The Tycoon's Takeover Read online

  Her father had continued to think of it that way long after reality had suggested otherwise. But she had hauled it into the modern era and, now he’d retired, the sky was the limit. But first she had to see off the Farradays. More specifically, she had to see off Jordan David Farraday.

  It shouldn’t be difficult. The man was a venture capitalist, not a retailer. He really couldn’t want to take on something so time-consuming. It was control he wanted. The last word. At least she hoped that was all he wanted. A prime site, the name alone, would be a big prize for one of the retail chains. But he wouldn’t…couldn’t…

  A shiver, as if someone had walked over her grave, goosed her flesh.

  Jordan Farraday showed his pass at the rear entrance of the building, parked his sports car in the space that had been allocated to him, then asked the security guard at the staff entrance to ring through to India Claibourne’s office to let her know he’d arrived.

  She wasn’t there.

  ‘Will you pass on my best wishes when you speak to her?’ India, dragging her mind back from a nightmare vision of the plans Jordan Farraday might have for the store, glanced at the commissionaire. ‘Miss Flora,’ he prompted as he opened the door for her. ‘I hope she’ll be very happy.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Edwards. I’ll tell her.’

  Most days she used the staff entrance at the rear of the store, but occasionally, having parked her car, she took the time to walk around to the main entrance, look at the window displays and enter the store as if she were a customer. Remind herself of that first time when, four years old, she’d been brought to the store by her grandmother to visit Santa’s grotto and had believed she’d walked into the Aladdin’s cave in her storybook.

  As she walked into the marble and mahogany entrance hall, spangled with coloured light from the Tiffany stained glass window that rose up three floors through the stairwell, the rush of excitement, the sense of wonder was as powerful as ever.

  She would not give this up for anything. Ever.

  But it occurred to her that sitting in her office waiting for Jordan Farraday to turn up and take it away from her was entirely the wrong strategy. Romana had dragged Niall off to a charity bungee jump. Bram had been given no choice but to join Flora on a research trip to a tropical island.

  Neither of them had had time to draw breath, settle into the standard ‘I’m a man and I know best’ routine.

  They hadn’t known what had hit them until it was too late. She had to ensure that for the next month she was the one in front and Farraday was always following her. If he ever turned the tables and took the lead it would all be over.

  Sitting at her desk going over last month’s sales figures when—if—he responded to the challenge in her incendiary e-mail wouldn’t fit the bill. He’d be expecting that and he wouldn’t be impressed by her ability to read a balance sheet.

  She had to be doing something that was totally outside his normal experience. Something that would give her an advantage. With a whole department store to play with, it shouldn’t be that difficult.

  She glanced at the noticeboard listing the special events taking place in the store that day. An all-day specialist doll collectors’ fair in the gallery. A cookery demonstration, with a celebrity chef doing his stuff, in the food hall at lunchtime. A book-signing by a well known American author in the country to promote her newest blockbuster novel. Bags of opportunities for photographs, she thought as she took the lift to the top-floor office suite.

  She needed to keep her photograph in the papers. Remind everyone that she was running the show. She’d get Molly in the PR department on to that, as her sister was away. The lift door opened to dust sheets and the sound of hammering, and she smiled a little grimly as she crossed to her office.

  Jordan Farraday might be sharing it with her for the next month, but he wouldn’t enjoy the experience much.

  ‘Indie…’ Her PA appeared in the doorway. ‘We’ve got a small problem in the nursery department.’

  ‘How small?’

  ‘Baby-sized. One of our customers left it a little late to do her shopping and she’s gone into labour. The paramedics have arrived, and they’ll be moving her to hospital as soon as they can, but I thought you’d want to know.’

  ‘I’d better go down there—make sure everything possible is being done.’

  ‘Well, actually…’ India paused on her way out. ‘There’s no need.’

  ‘No need?’

  ‘It’s being taken care of. Since you weren’t here, JD took charge—’

  ‘JD?’ India frowned.

  ‘Jordan Farraday. His staff call him JD, he said.’

  ‘Jordan Farraday? He’s here already? In the store?’ Her mouth was working on automatic, she realised. A bit like a goldfish, and making about as much sense. Of course he was here.

  She’d been mentally redesigning the frontage, chatting with the commissionaire, taking her morning stroll through the main selling floors while Jordan David Farraday had gone straight to the top floor and was already taking over her job.

  ‘He arrived on the dot of ten o’clock. You said you were expecting him some time today, so when Security buzzed through I told them to send him up.’

  ‘I was expecting him to ring and let me know when he was coming. I wasn’t expecting him to just turn up…unannounced!’

  ‘I was supposed to say, Go away, we aren’t ready for you?’ India raised a hand in a gesture of apology, shook her head. ‘I gave him coffee and put him in your office. There is nowhere else,’ she complained.

  No, there was nowhere else. It had seemed like a great idea when Romana suggested ripping out underused offices and moving Customer Services to the top floor in order to create more selling space. And why hang about? Get in the builders, create a noisy, dusty atmosphere and maybe, without an office—or even a desk—to call his own, JD Farraday would be less inclined to linger in the store. It was time she needed. Not her arch-nemesis following her every move.

  ‘I’m sorry, Sally. You did the right thing, of course, but just because he was sitting in my office did you have to treat the man as if he were already running the place? Did you have to tell him about the population explosion in the nursery department?’

  ‘I didn’t. Someone came rushing in with the news and he just sort of…well…took charge,’ she said, a little breathlessly.

  ‘Great.’ She took a deep breath. ‘But I really do think I’d better go and see what’s happening downstairs.’ She was in no rush. In fact she had a sudden craving to be somewhere else. Lying on a deserted beach, perhaps. ‘Do you ever just wish the alarm clock hadn’t gone off? That you’d slept through the day?’

  ‘Not this one, I promise you. JD Farraday is not a man I’d ever want to miss.’

  ‘That’s all I need. A secretary with a crush on a man who wants to take over my store.’

  ‘His name is above the door too. And I don’t have a crush. My personal life is fully spoken for.’ Then she grinned. ‘But I’m not dead.’

  ‘That’ll be a comfort to you when he’s sitting in my chair and you’re looking for a new job.’

  ‘Oh, come on. That’s never going to happen.’

  ‘Two months ago I might have agreed with you.’ Suddenly she wasn’t so sure. Her fallback position was the equal opportunities argument. He had a centuries-old agreement stating that control should pass to the ‘oldest male’. She was basing her equality on being ‘oldest female’. Would a lot of old men in wigs be swayed by the logic of that argument? Or would they—as she suspected—go for just plain ‘oldest’. Farraday, after all, was a man with a track record for making money. All she had to offer was a lifetime’s knowledge of the business and a passion to turn Claibourne’s into a household name—not just in London, or Britain, but in the world.

  ‘Hey, if all else fails you can always do a Claibourne on him.’

  Dragged back from the yawning chasm of failure, she frowned. ‘A Claibourne?’

  ‘Flutter
those long dark lashes at him. Once he’s in love, he’ll forget all about taking away your toy.’

  ‘Oh, great. I’m trying to convince everyone that I can run this store on merit and you want me to seduce the man. Whatever happened to thirty years of women’s liberation?’ As she turned angrily away she snagged her tights on a battered cardboard box. Great. The day that she’d begun with an uneasy feeling of foreboding was rapidly going downhill. ‘Sally, what the devil is this?’

  ‘Oh—’ She sucked in her teeth as she saw the damage to India’s tights, took a new pair from a supply she kept in her bottom drawer and handed them over. ‘Sorry. The builders left it there. They’re files from your father’s office. Pretty old stuff, but I thought you might want to look at them before I sent them down to the basement.’

  ‘But I cleaned out all the filing cabinets in Dad’s office.’

  ‘These were right at the back of that big walk-in cupboard. It looked like a box of old catalogues, but, knowing how disorganised your father was, I thought I’d better check before it went down the chute into the skip. The files were at the bottom.’

  India flicked through the top file. Thirty years old, it dated from the time her father had taken over the store from JD Farraday’s grandfather, and her scalp prickled with a rush of excitement. ‘Sally, that designer skirt you’ve been drooling over…it’s yours. Charge it to my account.’ Cutting off her thanks, she went on, ‘Just shift these files first,’ she said, peeling off the torn tights and replacing them. ‘I’d hate JD Farraday to fall over them and sue us.’

  ‘Why would he do that? Wouldn’t that be like suing himself?’ Then, realising that it was not a conversation with a future, she said, ‘I’ll put them in your office.’

  ‘No!’ India took a deep breath. ‘No, don’t do that. Arrange for them to be put in my car.’ The last thing she needed was Jordan Farraday looking over her shoulder as she went through them.

  Correction. The last thing she needed was Jordan Farraday. Full stop.

  CHAPTER TWO

  INDIA took another deep breath before she pushed open the door to the nursery department. She seemed to be doing that a lot this morning, but it was fortunate that her lungs were loaded with air, because she didn’t breathe again for what seemed like an age.

  JD Farraday was the kind of man who would always make the need to breathe redundant.

  He didn’t court publicity, but she’d gathered what information she could about the man. The grainy photographs from the financial pages of heavyweight newspapers had suggested an averagely good-looking, dark-haired man in his mid to late thirties. They didn’t do him justice. There was nothing average about Jordan Farraday.

  His features were arranged in the conventional manner, it was true, but the combination achieved something far from ordinary. There was something about him that transcended mere good looks.

  As if that were not enough he was taller, his hair darker—the touch of silver at his temple only emphasising just how dark—than just tall, or just dark. But that was the superficial, obvious stuff.

  What set her midriff trembling like a joke jelly, prickled her scalp and set up the tiny hairs on her skin, was the way he dominated the room, the way every person in it was looking to him for guidance, leadership.

  Jordan Farraday was the archetypal dominant male. Alpha man. Leader of the pack. The kind of man who would always make other men appear ordinary, who would attract women like iron filings to a magnet. In short, he was the most exciting man she’d set eyes on in months…years…possibly ever…

  And she’d taken him on in a winner-takes-all battle for control of Claibourne & Farraday.

  Not that he appeared in the least bit threatening at the moment. Far from it. As she stood there he crouched down to gently sandwich the hand of the very young soon-to-be-mother between both of his, reassuring her as she was fastened into a chair trolley by a paramedic, his smile a promise that he would let nothing bad happen to her.

  ‘You’re going to be fine, Serena. I’ve phoned your boyfriend and he’s going straight to the hospital.’ His voice was low, calming, like being stroked by velvet. ‘He’ll be waiting for you when you arrive.’ He glanced at the paramedics. ‘Ready?’ One of them nodded. ‘You’ll be there in just a few minutes.’ As he turned slightly the light behind him lit up a classic profile—the kind that Greek sculptors had reserved for gods. ‘Would you like me to come along with you in the ambulance?’

  By way of reply, the mother-to-be gripped his hand more tightly. ‘My bags…’ she began, less concerned with the swoon quotient of the man at her side, apparently, than the fate of her shopping. But then she was in labour—and India caught her breath again as the woman was seized by a contraction.

  In her place, she probably wouldn’t give a damn about how good-looking a man was either. She swallowed. In her place, she’d want someone exactly like Jordan Farraday holding her hand…

  He glanced around. A few feet away a hovering assistant was holding a couple of bags, and as he straightened to take them he saw her standing in the doorway. For a moment he remained perfectly still as their gazes locked, held, and for a long moment she was his prisoner.

  ‘Miss Claibourne…’ She jumped at the sound of her name and the moment passed as the department manager came between them. ‘We’ve had quite a morning.’

  ‘So I see,’ she said, making an effort to give the woman her full attention, despite the charged feeling at the back of her neck that suggested JD Farraday’s gaze was still fastened firmly upon her. ‘It appears one of our customers left her shopping trip rather late.’

  ‘Well, no harm done. Mr Farraday has been wonderful. He calmed that silly girl when no one else could.’ India thought that was probably a first. It seemed unlikely that was his usual effect on girls—or women—of any description. ‘Then he phoned her boyfriend, and when people wouldn’t move away he sent them all over to the coffee shop for complimentary coffee and cakes.’

  About to ask why it had been left to him, why the manager hadn’t done all that herself, she bit back her irritation at the woman’s ineffectiveness, and her lack of sympathy, and concerned herself with the fact that Jordan Farraday had witnessed it and taken charge.

  So much for throwing him off balance.

  It was not a great start.

  ‘I hope it was all right to do that?’ the woman added uncertainly, when India didn’t immediately respond.

  ‘Absolutely right,’ she said, discovering for herself what the expression ‘through gritted teeth’ actually meant. ‘Should anything like this happen again, don’t hesitate to do that,’ she said, and made a mental note to have the training department bring it up at the weekly workshops they ran for the managerial staff. With a reminder not to refer to the customers as ‘silly’ under any circumstances.

  ‘Miss Claibourne.’ The quiet authority of his voice matched his appearance. Just the way he said her name necessitated another deep breath before she turned to confront JD Farraday.

  ‘Mr Farraday.’ She extended her hand in a manner she hoped was sufficiently businesslike to counteract the breathlessness of her voice. Perhaps it didn’t matter. If her reaction—and she was famously difficult to impress—was anything to go by, he must believe that all women were chronically breathless. ‘I had assumed you’d call before you arrived, or I would have come straight up to my office instead of taking my usual morning walk through the store.’ She glanced at the mother-to-be, who was rapidly disappearing behind the door of the goods lift. ‘You seem to have kept yourself busy, however.’

  ‘It’s been an interesting morning,’ he admitted.

  ‘A little different from your office in the City.’

  ‘We do have women in the City. Some of them even have babies, although we do encourage them to take maternity leave rather than have them in the office.’ She’d expected him to be dour, cool. He was the enemy, after all. They both knew that. Yet his wry smile indicated a sense of humour, and the firm manner
with which he clasped her hand, held it, suggested that he’d waited all his life to meet her.

  Making a determined effort to collect herself, she retrieved it. ‘We’d rather they didn’t do it here either,’ she admitted. ‘But there’s nothing like being thrown in at the deep end. Since I arrived too late to do anything more than hold things up I thought it best to leave you to it. You seemed to be managing,’ she added, in another of those ‘gritted teeth’ moments. Then, ‘I was under the impression that you were going to be holding the young lady’s hand while she’s whizzed through the traffic to the hospital.’

  ‘I thought someone should offer,’ he replied. As a criticism of her department manager’s ineffectuality it was masterly in its understatement. ‘However, the paramedics were kind enough to assure me that I’d be in the way. They suggested I might to go along later—with her shopping.’ He held up a couple of their trademark dark red glossy carrier bags, the store’s name printed in elegant copperplate gold lettering. She had a momentary flash of her vision of the way it would be—Claibourne’s, all in lower-case modern type—once she’d seen him off. ‘They didn’t seem to think she’d have much use for it in the next hour or so.’

  ‘What? Oh, no, I imagine not.’ She looked around. ‘Excuse me.’ The assistants were busy returning the department to normal, and she crossed to thank them for the way they’d handled a difficult situation.

  ‘You will let us know what happens, won’t you, Miss Claibourne?’

  ‘Of course. Maybe you’d like to choose a card and sign it from everyone in the department? I’ll phone the hospital later, and when we know that everything has gone smoothly I’ll take it to the hospital with some flowers. And her shopping. Maybe one of you would be kind enough to take it up to my office?’ She turned to JD Farraday. ‘Or maybe you’d prefer to go on behalf of the store?’ she offered. ‘See the job through?’