Guilt, he decided now in retrospect.

Perversely, after she’d fallen asleep that night, exhausted from their sexual marathon, he’d been the one who’d felt guilty. Crazy, really. Why should he feel guilty? She was the guilty one. She was the adulterer, not him.

She’d blatantly lied to him about what she’d done that day—telling him she’d been shopping at lunchtime for a fabulous anniversary present for him. But he knew exactly what she’d been doing at lunchtime that Friday.

He’d left her then and gone to his study where he’d acted like the Neanderthal he felt like, drinking himself into oblivion before passing out on the sofa.

Which was where she’d found him the next morning.

And where their final ugly confrontation had begun...

It hadn’t been pretty, Scott still stunned by the accusations Sarah had thrown at him. And the names. In the end, she’d walked out on him. And she hadn’t come back.

By Sunday night Scott was forced to accept that Sarah might never come back.

Something that should have pleased him no end, but, perversely, it hadn’t. As much as he wasn’t the type of man who would countenance having a wife he couldn’t trust, Scott couldn’t get past the niggling doubt that maybe he’d been wrong to jump to the conclusion he had. Maybe he’d made a terrible mistake.

A knock on his office door startled him out of his troubling thoughts. ‘Yes?’ he bit out as he turned away from the window.

Cleo came in somewhat tentatively, the look she gave him speaking volumes. There was worry in her dark eyes and concern on her face. Scott had given her a potted version of the truth when he’d arrived this morning, knowing that it would be impossible to keep lying to Cleo. She wasn’t just his PA. After three years of working closely together she’d become his friend as well. She’d been more shocked than he was, if that were possible, declaring her disbelief openly.

‘Sarah would never be unfaithful to you, Scott. That girl loves you to death!’

Yes, well, he’d always thought so too. But obviously, he was wrong. Cleo, as well.

Scott would have shown her the photos, if he still had them. But he’d given the phone in question to his head of security last Saturday afternoon to have the damned things investigated.

Showing Harvey the photos of his wife with another man had been mortifying to say the least, but he simply had to make sure the photos were genuine and discover who had sent them. Plus he wanted to find out everything he could about the man involved. Lord knew what he would do once he found out his identity.

The man in the photos was facially handsome but he wasn’t as tall or as well built as Scott, his frame on the lean side. Elegant, though. And a snazzy dresser. Scott hated him with a passion.

‘Harvey just rang to say he was on his way up,’ Cleo said, interrupting his jealous train of thought. ‘Do you want me to get you both some coffee?’

Scott had been waiting for Harvey to report back to him all morning, but now that the moment was here he wished he’d never started on this course of action. He should have made Sarah stay and talk to him; should have insisted on her explaining those photos. Though what explanation could there possibly be? She hadn’t denied their veracity. Her outrage that morning had been directed at him, and what he’d done the night before. Okay, so he should have shown her the photos as soon as he arrived home but he hadn’t. Naturally, he’d still been too angry with her the following morning to apologise for what she called his caveman mentality. Her attempts to put the blame on him had almost worked, too. After she’d stormed out of the apartment, he’d begun to think that maybe she was innocent.

Till he’d looked at the photos again.

Scott’s teeth clenched down hard in his jaw after which he glanced up at his patient PA. ‘No coffee right now, thank you, Cleo,’ he told her, doing his best to sound normal and not like a man about to face a firing squad. ‘Oh, and, Cleo...thanks for standing in for me last Friday. I don’t know what I would do without you.’

Cleo shrugged. ‘Afraid I didn’t do you much good. The investor made it obvious that he didn’t like dealing with a female, especially one who’s under thirty. Still, if you want my opinion, you’re better off without his money. I didn’t like the look of him at all. He had shifty eyes.’

Scott smiled a wry smile. Cleo had the habit of judging people by their eyes. And strangely, she was usually right. She’d prevented him making errors in judgment several times. And she had liked Sarah, had thought her the loveliest, nicest girl. He supposed no one could always be right.

‘I’ll scratch him off as a potential partner, then,’ he said.

‘That would be my advice. Still, you’ll need to find someone else quick smart, Scott, or you’ll have to shut down the nickel refinery. Maybe the mine as well. You can’t keep running both at a loss indefinitely.’

‘Yes, I know that,’ he bit out. ‘Look, do some research and see who might be open to investment. Someone from Australia maybe. Ah, Harvey’s here. Come in, Harvey.’

Cleo left them to it, Harvey’s poker face revealing absolutely nothing as he walked in. Harvey was in his mid-fifties, a big burly man and totally bald, with a craggily handsome face, an uncompromising mouth and cold blue eyes. He’d spent twenty years on the police force and another ten as a private detective before he’d become Scott’s head of security. His bouncer-like appearance made him an excellent bodyguard, a job he’d done for Scott on occasion. Being a successful mining magnate did have its hazards, especially when a mine had to be closed, even temporarily. Despite his blue-collar appearance—Harvey was wearing jeans and a black leather bomber jacket—Harvey was also an IT expert, an invaluable security tool in this day and age.

Scott shut his office door then waved Harvey to one of the two armchairs in front of his desk.

‘So what have you found out?’ he asked straight away, hiding his escalating tension behind a brusque tone.

Harvey’s eyes carried the closest thing to compassion that Scott had ever seen in them.

His heart sank, his stomach swirling with sudden nausea. Slumping into his office chair, he scooped in a deep breath then let it out slowly. ‘From the look on your face, I presume you haven’t any good news to tell me.’

‘No.’

A man of few words, was Harvey.

Scott gathered himself in readiness for the worst. ‘Okay, shoot,’ he said.

Harvey leant forward and placed Scott’s phone on the desktop before settling back into the chair.

‘First things first,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘The phone used to send you those photos was a throwaway. Couldn’t be traced.’

‘I suspected that,’ Scott said. ‘Were they real, though? The photos?’

‘Yes. They weren’t doctored in any way.’

Scott swallowed the bile that rose in his throat. ‘What about the dates and times they were taken?’

‘Also real. I was able to confirm everything by checking the hotel’s security vision. They have cameras set up everywhere.’

‘And what hotel was it?’

‘The Regency.’

Scott’s gut tightened. The Regency was a five-star hotel that was a stone’s throw from the building where Sarah worked. ‘What else have you found out?’ he asked, resigned to more bad news.

‘I spoke to a member of the bar staff who was working last Friday at lunchtime. He remembered Sarah.’

Of course he did, Scott thought grimly. Any man who wasn’t blind would remember Sarah. She was a stunning-looking girl with long creamy blonde hair, big blue eyes and a mouth that would tempt Saint Peter himself. Add to that a slender but shapely figure that was always housed in softly feminine clothes and you had a package that drew every man’s eye—and kept it.

Scott had never forgotten the first moment he’d laid eyes on her. It had been just on fifteen months ago. He’d been in the process of buying a clapped-out diamond mine he’d had a hunch about and had arrived early for an appointment at Goldstein & Evans, a Sydney legal firm he always used for signing business contracts. Sarah had been sent to greet him, acting more like an accomplished hostess rather than the newly graduated lawyer that he’d soon found out that she was. Scott had fallen madly in love at first sight. She’d confessed to him one week later on their third dinner date that she’d been similarly smitten with him.

And he’d believed her. Three months later she’d become his wife. One year later, it looked as if she was about to become his ex-wife.

Scott cleared his throat. ‘What else did the barman say?’

‘He said they looked pretty cosy together. Sat off in a very private corner. Didn’t drink much. Just talked. Then after about fifteen minutes, they upped and left.’

‘Right,’ Scott bit out. They both knew exactly where they’d gone. The photos had told the story. First, the man had gone to Reception and booked a room. Then they’d ridden up in the lift and gone into the room, not emerging till forty-five minutes later.

‘On the plus side, the barman did say he’d never seen her in there before,’ Harvey added.

Terrific. But there were other hotels in Sydney’s CBD. Heaps of them.

‘The guy looked familiar, though,’ Harvey went on. ‘Been there with some other woman on a few occasions. A brunette.’

‘Did you find out who he was?’

‘Yup. His name is Philip Leighton. Mid-thirties. A lawyer.’

‘And he works for Goldstein & Evans.’

‘Spot on. In the family law section. He specialises in divorces. Society divorces mainly. People with money. His own family is wealthy. His father’s a senator. Word is Mr Leighton has his eye on going into politics himself. He’s not married and doesn’t have a permanent partner. Quite the ladies’ man, according to a work colleague of his I spoke to this morning. “A silver-tongued charmer” was the way this chap described him.’

Scott tried to blank his mind out to where that silver tongue might have been, but it was impossible, a black cloud of jealousy descending to darken his mood further. He hated being taken for a fool. And Sarah had taken him for a fool. Her outrage last Saturday morning had all been a sham to deflect attention away from her own guilt. The plain truth was Sarah had allowed herself to be seduced by that smooth-looking bastard.

Maybe if you hadn’t been going away on business so much lately, it wouldn’t have happened...

God, now he was making excuses for her!

Scott sat up straighter in his chair before sending his head of security what he hoped was a composed look. ‘Is there anything else you have to tell me about my wife’s relationship with this Leighton fellow?’

‘Only that she didn’t go to him after she left you on Saturday. He owns a house on the North Shore, and there’s no sign of her—or her car—at his address.’

Was he relieved at this news? He didn’t feel relieved. His gut churned some more.

‘She’s probably gone to stay at Cory’s,’ Scott muttered. ‘He’s her best friend. Sarah met him at university.’

Scott didn’t elaborate, mostly because he didn’t know all that much about the circumstances behind his wife’s close friendship with the young architect. It came to him suddenly that he didn’t know all that much about his wife’s past all round. She’d told him during their whirlwind courtship that her mother was dead and she was estranged from her father and her only sibling, an older brother. There’d been a bitter divorce when she was a teenager, with the brother siding with the father, despite the bastard being unfaithful to his wife. He’d never questioned her further about her past. He’d also never grilled Sarah over her friendship with Cory, mainly because he wasn’t worried about Cory. He rather liked the fellow. And Cory liked him back.

He probably doesn’t like me now, Scott thought. Not after Sarah told him what I did last Friday night. And she would have. She told Cory everything. They were like two teenagers sometimes, laughing and chatting to each other on the phone for hours. Scott would have liked to be a fly on the wall at Cory’s place right at this moment. Though possibly he wouldn’t find out anything. It was Monday, after all, and both of them would be at work.