For Revenge or Redemption? by Elizabeth Power Read Free Book Online Page B

to the new CEO, before she caught the covert glance her assistant sent her. It conveyed the message already obvious from Seth’s instructions; he isn’t going to take anyone slamming doors in his face!
    ‘I see,’ she said, rounding on him as the other woman tripped off towards the lift. ‘So she’s your PA now, is she?’
    ‘No,’ he surprised her by answering, ‘But I thought you wouldn’t mind my making use of her until my own arrives.’
    ‘It so happens, I do mind. And no one makes use of anyone in this company,’ she enlightened him, piqued by the dismissive manner in which he had just spoken about a member of her team. ‘I just thought I ought to warn you, otherwise you might wonder why you’ve got a full-blown mutiny on your hands.’
    ‘Thanks for the warning.’ He smiled indolently, making her body react to him in a way that made her brain chastise her for her stupidity. ‘It was just a figure of speech. Why don’t you go home, Grace?’ Strangely, his tone had softened, become dangerously caressing in its sensuality. She had a feeling that it was some sort of mind game he was playing with her. ‘Grab a couple of hours’ sleep? Freshen up a bit?’ His gaze raked with disconcerting thoroughness over her dishevelled appearance. ‘We’ve got a lot of work to do and I’m sure you’ll agree that no one can give their best if they aren’t functioning on all cylinders.’
    Was that concern in his eyes? she wondered, then dismissed the notion, deciding that it was probably pity. The type one would have for an animal one has just snared as one mulled over the most humane way to make the kill.
    ‘Perhaps you’d prefer it if I didn’t come back at all!’ Her fighting spirit rose to her defence, challenging him.
    ‘On the contrary,’ he said, and this time his mouth curved in a fragment of a smile that did nothing to warm his eyes,just merely showed her how calm he was in contrast. ‘As I’ve already explained, I’m going to spend every satisfying minute working with you.’
    Don’t imagine it will be a bed of roses! It took every gram of will power Grace had to bite the words back. This was her family’s business, in name if nothing else, and she’d be darned if she would let Seth Mason goad her into throwing in her share and just walking away, as Corinne had done, or give him any reason to get rid of her which—unbelievable and humiliating though it was—he now had the power to do.
    ‘You’re right,’ she accepted, deciding to ignore his last remark that made her blood pump heavily through her with its scarcely concealed implication. Her head was pounding too and she was longing for a shower. ‘I think I will freshen up.’
    But she didn’t summon a taxi to take her home.
    No way, she decided, was she going to take the advice of this conceited, over-confident, muscle-bound boat builder—or whatever he had been—and abandon her staff just when they needed someone to reassure them that all their hard work and their loyalty wasn’t just going to be written off.
    Instead, swinging away from him, she took the lift down to her own office. This time when she rang the Culverwell home, Corinne answered.
    ‘How could you?’ Grace breathed as the much-too-affected voice of her grandfather’s widow started trying to placate her with some hollow, meaningless explanation. ‘How could you? And without breathing a word of it to me?’
    ‘Because I knew you’d react like this.’ Corinne sounded irritated. Grace could almost see her sitting at her marbletopped dressing table in her transparent negligee, her short red hair gelled to look as though she’d just tumbled out of bed, a cooling mask on her face as she applied precise sweeping strokes of lacquer to her perfect nails. ‘Be sensible, Grace.I wanted to sell my shares—so did Paul—and you couldn’t afford to buy them.’
    ‘Paul?’ The fact that her ex could have been complicit in trying to oust her from the board of the family