‘Yes—really!’ she echoed forcefully.
‘That might be a little difficult, Kenzie, when I have every intention of becoming completely involved in all aspects of Carlton Cosmetics,’ Dominick stated.
How could Dominick have done this? she wondered in a daze.
Kenzie had known him as many things since she had first met him: as the man she loved; the man she married; the man she couldn’t stay with any more because he was incapable of returning her love, and then the deeply angry man who had challenged her to walk away from him.
But the Dominick he was now was consumed with a need for revenge, on Jerome Carlton, and on her, to the extent that he had taken that vengeance by trying to ruin both of them.
She didn’t doubt that he had ruined Jerome.
And he would succeed in ruining her too if she refused to continue working for Carlton Cosmetics and he sued her for breach of contract. Something, after today, she was sure he was more than capable of doing!
She gave a disbelieving shake of her head. ‘I think I can understand your need to get back at me, Dominick,’ she said dully. ‘But why you felt it necessary to drag Jerome into your vendetta is totally beyond me—’
‘Is it?’ he cut in fiercely. ‘Then you obviously don’t know me very well, Kenzie.’
She looked at him with blank, unemotional eyes. ‘I’m beginning to think that I never knew you at all,’ she murmured quietly. ‘One thing I do know—I’ll never forgive you for doing this, Dominick. Never,’ she assured him softly before turning away.
‘Where are you going?’ he called after her harshly.
She glanced back at him with dull eyes. ‘Away from here. Away from you,’ she said with emphasis.
‘Do you really think it’s going to be that easy, Kenzie?’ he scorned.
Leaving him the first time had been horrible, but leaving the stranger he had become now wasn’t difficult at all!
But that wasn’t what Dominick meant, of course, his controlling interest of Carlton Cosmetics meaning that if she couldn’t break her contract—and Dominick seemed pretty certain that she couldn’t!—then for the next eight months, at least, the two of them would be bound together and forced to meet.
She gave him a pitying look. ‘Do you know the saddest part of all this, Dominick?’ She frowned. ‘No, of course you don’t,’ she answered her own question derisively. ‘Your behaviour—what you’ve done … ’ She shook her head sadly. ‘Oh, I can’t deny that the next eight months are going to be difficult—’
‘I’m sure you can’t,’ he rasped.
‘But you don’t see what you’ve really done at all, do you, Dominick?’ Kenzie sighed. ‘No matter what you might believe, until now I’ve only ever had a working relationship with Jerome, but now, after what you’ve done to him because of that relationship, you’ve actually succeeded in uniting the two of us. Against you, if nothing else.’
‘That’s nothing new,’ he dismissed scathingly.
‘I feel sorry for you, Dominick,’ she whispered. ‘I really do.’
‘Don’t waste your pity,’ he advised harshly.
‘No,’ she accepted heavily, giving him one last sorrowful glance before turning on her heel and leaving the room.
Dominick stood rigidly as he heard her ascent up the stairs, followed seconds later by the lightness of her step as she came back down again, listening as the front door closed behind her with soft finality as she left the house altogether.
Kenzie was walking out on him for the second time!
Strangely, he felt none of the satisfaction that he had thought, either at having made love to her in the way he had, or on telling her of his controlling interest in Carlton Cosmetics. He could only remember the disgust in her face when she had realized what he had done, and her disbelief.
Her hatred …
Kenzie really did hate him now, he realized as he poured himself another brandy. It had been there in her face as she had looked at him that last time, and in the pained disillusionment in her eyes.
Well, it was what he had wanted, wasn’t it—what the last four months, and this weekend, had all been about?
Then why did that cold dish of revenge feel so much like a leaden weight, giving him a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach rather than the fulfilment he had expected to feel …?
CHAPTER TWELVE
WHATEVER Kenzie had expected Dominick’s next move to be after that awful day at Bedforth Manor, she was left in suspense for the next five weeks, as the time passed with no word or sight of him.
Not that the silence wasn’t a relief. It was just surprising at the same time.
But this evening that was going to come to an abrupt end because tonight was the launch party of Carlton Cosmetics’ new fragrance, an event that, as the promotional face of the company, required Kenzie’s attendance. She had flown to New York especially for the occasion, and, as she knew from conversations with Jerome, Dominick had every intention of being at the party too.
She and Jerome, united as she had warned Dominick they would be, had consulted with a lawyer to see if there wasn’t something to be done about Dominick’s stranglehold on Carlton Cosmetics and her own contract with the company. But, as she might already have guessed, there was nothing illegal about Dominick’s purchase of the shares, and there was no suitable let-out clause in her own contract, either—not wanting to work for your estranged husband wasn’t reason enough, apparently!
Dominick, with his usual thoroughness, had tied the company, and her, up in legalities that simply couldn’t be broken.
So they were stuck with it, and Dominick, a fact that, understandably, didn’t sit too well with Jerome.
‘The brute should be making his grand entrance any time soon!’
Jerome muttered as he joined Kenzie near the entrance of the reception room at one of New York’s most prominent hotels. Chandeliers glittered over the elegant heads of the society guests and members of the media, and the room was abuzz with conversation and the soft music being played by a string quartet.
It wasn’t too difficult, in the circumstances, to guess which ‘brute’ Jerome was referring to!
‘Perhaps he’ll do us all a favour and decide not to come, after all,’ she dismissed distractedly, totally on edge as she kept half an eye on the door while she circuited the room talking and smiling with the other guests.
‘We couldn’t be that lucky.’ Jerome scowled, still boyishly attractive despite his forty-two years.
But Jerome’s looks were such that they had never appealed to Kenzie. Firstly because when she had met him she had still been married to Dominick and had had no interest in other men, and then later simply because she wasn’t attracted to him. As she hadn’t been to any man after she and Dominick had parted …
‘Here he comes now,’ Jerome announced scathingly.
Kenzie tensed so suddenly that she spilt some of the champagne from her glass over her fingers, fingers that gripped the slender stem of the flute so tightly it was in danger of snapping.
‘And, damn it, he’s brought Caroline with him!’ Jerome added angrily.
Kenzie was licking the champagne from her fingers when she turned in time to see cameras snapping as Dominick made his entrance. He looked tall and powerful in his black evening suit, snowy white shirt and red tie—the colour of which exactly matched the clinging red dress Kenzie was wearing, she was totally dismayed to see.
Standing