Tasmanian Tangle (5 page)

With this thought in mind, it was a little unnerving

to find that Melanie's attitude had undergone a drastic change since their last encounter. She actually smiled at Tanya, but there was an anxious look in her eyes and something else that Tanya thought might be a kind of pleading. It did look as if Kade had found out, she thought with another stab of panic, and it was all she could do to keep on walking towards the manager's office. She couldn't discuss it, she thought wildly, and if he tried—

'Good morning, Miss Hume,' Kade's smooth voice greeted her, as she closed the office door behind her and stood waiting to hear the dreaded subject mentioned.

'Good morning, Mr Player,' she answered warily, keeping near the door ready to make her exit at the slightest hint of a conversation ensuing.

'Well, come in,' he said irritably, 'and sit down, we've a lot to discuss.'

Tanya swallowed. Not if they were going to talk about the past they hadn't! She walked over to the chair placed opposite him and sat down slowly. It might be as well to get it over with, she thought wearily, as her smouldering eyes swept over the immaculately dressed man sitting in front of her. If he said one word out of place she'd fire him ! She wasn't quite sure how you did fire someone but presumed one just said 'You're fired!' The thought gave her comfort and she found herself actually hoping that he would step out of line.

He had been looking at some notes on his desk and Tanya's eyes had followed his gaze, but when she glanced up at him again she found that he was studying her with narrowed eyes. 'Something on your mind?' he asked bluntly.

Tanya started, but made a quick recovery. 'I believe

it was you who asked to see me,' she replied coldly.

There was no doubt that her reply had given him food for thought, if not startled him, but with his hard features it was hard to tell. One thing was certain, she had never spoken to him like that before. She had been timid and desperately anxious to please him, but those days were gone, she thought with a kind of bitter release.

He raised an expressive eyebrow before he picked up the list that he had been studying, then he handed it to her. 'That's a list of the firms we deal with,' he said curtly. 'Their files are in the secretary's office. I want you to study them, from now on you'll be working at management level. I'm having a desk put in Miss Black's office for your use. Your first function will be to watch points, nothing else, got that?'

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 P
layer, 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 the 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.'