Tasmanian Tangle Page 4

  It was Tanya's eyebrows that rose this time; anyone would think that he was talking to an office girl! 'Very well,' she replied stiffly, 'but I would like to point out that if any more dismissals are on the agenda, I want to be consulted first.' Her determined eyes met the now blazing ones of Kade. 'You said something about my eventually running the business,' she reminded him relentlessly, 'and in that case I see no point in having to reinstate staff who had been dismissed after I take over.'

  There was a glint in Kade's eye as he said, 'Got your eye on a manager, too, have you?'

  If he thought he was frightening her by threatening to walk out, then he had a shock coming, Tanya thought grimly. She shrugged her shoulders lightly. 'I'm sure someone would prove suitable,' she answered quietly.

  'Well, that's too bad,' he said harshly. 'When I'm

  good and ready to leave, you can fill my position, but that will not be for quite some time yet, I can promise you.'

  Tanya stared at him defiantly. 'If I say so, you'll have to go! she spat out at him, longing to take that superior look off his face.

  'Are you firing me, Miss Hume?' he asked, in a silky voice that Tanya didn't care for at all, for it held a hint of warning in it.

  'I'd rather request your resignation,' she lied sweetly.

  He drew in a deep breath, and she held herself rigid in her seat because she had a feeling that he would like to shake her until her teeth rattled. 'I've a damn good mind to do just that,' he ground out furiously, his eyes like chips of blue ice. 'You wouldn't be looking for staff then, but a buyer for what's left of the business, and that wouldn't be much, I assure you.'

  Tanya's eyes turned pure green as she returned his fire. 'You mean you'd take our business with you? Well, of all the low tricks ! ' she fumed at him.

  'Who said it was your business?' he queried acidly. 'I take what's mine. Three quarters of this business is mine.'

  Her eyes opened to their full extent and she sat there stunned while she digested the shock. 'I don't believe you,' she said, in a low voice that was full of uncertainty, for Kade was not a man to bluff. She swallowed. 'If that's true, why didn't my father explain the position to me—and you, come to that,' she said accusingly. 'You told me that I'd inherited the business, you said nothing about joint ownership.'

  Kade drew in a deep breath again, and Tanya noticed that his strong hands had clenched into fists,

  hands that he'd like to slap her with, she thought. 'Because that was how your father thought things were,' he said grimly.

  Tanya's eyes were full of her deductions on the last telling statement. Kade had bought him out behind his back, no wonder he'd not left the firm all those years ago! 'I see,' she said quietly, and stood up quickly, not being able to bear being in the same room with such a man. 'In that case, would you care to buy me out too?' she asked, trying to inject a sarcastic note into her voice, but it just came out as an ordinary question and much more effective, for it showed her distaste for the type of man she thought he was.

  'Sit down,' he growled at her. 'We've a long session ahead, and you're going to listen whether you like it or not.'

  Tanya's reaction to that was to make a dart for the door, but Kade beat her to it with an agility she would not have credited such a big man with. Her startled eyes watched as he turned the key in the lock, and stood towering over her. 'I said, sit down.' he repeated slowly, 'and stop looking at me as if I was last year's pin-up boy. You know, don't you?' he shot out at her suddenly.

  Tanya looked away from those searching eyes of his, and closed hers. She wasn't going to discuss that, not now, All she wanted was to run as fast as she could away from the works, away from Kade. 'I don't know what you're talking about,' she said quickly, feigning surprise. 'I didn't know that you owned the business—or as good as,' she tacked on wildly, wanting to distract him, but it didn't work.

  'I'm not talking about the business,' he rapped out, 'and you know it. I'd like to know how the devil you

  found out, though. Who told you?' he demanded.

  Tanya shook her head wearily; she had really had enough. 'Does it matter?' she said in a low voice, then her voice was pitched on a note of sheer desperation. 'Please, I don't want to discuss it, not now, not ever. I meant it when I asked you to buy me out. There's nothing more to discuss.'

  'I'm not buying you out, so you can forget that for a start,' replied Kade, but this time in a less harsh tone, and placing his hands on Tanya's slim shoulders he turned her round to face him. 'Do as I say, Tanya, go and sit down,' he commanded.

  Tanya shied away from his touch as though he were a repellent insect, and Kade took full note of the fact and his jaw squared. As she did not have much choice in the matter she did as he asked and sat down again.

  He had never called her by her christian name before, she thought numbly, and remembered bitterly how often she had wished he would. She wanted to spit out at him that she would rather he called her Miss Hume, but he'd do just what suited him whether she liked it or not.

  Kade's eyes went over her slight figure and those wide eyes of hers that mirrored her thoughts so revealingly. 'You're like your mother,' he said thoughtfully, 'and yet not. Unless I miss my guess I'd say you were a fighter. You'd stay and see things through, not run away as she did.'

  The hate Tanya felt for him was there in her eyes as she looked back at him. How dare he casually discuss her mother like that! She had been too good for the likes of him. 'I understand that she lost her reasoning for a while,' she bit back at him, and felt a spurt of

  satisfaction as she saw a tightening of his mouth. Yes, that had got through all right, she thought.

  'You're not going to believe this, but I entirely agree with you,' he replied harshly. 'And it put me in a hell of a situation, but I guess you wouldn't see that side of it,' he added grimly, then shot a look at her under his dark forbidding brows. `Do you know why I chose to work for your father?' he asked her abruptly.

  Tanya looked away quickly. If she wasn't very careful he would gain a point here and she didn't intend to give an inch. She shrugged as if to say that that part of it did not concern her, and her eyes met the piercing blue ones of Kade as she answered sharply, 'Yes.'

  His eyes narrowed at this. 'Learned an awful lot in a short time, haven't you? I'd swear you knew nothing this time yesterday—am I right?' he demanded.

  Tanya gave him a warning look that clearly told him that she was not going to discuss that part of it, but she needn't have bothered.

  'Okay!' he said curtly, `so you don't want to talk about it, but you're going to have to. What you don't tell me I'll find out. A lot of trouble was taken to keep the lid on the past. It's finished, and should have stayed that way.' He gave Tanya an assessing stare. 'Just look at you,' he said grimly. 'You're as white as a sheet, and I'm pretty sure you're trembling all over, in spite of that brave front you're putting up. If I made a move towards you you'd scream the place down, wouldn't you?' he asked in an almost conversational way.

  'I wouldn't advise you to try it,' warned Tanya, with flashing eyes, 'because you're right. I would scream the place down. I want nothing from you, Kade Player, except-your resignation ! '

  'And that you're not going to get,' he drawled. 'As for making a play for you, you'd be disappointed on that score, too. I'm afraid I don't hanker after kids, and you've a lot of growing up to do.'

  'Is that the sort of advice you gave my mother when you threatened her with the horsewhip?' retaliated Tanya, furious at the way he had deliberately misinterpreted her behaviour towards him and making it look as if it had been a ploy on her part to goad him into making a grab for her. She could feel the wetness gathering at the back of her eyes, but she wasn't going to give way to tears, not in front of this man. Connie had been right, you couldn't win against a man like Kade.

  'So that came out too, did it?' he growled ominously, in a tone that spelt an awful lot of trouble for someone, and Tanya wondered if Melanie was shaking in her shoes the other side of th
e door. 'Well, I guess that narrows down the field,' he added pithily.

  'Does it matter?' said Tanya, in a voice that spoke of her distaste for the whole subject. 'I had to know some time, didn't I? and I'm glad I know. There were lots of things I couldn't understand before,' her voice was not quite as steady as it had been because she was thinking of her mother, 'and if you don't mind I would rather. we dropped the subject,' she added with as much dignity as she could muster.

  His harsh, 'Very well,' took her by surprise and she almost blinked at him. 'But there's things you still don't know,' he went on in a flat unemotional voice, 'and it's time you did.'

  Tanya drew in a deep breath; now that the emo-

  tional side of it was over she felt she could cope. She waited for him to go on.

  'Well,' he began, taking a cigarette out of a silver case on his desk and lighting up with a matching lighter, then drew on the cigarette and exhaled the smoke slowly, 'you know why I came, and that means that you also know how your father came to my father's aid by backing him when a load of stocks crashed.' He gave Tanya a hard searching look and she had a feeling that he was trying to make her see things from his point of view, but it wouldn't work, she thought dully; if anything it would make things worse, not better.

  'So how do you think I felt when your mother made a dead set at me?' he demanded softly.

  Tanya couldn't meet his eyes but stared dully at the carpet at her feet.

  'Hell! It's just as embarrassing for me as it is for you,' he exclaimed furiously. 'Just climb down from that high peak you've settled yourself on and try and see things as they were. Sure, your mother had a bad time of it. So did I, and I'll tell you this for what it's worth, even if I'd been tempted, I wouldn't have done anything about it, I would have cleared out there and then.' He frowned in recollection. 'Perhaps I ought to have done anyway, but I didn't; like your father I thought that she'd come to her senses.' He drew hard on his cigarette. 'Maybe I was too hard on her,' he said slowly, 'but I saw no other way of getting through to her, she was living in a pipe dream. I didn't think she'd take off like that, though, I thought she'd more courage than that, but she hadn't.' His free hand clenched into a fist. 'She not only ran, but took you with her. How do you think your father took that?' he shot out at Tanya.

  'He thought as much of you as he did of her.'

  He crushed his cigarette out with a vicious stab, revealing his thoughts on the matter. 'It took a while to bring him round after a blow like that,' he went on harshly. 'I didn't hide the fact that I'd had to speak to her, either, I owed him that much; besides, he wasn't a fool, he knew what was going on. I offered him my resignation then, in case my being here made it difficult for her return, but he wouldn't hear of it.' His gaze rested on an old print of the farm hanging on the wall opposite him. 'I guess he knew she wouldn't be back,' he added slowly. 'He knew her better than I did.'

  Tanya said nothing but transferred her gaze to the floor again.

  'I'm only outlining the facts for you to understand the following events,' he said harshly, 'and why I acted as I did. There was nothing underhand in my acquisition of part of the farm. They say there's no such thing as coincidence, but I've other thoughts on the matter. Your father also took a fall on the shares, and one just as bad as my father's. It happened just six months after you left, and I knew one thing for certain, and that was that if I'd passed that information on to him, he'd have wanted to sell the business and recoup what he could. He'd no heart for a fight back even if I'd offered to stand surety for him. By that time I was in sole charge of all business affairs, and all that was required of him was to countersign any cheques that needed signing.'

  He did not miss Tanya's twisted smile, or the thoughts behind it.

  'Oh, sure,' he said harshly. 'I could have been swindling him blind, but it just so happens that I'm a partner in my father's business and I could have bought

  Orchard Farm any time I'd a mind to do so, particularly as your father had lost interest in the business—but I didn't. I wasn't going to give him a chance to get out and spend the rest of his time brooding on the past. He needed an occupation and I made sure that he got one. I covered the loss on the stocks with my own money, and the only way I could do that was to buy my way into the business.'

  Tanya felt ashamed of herself. Instinctively she knew that Kade was telling the truth, and she wished desperately that she could bring herself to say thank you for his loyalty to her father, but the thought of her mother and her unhappiness kept her silent.

  'And that is why you were named as the sole inheritor of Orchard Farm,' he said quietly. 'Your father had no idea that I'd had to buy myself into the firm to keep it solvent. It's also the reason why I'm staying on, quite apart from the fact that I own the greater share of the property. I promised your father that I would watch over your interests and teach you the business. Whether you like it or not, that's precisely what I'm going to do.' He gave the startled Tanya an assessing look. 'I said that I thought you were a fighter. Am I wrong? Are you going to stick it out, or run for it as your mother did?' he challenged her harshly.

  Tanya felt the tears gathering again; she wanted to shout out at him that she took after her mother, and wanted nothing to do with Orchard Farm—not now that it belonged to Kade. She still couldn't look at him and badly wanted time to think things out. She had never envisaged going away again; she was sick of the constant travelling to various smart resorts where the better endowed people spent their time, idling away

  their lives on a constant round of so-called pleasure, and when she had been unhappy she had thought of Orchard Farm. It had been an anchor in the sea of constant travels, an anchor that would one day hold her fast to the place where she belonged. Her father had told her often enough that her home was there and would be always waiting for her.

  She looked back at Kade, who sat there with that still but watchful look, and the unhappiness in her wide eyes said more than words could ever convey. 'I'm sorry,' she said in a low but firm voice. 'I meant it when I asked you to buy me out,' she gave a weary shrug of her slim shoulders. 'As you refuse—well, I shall just have to remain a shareholder.'

  She flushed under Kade's hard scrutiny. He could think what he liked of her, she didn't care.

  'Where will you run to?' he asked with an ironic note in his voice.

  Tanya stared at her hands, her fingers now closely twisted together. 'I haven't thought that out yet,' she answered, and somehow managed to give him a tight smile. 'Don't worry, I'll make out. There are a lot of friends I could join for a while at least.'

  'Who, for example?' queried Kade, still with that touch of irony in his voice.

  It was none of his business, thought Tanya, surfacing from her well of misery to give him a look that said just that. 'Just friends,' she repeated stonily.

  'You mean your mother's friends, don't you?' he demanded persistently.

  `If you like!' bit back Tanya crossly, tired of the whole wretched business and willing an end to this miserable meeting.

  'And then what?' Kade demanded harshly. 'Oh, I've seen the bills your father settled in the past for you both. I hardly think your income is going to live up to those standards.'

  Tanya stared at him. What was he talking about? They had lived on her mother's money, hadn't they? Her father had not been a poor man, and he had left her a legacy—she caught her breath on a raw sob—but it hadn't been enough to pay for the life style they had acquired since leaving home. So that was why she had never married again, or sought a divorce.

  On seeing her look of utter astonishment, Kade nodded significantly. 'It was one of the conditions of the separation,' he said harshly. 'You might as well hear the rest of it now. Your father agreed on a separation providing your mother never remarried. He was looking out for your future. He didn't intend you to find yourself lumbered with a stepfather you might not have got on with. He meant you to come back here where you belonged, but you can't bring yourself to even do that, can you? After al
l he did for you!' he pointed out savagely.

  The tears Tanya had held back for so long now cascaded down her cheeks, and she turned her face away from her tormenter.

  A large handkerchief was thrust into her hand, the knuckles of which were now wet where she had tried to stem the flow of tears. 'Try that one for size,' Kade said gruffly. `Go on, get it out of your system. I guess you've had a pretty rough time of it since yesterday, and I haven't made things any easier for you, but you had to hear the whole of it.'

  Tanya hastily mopped her face, then wondered

  vaguely what to do with the handkerchief, she couldn't very well hand it back to him in that condition. She gulped, then took a deep breath, concentrating only on not giving way to her emotion. If she did as Kade suggested, she had a feeling that she would never stop crying once she had let herself go.

  'Well, that's that,' said Kade in a resigned tone that Tanya somehow did not connect with the Kade she knew. 'I tried, but I've failed. I might have known how you'd react. It was the reason why I clamped down on the past. Sure, you'd have to know some time, but I figured there was plenty of time. There's ways of explaining things, and I sure as hell didn't intend you to be thrown head first into the mire of the past, not that there's anything murky about it. I told you the truth. Your mother might have been unhappy, but she took the wrong way out.'

  He was silent for a moment or so after this, and Tanya, still desperately hanging on to her shattered aplomb, wondered if he would now allow her to leave.

  'It gets into your blood, you know,' Kade continued in an almost conversational tone. 'Watching the yield each year, and assessing the crop, not to mention the sight of the blossom each spring.' He looked towards Tanya, now twisting his very damp handkerchief in her restless hands. 'Have you forgotten what it's like?' he asked her quietly, then gave a wry grin. 'I guess I ought to bring my father out here at that time. He might be able to understand why I prefer this life to the city life.'