The Gigolo (11 page)

‘Blackmail!
I haven’t blackmailed anyone. I’m just a property developer.’

‘Don’t play games with me, boy. I’ve seen your
seedy little sex tape.’

He was talking about Kara.
She was the only one who had ever asked him to video the sex. But how did Jack Finnegan know Kara and why would he care so much about her that he’d come in person to threaten him? He just didn’t get the connection but in the interest of his health he kept his mouth shut.

‘What I do with my clients is confidential but I can assure you that I have no intention of blackmailing anyone.’

‘I thought you said you were a builder, boy’ Jack sneered.

‘I don’t have to explain myself to you.
Get out of my house.’ William opened the door and stood aside for Jack to leave.

‘Listen to me, son. I’ve disposed of worse scum than you before breakfast.’

Jack Finnegan used the word
‘disposed’ in the same way as an executioner or a Sicilian mafia boss would. William wasn’t exactly sure what he’d done but he didn’t much like being on the wrong side of this man.

‘
I don’t want you contacting her, nor even speaking to her should she happen to get in touch with you. Have I made myself clear?’

‘Yes sir
. Perfectly clear.’ William was still confused but also relieved. When he’d seen Jack Finnegan at the door he’d been expecting to have his nose relocated to the side of his face, at the very least, and seeing as Finnegan hadn’t mentioned Laura he wasn’t about to ask if this exclusion zone also included his wife.

‘T
his should ensure you forget the girl ever entered your life.’ Jack handed William an envelope stuffed with fifty pound notes and turned to leave. ‘I know money talks to your type.’ Finnegan seemed to lower his gaze to William’s crotch as if in an odd, and quite frankly offensive, reference to what he did for a living.

Once the relie
f of escaping a beating, or worse, from Laura’s husband had subsided William began to worry about Kara. None of this made any sense. Why would Laura’s husband warn him off Kara..? Unless he was having an affair with Kara – but that didn’t make any sense either. Kara was a dedicated career woman with a finely honed allergy to married men. And if she was his bit on the side why was she paying him to entertain her?

The niggling
suspicion that Kara hadn’t instigated her own ‘date’ with him raised its ugly head again. He had to speak to her, but with the smell of Finnegan’s cigar still hanging thick on the air as a reminder of his threat William keyed Laura’s mobile number into his phone instead. She’d told him it was safe to use this if he was ever worried about approaching her house when her husband’s car was outside.

‘Hello.’

‘Laura, is it safe to talk?’

‘Yes, William. What’s wrong?’

‘I’ve just had a visit from your husband, but it was kind of weird. I was expecting him to rip my head off for what I’ve been doing for you but instead he told me to keep away from Kara Kavanagh. Do you know her?’

William heard Laura laugh at the other end of the line.

‘Yes, of course I know her. Kara Kavanagh runs one of my husband’s companies. Her squeaky clean image attracts more business than my husband’s ever would. Don’t tell me
she has to
pay for her sex?’ Laura laughed.

‘So he doesn’t know about us?’ William was keen for reassurance
and ignored Laura’s comment.

‘
No, of course he doesn’t.’

William wanted to ask if Kara might be his mistress but if it was true, and Laura had no idea, it really wasn’t the sort of devastating news that should be delivered over the phone
by him.

William hung up
. He found himself disappointed that Kara had the weighty influence of Jack Finnegan on her side. He thought they might’ve had something special, and the more he thought about it the more he began to smell a rat.

He picked up the phone and dialled
Kara’s mobile.

‘What?
’ Jack Finnegan answered.

William
disconnected the call but far from discouraging him it made William even more concerned for Kara.

He waited until it got dark and went
out to her house. He got the cab to stop at the end of the road and he walked the last few metres, checking for any signs of Finnegan’s Bentley, but the road was clear and quiet.

There were no lights on in
her house. Either she wasn’t there or she’d already gone to bed. He knocked softly and put his ear to the thick wooden door hoping to hear something from within. Nothing happened so he pressed the doorbell. He could hear it buzzing in the hallway. He stepped back to check for lights at the upstairs windows but it remained dark.

William was forced to give up.
She obviously wasn’t there. She was probably keeping Finnegan’s bed warm.

When
William was on his way back home his phone beeped in his pocket. He took it out and looked at the screen. It was a text from Kara. William smiled and opened the message: 

– Leave me alone and stop calling. I’m with Jack.

William didn’t believe it was from Kara. She would’ve just said fuck off and not bothered to explain why if it had been her.

CHAPTER
NINE

Kara woke feeling punch drunk. She looked at the empty bottle of vodka sitting on her night stand and groaned as a wave of nausea washed over her.

She ran to the bathroom
and threw up in the toilet bowl wishing now that she hadn’t attacked the bottle with such vigour last night. William’s gold ring still sat in the bottom of the pan. She flushed it away. Tears blurred her vision. The last thing she needed right now was to be reminded of what a fool she’d been. She had to get a grip of herself.

I
f Jack was true to his word at least she no longer had the threat of her blackmailer hanging over her head, although she was less sure about the future of her job. Jack had left here last night in a boiling rage – that much she did remember before she’d passed out again.

Kara showered
. She was mourning the loss of William’s ring and the future she’d stupidly began to imagine they had together, but her stomach still lurched each time she thought about him. Even though she knew he’d been paid to entertain her she couldn’t get him out of her head. The bastard! He really had been good at his job.

Kara dressed and called for her car, grabbing a mug of black
coffee to take with her on the journey.

She
painted on a smile for the doorman, and again for the receptionist. At least her possessions weren’t waiting in a cardboard box for her in the foyer.

I can do this. I’m strong enough to stand up to him,
she told herself as she stepped into the lift to make her way up to her office. He had to respect what she’d done for his business, surely? Not even Jack Finnegan could get away with sacking her just because she refused to have sex with him…could he? She hoped he’d be thinking more clearly this morning.

By the time she got up to the third floor Kara was feeling more confident
about her day. When push came to shove they were on the same side.

‘
Julie, pull the file on job applicants, please.’ She left her empty coffee mug with her secretary to wash and headed for her office. They were a man down, and such was their reputation, people were queuing up for jobs here.

She picked
three from the weighty file Julie had given her and got her to arrange interviews before calling the meeting that she’d been forced to cancel yesterday.

Word had got
around that Granger had cleared his desk and if anything, his leaving had sharpened the wits of her remaining team. They were polite and attentive and ultra-keen this morning – and they also wanted to know what had happened to their colleague. Kara said nothing.

‘
And finally...I want to see results that justify your huge salaries.’ She ended the meeting with her usual war cry and headed back to her office, happy to be back on form and firing on all cylinders again...
Who the hell was she kidding?
It was all Kara could do to keep up the pretence that she was functioning normally.
Is this what a broken heart feels like?
She wondered miserably.
Or maybe this was just the pain of self-pity.

Once she’d cleared her in-tray of
the day’s urgent matters Kara’s attention wandered towards the phone. He deserved to get a piece of her mind at the very least – and she deserved an explanation – an apology, even. She wanted him to know what a low life shit he was…and she wanted to hear his voice just one more time. Perhaps there’d be a logical explanation for all this – that’s what she really hoped to hear.

‘William
Baron.’ He answered almost immediately and Kara was suddenly struck dumb with nerves. ‘Can I help you?’ he said. His voice was warm and rich and still had the power to obliterate her reasoning.

‘This is
Kara Kavanagh.’ Her stomach was turning summersaults. Her voice was small and shaky.

The phone went dead.
He’d hung up on her! Tears stung her eyes. The bastard had hung up on her!
He didn’t even have the courage to face me. Fucking coward!
She cursed.

She dialled the number again
– she wasn’t going to be fobbed off quite so easily – but this time she got the engaged tone. He’d obviously left it off the hook. Kara was fuming. She went to dial a third time but her phone rang. She picked it up eagerly.

‘Hello.’

‘Be upstairs in five minutes.’ The line went dead again. It was Jack – his manner was abrupt. Kara tidied her desk and headed up to the penthouse suite. It wasn’t the first time she’d been summoned to the top floor but he normally gave her more notice. She hoped this wasn’t the last time she was going to be making this journey. No matter how put out he was at her turning him down, she hoped he had more integrity than to let it cloud his judgment.

The lift doors swished open at the penthouse.
Jack was standing with his back to her, looking out at the London skyline. He was wearing a robe.

‘Morning, Jack.’

When he turned around Kara noticed that his robe was open and that he was naked underneath. She was tempted to hit the lift button and return to the third floor but she didn’t.

Kara stepped
hesitantly out of the lift but found herself unable to venture any further into the room. Her feet seemed to have put down roots.

Jack closed the gap between them
instead.

‘Take your clothes
off, then, Kara.’

‘What?’
Kara gave a nervous laugh. He was joking. It was the kind of sick joke that he would find amusing and she wouldn’t have been surprised if it had worked for him in the past.

‘I said take off your clothes.’

‘No,’ Kara whispered as if she was afraid that someone else would hear their conversation. ‘This is wrong, Jack. It would completely undermine my position in the company.’

‘Your position has changed,’

‘Are you demoting me?’ Kara swallowed the lump in her throat.

‘No, I’m
happy enough with your work but this is a dog eat dog world and your position in it has been changed…irrevocably.’

‘Why
?’ Kara refused to simply roll over and give him what he wanted and she was close to tears. She couldn’t let him see her cry. A man in her position wouldn’t be reduced to tears simply because he’d been caught in flagrante. In fact, Jack would more than likely be slapping her back and congratulating her if she’d been a man.

‘You allowed yourself to be exploited and in so doing you’ve
put the good name of the company at risk. You have to pay for that mistake.’

‘
Then ball me out, dock my pay check, or sack me, but I won’t be blackmailed into your bed, Jack.’

Jack
sighed, picked up an envelope from his desk and tipped its contents onto the table in front of her – a DVD and a USB stick fell out.

‘
Granger gave me these before he left.’

Kara felt some of the tension leave her body.

‘What happened to him?’

‘I’ve sent him
on a sabbatical. Halfpenny went too. They won’t be bothering you again.

‘But what about Granger’s wife?’

‘He hasn’t got a wife. He lived with Halfpenny in a flat that looked as if it hadn’t been cleaned in a decade.

‘The little shit lied to me,’ Kara cursed.

‘Maybe you’re losing your touch, Kara,’ Jack said.

‘C
an I destroy them?’ Kara asked, crossing her fingers behind her back.

She was hopeful that Jack was
just playing with her – making her suffer for getting into such a stupid mess – although she knew he wasn’t faithful to his wife. Laura seemed to be nothing more than the token wife – a thing of beauty to hang off his arm when he went to functions. Kara wondered if Laura knew that her husband had been through most of the typing pool.