The Devil's Pawn Read online

  'The steel company has asked for tenders for a second plant they want to erect about fifteen kilometres from here, and there is a good chance that I might get it, but I won't know for at least another two months.'

  'And if you don't get it?'

  She knew the answer already, it was there in the pallor of his face, but the question had been wrung from her with something close to desperation.

  'If I don't get the contract, then I'll be ruined financially,' her father informed her, and his hands shook when he pushed his fingers uncharacteristically through his hair. 'We will have to sell this house, and I doubt if your mother will ever forgive me for that.'

  Cara could imagine how her mother would feel about selling the home she had known for so many years, and she could also imagine what it would do to her mother to have to part with the various pieces of antique furniture which she had collected with such loving care.

  'I don't think we should tell Mother about this… not yet, anyway,' Cara suggested, and her father nodded tiredly.

  'I don't know what I'm going to do if Steiner refuses to extend our agreement, Cara.'

  He had perhaps not meant it to sound like a plea for help, but Cara felt as if she had been driven into a corner. If Vince Steiner was to be taken seriously, then she had it within her power to save the situation for both her father and her mother. The price she would have to pay for his leniency made her shudder, but she found herself considering his proposal of marriage seriously for the first time.

  Cara was happy in her job as Librarian at the local library. With her degree in literature she found it an absorbing and interesting occupation, but her concentration left much to be desired the following morning. Her mind was occupied with the problem of saving her home while at the same time escaping the clutches of Vince Steiner, and her young assistant, Nancy de Witt, glanced at her curiously on several occasions when she had made blatant errors in filing the membership cards.

  'Why don't you take a break, Miss Lloyd,' Nancy suggested that afternoon when Cara's carelessness during the day had obviously led her to believe that her superior was tired. 'I'll cope in here and, if there are any queries, I'll refer them to you.'

  Cara hesitated momentarily, then she nodded abruptly. 'I'll be in my office if you need me.'

  She sighed with relief when she sat down behind her desk, but her glance rested on the pile of correspondence in front of her, and she groaned inwardly. She simply could not cope while her mind leapt about like a frantic hare seeking an escape hole to jump into, but she pulled the pile of correspondence towards her and managed to draft a few letters in reply before there was a light tap on her door.

  'Come in, Nancy,' she called absently, putting down her pen and raising her glance. The door was opened, but her eyes widened beneath her delicately arched brows when she found herself looking up into a pair of ice-grey eyes. 'Mr Steiner!'

  He stepped into her small office, and the sheer length and breadth of him dwarfed its cluttered interior into the claustrophobic size of a cupboard when he closed the door behind him. 'Miss de Witt said you wouldn't object to being disturbed.'

  Disturbed was a mild word compared to what she felt at that moment. Her nerves were jangling as if she had been connected to an alarm, and her mind was a frantic mess of thoughts and impressions that left her staring rather stupidly at Vince Steiner for a moment. The cut of his immaculate brown suit accentuated the width of his shoulders and the leanness of his hips. His thigh muscles strained against the confining cloth of his trousers and, when she happened to glance at his large hands, the words of an old song came to mind.

  One fist of iron, the other of steel,

  If the right one don't get you, then the left one will.

  There was a threat in those words, and this was not the first time Cara had sensed that thread of steel in this man's bearing. He could break anyone as easily as he could break a twig between those strong fingers with the clean, neatly clipped nails, and this was not a very reassuring thought while she struggled to gather her scattered wits about her.

  'Won't you please sit down,' she heard herself saying politely in a voice that sounded incredibly cool and calm while everything within her wanted to scream abuse at him. He seated himself in the chair facing her across the small desk, and she laced her trembling fingers together in her lap. 'How can I help you?'

  His mocking eyes trailed from her high cheekbones down to her full, sensitive mouth. 'You know why I'm here.'

  Cara should have anticipated something like this, but instead she was totally unprepared for it, and she felt herself shrinking visibly from the decision she knew she had to make.

  'I thought you would be coming to our home this evening for your answer.' She spoke evasively, her face pale, and her body rigid with antagonism and dislike.

  'I don't think you fully understand the seriousness of the matter, and I am here to stress the fact that I meant what I said last night.' Vince Steiner's cold eyes held hers with an effortless ease that frightened her, and she felt like a trapped animal with no way to escape. 'Marry me, and your father can have the extra twelve months to repay his loan.'

  'Why are you so hard on him, Mr Steiner?' she questioned him with an unconscious plea in her eyes. 'Why can't you be a little lenient and give him the extra time he requires?'

  'I have my reasons.' His hand dipped into the inside pocket of his jacket and he took out a gold cigarette case. 'One of those reasons is that he signed an agreement to the effect that he would repay his loan on or before this coming Saturday.'

  Cara watched him light a cigarette, and decided to probe a little deeper into the mysterious hold this man had on her father. 'How much did my father borrow from you?'

  A cloud of smoke was ejected forcibly between his chiselled lips and directed towards the ceiling while his narrowed, speculative eyes met hers. 'A quarter of a million.'

  If Cara had not been seated at that moment she dreaded to think what might have happened. The room spun crazily for several seconds before it seemed to right itself, and she caught the fleshy part of her lower lip sharply between her teeth as if she subconsciously hoped the pain of it would help to steady her. A quarter of a million rand was a fortune, and it did not surprise her now that this man was exerting pressure on her father.

  'Mr Steiner…' She swallowed convulsively and clasped her hands a little tighter in her lap. 'Is there no other way we can solve this problem?'

  'There is,' he smiled twistedly, tapping his cigarette ash into the ashtray she pushed towards him. 'The sale of your home and the furniture in it might only just collect the amount owing to me.'

  'How easily you say that, Mr Steiner,' she accused, her wide, attractively curved mouth tightening. 'Do you have any notion of the sentimental value one attaches to those things one has collected over the years to form a part of one's home?'

  'I'm not a sentimental man, Cara.' His use of her name once again sent that odd tremor racing through her, but she shrugged it off with distaste when he continued speaking. 'I deal with facts and figures, and I learnt a long time ago that sentimentality has no place in business.'

  He was as unrelenting as the concrete wall behind him, she could see this now, and nothing would divert him from the stance he had taken. His rigid, unbending manner frightened her, and it was fear that drove her to her feet to stare out of the window into the street. The children were playing in the park. She could see them laughing as they propelled themselves with their bodies to urge the swing to higher realms, and she envied them in that moment. They were so carefree and happy, and she would have given anything to be one of them for just a few brief hours.

  There was something she had to know, but she could not bear to face the man seated in the chair behind her, so she kept her back turned rigidly towards him. 'If I— If I agree to marry you…'

  'If you agree to marry me, and your father repays his loan within the next twelve months, then I shall naturally free you from our marriage,' Vince Steiner elabora
ted in his deep-throated voice.

  'And if he can't repay the loan?' she asked, holding her breath for an agonised second.

  'You shall be free after twelve months no matter what happens.' She felt certain that his eyes were roaming over her body, probing beneath the neat grey skirt and crisp white blouse, and she turned to see that her suspicions were confirmed. His eyes flicked over her lazily, lingering deliberately on her small breasts and, to her complete dismay, she felt their thrusting response as if he had actually touched her. The smile that curved his mouth told her that her reaction had not escaped his notice, and the blood rushed into her cheeks to make her furious eyes look feverishly bright. 'I think I shall have had my money's worth out of you after twelve months,' he added, filling her with a shuddering revulsion and something else she could not define.

  'You disgust me, Mr Steiner!' she spat out the words.

  'I'm a man of thirty-eight, Cara,' he mocked her, crushing his cigarette into the ashtray and rising to his feet to tower over her. 'Did you think I would propose a marriage in name only?'

  The powerful force of his masculinity overwhelmed her to the extent that she was aware of her femininity in a way she had never been before, and she tried to back away from him only to have the windowsill dig into her waist. 'Do you think I have no feelings?' she demanded defensively.

  'I'm quite sure you have feelings, but I've watched you closely during this past year, and you hide your feelings well behind that cool as marble exterior of yours.' His cold eyes came alive with mockery and hateful anticipation as his glance flicked over her. 'You have intrigued me for some time, and now I will have the opportunity of getting to know everything about you.'

  'You are assuming arrogantly that I will marry you,' she snapped accusingly, but her accusation bounced off him like a rubber ball against a wall.

  'When you walked into your father's study last night you paved the way for your own future, and you gave me an exciting glimpse of what lay beneath that cool surface you display to the world,' he voiced the price she would have to pay for her curiosity and concern. 'It has made me curious to know more.'

  'What would have happened if I hadn't walked in on your discussion last night?'

  His square jaw hardened. 'Your father would have been making arrangements this minute to sell your home.'

  She knew that he meant it, and she disliked him in that moment with an intensity that simmered within her like a volcano. 'You have given me a glimpse into your character as well, Mr Steiner, and I don't particularly like what I see. You're determined to monopolise the building industry in this area, and you don't really care whom you crush in the process of climbing your particular ladder of success. It's a despicable trait, and one which will never reward you with a shred of happiness.'

  'I'm not looking for happiness,' he corrected harshly. 'What I want is justice, and if my methods of acquiring it don't appeal to you, then that's just too bad.'

  'Justice?' she gasped the word incredulously, her tawny eyes flashing up at him angrily. 'What has my father ever done to you that you should want to crush him so completely in your search for so-called justice?'

  'Isn't it enough that he could have taken a loan from me, and then not want to repay it within the specified time?' he demanded bitingly.

  'It's not a criminal offence to be in financial difficulties,' she reminded this man who seemed to have an answer for everything.

  'It can become a criminal offence if I decide to take the necessary legal steps,' he threatened, and Cara went cold at the thought.

  'My father is not reluctant to repay you,' she argued, forcing herself to remain calm despite her growing fears. 'If you took legal action then you would have to agree in court to receiving a monthly repayment of the loan.'

  'You obviously don't know much about your father's financial predicament,' he laughed, leaning back against her desk and folding his arms across his broad chest. 'You and your mother have been existing on your father's reputation in this town for the past two years. He owes everybody money; the butcher, the baker, you name it. No one wants to take action because they know him too well and, if he can't pay his ordinary debts every month, how do you think he is going to repay the loan he accepted from me. Oh, no, Cara, to sue him is not the solution, as I see it. I'll give him another twelve months with you as security, but in the end he will have to sell up and admit he's a failure.'

  'He won't have to do that,' the words spilled unwisely from her lips.

  'Oh?' Vince Steiner remarked, his eyes narrowed and intent upon her white face, and she shook her head, indicating that she was not going to say more, but he seemed capable of reading her like a book. 'Don't tell me your father has put in a tender for the new steel plant?' Her expression must have given her away because he laughed derisively. 'He can forget about it.'

  'If my father has put in a tender,' she said cautiously, 'then there is a strong possibility he will get the contract.'

  'I wouldn't bet on that,' Vince Steiner snorted disparagingly.

  'Why not?'

  His mouth twisted in a hateful smile. 'I have also tendered for that steel plant, and I'm confident that I'll get the contract.'

  Cara had never lost her temper before, but this man was succeeding admirably where everyone else had failed, and she clenched her hands at her sides to prevent herself from striking him. 'Isn't it enough that you got the contract for the first steel plant? Do you have to try and snatch this one away from my father as well?'

  He raised a sardonic eyebrow. 'I'm not doing any snatching, believe me. I put in a tender, and we will have to wait and see who gets the contract.'

  'I think you're the devil himself,' she hissed, her eyes dark with an inner fury, and his harsh laughter made her shake with the desire to lash out at him physically.

  'Tell your father I'll call around at eight this evening, and I shall want an answer one way or the other.'

  He strode out of her office and closed the door behind him, but his threatening ultimatum hovered like a dark cloud in the office for some minutes after he had gone.

  Cara stood there trembling with a fury that made her breath come jerkily over her parted lips. She was trapped! To protect her father, and to save the home her mother loved so much, she would have to marry Vince Steiner, and everything within her cried out in fierce protest at the mere thought of it.

  CHAPTER TWO

  'I still can't understand why you had to rush into marriage in this abominable way,' Lilian Lloyd muttered disapprovingly as she zipped Cara into her dress, and their eyes, very similar in colour, met in the dressing-table mirror. 'You could have announced your engagement, and in a few weeks from now you could have had a respectable church wedding to which we could have invited our family and friends.'

  Cara had seldom hidden anything of importance from her mother, and habit was her enemy at that moment. To prevent the truth from spilling out she clenched her teeth so tightly that her jaw ached. Bitterness rose like gall within her, but she played out the charade which had begun a few days ago when she had agreed to marry Vince Steiner to save her parents from losing everything they held most dear.

  She smiled forcibly into the eyes observing her so anxiously in the mirror. 'Mother, I know that a ceremony in the magistrate's office was not exactly what you had envisaged for me, but both Vince and I want it this way.'

  'It's indecent, that's what it is, and I wasn't even aware that you knew each other,' Lilian complained, her grey head only just visible behind Cara's in the mirror when she fastened the hook above the zip, then she swung Cara round and looked her up and down with a new kind of anxiety. 'You're not pregnant, are you?'

  'No, of course not, Mother!' Cara almost choked with indignation. 'How could you even think such a thing!'

  'I merely wondered, that's all,' Lilian appeased her, her hands fluttering from this to that on the dressing-table without actually touching anything. 'I believe his sister will be coming up from Johannesburg for the wedding this afternoon.
'

  'So Vince told me,' Cara confirmed, still finding it difficult to use his name, and suppressing a shiver at the thought of what still lay ahead of her.

  'She's a doctor, I think he said, and she isn't married.'

  'That's correct.'

  'Cara…' Those slender, fluttering hands gripped Cara's arms with surprising strength. 'Are you absolutely sure that this is what you want?'

  No, God help me, this isn't what I want! Cara bit the words back forcibly as they rose to her lips, and she swallowed down the growing lump of fear in her throat, for her mother's sake she had to remain silent. Her father knew the truth, and it was bad enough having to watch him suffer.

  'Yes, Mother, I'm sure,' Cara heard herself saying in an admirably calm voice as she met her mother's eyes on a level with her own. 'Now, please go downstairs and keep Dad company while I do my make-up… and stop worrying.'

  'How can I stop worrying,' Lilian wailed. 'You're my only daughter, and I care about you, and… oh, I'd better take a handkerchief because I know I'm going to cry.'

  Lilian Lloyd hurried out of the room and closed the door, but she left behind a hint of her delicate, fragrant perfume. The familiarity of it brought the sting of tears to Cara's eyes, but she controlled herself with a formidable effort and studied herself absently in the mirror.

  Her lustrous dark hair was coiled into a knot in the nape of her neck, and a tortoise-shell comb held it firmly in place. Her tawny eyes were fringed with long dark lashes which often hid the sparkle of humour there, but in anger her eyes could become dark and stormy. Cara had been blessed with an even temperament, but during the past few days Vince Steiner had had her fluctuating between a simmering and an explosive anger which she had never known before. It was as if his mere presence triggered off something inside her which inevitably brought out the worst in her. Her peaceful existence had been shattered, and her usually tranquil mind was filled with disturbing, turbulent thoughts.