Blake's Office, Denver Carrington:
The skyline of Denver provided an impressive backdrop for the meeting, the mile high sky scrapers covered in thousands of little lights that cast a starry glow over the city, holding the shadows of the Rockies at bay. It was only fitting that this occasion had such breathtaking scenery. Blake stood in his company boardroom gazing at the view, "A penny for your thoughts."
Blake turned and smiled at his visitor "Hello Alexis, shouldn't that a be dollar?"
"Not where I come from, besides are they really worth a whole dollar? You must be pondering something really important, the nature of the universe at least, because don't tell me that currency fluctuations and inflation can turn a penny into a dollar."
Blake chuckled softly and shook his head "No nothing so grand, I was just wondering if when I first started Denver Carrington I had the slightest idea that it would all turn out like this? That I would one day man the helm of one of the largest oil companies in the US, and after tonight one of the most powerful in the world."
"Well I did Blake, I never had a doubt about it. If you think your life is different than you expected, then mine is completely opposite. Growing up I thought like all girls do that I would meet a handsome prince, fall madly in love and live happily ever after just like in the fairy tales. Well I didn't get the happily ever after but I did get an empire as compensation so I can't say I've done too shabbily, and after tonight both our companies are going to be more powerful than ever."
Blake sighed, Alexis was right there was no such thing as happily ever after, he was just pleased that of the many things that they managed to accomplish over the years putting their feud behind them was one. It had taken along time to get to the root of the problem, due to the fact that both were too stubborn to admit to it. Krystle had made him face facts, he was still uncomfortable around Alexis and she around him because on some deep level they couldn't stop caring for the other, resorting to punishing themselves and each other for the love they scorned to bear. However the result of this was that despite putting the weapons away, they were still on edge around the other, needing to maintain the barriers that kept them and the underlying tensions at bay.
Alexis sighed, she had been watching Blake for some minutes before she had interrupted his reverie, it was at such times that he let his guard down and let his thoughts and feelings show on his face and he was never so open as when he was surveying his kingdom. At that moment the door opened and their eldest son Adam entered, he was positively animated with excitement, like a little boy at Christmas. Alexis beamed at him, it was true that this deal was as much his triumph as hers and Blake's, he had come up with the original idea, which had at first seemed ludicrously far fetched and too ambitious for Denver Carrington to attempt alone. It was through his dog- eared persistence that he had persuaded Blake to approach her to propose a joint operation, and now here they stood on the eve of its fruition, Adam had every right to be excited.
"They're starting to arrive now, the delegations from the Australian companies are already on their way up and the Japanese are due to arrive in about five minutes. Do you want me to bring them straight in here or wait for everyone to arrive first?"
"Bring them in here, it will give them a chance to relax and get settled before we start, oh and tell Marsha to bring in the coffee." Blake answered, Alexis smiled to herself, the moments of introspection and doubt were over, Blake was back to his usually Captain at the helm self.
The Carrington Mansion:
Meanwhile across Denver a drama of a very different kind was being played out. Fallon Carrington Colby was trying desperately to get her stubborn daughter to open the door.
"Lauren, please let me in, your father will be home any minute, you know how important this family dinner is to him."
There was no answer, according to the staff ever since Lauren had came home from school she had locked herself in her room, unwilling to speak to anyone. At first no one was particularly worried, it wasn't uncommon for Lauren to spend hours in her room, but normally the door wasn't locked and you could tell she still lived from the repetitious loud music she played.
Fallon had had to laugh the other day when she caught Gerard singing along to a Britney Spears track, the poor man hadn't even realised what he was doing, and ever since then he hadn't been able to look her in the eye. Tonight she would give anything to hear her daughter play her music, this silence was unnerving, LB had never given her these types of problems, plenty of others though especially with girls. The family loved to needle LB about his many girlfriends, never letting him forget about the night one of his ex's had rung the mansion asking to speak to Blake ending up with Blake senior; at whom she had proceeded to throw torrents of abuse before realising her mistake.
"Lauren, I mean it now, open this door and explain yourself or believe me you'll regret it."
"Alright, I'm coming, just give me a minute will you!" Lauren opened the door about and inch and peaked out,"What?"
"Lauren let me in, we need to talk about your attitude" Fallon pushed open the door only to be astounded with what she saw, "Lauren, what the hell have you done to your hair?"
Her daughter's face crumpled up," It wasn't meant to turn out like this, I wanted a nice red tinge but I think I left it on too long, oh mum, I look like a human carrot." Fallon tried in vain not to laugh, she herself knew the perils of home hair-care but fortunately for her, her mistakes had only amounted to a very ragged fringe, whereas her daughter had managed an almost fluorescent orange.
"Mum it's not funny what the hell am I going to do?"
"Well have you thought of shaving it off?"
"HA HA, that's very amusing, something constructive please!"
"Alright we can try dying it darker, I'll make the call."
"It had better work or else I'm not leaving my room until it's grown out."
"Lauren it's not that bad, besides you could always get a part time job at the airport."
"What?"
"You know guiding planes in to land," and with that she made a dash for the door, narrowly avoiding the cushion thrown at her, by her glowering daughter.
The Boardroom, Denver Carrington:
Back at Denver Carrington the room was bustling with businessmen, no other women though Alexis noted, or was that one a woman, these days it became more and more difficult to tell. She could never understand why women executives fell into two distinct categories the vamp or masculine clones. The first used the men around her to climb up the ladder of power never to reach the pinnacle, the second tried to make themselves as much like their male colleagues hoping it would compensate for their not having a penis. However these businessmen were somewhat different than she normally dealt with, most of these men were the owners of their small companies, combining money management with manual labour on their own rigs. She doubted if many of them had been in a boardroom in their lives, certainly not one belonging to a company the size of Denver Carrington.
Alexis looked up and caught Blake's eye, he nodded at her and began to lead his companion across to her, Blake had been talking to one of the Australians, a tall man with sandy coloured hair flecked with grey at the temples and a rugged complexion.
"Alexis may I introduce Jim Marker, he's the director and owner of the Marx Incorporated, we've been hearing so much about."
"M'am I'm very pleased to meet you, Blake you're a lucky man, I wish I had such a beautiful wife who helped out at my business functions, it must be nice having all your family involved in the business." Alexis almost laughed out loud; the look on Blake's face was a picture, and as her mother always said a picture beats a thousand words.
"Mr Marker, Alexis is my business partner, not my wife, if you'll excuse me we need to make a start."
As Blake speedily departed Mr Marker turned to Alexis his face beetroot, his mouth agape and began to stutter his apologies.
"I'm sorry it just that when Adam introduced me to his father, he mentioned that Blake should introduce me to 'Mother', and then he brought me over and introduced you as his partner, and I just thought."
"You just put two and two together and come up with five instead? Don't worry it isn't entirely your fault, Adam is mine and Blake' son, in fact he's the eldest of our four children, however we've been divorced for over twenty years, and I think it still needles Blake when people assume that we're a couple, especially as we've both subsequently re-married."
The tapping of a water glass gained everyone's attention and Blake moved to his seat at the head of the boardroom table.
"Good Evening Gentlemen, I trust that you all had pleasant flights and that the accommodation we've provided for you during your stay is satisfactory? However I'm sure that you're anxious to get started and find out why we've invited you all to Denver?"
At this Jim Marker spoke up,"You could say that Mr Carrington. After all what would two of the richest oil producers in the States want with a handful of small time players from the other side globe? I know it piqued my curiosity enough to come, however I'm stating right now Mr Carrington, if this is just a ploy to butter us up in order to get us to sell out, your going to be very disappointed. I've had to work hard to keep my company afloat and I'm not going to sacrifice the jobs of my workers or my children's inheritance due to pressure from a big overseas player. I know that's the reason why a few of my friends turned your offer down, I think we all would agree that Stageman Industries is most noted by its absence."
Blake nodded in agreement with Marker's sentiments, "I understand how you feel, I built my company up from nothing and I too wouldn't sell out to any one no matter the price. That's why you're all here, your companies were selected because you survived when many of your competitors were going under, your fighters and that's what we need. My son Adam came up with this proposition, we know the only way to survive is to find new fields in territory outside of OPEC's grasp. However despite the globalised nature of both Denver Carrington and Colby Co our expansion into the Far East had only progressed as far as the South China Seas Oil leases and so we could spend years and billions of dollars in our own separate explorations. Yet it was precisely in this area that we needed to be expanding. Therefore he proposed a partnership, firstly between Denver Carrington and Colby Co to provide the international clout and financing. Then secondly an alliance with some smaller companies in the localities into which we needed to expand. The first stage of this operation is complete, our Japanese visitors represent a number of small mineral exploration firms, who have been investigating prospective drilling sites, it took some time but they have been able to provide us with a handful of possibilities. Therefore it is now on to stage two and for this we need your help. Alexis would you care to elaborate?"
Blake watched as the eyes of their prospective partners fixed on the beautiful Alexis Colby, everything was so far going according to plan, he'd set up the deal and now it was her turn to sell it to them. She stood up slowly, smiling graciously at the assembly and he saw many of the men who had been uptight and defensive listening to his oration visibly relax. It often surprised him the effect that she could have on the most rational of businessmen, yet all men have their weaknesses; many would fight fifteen rounds with another man before giving ground, but would be putty in the hands of the right woman.
"Good evening gentlemen, I assume by now you have some idea why you specifically are here? As Blake has already explained through co-operation with other companies we have located some potential drilling sites. However as you are all experienced oil men you will know that despite their best efforts these meteorologists can only tell us so much, it is through actually digging that we can determine firstly if the oil there is reachable and secondly how much there is. That is where you come in. Despite the size and reach of our companies Blake and I would need to invest billions of dollars to exploit all these sites, more to the point there is the time factor.
We would need to start from scratch, either recruiting staff in the area or moving our own people in, both of which would cost us time and we might lose out on these opportunities to other international companies. However with your help we could solve this problem. You already have employed, the skilled workers that we require, you have the appropriate infrastructure in place and therefore could be up and drilling in a fraction of a time it would take us; nor would we have to interfere with our other projects by dragging off skilled workers. Gentlemen it is that simple, we want to do business with you, we want to work alongside you and bring in the profits for all our companies.
The only catch is timing, we need companies in this that are prepared to start work immediately before the international community realises what were up to. Although we do hold the appropriate leases I'm sure we all know that many rotten apples can be thrown into the political barrel to stop us, environmental groups, health and safety committee reviews, the list is endless. We need to move and start drilling on our prospective sites ASAP and for that we need your immediate reactions. To put it simply gentlemen are you in or out? If the answer is an outright no I suggest you say so now, then no hard feelings and we hope you enjoy our hospitality in Denver until you fly home. So gentlemen what is it going to be?"
Stageman Industries, Australia:
The sun beat down heavily on the rig workers. It had been a hot summer so far, the kind of heat that drove dogs mad, John Stageman sighed, it was driving him mad. The work was progressing very slowly, what made things worse was the fact that he had to sit around waiting for reports to come, instead of being out in the field making things happen. He knew he should be used to it by now, he'd been stuck in this wheelchair for fifteen years ever since that damn accident, but this summer seemed the worst. He sighed again, to the outsider things would appear to be going well, despite his paralysis his company was flourishing and his only daughter was finally getting married, and both were thanks to his future son in law. Maybe that was what was really bothering him? No he shook his head, in the five years that he had known Alex he could count on one hand the number of times they had argued, and even then he found it hard to stay mad at the man who had saved his life. Not even over this Denver business. Although it could be blamed for dragging up long buried memories.
It had been a summer much like this, the sun scorched the land and there was no sea breeze to take the edge away, he and his men had been out on a preliminary drill site and the heat was getting to everyone. It had been nearing sundown when he decided to call it a night, most of his crew had gone to bed or the local, and he was on his way to join them when one of the fire alarm klaxons sounded. He hurried to the control equipment, it appeared that someone hadn't closed down properly and due to the intense heat some of the wiring had fused but John knew his crew too well, it had to be sabotage. The next thing he remember was an intense weight crashing down on him and he passed out, when he woke up it was to the smell of thick black smoke and the sound of a low soothing voice reassuring him before he blacked out. The next time he opened his eyes was in the hospital a week later and it was then that he found out that he would never walk again.
However in the years since he had become even more certain it had been no accident, that a business competitor had paid someone to sabotage his operation, hoping it would destroy his credibility as an oilman and bankrupt him. He could never gather enough proof but he was certain he knew who was responsible, he had only met the man once when he had thrown down his offer to sell out. No one was going to get away with trying to blackmail him and he'd called in a few favours and had the jackass run out of town. At the time he hadn't taken the man's threat of revenge seriously, he was a known opportunist not at all a heavy weight. He knew deep down that he was right not let Alex go to Denver to deal with the Americans, he had learnt years ago from that skirmish never to trust any man called Carrington.
The skyline of Denver provided an impressive backdrop for the meeting, the mile high sky scrapers covered in thousands of little lights that cast a starry glow over the city, holding the shadows of the Rockies at bay. It was only fitting that this occasion had such breathtaking scenery. Blake stood in his company boardroom gazing at the view, "A penny for your thoughts."
Blake turned and smiled at his visitor "Hello Alexis, shouldn't that a be dollar?"
"Not where I come from, besides are they really worth a whole dollar? You must be pondering something really important, the nature of the universe at least, because don't tell me that currency fluctuations and inflation can turn a penny into a dollar."
Blake chuckled softly and shook his head "No nothing so grand, I was just wondering if when I first started Denver Carrington I had the slightest idea that it would all turn out like this? That I would one day man the helm of one of the largest oil companies in the US, and after tonight one of the most powerful in the world."
"Well I did Blake, I never had a doubt about it. If you think your life is different than you expected, then mine is completely opposite. Growing up I thought like all girls do that I would meet a handsome prince, fall madly in love and live happily ever after just like in the fairy tales. Well I didn't get the happily ever after but I did get an empire as compensation so I can't say I've done too shabbily, and after tonight both our companies are going to be more powerful than ever."
Blake sighed, Alexis was right there was no such thing as happily ever after, he was just pleased that of the many things that they managed to accomplish over the years putting their feud behind them was one. It had taken along time to get to the root of the problem, due to the fact that both were too stubborn to admit to it. Krystle had made him face facts, he was still uncomfortable around Alexis and she around him because on some deep level they couldn't stop caring for the other, resorting to punishing themselves and each other for the love they scorned to bear. However the result of this was that despite putting the weapons away, they were still on edge around the other, needing to maintain the barriers that kept them and the underlying tensions at bay.
Alexis sighed, she had been watching Blake for some minutes before she had interrupted his reverie, it was at such times that he let his guard down and let his thoughts and feelings show on his face and he was never so open as when he was surveying his kingdom. At that moment the door opened and their eldest son Adam entered, he was positively animated with excitement, like a little boy at Christmas. Alexis beamed at him, it was true that this deal was as much his triumph as hers and Blake's, he had come up with the original idea, which had at first seemed ludicrously far fetched and too ambitious for Denver Carrington to attempt alone. It was through his dog- eared persistence that he had persuaded Blake to approach her to propose a joint operation, and now here they stood on the eve of its fruition, Adam had every right to be excited.
"They're starting to arrive now, the delegations from the Australian companies are already on their way up and the Japanese are due to arrive in about five minutes. Do you want me to bring them straight in here or wait for everyone to arrive first?"
"Bring them in here, it will give them a chance to relax and get settled before we start, oh and tell Marsha to bring in the coffee." Blake answered, Alexis smiled to herself, the moments of introspection and doubt were over, Blake was back to his usually Captain at the helm self.
The Carrington Mansion:
Meanwhile across Denver a drama of a very different kind was being played out. Fallon Carrington Colby was trying desperately to get her stubborn daughter to open the door.
"Lauren, please let me in, your father will be home any minute, you know how important this family dinner is to him."
There was no answer, according to the staff ever since Lauren had came home from school she had locked herself in her room, unwilling to speak to anyone. At first no one was particularly worried, it wasn't uncommon for Lauren to spend hours in her room, but normally the door wasn't locked and you could tell she still lived from the repetitious loud music she played.
Fallon had had to laugh the other day when she caught Gerard singing along to a Britney Spears track, the poor man hadn't even realised what he was doing, and ever since then he hadn't been able to look her in the eye. Tonight she would give anything to hear her daughter play her music, this silence was unnerving, LB had never given her these types of problems, plenty of others though especially with girls. The family loved to needle LB about his many girlfriends, never letting him forget about the night one of his ex's had rung the mansion asking to speak to Blake ending up with Blake senior; at whom she had proceeded to throw torrents of abuse before realising her mistake.
"Lauren, I mean it now, open this door and explain yourself or believe me you'll regret it."
"Alright, I'm coming, just give me a minute will you!" Lauren opened the door about and inch and peaked out,"What?"
"Lauren let me in, we need to talk about your attitude" Fallon pushed open the door only to be astounded with what she saw, "Lauren, what the hell have you done to your hair?"
Her daughter's face crumpled up," It wasn't meant to turn out like this, I wanted a nice red tinge but I think I left it on too long, oh mum, I look like a human carrot." Fallon tried in vain not to laugh, she herself knew the perils of home hair-care but fortunately for her, her mistakes had only amounted to a very ragged fringe, whereas her daughter had managed an almost fluorescent orange.
"Mum it's not funny what the hell am I going to do?"
"Well have you thought of shaving it off?"
"HA HA, that's very amusing, something constructive please!"
"Alright we can try dying it darker, I'll make the call."
"It had better work or else I'm not leaving my room until it's grown out."
"Lauren it's not that bad, besides you could always get a part time job at the airport."
"What?"
"You know guiding planes in to land," and with that she made a dash for the door, narrowly avoiding the cushion thrown at her, by her glowering daughter.
The Boardroom, Denver Carrington:
Back at Denver Carrington the room was bustling with businessmen, no other women though Alexis noted, or was that one a woman, these days it became more and more difficult to tell. She could never understand why women executives fell into two distinct categories the vamp or masculine clones. The first used the men around her to climb up the ladder of power never to reach the pinnacle, the second tried to make themselves as much like their male colleagues hoping it would compensate for their not having a penis. However these businessmen were somewhat different than she normally dealt with, most of these men were the owners of their small companies, combining money management with manual labour on their own rigs. She doubted if many of them had been in a boardroom in their lives, certainly not one belonging to a company the size of Denver Carrington.
Alexis looked up and caught Blake's eye, he nodded at her and began to lead his companion across to her, Blake had been talking to one of the Australians, a tall man with sandy coloured hair flecked with grey at the temples and a rugged complexion.
"Alexis may I introduce Jim Marker, he's the director and owner of the Marx Incorporated, we've been hearing so much about."
"M'am I'm very pleased to meet you, Blake you're a lucky man, I wish I had such a beautiful wife who helped out at my business functions, it must be nice having all your family involved in the business." Alexis almost laughed out loud; the look on Blake's face was a picture, and as her mother always said a picture beats a thousand words.
"Mr Marker, Alexis is my business partner, not my wife, if you'll excuse me we need to make a start."
As Blake speedily departed Mr Marker turned to Alexis his face beetroot, his mouth agape and began to stutter his apologies.
"I'm sorry it just that when Adam introduced me to his father, he mentioned that Blake should introduce me to 'Mother', and then he brought me over and introduced you as his partner, and I just thought."
"You just put two and two together and come up with five instead? Don't worry it isn't entirely your fault, Adam is mine and Blake' son, in fact he's the eldest of our four children, however we've been divorced for over twenty years, and I think it still needles Blake when people assume that we're a couple, especially as we've both subsequently re-married."
The tapping of a water glass gained everyone's attention and Blake moved to his seat at the head of the boardroom table.
"Good Evening Gentlemen, I trust that you all had pleasant flights and that the accommodation we've provided for you during your stay is satisfactory? However I'm sure that you're anxious to get started and find out why we've invited you all to Denver?"
At this Jim Marker spoke up,"You could say that Mr Carrington. After all what would two of the richest oil producers in the States want with a handful of small time players from the other side globe? I know it piqued my curiosity enough to come, however I'm stating right now Mr Carrington, if this is just a ploy to butter us up in order to get us to sell out, your going to be very disappointed. I've had to work hard to keep my company afloat and I'm not going to sacrifice the jobs of my workers or my children's inheritance due to pressure from a big overseas player. I know that's the reason why a few of my friends turned your offer down, I think we all would agree that Stageman Industries is most noted by its absence."
Blake nodded in agreement with Marker's sentiments, "I understand how you feel, I built my company up from nothing and I too wouldn't sell out to any one no matter the price. That's why you're all here, your companies were selected because you survived when many of your competitors were going under, your fighters and that's what we need. My son Adam came up with this proposition, we know the only way to survive is to find new fields in territory outside of OPEC's grasp. However despite the globalised nature of both Denver Carrington and Colby Co our expansion into the Far East had only progressed as far as the South China Seas Oil leases and so we could spend years and billions of dollars in our own separate explorations. Yet it was precisely in this area that we needed to be expanding. Therefore he proposed a partnership, firstly between Denver Carrington and Colby Co to provide the international clout and financing. Then secondly an alliance with some smaller companies in the localities into which we needed to expand. The first stage of this operation is complete, our Japanese visitors represent a number of small mineral exploration firms, who have been investigating prospective drilling sites, it took some time but they have been able to provide us with a handful of possibilities. Therefore it is now on to stage two and for this we need your help. Alexis would you care to elaborate?"
Blake watched as the eyes of their prospective partners fixed on the beautiful Alexis Colby, everything was so far going according to plan, he'd set up the deal and now it was her turn to sell it to them. She stood up slowly, smiling graciously at the assembly and he saw many of the men who had been uptight and defensive listening to his oration visibly relax. It often surprised him the effect that she could have on the most rational of businessmen, yet all men have their weaknesses; many would fight fifteen rounds with another man before giving ground, but would be putty in the hands of the right woman.
"Good evening gentlemen, I assume by now you have some idea why you specifically are here? As Blake has already explained through co-operation with other companies we have located some potential drilling sites. However as you are all experienced oil men you will know that despite their best efforts these meteorologists can only tell us so much, it is through actually digging that we can determine firstly if the oil there is reachable and secondly how much there is. That is where you come in. Despite the size and reach of our companies Blake and I would need to invest billions of dollars to exploit all these sites, more to the point there is the time factor.
We would need to start from scratch, either recruiting staff in the area or moving our own people in, both of which would cost us time and we might lose out on these opportunities to other international companies. However with your help we could solve this problem. You already have employed, the skilled workers that we require, you have the appropriate infrastructure in place and therefore could be up and drilling in a fraction of a time it would take us; nor would we have to interfere with our other projects by dragging off skilled workers. Gentlemen it is that simple, we want to do business with you, we want to work alongside you and bring in the profits for all our companies.
The only catch is timing, we need companies in this that are prepared to start work immediately before the international community realises what were up to. Although we do hold the appropriate leases I'm sure we all know that many rotten apples can be thrown into the political barrel to stop us, environmental groups, health and safety committee reviews, the list is endless. We need to move and start drilling on our prospective sites ASAP and for that we need your immediate reactions. To put it simply gentlemen are you in or out? If the answer is an outright no I suggest you say so now, then no hard feelings and we hope you enjoy our hospitality in Denver until you fly home. So gentlemen what is it going to be?"
Stageman Industries, Australia:
The sun beat down heavily on the rig workers. It had been a hot summer so far, the kind of heat that drove dogs mad, John Stageman sighed, it was driving him mad. The work was progressing very slowly, what made things worse was the fact that he had to sit around waiting for reports to come, instead of being out in the field making things happen. He knew he should be used to it by now, he'd been stuck in this wheelchair for fifteen years ever since that damn accident, but this summer seemed the worst. He sighed again, to the outsider things would appear to be going well, despite his paralysis his company was flourishing and his only daughter was finally getting married, and both were thanks to his future son in law. Maybe that was what was really bothering him? No he shook his head, in the five years that he had known Alex he could count on one hand the number of times they had argued, and even then he found it hard to stay mad at the man who had saved his life. Not even over this Denver business. Although it could be blamed for dragging up long buried memories.
It had been a summer much like this, the sun scorched the land and there was no sea breeze to take the edge away, he and his men had been out on a preliminary drill site and the heat was getting to everyone. It had been nearing sundown when he decided to call it a night, most of his crew had gone to bed or the local, and he was on his way to join them when one of the fire alarm klaxons sounded. He hurried to the control equipment, it appeared that someone hadn't closed down properly and due to the intense heat some of the wiring had fused but John knew his crew too well, it had to be sabotage. The next thing he remember was an intense weight crashing down on him and he passed out, when he woke up it was to the smell of thick black smoke and the sound of a low soothing voice reassuring him before he blacked out. The next time he opened his eyes was in the hospital a week later and it was then that he found out that he would never walk again.
However in the years since he had become even more certain it had been no accident, that a business competitor had paid someone to sabotage his operation, hoping it would destroy his credibility as an oilman and bankrupt him. He could never gather enough proof but he was certain he knew who was responsible, he had only met the man once when he had thrown down his offer to sell out. No one was going to get away with trying to blackmail him and he'd called in a few favours and had the jackass run out of town. At the time he hadn't taken the man's threat of revenge seriously, he was a known opportunist not at all a heavy weight. He knew deep down that he was right not let Alex go to Denver to deal with the Americans, he had learnt years ago from that skirmish never to trust any man called Carrington.