Charade of Hearts – Chapter 31

A/N:  I hope kalma na kayong lahat by this time… Cencya po sa late posting, churi po sa mga nagpuyat…I do not own this story, this is an adaptation of the novel Double Standards by Judith McNaught!

 

 

“Mr. Lim.” The secretary in Davao bent down beside Richard, her voice lowered to a whisper to avoid disturbing the seven other major industrialists seated around the conference table discussing the final details of an international trade agreement.

“I’m sorry to disturb you, sir, but there’s a Mr. James Ventura on the phone for you…”

Richard nodded and slid his chair back. Seven men glanced up and looked at him with irritated accusation. Except in matters of extreme emergency, none of them was taking calls. During the last meeting and now this one, only Richard had received an urgent call and the last time the meeting had to be aborted and rescheduled because he had abruptly walked out on them.

Richard strode from the conference room, gripped by the memory of the last time James’ call had interrupted him in this meeting. That time James had fabricated some silly damned excuse for calling, so that he could say that Maya had resigned.

“Yes, what is it?” Richard said, angry at the memory of her, angry at the pain that thinking of her always evoked.

“There’s quite a celebration going on over in the engineering department,” James began, his voice hesitant and confused.

“Richard, even though Maya gave Cervantes copies of our four bids, we have just been awarded two of the four contracts. The low bidders on the other two contracts still haven’t been announced.” He paused, evidently waiting for Richard to answer.

“I can’t figure it out—what do you think?”

“I think,” Richard snarled, “that the stupid bastard isn’t smart enough to win a poker hand with a deck of marked cards.”

“Cervantes is conniving and wily and anything but stupid,” James argued.

“I think I’ll get the file from Joma Adriano in security and go over the figures that Maya—”

“I told you what I wanted you to do,” Richard interrupted in a low, deadly voice. “Regardless of who gets the remaining two contracts, I want Limco to bid on every job that Cervantes bids on and I want you to bid it below our cost if necessary. I want that bastard out of business in one year!”

Richard slammed the phone down and stalked back into the conference room. The chairman looked at him with ill-concealed reproof for the interruption.

“Now, may we resume?”

Richard nodded curtly. He voted carefully on the next three issues, but as the morning drifted into afternoon, and afternoon darkened into early evening, it became more and more impossible to think of anything but Maya. Rain fell outside the windows of Davao City skyscraper as the meeting continued and Provo’s outraged voice played through his mind…

“You threw her out with no coat, no money, no nothing and does she call Cervantes? No! She walks eight blocks in the cold and rain, to collapse in my arms.”

Eight blocks! Why hadn’t the guards let her stop to get her coat or umbrella? He remembered the thin blouse she’d been wearing, because he had unbuttoned it himself with every intention of exposing and degrading her, exactly as he had. He remembered the sheer perfection of her creamy breasts; the incredible silkiness of her skin; the exquisite taste of her lips; the way she had kissed him and held him to her…

“Richard,” the chairman said sharply, “I assume you are in favor of this proposal?”

Richard dragged his gaze from the windows. He had no idea what proposal was being discussed.

“I’d like to hear more about it before I decide,” he prevaricated.

Seven surprised faces turned toward him.

“It’s your proposal, Richard,” the chairman scowled.

“You wrote it.”

“Then naturally I’m in favor of it,” he informed them coolly.

The committee dined as a group in one of Davao’s most elegant restaurants. The moment their meal was over, Richard abruptly excused himself to return to his hotel. Rain fell in big droplets, soaking his overcoat and dripping from his dark hair as he strolled down the crowded street, glancing disinterestedly into exclusive shops whose brightly lit windows were decorated for Christmas.

He shoved his hands into his pockets, mentally cursing James for calling him this morning about Maya and cursing Maya for walking into his life. Why hadn’t she called Cervantes to come and get her when the guards forcibly removed her from the building? Why in God’s name had she walked eight blocks in stormy weather to go to Provo?

After he had hurt and degraded her, why had she wept at his feet like a heartbroken angel? Maya’s voice drifted through his mind, choked with racking sobs.

“I love you so much,” she had wept. “Please listen to me… Please don’t do this to us…”

Fury and pain blazed through him. He could not take Maya back, he reminded himself forcefully. He would never take her back.

He was willing to believe that Cervantes had blackmailed her into giving him the bids. He was even willing to believe that Maya hadn’t told Cervantes about the Rossi project. After all, if she had, Cervantes’ men wouldn’t have been swarming all over the village asking questions about Richard’s activities—they’d have been asking about Rossi. Apparently they didn’t even know the chemist’s name. Even if they found out, it wouldn’t matter. The lab tests had proved Rossi’s formula to be only a fraction as effective as he’d claimed it was, besides being a skin and eye irritant.

Richard stopped at the light on the corner, where a man in a bright red Santa Claus costume was standing beside a black iron pot and ringing a bell. Christmas had never been particularly pleasant to Richard. It was a holiday that invariably called to mind the visit he had paid to his mother as a boy; in fact, he never thought of her except at Christmas time.

Cars glided past him, their tires splashing the water in the roads. This Christmas could have been different; it could have been a beginning. He would have taken Maya to US or somewhere in Europe. No—he would have spent it at home with her. He would have built the Christmas tree with her and they could have started their own traditions. He would have made love to her, with the lights from the Christmas tree glowing on her satin skin…

Richard angrily jerked his mind away from those thoughts and stalked across the street, ignoring the horns that blared their protest and the headlights flying toward him. There would be no Christmases with Maya. He wanted her badly enough to forgive her for almost anything, but he could not, would not, forgive or forget the fact that she had betrayed him to his mother and stepfather. Perhaps in time he could have forgiven her for conspiring against him, but not with the Cervantes’. Never with them.

Richard inserted his key into the double doors of his penthouse suite.

“Where the hell have you been?” James Ventura demanded from the Queen Anne sofa where he was lounging with his feet propped on an antique coffee table.

“I’ve come to talk about the bids Maya gave Cervantes.”

Richard jerked off his coat, furious at having his suite invaded, his privacy infringed upon and particularly at being forced—even for the moment it was going to take to get James out of here—to talk about Maya again.

“I told you,” he said in a low, deadly voice, “that I wanted Cervantes out of business and I told you how I wanted it done. When you explained your part in Maya’s complicity, I excused it, but I will not—”

“You don’t have to put Cervantes out of business,” James interrupted quietly as Richard stalked toward him.

“Maya is doing it for you.” From the sofa beside him, James picked up copies of the original bids and the altered copies that Maya had made to give Cervantes.

“She changed the figures, Richard,” he said somberly.

The meeting of the committee on international trade reconvened at precisely nine o’clock the following morning. The chairman of the committee looked at the six men seated around the conference table.

“Richard Lim will not be present today,” he informed the thunderous-looking group.

“He asked me to express his regrets and to explain that he was called away on an urgent matter.”

In unison, six outraged faces turned to glare with impotent hostility at the vacant chair of their missing member.

“Last time it was a labor relations problem. What the hell is Lim’s problem this time?” a jowly man demanded unsympathetically.

“A merger,” the chairman answered.

“He said he is going to try to negotiate the most important merger of his life.”