The Master Player

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

DESPITE Chloe’s determination to set things right, she felt very nervous about the confrontation with Tony. He was sure to be angry and spiteful, and although their respective lawyers would be at the meeting-hopefully keeping the situation calm and orderly-having to face her husband again was not a pleasant prospect.

‘I can feel your tension, Miss Rollins,’ Gerry Anderson remarked caringly as they set out on the drive into the city. ‘Want to spell out the problem so I’ll know what to watch out for?’

He was a nice man. She had always felt comfortable with him. It was easy to tell him what had happened with Laura Farrell and the purpose of this meeting with her husband.

‘May I give you a piece of advice?’ he said when she’d finished.

‘Please do.’

‘Miss Farrell was using every angle she could to milk you. Sounds like a very practised con lady to me and I’ve had a lot of experience with that kind of person. Don’t be surprised if she’s already milked Mr Lipton for all she could get.’

‘You mean she lied to me about Tony not giving her anything?’ It was a stunning thought.

‘I’m just saying it’s a possibility. For my money, she was going after the cream with you.’ He shot her a smile of approval. ‘I’m glad you didn’t fall for it.’

Chloe grimaced. ‘I did give her five hundred dollars.’

‘Not too bad a loss. And it made you feel better, which was fair enough. I think you’ll probably have to accept it as a loss. I doubt you’ll get it back from Mr Lipton. In fact, I think you should listen carefully to his side of the situation before accusing him of anything.’ He glanced a quick appeal at her. ‘Okay?’

‘Yes. Thank you, Gerry,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘I really appreciate your advice.’

He smiled and nodded. ‘Glad to be of assistance to you, Miss Rollins.’

‘I’m glad I called you. I feel more…more prepared now.’

‘I’ll be right on hand if you run into any trouble,’ he assured her.

‘Thank you,’ she said on a sigh of relief.

Having parked the car under the Opera House, Gerry escorted her up Castlereigh Street to her lawyer’s chambers and settled himself in the legal secretary’s office, right outside the door to the boardroom where the meeting was to be held. Tony and his lawyer were already there when hers walked her in.

The men were dressed in sober dark grey suits. She’d also worn a suit-a light pink linen-and after the preliminary formal greetings, Tony complimented her on it, smiling at her as though he was delighted to be in her company again.

‘You look lovely, Chloe,’ he said, throwing her into confusion with his charming manner.

She looked at the lawyers in agitated appeal. ‘Let’s get down to business, shall we?’

They sat at a long boardroom table, each party on opposite sides.

Tony leaned forward, hands outstretched in appeal as he earnestly stated, ‘Laura lied to you, Chloe. She lied to me. She’s not pregnant. Never was. It was all a lie.’

She’d been prepared for lies but not this. Nothing like this. Her mind reeled with shock. ‘But…but I saw her. She had a baby bump. Four or five months…’

‘Clever padding, I promise you,’ Tony asserted. ‘When the other guy she’d tricked contacted me, I insisted that Laura accompany me to a doctor to have the pregnancy confirmed. She wouldn’t do it, carrying on about me not trusting her, trying to get me to back off from having proof of pregnancy. No way. She’s done this before. Blackmail and fraud.’

Chloe stared at him, barely able to take in what he was saying. She kept seeing Laura standing on her front porch in profile, her pregnancy on obvious show. Was Tony spinning a story to suit himself?

‘What other guy?’ she asked, finally homing in on his back-up proof for the accusation of blackmail and fraud.

‘He’d read the story about our break-up in the newspapers. Laura Farrell’s part in it. He thought about it for a while, then decided to contact me, said he didn’t want another one of her suckers to suffer as he had, didn’t want her to get away with it again.’ Tony gestured to his lawyer. ‘Show Chloe his statutory declaration.’

The lawyer opened a manila folder and passed her a sheaf of documents. On top was a statutory declaration, made by a John Dennis Flaherty with a Perth address, not anyone she knew or imagined Tony would know since he lived on the other side of Australia. Still, it was entirely possible that newspapers over there had picked up on a juicy celebrity scandal, so that part was credible.

She began reading.

According to John Flaherty, Laura Farrell had been his personal assistant four years ago. She had seductively maneuvred him into a sexual relationship although he loved his wife and had no intention of breaking up his marriage, which he’d made clear to Laura Farrell, who had apparently accepted this situation until she told him she had accidentally fallen pregnant, subsequently pressing him to leave his wife. He refused, ending the affair and offering only to pay support for their child. Laura Farrell went to his wife, begging her to dump him so they could be married. His wife divorced him. He had nothing more to do with Laura Farrell except to pay out a substantial settlement to get her out of his life. A year later he decided he wanted to see his child. He hired a private investigator to track down Laura Farrell. The investigator discovered there was no child and no medical record of there ever being a pregnancy let alone a birth.

Photocopies of the investigator’s reports followed. On being questioned, Laura Farrell had declared the money was a personal gift-‘a kiss-off’-and there was no proof of anything else. It was her word against his-the ex-wife would not testify on his behalf because he had admitted infidelity-so no legal action for fraud could be taken to recover the money.

It was a nasty story, making Chloe’s spine crawl over how Laura had come to her-the wife-forcing the marriage break-up then playing on her sympathy, playing every emotional string she could, making herself out to be Tony’s victim. Chloe wondered if the substantial settlement had been fifty thousand dollars-not a bad take for a bit of pregnancy padding.

‘Laura didn’t suck you in, did she?’ Tony asked anxiously. ‘You didn’t shell out a lot of money to her?’

She slowly raised her gaze from the documents to look directly at him. ‘No. I thought you should. Which is why we’re here.’

His face sagged with relief. ‘At least she didn’t do us that damage.’

It sounded as though he was wiping all fault from himself and Chloe was not about to accept that, eyeing him coldly as she pointed out, ‘You put us in this position, Tony. You gave her the power to play this game.’

‘Do you think I haven’t cursed myself a thousand times for falling into her trap?’ he pleaded.

‘Laura said you seduced her.’

‘Well, she would say that to you, wouldn’t she?’ he scoffed. ‘It served her purpose. Just as it served her purpose to hang out availability signals to me from day one of working for you. Flirtatious looks. Sexy double entendres. The occasional brush past. A whole stack of sly temptations. I laughed it off for months. I didn’t want her.’

Again he leaned forward earnestly, his blue eyes begging her understanding. ‘I had you, Chloe. I didn’t want Laura Farrell. Even when she was doing it to me I told myself I should be stopping her, but I’d had too much to drink at the party and…’ He raked his hands through his hair in an anguished manner. ‘I tell you, Chloe, she’s a female predator. I was coming out of the bathroom. She pushed me back in, had me unzipped in a flash, went down on me and…’

‘Spare me the details!’ Chloe snapped.

‘I’m sorry…sorry…I’m just trying to explain how it was, how I never meant it to happen. I love you,’ he cried emphatically.

Anger flared at the way he was twisting things again. Whether Laura had seduced him or the other way around didn’t really matter because it hadn’t stopped in that bathroom. Her eyes savagely mocked any excuse for his continued infidelity.

‘Don’t tell me this was a once only lapse on your part, Tony. I know it wasn’t.’

‘What did Laura tell you?’ he quickly countered.

Chloe shot down any more lies before he could come up with them. ‘My mother told me. She dismissed the affair as unimportant. The affair, Tony. Not a one-night stand.’

Chloe could see him recalculating, knowing he was under the gun with Stephanie Rollins’s sharp eyes never missing anything. It wouldn’t suit her purpose to plead his cause so he had to give the affair a forgivable twist.

‘All right,’ he conceded with a self-deprecating grimace. ‘Laura knew how to work sex to get to me and it did. Any man would have taken what she was giving out. I’m only human, Chloe. But it made me feel guilty as hell and in the end I did stop it because I cared about our marriage and didn’t want her messing with it.’

She wondered if Max would have taken what Laura could do with sex. Obviously Tony had found it more exciting than what he’d had at home. Was sex more important to men than love? Perhaps the reason why Max had never married was because sex with the one woman got boring after a while, and he preferred to remain free to go after something new and exciting when the urge took him.

Like with her.

A wave of depression rolled through Chloe. She didn’t want to listen to anymore. There was no need to fight for child support on Laura Farrell’s behalf. The business of this meeting was over. She looked bleakly at the man she had married with blind faith in love and spoke what she knew to be the truth.

‘You didn’t want to lose your cash cow, Tony.’

His face flushed an ugly red. ‘Those are Laura’s words, not mine. She was determined on alienating you from me, Chloe, but she’s out of our lives now. No baby for her to hang onto me. That’s all behind us.’ Again his hands reached out in appeal. ‘I’m begging you to forgive me. Give us another chance.’

She shook her head, pushed her chair back and stood up, turning to the two lawyers. ‘Thank you for your services in clarifying the situation with Laura Farrell.’

All three men rose to their feet, Tony rushing into more urgent speech. ‘Please think about it, Chloe. We had a good marriage before this. I know you wanted a baby and I put it off but I won’t if you give us another chance. I promise you…’

Chloe had no doubt he would keep that promise. A baby was the best string of all to hold her to their marriage. But she vividly remembered how he’d treated Luther-a baby dog-and she couldn’t see Tony as a good father. Nor as a good husband for her. He never had been.

‘This meeting is over,’ she stated flatly. ‘It wasn’t about us, Tony.’

‘But surely you now realise I was Laura’s victim, just as John Flaherty was,’ he pleaded. ‘You’re letting her win, Chloe.’

‘No. She didn’t get anything out of this.’ Except the five hundred dollars, which would have been peanuts in her overall scheme.

‘She got the satisfaction of breaking us up,’ Tony vehemently argued.

Oddly enough, Chloe now felt Laura Farrell had done her a favour-the catalyst for breaking up a lot of bad things in her life. ‘I’ve moved on, Tony. There’s no going back,’ she said firmly.

An angry red flushed his face this time. ‘I can forgive you Max Hart. He took advantage of the situation.’

She shook her head. ‘I’m leaving now. I’d appreciate it-’ she glanced at Tony’s lawyer ‘-if you and your client remain in this boardroom until I’ve gone.’

The lawyer nodded. ‘Understood, Miss Rollins.’

‘Chloe…’ Tony persisted pleadingly.

She turned away and her own lawyer escorted her to the door, opening it.

‘Max Hart won’t marry you,’ Tony threw after her. ‘He won’t give you children. You’ll end up on the scrap heap with the rest of the women he’s had.’

She knew Max would move on as he always did and she knew it would hurt when he did. But he had been there for her at a critical time in her life, giving her what she needed, helping her to find the strength to become a person who could stand on her own feet and make her own choices. She fiercely resolved to remember the good he’d done after he moved on. It had to outweigh the hurt she would inevitably feel.

Her lawyer stepped back to usher her out of the boardroom. Chloe walked forward into the legal secretary’s office.

‘I’d give you a better life than Max Hart ever will,’ Tony persisted in a last, heart-clawing plea. ‘I swear you’re the only woman for me. I’ll never again even look at anyone else. And we’ll have a family. As many children as you want. What we had was good before Laura mucked it up. Think about it, Chloe. Think about it. Call me…’

The door was closed behind her.

Gerry Anderson rose from his chair in the secretary’s office.

Chloe thanked her lawyer.

She could leave now and she did.

Max checked his watch again, frowning over the time that had passed since Chloe’s eleven o’clock meeting with the lawyers and Tony Lipton.

‘What’s got you so uptight, Max?’ Angus Hilliard inquired, his bespectacled grey eyes glinting with sharp curiosity. ‘That’s the third time you’ve checked the time and frowned, apart from the fact you haven’t been giving our business your undivided attention.’

Max grimaced at the head of his legal department who was too astute a man to let anything go unnoticed. ‘Waiting on a call from Chloe. A bit of nasty stuff going on with Tony Lipton and Laura Farrell.’

‘Ah! The pregnant P.A. making more waves? Anything I can do?’

‘No. The divorce lawyers are handling it, Angus. What’s worrying me is the meeting shouldn’t have dragged on this long. I wanted to accompany Chloe to it…’

‘Better you didn’t, Max.’

‘I know. I know. But I don’t trust her husband to play anything straight. Anyhow, Chloe came up with the idea of having the security guy escort her to and from the meeting.’

‘Gerry Anderson?’

‘The same,’ Max affirmed.

‘He’s one of the best,’ Angus assured him, having vetted the security guard personally. ‘Why not call him? Check out what’s going on? I have his number here.’ He opened the teledex on his desk.

‘I’m not his client this time,’ Max pointed out. ‘And Chloe promised to call me.’

‘You have his client’s interests at heart,’ Angus argued. ‘I’m sure Anderson will appreciate that position.’

It smacked of going behind Chloe’s back. Max didn’t like it, yet he felt too uneasy not to make the call. The sense of Chloe separating herself from him was getting stronger. She should have contacted him by now. Unless something was very wrong.

He had to know.

He made the call.

Ten minutes later he was assured that Chloe was safely home, had been since shortly after midday. He’d also been informed of the fraudulent pregnancy-a con game Laura Farrell had played profitably before. The most disturbing news, however, was Gerry Anderson’s report of what he’d overheard Tony Lipton say as Chloe was leaving the lawyer’s office-the strikes against any hope of sharing a long-term future with him lined up against what her husband was offering. And the final plea…

Call me.

She hadn’t made the promised call to him-the man whose lifestyle suggested she was only one link in a chain of many women, none of whom had locked him into marriage or having children.

Was she considering the self-serving promises her husband was holding out to her? Tony Lipton would have played the victim to the hilt, begging forgiveness, pleading for another chance to make a go of their marriage-cancel out his affair with Laura, cancel out her affair with Max, make a fresh start, have a family together…

‘Max, you’re wearing out my carpet.’

The dry comment jolted him into realising he was prowling around Angus’s office like a fiercely frustrated tiger, wanting to lash out at the situation, yet hemmed in by bars he couldn’t simply knock aside. Chloe was no longer living on his property, not so readily accessible, especially if she didn’t choose to be. And she was still married to Tony Lipton, who was undoubtedly trying to capitilise on Laura Farrell’s deceit.

He came to a halt in front of Angus’s desk, who leaned back in his chair and held up his hands in mock fear of being shot down where he sat. ‘Whoa! I’m not the target. I’m the negotiator, remember? Just point me in the direction you want to take…’

‘She’s mine!’ The words snapped out in an explosive burst of feeling. His hand sliced the air as violently as a slashing sword. ‘I don’t want that worm of a husband wriggling back into her life!’

Angus shrugged, looking askance at Max as though his behaviour was distinctly weird. ‘Why would she take him back?’ he queried in a tone of calm reasoning.

Max snarled back at him. ‘Because the P.A.’s pregnancy has been proved fraudulent. Because Tony Lipton knows how to twist that to his advantage-an infidelity trade-off-plus all the forever promises of love, having a family.’ He threw up his hands. ‘That pregnancy was the breaking point because Chloe wanted a baby.’

‘Then give her one, Max. Give her one.’

As though it was the simplest thing in the world!

Max rolled his eyes.

Angus proceeded to argue his strategy, the grey eyes glinting absolute certainty behind the frameless spectacles. ‘If Chloe wants children, sooner or later you’re going to lose her if you’re not prepared to give her any. Basic instinct in most women. Given that you want to keep her, there’s only one sure-fire win position for you to take, Max. Otherwise, you’d best start resigning yourself to letting her go.’

He couldn’t bear the thought of letting her go. It would be totally intolerable to watch her walk away from him to share her life with someone else.

Angus wriggled his fingers in a weighing-up gesture. ‘You’ve never had a problem attracting beautiful women. I happen to think that Chloe Rollins has something very special, but…it’s your life, Max. Your choice.’

Angus was right.

There was only one sure-fire way to win.

The only question was…would Chloe want to join him in the longest run that two people could ever take on together?