Lady's Choice by Jayne Ann Krentz Page A

shoulders and shook her gently. "This is your inheritance we're talking about. It belongs to you and David. Surely you're not going to just give up and surrender like this. You've got to fight back."
    Travis wandered over to the edge of the terrace and leaned one elbow on the teak railing. "You're wasting your time, Juliana. Elly's not like you. She doesn't know how to fight for what she wants.
    She's used to having someone else hand it to her on a silver platter."
    Elly's head came up abruptly. "You... you bastard. Thank heaven I didn't marry you five years ago.
    I would have been married to a... an in human monster." Elly choked audibly on her tears and broke free of Juliana's grip. Without a backward glance she ran toward the relative safety of the crowd near the pool.
    Juliana gritted her teeth in disgust as she watched her cousin dash away like a graceful gazelle fleeing the hunter. Then she whirled to confront Travis. "Satisfied? Are you proud of yourself? Do you enjoy hurting things that are softer and weaker than you are?"
    "There's nothing all that soft or weak about your cousin. She may not know how to fight a fair fight, but that doesn't mean she's not very good at getting what she wants. She uses her softness, trades on it."
    "She's a gentle, loving creature by nature. And you've got a lot of nerve talking about a fair fight. Is that what you call this nasty bit of vengeance you're after? A fair fight? So far all I've seen is a lot of low-down, sneaky, underhanded, manipulative, back-stabbing tactics."

    "Believe me, everything I know about that kind of fighting, I learned from your family."
    "Don't you dare use them as an excuse. My guess is you were born knowing about that kind of fighting."
    "It's not an excuse. After what they did to me five years ago, I've got every right to fight as dirty as I have to in order to get even."
    "You make it sound like you're involved in some sort of vendetta."
    "I guess you could call it that," Travis agreed. "I told Elly the day she called off the engagement that I would come back and when I did, I'd take the whole damned place out of Grant hands. I always follow through on my promises, Juliana."
    "Really?" She lifted her chin. "Is that why you were so very careful not to make any promises of marriage to me? You wanted to feel you'd maintained your high standard of business ethics even in bed? How very noble of you."
    '1 know you won't believe this, but I'm sorry that you got caught in the crossfire. You're different from the others. I should have left you out of it. I can see that now."
    "You couldn't have left me out of it. I'm family, remember? I'm a Grant."
    "I remember. And that automatically puts you on the other side. I've known how it would be from the beginning. But, like I said, I'm sorry, all the same."
    "Stop saying you're sorry. I don't believe that for a minute."
    He swirled the contents of his glass. "No, I don't suppose you do." His gaze was on the darkness of the sea.
    "If you were truly sorry," Juliana said suddenly, knowing she was clutching at straws, "you'd call the whole thing off, walk out of here tonight and never bother my cousin and her husband and the rest of the family again."
    His teeth were revealed in a brief, macabre grin that vanished as quickly as it had appeared. "Not a chance in hell of that happening, Juliana. I've come too far, waited too long and planned too carefully.
    Nobody gets away with making a fool out of me the way your family did five years ago."
    "Sounds to me like you made a fool out of yourself."
    "It's true I made a few mistakes. I let the personal side of my life get mixed up with the business side.
    I don't make that kind of mistake these days."
    "Yes, you made a few mistakes." For an instant Juliana was overwhelmed by the sense of loss that swept through her. "Damn it, Travis, how could you be so blind? We could have had something wonderful together, you and I. I was so sure of us. So certain we were meant for each other.