Kitabı oku: «One Night With The Billionaire: Sparks Fly with the Billionaire / The Nanny Plan / Second Chance with the Billionaire», sayfa 3

CHAPTER THREE

MARGOT’S HOUSE WAS adorable. This whole town was adorable, Allie thought, as she walked past the long row of fishermen’s cottages to reach Margot’s postcard-perfect cottage.

The rain had stopped. The late afternoon sun was shimmering on the water and the boats swinging at anchor in the bay looked clean and washed. Fort Neptune had once been a major defence port, and the fort itself was still a monolith on the far headland, but the time for defence was long past. The town was now a sleepy fishing village that came alive each summer, filling with kids, mums and dads eager for time out from the rest of the world.

It was Allie’s very favourite circus site, and the thought that Henry and Bella had planned their retirement here was a comfort.

Or it had been a comfort, she thought grimly, fighting for courage to bang Margot’s lion-shaped brass knocker. It was all lies.

Lies created to save her elephants?

This was her call. Her responsibility. She took a deep breath—and knocked.

Mathew answered, looking incongruously big, stooping a little in the low doorway. Margot’s forebears must have been little, Allie thought—or maybe it was just Mathew was large. Or not so much large as powerful. He was wearing a fisherman’s guernsey and jeans. Maybe he’d walked on the beach as well—he looked windswept and tousled and … and …

Okay, he looked gorgeous, she conceded, taking a step back, but gorgeous didn’t have any place here. He was looking at her as if she was a stranger, as if she had no right to be here, and she felt like running.

If Margot was dying she had no right to intrude.

But what was at stake was her grandparents’ future and the future of all the crew. If she didn’t front this man she’d have to go back to the show-ground, give orders to dismantle the big top and do … what?

The future stretched before her like a great, empty void.

‘I need to talk to you,’ she said, but Mathew’s face was impassive. She was a loan, she thought. A number on a balance sheet. A red one. It was this guy’s job to turn it to black.

The human side of him had emerged this afternoon. Her grandfather’s collapse had propelled him into the circus ring and he’d done well, but how could she propel him to do more?

The loan was enormous. She had the collateral of an ageing circus and a bunch of weird animals. Nothing else.

He needed to turn back into a banker and she knew it.

‘There’s nothing more I can do,’ he said, surprisingly gently. ‘But how’s your grandpa?’

‘I … he’s okay. They’re keeping him in hospital for checks.’

‘Maybe it’s just as well. It’ll keep him off site while the circus is disbanded.’

She felt sick. More, she felt like … like …

No. She had no idea what she felt like. Her world was spinning, and she had no hope of clinging to it.

‘Mathew?’ She recognised the old lady’s voice calling from the living room. Margot. ‘Mathew, who is it?’

‘It’s Allie from the circus,’ she called back before Mathew could answer. Margot had always seemed a friend. It would have been wrong not to answer. ‘It’s Allie, alias The Amazing Mischka.’

There was a faint chuckle in return. ‘Mischka. Allie. Come on in, girl.’

Come in …

‘How sick is she?’ she said urgently, whispering.

‘She’s decided she’s dying,’ Mathew said in an under-voice. ‘She’s only eighty, but her dog died and she’s scarcely eaten since. She’s spending her time planning her funeral and deciding who inherits her pot plants. Not me, I gather, because I’m not responsible enough. It sounds comic but it’s not. She wants to die, and she’s making sure it happens.’

‘Oh, no.’ She looked into his impassive face—and realised it wasn’t impassive. He was fond of the old lady, then. Very fond.

‘Come in, girl.’ Margot’s voice was imperative. ‘Mathew, don’t keep her out there.’

‘Don’t …’ Mathew said and then he shrugged his shoulders. But she knew what he wanted to say. Don’t upset her. This loan is nothing to do with her.

‘Allie!’ This time the call was peremptory and Allie had no choice but to brush by Mathew and walk through into the sitting room. She was tinglingly, stupidly aware of Mathew as she brushed past him—but then she saw Margot and Mathew was forgotten.

Margot was sitting hunched over the fire, in a pale pink dressing gown, draped in a cashmere throw.

Allie had met this lady every year, every time the circus came to town. She was tall and dignified, wearing tailored tweeds with effortless grace. For the last few years she’d carried and used a magnificent ebony walking cane and she’d given the impression of timeless beauty.

But now she was shrivelled. Disappearing?

‘Oh, Margot.’ Her cry of distress was out before she could stop herself. She’d always referred to Margot as Miss Bond. They’d greeted each other with businesslike pleasantries—this woman was a patron of the circus and her grandfather’s friend—but here, in her pink robe, her body hunched over the fire, Miss Bond seemed inappropriate and cruel.

She hadn’t realised, she thought, how much this lady was part of her history. Even as a little girl, every time the circus was in Fort Neptune she remembered Margot in her tweeds, sitting proudly upright in the front row.

Could she remember Mathew coming with her? No. He’d be older than she was, she thought, and he mustn’t have come with his aunt for years.

All these things flickered through her mind as she knelt by Margot and took her hand. ‘Oh, Margot …’ she said. ‘Oh, Grandpa will be so distressed.’

‘Your grandfather’s ill himself,’ Margot said, looking down at their linked hands for a moment and then gently pulling away. ‘All my friends are dying.’

It was a shocking statement, one that made Allie sit back and glance at Mathew.

His face was grim.

‘You still have family,’ he said. ‘And friends. What about Duncan? What about me? Just because you lost your dog … Margot, there’s no need for you to die as well.’

‘Halibut was my family,’ she said, gently reproving. ‘And it’s my time. Losing Halibut made me realise it. I’m eighty years old, which is too old to get another dog. I have no intention of lying around until everyone’s forgotten me and even my nephew’s wrinkled and gnarled as he stands by my grave.’

It was such a ridiculous image that Allie stared at Mathew in astonishment. He looked anything but gnarled.

He was thirty-fivish, she thought, surely not more.

‘Wow,’ she said to Margot. ‘You might have a few more years before that happens. Too old to get another dog? Dogs live for less than fifteen years. Ninety-five isn’t such a great age. And Mathew, gnarled? It doesn’t seem an immediate danger.’ And she chuckled.

Okay, maybe a chuckle was inappropriate. Mathew surely looked as if it was inappropriate. ‘Your business is with me,’ he snapped. ‘Not with Margot. Come into the study.’

‘Not yet,’ Margot said, with a touch of the asperity Allie remembered. ‘How’s Henry? Mathew told me he was taken ill.’

‘He’ll be okay,’ Allie told her, deciding to ignore Mathew’s blatant disapproval. ‘The doctors say it’s just angina after a dose of the flu.’ She looked cautiously at Margot, wondering exactly what the matter was. ‘If you’d like to risk a few more years to stay friends with him, it might be worthwhile.’

Margot chuckled then, too, but it was a bitter chuckle. ‘But Henry’s only here in summer,’ she said. ‘You all go. Two weeks of Sparkles Circus … I can’t stick around until next year.’

‘And we won’t be here next year, anyway,’ Allie admitted, and saw Mathew’s face darken and thought … uh oh. Hasn’t he told Margot what he’s doing?

‘In the study,’ he snapped and it was a command, but Margot’s hand closed on Allie’s wrist.

‘Why not?’

‘Because the circus is bankrupt,’ Mathew said in a goaded voice. ‘Because they’ve been living on borrowed time and borrowed money for ten years now. Because their time has past.’

‘Like mine,’ Margot said, and her voice matched his. Goaded and angry.

‘You know that’s not true.’ Mathew closed his eyes, as if searching for something. He sighed and then opened them, meeting Margot’s gaze head-on. ‘How can you say your time is past? You know you’re loved. You know I love you.’

It hurt, Allie thought. She watched his face as he said it and she thought it really hurt to say those words. You know I love you. It was as if he hated admitting it, even to himself.

‘And I love Sparkles Circus!’ Margot retorted, her old eyes suddenly speculative. ‘You’re declaring them bankrupt?’

‘He has the right,’ Allie admitted, deciding a girl had to be fair. ‘Margot, you’ve been wonderful. I gather you persuaded Bond’s to finance us all those years ago. I’m so grateful.’

‘Yet you come here looking for more,’ Mathew demanded and there was such anger in his voice that she stared at him in astonishment—and so did Margot. Whoa.

‘I’m not here looking for more money,’ Allie said through gritted teeth. ‘Or … not much. I didn’t know about the loan, but I’ve been through Grandpa’s files now and I’m horrified. The circus can’t keep going—I know that now—but what I want is permission to continue for the two weeks we’re booked to perform in Fort Neptune. We have sold-out audiences. That’ll more than pay our way. If we need to refund everyone, it’ll eat into your eventual payout and we’ll have a town full of disappointed kids. If we can keep going for two weeks then I can give the crew two weeks’ notice. The alternative is going back tonight and saying clear out, the circus is over and letting your vultures do their worst.’

‘Vultures …’

‘Okay, not vultures,’ she conceded. ‘Debt collectors. Asset sellers. Whatever you want to call them. Regardless, it’s a shock and we need time to come to terms with it.’

‘You’re foreclosing on the loan?’ Margot said faintly. ‘On my loan?’

‘It’s not your loan,’ Mathew told his aunt. ‘You asked Grandpa to make the loan to Henry and he did. The circus can’t keep bleeding money. With Henry in hospital, they don’t even have a ringmaster. How the …’

‘We do have a ringmaster,’ Allie said steadily and turned to Margot. She knew what she wanted. Why not lay it on the table? ‘This afternoon your nephew put on Henry’s suit and top hat and was brilliant as ringmaster. He’s here to take care of you. Could you spare him for two performances a day? Just for two weeks and then it’s over?’

‘Mathew was your ringmaster?’

There was a loaded silence in the hot little room. Margot had been huddled in an armchair by the fire, looking almost as if she was disappearing into its depths. Suddenly she was sitting bolt upright, staring at Mathew as if she’d never seen him before. ‘My Mathew was your ringmaster?’ she repeated, sounding dazed.

‘He made an awesome one,’ Allie said. ‘You should come and see.’

‘I did it once,’ Mathew snapped. ‘In an emergency.’

‘And I couldn’t come,’ Margot moaned. ‘I’m dying.’

‘You don’t look dead to me,’ Allie said, and she wasn’t sure why she said it, and it was probably wildly inappropriate, cruel even, but she’d said it and it was out there, like it or not. ‘If you’re not dead then you’re alive. You could come.’

To say the silence was explosive would be an understatement. She glanced at Mathew and saw him rigid with shock.

He’d throw her out, she thought. He’d pick her up bodily and throw.

‘I’m … I’m sorry,’ she said at last because someone had to say something. ‘I don’t know how sick you are. That was … I mean, if you can’t …’

‘If you ate some dinner, let me help you dress, let us rug you up and use your wheelchair …’ Mathew said in a voice that was really strange.

‘I can’t eat dinner,’ Margot retorted, but it wasn’t a feeble wail. It was an acerbic snap.

‘You could if you wanted to.’ He glared at Allie, and back at Margot, and he looked like a man backed against a wall by two forces.

He loved this woman, Allie thought—and with sudden acuity she thought he loves her against his will. He hates it that he loves her and she’s dying.

What was going on?

And he told her.

‘It’s Margot’s decision to die,’ he said, sounding goaded to the point of explosion. ‘Her dog’s died. Her knees don’t let her walk like they used to, so she’s given up. She’s stopped eating and she won’t see her friends. She’s lost twelve kilos in the last four weeks.’

‘You’re kidding,’ Allie said, awed. ‘Twelve kilos? Wow, Margot, what sort of diet are you on? Our Exotic Yan Yan—Jenny to the rest of us—has tried every diet I’ve ever heard of. She’s currently on some sort of grapefruit and porridge diet. Her husband keeps sneaking over to my caravan for bacon and eggs. Maybe I should send Jenny to you.’

There was another silence at that. A long one. She’d trivialised something life-threatening, Allie thought. Uh oh.

She glanced at Mathew and saw his face almost rigid with tension. How hard would it be, she thought, to watch someone you loved decide to die? And she’d made light of it. Joked.

But in for a penny, in for a pound. Why not go for it?

‘It’s Sunday,’ she said, to no one in particular. To both of them. ‘We don’t play tonight, which is just as well as I’m feeling shattered, but tomorrow’s another day. We’re in the middle of the summer holidays and the forecast is for perfect weather. We have performances at two and at seven-thirty. Choose one. Mathew could rug you up and we’d keep the best seat for you like we always do. You could watch Mathew being wonderful and afterwards you could talk to Jenny about your diet.’

‘You can’t want me being wonderful,’ Mathew exploded. ‘If you think I’m about to make a spectacle of myself again …’

‘You enjoyed it,’ she said flatly. ‘Tell me you didn’t. I won’t believe you.’ She turned back to Margot. ‘Mathew took to ringmaster to the manor born,’ she said. ‘He’s seriously awesome. He could spend the next two weeks playing ringmaster. You could put off dying for a couple of weeks. I could give the team time to figure where we go from here. It’s win-win for everyone.’

‘You think dying’s a whim?’ Margot said faintly and Allie took a deep breath and met her gaze head on. She’d been blunt and insensitive—why not just keep on going?

‘I guess dying’s something we all have to do,’ Allie admitted. ‘But if you could squeeze in a couple more weeks of living and lend us your nephew while you did, we’d be very grateful. More than grateful. You’d be saving the circus. You’d be giving us—all of us—one last summer.’

‘The loan’s already called in,’ Mathew snapped.

‘Then call it out again,’ Margot snapped back and suddenly the old lady was pushing herself to her feet, unsteady, clinging to the arms of her chair but standing and looking from Mathew to Allie and back again.

‘Mathew is your ringmaster?’ she demanded as if she was clarifying details.

‘He is,’ Allie said.

‘I’m not,’ Mathew said, revolted.

‘If I eat,’ Margot said. ‘If I manage to eat my dinner and eat my breakfast … if I decide not to die … would you extend the loan for the two weeks Allie’s asking? You know I’ve never touched Bond’s money. You know I fought with my family. Apart from that one loan to Sparkles, I’ve never asked anything of you or your father or your grandfather. I’ve asked nothing but this, but I’m asking it now.’

‘Margot …’

‘I know,’ she said, and amazingly she grinned and Allie caught the glimpse of the old Margot, the Margot who’d been a friend of the circus forever, who’d sat and cheered and eaten hot dogs and popcorn and looked totally incongruous in her dignified tweeds but who now held the fate of the circus in her elderly, frail hands. ‘It’s blackmail,’ she admitted. ‘It’s something we women are good at. Something this Allie of yours seems to exemplify.’

‘She’s not my Allie,’ Mathew snapped.

‘She’s your leading lady,’ Margot said serenely. ‘Mathew, I’m happy to live for another two weeks, just to enjoy the circus.’

‘This is business, Margot.’

‘It’s probably not fair,’ Allie ventured. To say she was feeling gobsmacked would be an understatement. She’d come to plead for a two-week extension, not to negotiate a life. ‘Margot, you don’t have to do this.’

‘Don’t you want me to live?’ Margot demanded, and Allie felt flummoxed and looked at Mathew and he was looking flummoxed, too.

‘I came down to spend time with you,’ he managed.

‘And now you can,’ Margot retorted. ‘Only instead of immersing yourself in your financial dealings while I die, you can be a ringmaster while I watch. You’ve been a banker since the day you were born. Why not try something else?’

What had she done? Allie thought faintly. She hadn’t just backed this man against the wall; she’d nailed him there. He was looking as if he had no choice at all.

Which was a good thing, surely? It was the fate of the whole circus team she was fighting for here. She had no space to feel sorry for him.

Besides, he was a big boy.

And he was an awesome ringmaster.

‘I brought the scripts for the clown jokes for the week,’ she ventured, sort of cautiously. The room still felt as if it could explode any minute. ‘We swap them around because lots of families come more than once. If you could read them … even memorise them like you did today …’

‘He memorised his lines?’ Margot demanded.

‘He helped with the water cannon joke,’ Allie told her. ‘He timed it to perfection.’

‘My Mathew … a ringmaster …’

‘Worth living for?’ Allie asked and chuckled and glanced at Mathew and thought chuckling was about as far from this guy’s mindset as it was possible to get.

‘Yes,’ Margot said. ‘Yes, it is. Mathew, do you agree?’

It felt as if the world held its breath. Allie had almost forgotten how to breathe. Breathing was unnecessary, she thought—unless the decision came down on her side.

‘Yes,’ Mathew said at last, seemingly goaded past endurance, and she couldn’t believe she’d heard right.

‘Yes?’

‘Give me the scripts.’

‘You mean it?’

‘I don’t,’ he said through gritted teeth, ‘say anything I don’t mean. Ever.’

‘Oh, my …’ Her breath came out in a huge rush. ‘Oh, Mathew …’

‘You have what you want,’ he said. ‘Now leave.’

‘But I’d like crumpets,’ Margot interjected, suddenly thoughtful. ‘With butter and honey. Mathew, could you pop across to the store to get me some?’

‘Of course.’ Mathew sounded totally confused. ‘But …’

‘And leave Allie with me while you go,’ she said. ‘If I’m not dying I need company.’

‘I’ll get them for you,’ Allie offered but Margot suddenly reached out and took her hand. Firmly.

‘I’d like to talk to you. Without Mathew.’

‘Margot …’ Mathew said.

‘Women’s business,’ Margot said blandly. ‘Fifteen minutes, Mathew, then I’ll eat my crumpets and have a nap and you can go back to your work. But I need fifteen minutes’ private time with Allie.’

‘There’s nothing you need to discuss with Allie. Two weeks. That’s it, Margot. No more.’

‘That’s fine,’ Margot said serenely. ‘But I will talk to Allie first. Go.’

He went. There didn’t seem a choice. He needed to buy what Margot required, leaving the women to … women’s business?

He had no idea what Margot wanted to talk to Allie about, but he suspected trouble. Margot was a schemer to rival Machiavelli. For the last few months she’d slumped. He’d seen how much weight she’d lost, he’d watched her sink into apathy and he really believed she was dying.

Did he need to fund a circus in perpetuity to keep her alive?

It wouldn’t work, though, he thought, even if it made financial sense—which it didn’t. For the next two weeks, Sparkles would play in Fort Neptune, Margot would see him as the ringmaster and maybe she’d improve. But even if the circus was fully funded, it’d move on and she’d slump again.

Meanwhile, two weeks with Allie …

Allie.

He gave himself a harsh mental shake, disturbed about where his thoughts were taking him. The last couple of days while he’d been here, watching Margot fade, he’d become … almost emotional.

What was it about a girl in a pink leotard with sparkling stripes that made him more so?

A man needed a beer, he thought, and glanced at his watch. Two minutes down, thirteen minutes to go. Women’s business. What were they talking about?

A man might even need two beers.

‘You need to excuse my nephew.’ With the door safely closed behind Mathew, Margot lost no time getting to the point. ‘He doesn’t cope with emotion.’

‘Um …’ Allie was disconcerted. ‘I don’t think I need to excuse Mathew for anything. He’s just saved our circus.’

‘For two weeks and he foreclosed in the first place.’

‘Grandpa borrowed the money,’ she admitted, trying to be fair. ‘With seemingly no hope of repaying the capital. Bond’s is a bank, not a charity. It’s business.’

‘And that’s all Mathew does,’ Margot said vehemently. ‘Business. His parents and sister died in a car crash when he was six. His grandfather raised him—sort of—but he raised him on his terms, as a banker. That boy’s been a banker since he was six and he knows nothing else. I brought him down here for two weeks every summer and I tried my best to make him a normal little boy, but for the rest of his life … His grandfather worked sixteen-hour days—he did from the moment his son died—and he took care of Mathew by taking him with him to the bank. He taught Mathew to read the stock market almost as soon as he could read anything. Before he was ten he could balance ledgers. His grandfather—my brother—closed up emotionally. The only way Mathew could get any affection was by pleasing him, and the only way to please him was to be clever with figures. And there was nothing I could do about it. Nothing.’

‘Oh, Margot …’ What business was this of hers, Allie thought, but she couldn’t stop her.

‘You’re the same, I suspect,’ Margot said. ‘The circus is in your blood; you’ve been raised to it. I’ve watched you as a little girl, without a mother, but I always thought having the run of the circus would be much more fun than having the run of the bank.’

‘I’ve never … not been loved,’ Allie said.

‘You think I can’t see that? And I bet you’re capable of loving back. But Mathew … He’s brought three women to visit me over the years, three women he thought he was serious about, and every one of them was as cool and calculating as he is. Romance? He wouldn’t know the first thing about it. It’s like … when his family was killed he put on emotional armour and he’s never taken it off.’

‘Why are you telling me this?’ Allie asked, feeling weird. ‘It’s none of my business.’

‘It is your business,’ Margot said. ‘You’ve thrown him off balance, and what my Mathew needs is to be thrown off balance and kept off balance. Knock him off his feet, girl. If you want to save your circus …’

‘Margot …’ She’d been sitting on a stool near Margot. Now she rose and backed away. ‘No. I’m not even thinking … I wouldn’t …’

‘If I thought you would, I wouldn’t suggest it.’

‘And that makes no sense at all,’ she said and managed a chuckle. ‘Margot, no. I mean … would a Bond want a kid from the circus?’

‘He might need a kid from the circus. A woman from the circus.’

Margot was matchmaking, Allie thought, aghast. One moment she’d been dying. The next, she was trying to organise a romance for her nephew.

‘I think,’ she said a trifle unsteadily, ‘that I’ve won a very good deal by coming tonight. You’ve helped me keep the circus going for two weeks and that’s all I came for. I’d also really like it if you kept on living,’ she added for good measure. ‘But that’s all I’m interested in. You’re about to eat crumpets. If you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll quit while I’m ahead.’

‘He needs a good woman,’ Margot said as she reached the door.

‘Maybe he does,’ Allie managed, and tugged the door open. ‘But I need a ringmaster and two weeks’ finance and nothing more, so you can stop your scheming this minute.’

The pub was closed. Sunday night in Fort Neptune, Matt thought morosely. Yee-ha.

He walked the beach instead.

The moon was rising over the water, the last tinge of sunset was still colouring the sky and the beauty of the little fort was breathtaking—yet he deliberately turned his mind to figures.

Figures were a refuge. Figures were where he was safe.

It had been that way for as long as he remembered.

When he was six years old his family had died. He had a vague memory of life with them, but only vague. He remembered the aftermath, though. The great Bond mausoleum. His grandfather being … stoic. His great-aunt Margot arriving and yelling, ‘Someone has to cuddle the child. I know you’re breaking your heart, but you’re burying yourself in your bank. You have a grandson. If you can’t look after him, let me have him.’

‘The boy stays with me.’

‘Then look after him. Take him to the bank with you. Teach him your world. Heaven knows, it’s not the perfect answer but it’s better than leaving him alone. Do it .’

Thinking back, it had been an extraordinary childhood, and it didn’t take brains to understand why he was now really only comfortable ensconced in his world of high finance.

Which was why this was so … bewildering. Walking on the beach in the moonlight, knowing tomorrow he’d be a ringmaster …

Figures. Business.

He needed guarantees, he thought, fighting to keep his mind businesslike. He needed an assurance that in two weeks the handover would be smooth and complete.

He’d draw up a contract. Make it official. That was the way to go.

It was a plan, and Mathew Bond was a man who worked according to plans.

Tonight he’d watch Margot eat crumpets, he’d help her to bed, and then he’d make Allie sign something watertight. He’d make sure it was clear this was a two-week deal. And then …

Okay, for two weeks he’d be ringmaster, and that was that. He hoped that it’d make a difference to Margot but if it didn’t there was only so much a man could do.

He’d do it, and then he’d get back to his world.

To banking.

To a world he understood.