Читать книгу Lover By Deception - Пенни Джордан, Penny Jordan - Страница 6

CHAPTER ONE

PAIN, anger and guilt—right now, looking at his twenty-two-year-old half-brother, Ritchie, Ward felt them all.

‘Why on earth didn’t you come to me if you needed money?’ he demanded tersely.

The sunlight through the narrow, almost monastic window of Ward’s study touched Ritchie’s hair, turning it to bright gold.

Ward already knew that when Ritchie raised his head to look at him his blue eyes would be full of remorse.

‘You’ve already done so much, given me so much,’ Ritchie told him in the quiet, well-modulated voice that was so very much his own father’s, Ward’s stepfather’s.

‘I didn’t want to bother you, to ask you for any more, but this postgraduate year in America would just be so valuable,’ he told Ward earnestly, and then he was off, completely absorbed as his enthusiasm for his subject, his studies, overwhelmed his earlier guilt.

As he listened to him Ward looked at him steadily, his eyes not blue like Ritchie’s and his stepfather’s, but instead a dark iron-grey, the same colour as those of the tough young apprentice who had fathered him forty-two years ago and who had then lost his life before he, Ward, was out of nappies. He’d been killed in an industrial accident which had had more to do with him being the victim of a greedy employer’s refusal to make sure that he was operating proper safety standards for his workforce than any genuine ‘accident.’ That had been in the days before such incidents were fully monitored, when any compensation for the loss of a life, a husband, a father, was at the discretion of the employer rather than a matter for the law.

Ward’s mother had received nothing—less than nothing since; following her young husband’s death she had had to leave the company-owned terraced property they had lived in and she and her baby son had had to move to another part of the northern town where they lived to make their home with her own parents. Baby Ward had been left with his grandmother whilst his mother earned what little she could cleaning.

It had been through her job cleaning the local school where Ward went that she had ultimately met her second husband, Ritchie’s father.

She had spent a long time discussing with Ward her hopes and plans and the changes they would make to both their lives before she had accepted the proposal of the gentle English teacher who had fallen in love with her.

Neither of them had expected that their marriage would result in the birth of their own child and Ward could well understand why both of them should have been so besotted with their unexpected and precious son.

Ritchie was his father all over again. Gentle, mild-mannered, a scholar, unworldly and easily duped by others, not through any lack of intelligence but more because neither of them could conceive of the extent of other people’s greed and selfishness, since these were vices they simply did not possess.

It had been thanks to his stepfather and his care, his love, his fatherliness, that Ward had been persuaded to stay on at school and then, later, to start out and found his own business.

He was, as others were very fond of saying, very much a self-made man. A millionaire now, able to command whatever luxuries he wished since the communications business he had built up had been bought out by a large American corporation, but Ward preferred to live simply, almost monastically.

A big lion of a man, with broad shoulders and the tough-hewn body and bone structure he had inherited from his own father and through him from generations of working men, gave him a physical appearance of commanding strength and presence. Other men feared him—and their women...

His dark eyebrows snapped together angrily, causing his silently watching half-brother to wince inwardly and wish that he had not been so foolish.

Only the other week Ward had had to make it sharply plain to the wife of a business colleague that despite her obvious sensuality and availability he was not interested in what she had to offer.

Ward had grown up with a mother who was everything that a woman should be—tender, loving, gentle, loyal and trustworthy.

It had come as an unpleasant awakening to discover how rare her type of woman actually was.

His wife, the girl he had fallen in love with and married at twenty-two, had shown him that. She had left him before their marriage was a year old, declaring that she preferred a man who knew how to have fun, a man who had time and money to spend on her.

By that time Ward had been as disillusioned by marriage as she, tired of coming home to an empty house, tired of having to search through empty cupboards to throw himself a meal together, but tired most of all of a woman who gave nothing to their relationship or to him but who took everything.

Even so, it had given him very little pleasure five years later to have her feckless husband come begging him for a job.

More out of disgust than anything else he had not just given him one but had made the couple a private, non-repayable ‘loan.’ He could still remember the avaricious look he had seen in his ex-wife’s eyes as she’d looked around the new house he had just moved into, assessing the worth of the property, of the man who could have been hers.

Small wonder, perhaps, that she had had the gall to dare to come on to Ward behind her new husband’s back, claiming that she had loved him all along and that their divorce, her desertion of him, had been an aberration, a silly mistake. Even if he’d had the misfortune to still love her, which fortunately he did not, Ward would not have taken her back. It was in his genes, his tough northern upbringing and inheritance, to prize loyalty and honesty above all else.

Their marriage was dead, he had told her starkly, and so too was whatever emotion he had once felt for her.

He hadn’t seen her since, nor had he wished to do so, and since then he had opted for a woman-free lifestyle, but that of course did not mean that he didn’t have his problems, and he was being confronted with one of them right now.

When Ritchie had won a place at Oxford, Ward had proudly and willingly offered to finance him. Ritchie was, after all, his half-brother, his family, and Ward himself could never forget the help and support his stepfather had given him when he was first getting started.

His parents, their parents, were retired now, his stepfather, older than their mother by nearly fifteen years, in poor health, suffering from a heart condition, which meant that he had to live as quietly as possible, without any stress. Which was why...

‘Why the hell didn’t you tell me you needed more money?’ he reiterated to Ritchie explosively now.

‘You’d already given me so much,’ Ritchie repeated. ‘I just couldn’t—didn’t...’

‘But for God’s sake, Ritchie, surely your intelligence, your common sense must have told you that the whole thing was a scam? No one, but no one, pays that kind of interest or gets that kind of return. Why the hell do you think they were using the small ads?’

‘It just seemed to be the answer to my problem,’ Ritchie told him. ‘I had the five thousand that you’d given me in the bank, and if it could be turned into virtually ten in a matter of months and I could get a holiday job as well...’ He stopped uncomfortably as he saw the way Ward was shaking his head and looking skyward in obvious angry disbelief.

‘It seemed such a good idea,’ he insisted defensively. ‘I had no idea...’

‘You’re dead right you didn’t,’ Ward agreed grimly. ‘No idea whatsoever. You should have come to me instead... Tell me again just what happened,’ he instructed his half-brother.

Ritchie took a deep breath.

‘There was an ad in one of those free news sheet things. I just happened to pick it up. I forget where. It said that anyone interested in seeing real growth and profit on their capital should apply to a box number they quoted for more details.’

‘A box number.’ Ward raised his eyes skyward a second time. ‘So you, with the common sense of a lemming, applied.’

‘It seemed such a good idea,’ Ritchie protested again, a hurt look in his eyes. ‘And I just thought...Well, Dad’s always going on about how lucky I am to have you behind me, helping me, financing me. How he and Mum couldn’t have afforded to give me any help to go up to Oxford and the fact that I don’t have to finance myself with part-time work means that I’m free to study properly, and sometimes that makes me feel...Well, I hate thinking that Dad’s comparing me to you and finding me wanting and that my classmates reckon I’m spoiled rotten because I’ve got you to bankroll me.’

Ritchie found wanting? Ward’s frown deepened. He admired and respected his stepfather, yes, and loved him too, but he had always been sensitively conscious of how far short he must fall of the kind of ideals on which his gentle, unmaterialistic stepfather had founded his life.

‘Anyway,’ Ritchie continued, ‘eventually I had a phone call from this chap and he told me what to do—said that I should send him a cheque for five thousand pounds and that he’d send me a receipt and a monthly statement showing the value of my investment. He also said he’d send me a portfolio listing where my money had been invested.’

‘And did he, by any chance, also tell you just how he was able to offer such a reality-defying rate of growth and profit on this investment?’ Ward enquired with awful ominous calm.

‘He said it was because he cut out the middle man and that due to all the changes going on in certain overseas markets there were good opportunities there for those who knew the markets to make a real killing...’

‘Indeed, and he, out of sheer generosity, intended to share that knowledge with anyone who happened to respond to his ad. Was that it...?’

‘I...Ididn’t enquire into his motivation,’ Ritchie responded with desperate dignity and a betrayingly flushed face.

‘Oh, I know I ought to have done, but Professor Cummins had just told me that if I took this extra year out to get an additional qualification in the US, then I’d have a much better chance of success if I ever decided I wanted to apply for a fellowship over here, and he had just asked me to do some research for him for a series of lectures he was giving in America. God knows why he chose me. My grades...’

‘He chose you for very much the same reason that our enterprising entrepreneur and financial crook chose you, Ritchie,’ Ward told him with cool sarcasm before prodding his half-brother.

‘So, to continue, you paid over the five thousand pounds you had in your bank account, and then what?’

‘Well, for the first two months everything went well. I got statements showing an excellent return on the investment, but then the third month I didn’t receive a statement, and when I eventually rang the number I’d been given I was told that it was unobtainable.’

He looked so perplexed that in any other circumstances Ward, who had a good sense of humour, would have been tempted to laugh a little at his naivety, but this was no laughing matter. This was a young man who had been deliberately and cold-bloodedly relieved of five thousand pounds by as shrewd a fraudulent operator as Ward had ever come across, and he had met his fair share of the breed in his time, although needless to say none of them had ever taken him in.

‘How surprising,’ was the only comment he allowed himself to make.

Ritchie raised stricken eyes to his and muttered, ‘I know. I know what you’re thinking but...Well, at first I just thought it was a mistake. I wrote to the address on the statements but my letter came back “address unknown” and since then...’

‘Since then your friendly investment manager has proved that it isn’t just money he can magic away into thin air?’ Ward suggested dryly.

‘I really am sorry, Ward, but I...I had to tell you...I haven’t even got enough money left to cover myself this term now, never mind next, and...’

‘How much is it going to cost you to pay for the rest of your year’s living and studying expenses?’ Ward asked him point-blank.

Reluctantly Ritchie told him.

‘And how much for your year in the US? And I want the full cost of it, please, Ritchie, not some ridiculous guestimate because you’re too proud to tell me the full amount.’

Again, this time even more reluctantly, Ritchie gave Ward the figure he wanted.

‘Right,’ Ward announced, opening a drawer to his desk and removing his cheque book, which he promptly opened, writing across the top cheque an amount which not only covered the sum Ritchie had disclosed but included a very generous allowance over it as well.

So much so that when he handed Ritchie the cheque the younger man gasped and coloured up to the roots of his fair hair, protesting, ‘No, Ward, I can’t. That’s far too much... I...’

‘Take it...’ Ward overrode him firmly and then glanced at his watch before adding casually, ‘Oh, and by the way, I’ve decided it’s time you had a new car. I’ve got the keys for you so you can leave the old one here; I’ll dispose of it for you.’

‘A new car? But I don’t need one; the Mini is fine for my needs,’ Ritchie protested.

‘For yours, yes, but your father isn’t getting any younger. I know how much he looks forward to your visits home and how much he worries, and we both know that that isn’t good for him. He’ll feel much happier if he knows you’re driving something that’s safe...’

Shaking his head, Ritchie accepted the set of keys his elder brother was extending to him. There was no point in arguing with Ward. No point whatsoever. As he smiled his thanks into his brother’s austerely handsome face he wished, not for the first time, that he could be more like him.

Only the previous term, when Ward had come down to visit him, one of the other students in his year, a girl—the prettiest and most sought after girl on the campus—had commented breathlessly to him that Ward was just so-o-o hunkily sexy, and Ritchie had known exactly what she meant.

There was an energy, a power, and maleness about Ward that somehow or other set him apart from other men. He was a born leader and he possessed that magical spark inherited from his forebears which Ritchie knew he could never, ever possess, no matter how many academic qualifications he obtained.

After his half-brother had left, Ward picked up the small folder he had brought with him. In it were the statements Ritchie had referred to. Frowningly Ward studied them. He would check out the stock they cited, of course, but he knew already that they would either be completely fictitious or, if real, never actually bought That was how this kind of scum worked.

Heavens, but you’d have thought that a young man with Ritchie’s brains would have known immediately that the whole thing was a scam. There had been enough warnings over the years in the financial press about this type of thing, but then Ritchie was studying the classics and Ward doubted that he had ever read a financial article in his life.

His father was similarly naive and had been hopelessly out of place in the large, sprawling urban jungle of a school where he had taught and where Ward himself had been a pupil. Ward had perfectly understood what his mother had meant when she had told her son gently that one of the reasons she wanted to accept Alfred’s proposal of marriage was that she felt he needed someone to look after him properly.

Ward could still remember how some of the other boys had mocked and taunted him because their softie of an English teacher was now his stepfather, but Ward had soon shown them the error of their ways. He had been big and strong for his age, with a tongue that could be just as quick and painful as his fists when it needed to be.

Ward had grown up in an environment where you had to be tough to survive, and the lessons he had learned there had equipped him very well when it had come to surviving in business. But now those early thrusting, exhausting years were over. Now he never needed to work again.

He got up and walked over to stare out of the window. Down below, the Yorkshire moors rolled away towards the town. The stone manor house he had made his home was considered by many to be too bleak for comfort, but Ward just shrugged his shoulders at their criticism. It suited him. But then, perhaps, he was a bleak person. He certainly was one it wasn’t advisable to try to cheat.

He looked again at the statement. He suspected that J. Cox and A. Trewayne, whoever they might be, were by now very safely out of reach; that was the way of such things. But the streak of stubbornness and the drive for justice that were such a strong part of his personality refused to allow him to dismiss the matter without making at least some attempt to bring them to book.

Now that he had sold his business, his time was pretty much his own. There were certain calls upon it, of course. He made regular visits to his parents, who were now living happily and genteelly in the spa town of Tunbridge Wells. He took a very vigorous interest in the local workshop he had founded and funded which taught youngsters the basic mechanics of a wide range of trades—thus not only providing them with some skills but also providing older men who had been made redundant with a new job which gave them a renewed sense of pride in their trades.

It was a project to which Ward devoted a considerable amount of his time, and he had no time for shirkers. Everyone accepted onto it, whether as a teacher or a pupil, was expected to work and work hard. Tucked away at the back of Ward’s mind was the possibility that, should the right opportunity arise, it might be worthwhile establishing an eclectic workforce comprising the best of his young trainees and encouraging them to work both as a supportive group and on their own.

‘Ward, you can’t finance the apprenticeship of every school-leaver in Yorkshire,’ his accountant had protested when Ward had first mooted his plans to him.

But Ward had shaken his head and told him simply, ‘Maybe not, but at least I’ll be able to give some of them a chance.’

‘And what about those who are simply using your scheme, your generosity—the ones who are using you?’ his accountant had asked him.

Ward had merely shrugged, the movement of his big shoulders signifying that they were broad enough to take such small-mindedness and greed. But if either his accountant or anyone else had ever dared to suggest that he was an idealist, a romantic at heart who wanted only to see the best in everyone, to help everyone, Ward would have dismissed such a statement instantly with a pithily scathing response.

He frowned as he studied the papers Ritchie had given him again and then flicked through his phone book, looking for the number of the very discreet and professional service he sometimes used when he wanted to make enquiries about anyone. As a millionaire and a philanthropist he was constantly being approached for financial help, and whilst Ward was the first man to put his hand in his pocket to help a genuinely deserving cause or person he was street-wise enough to want to make sure that they were genuinely deserving.

Whilst he was waiting for his call to be answered, his attention was caught by some papers awaiting his attention on his desk.

They carried his full name—once the bane of his life and the cause of many a childhood scuffle; where he had grown up there had sometimes been only one way of convincing his jeering taunter that the name Hereward did not mean that he was a victim or an easy target for the school’s bullies.

Hereward.

‘Why?’ he had once emotionally demanded of his mother.

‘Because I like it,’ she had told him with her loving smile. ‘I thought it suited you. Made you different...’

‘Aye, it’s done that all right,’ he had agreed bluntly.

Hereward Hunter.

Perhaps deep down inside his mother had been motivated by much the same impulse that had driven the absentee father in Johnny Cash’s famous song ‘A Boy Named Sue.’ She had known, not that it would make him different, but that it would make him strong. Well, strong he undoubtedly was, certainly strong enough to ensure that J. Cox and A. Trewayne paid back every penny they had gulled from his naive half-brother, even if he had to up-end them and shake them by the seat of their pants to make their pockets disgorge it.

A single bar of sunlight streaming in through the narrow window of his office touched his thick dark brown hair, burnishing and highlighting the very masculine planes of his face. His eyes were as cold and dark as the North Sea on a stark winter’s day when he told the girl who answered his call whom he wanted to speak with.

Oh, yes, J. Cox and A. Trewayne were most definitely going to regret cheating his half-brother. Legally it might be possible to pursue them through the courts for fraud, but Ward had already decided that they merited something a little swifter and more punitive than the slow process of the law.

Like the bullies who had tried it on with him at school, their type relied on their victim’s vulnerability and fear—not, of course, fear of violence, but of being publicly branded either foolish or, even worse, financially incompetent. And that fear prevented the truth of what these con men were doing from being disclosed.

Well, they were soon going to discover that in trying to con his half-brother they had made the biggest mistake of their grubbily deceitful lives.