Читать книгу Sparks Fly with the Billionaire - Marion Lennox, Marion Lennox - Страница 8

SHE CHANGED BEFORE she went to meet him. For some reason it seemed important to get rid of the spangles and lashes and make-up. She thought for a weird moment of putting on the neat grey suit she kept for solemn occasions, but in fact there’d only ever been one ‘solemn’ occasion. When Valentino’s mother died, Valentino—or Greg—had asked them all to come to the funeral in ‘nice, sober colours’ as a mark of respect.

Allie looked at the suit now. She lifted it from her tiny wardrobe—but then she put it back.

She could never compete with that cashmere coat. If she couldn’t meet him on his terms, she’d meet him on her own.

She tugged on old jeans and an oversized water proof jacket, scrubbed her face clean, tied her hair back with a scrap of red sparkle—okay, she could never completely escape sparkle, and nor would she want to—and headed off to face him.

He was sitting at her grandparents’ table. He’d made two mugs of tea.

He looked … incongruous. At home. Gorgeous?

He’d taken off his ringmaster coat but he hadn’t put his own coat back on. Her grandparents’ van was always overheated and he’d worked hard for the last three hours. He had the top couple of buttons of his shirt undone and his sleeves rolled up. He looked dark and smooth and … breathtaking?

A girl could almost be excused for turning tail and running, she thought. This guy was threatening her livelihood. Dangerous didn’t begin to describe the warning signs flashing in her head right now.

But she couldn’t turn and run.

Pull up those big girl panties and forget about breathtaking, she told herself firmly, and she swung open the screen door with a bang, as if she meant business.

‘Milk?’ he said, as if she was an expected guest. ‘Sugar?’

She glared at him and swiped the milk and poured her own. She took a bit longer than she needed, putting the milk back in the fridge while she got her face in order.

She would be businesslike.

She slid onto the seat opposite him, pushed away a pile of purple sequins, cradled her tea—how did he guess how much she needed it?—and finally she faced him.

‘Show me the figures,’ she said, and he pushed the file across the table to her, then went back to drinking tea. He was watching the guys packing up through the screen doors. The camels—Caesar and Cleopatra—were being led back to the camel enclosure. He appeared to find them fascinating.

Like the figures. Fascinating didn’t begin to describe them.

He had them all in the file he’d handed her. Profit and loss for the last ten years, expenses, tax statements—this was a summary of the financial position of the entire circus.

She recognised every set of figures except one.

‘These payments are mortgage payments,’ she said at last. ‘They’re paying off Gran and Grandpa’s retirement house. There’s no way the loan’s that big.’

‘I don’t know anything about a house,’ he said. ‘But the loan is that big.’

‘That’s monstrous.’

‘Which is why we’re foreclosing.’

‘You can just … I don’t know …’ She pushed a wisp of hair from her eyes. ‘Repossess the house? But there must be some mistake.’

‘Where’s the house?’

She stared across the table in astonishment. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘The house you’re talking of,’ he said gently. ‘The house that matches this mortgage you seem to think exists. Is it in Fort Neptune?’

‘Yes,’ she said blankly. ‘It’s a street back from the harbour. It’s small but it’s perfect.’

‘Have you ever been inside?’

‘It’s rented. Gran and Grandpa bought it ten years ago. It’s for when they need to leave the circus.’

‘Have you ever seen the deeds?’

‘I … No.’

‘So all you’ve seen is the outside?’

She felt … winded. ‘I … yes,’ she managed. ‘They bought it while I was away and it’s been rented out since.’ She was thinking furiously. She would have been, what, seventeen or eighteen when they’d bought it? It was just after that awful fuss about the elephants …

The elephants … Maisie and Minnie. Two lumbering, gentle Asian elephants she’d known and loved from the moment she could first remember.

Elephants.

House.

‘They sold the elephants,’ she whispered, but already she was seeing the chasm where a house should be but maybe elephants were instead.

‘There’s not a big market for second hand circus elephants,’ Mathew said, still gently, but his words were calmly sure. ‘Or lions. Or monkeys, for that matter.’

‘Grandpa said he sold them to an open-range zoo.’

‘Maybe your grandpa wanted to keep you happy.’

She stared at him—and then she snatched up the paper and stared at it as if it was an unexploded bomb, while Mathew Bond’s words washed around her.

‘Bond’s Bank—meaning my grandfather—was approached ten years ago,’ he told her as she kept staring. ‘We were asked to set up a loan to provide for the care of two elephants, three lions and five monkeys. A wildlife refuge west of Sydney provides such care, but, as you can imagine, it’s not cheap. Elephants live up to seventy years. Lions twenty. Monkeys up to forty. You’ve lost one lion, Zelda, last year, and two of the monkeys have died. The rest of the tribe are in rude health and eating their heads off. The loan was worked out based on costs for ten years but those costs have escalated. You’ve now reached the stage where the interest due is almost as much as the loan itself. Henry’s way overdue in payments and the refuge is calling in its overdue bills. They’re winding down. Your grandfather’s seventy-six, Allie. There’s no way he can repay this loan. It’s time to fold the tent and give it away.’

Silence.

She was staring blindly at Mathew now, but she wasn’t seeing him. Instead she was seeing elephants. She’d watched them perform as a child, she’d learned to work with them and she’d loved them. Then, as a teenager she’d started seeing the bigger picture. She’d started seeing the conditions they lived in for what they were, and she’d railed against them.

She remembered the fights.

‘Grandpa, I know we’ve always had wild animals. You’ve lived with them since you were a kid, too, but it’s not right. Even though we do the best we can for them, they shouldn’t live like this. They need to be somewhere they can roam. Grandpa, please …’

As she’d got older, full of adolescent certainty, she’d laid down her ultimatum.

‘I can’t live with you if we keep dragging them from place to place. The camels and dogs and ponies are fine—they’ve been domestic for generations and we can give them decent exercise and care. But not the others. Grandpa, you have to do something.’

‘The circus will lose money …’ That was her grandfather, fighting a losing battle.

‘Isn’t it better to lose money than to be cruel?’

She remembered the fights, the tantrums, the sulky silences—and then she’d come home from one of her brief visits to her mother and they’d gone.

‘We’ve sent them to a zoo in Western Australia,’ Gran had told her, and shown her pictures of a gorgeous open range zoo.

Then, later—how much later?—they’d shown her pictures of a house. Her mind was racing. That was right about the time she was starting to study bookkeeping. Right about the time Henry was starting to let her keep the books.

‘The house …’ she whispered but she was already accepting the house was a lie.

‘If they’ve been showing you the books, maybe the house is a smokescreen. I’m sorry, Allie, but there is no house.’

Her world was shifting. There was nothing to hold on to.

Mathew’s voice was implacable. This was a banker, here on business. She stared again at that bottom line. He was calling in a loan she had no hope of paying.

No house.

The ramifications were appalling.

She wanted this man to go away. She wanted to retreat to her caravan and hug her dogs. She wanted to pour herself something stronger than tea and think.

Think the unthinkable?

Panic was crowding in from all sides. Outside, the circus crew was packing up for the night—men and women who depended on this circus for a livelihood. Most of them had done so all their lives.

‘What … what security did he use for the loan?’ she whispered.

‘The circus itself,’ Mathew told her.

‘We’re not worth …’

‘You are worth quite a bit. You’ve been running the same schedule for over a hundred years. You have council land booked annually in the best places at the best times. Another circus will pay for those slots.’

‘You mean Carvers,’ she said incredulously. ‘Ron Carver has been trying to get his hands on our sites for years. You want us to give them to him?’

‘I don’t see you have a choice.’

‘But it doesn’t make sense. Why?’ she demanded, trying desperately to shove her distress to the background. ‘Why did Bond’s ever agree to such a crazy loan? If this is true … You must have known we’d never have the collateral to pay this back?’

‘My Great-Aunt Margot,’ he said, and he paused, as if he didn’t quite know where to go with this.

‘Margot?’

‘Margot Bond,’ he said. ‘Do you know her?’

She did. Everyone knew Margot. She’d had a front row seat for years, always present on the first and last night the circus was in Fort Neptune. She arrived immaculately dressed, older but seemingly more dignified with every year, and every year her grandparents greeted her with delight.

She hadn’t been here this year, and Allie had missed her.

‘My grandfather and Margot were brought to Sparkles as children,’ Mathew told her. ‘Later, Margot brought my father, and then me in my turn. When your grandfather couldn’t find anyone to fund the loan, in desperation he asked Margot. He knew she was connected to Bond’s. When Margot asked my grandfather—her brother—he couldn’t say no. Very few people can say no to Margot.’

He hesitated then, as if he didn’t want to go on, and the words he finally came out with sounded forced. ‘Margot’s dying,’ he said bleakly. ‘That’s why I’m in Fort Neptune. We could have foreclosed from a distance but, seeing I’m here, I decided to do it in person.’

‘Because now she’s dying you don’t need to make her happy any more?’

Her tea slopped as she said it, and she gasped. She stood up and stepped away from the table, staring at the spilled tea. ‘Sorry. That … that was dreadful of me—and unfair. I’m very sorry Margot’s dying, and of course it’s your money and you have every right to call it in. But … right now?’

‘You’ve been sent notices for months, Allie. Contrary to what you think, this is not a surprise. Henry knows it. This is the end. I have authority to take control.’

She nodded, choked on a sob, swiped away a tear—she would not cry—and managed to gain composure. Of a sort. ‘Right,’ she managed. ‘But there’s nothing you can do tonight. Not now.’

‘I can …’

‘You can’t,’ she snapped. ‘You can do nothing. Otherwise I’ll go straight to the local paper and tomorrow’s headlines will be Bond’s Bank foreclosing on ancient circus while its almost-as-ancient ringmaster fights for his life in the local hospital.’

‘That’s not fair.’

‘Fair,’ she said savagely. ‘You don’t know what fair looks like. I haven’t even started. Now, I’m going to the hospital to see how Grandpa really is. Meanwhile, you need to get off circus land.’

‘Are you threatening me?’

‘Yes,’ she said, and suddenly the emotion, the anger, the distress built up and she could no longer contain it. ‘Now. If I so much as see you skulking …’

‘I do not skulk …’

‘Or any of your heavies …’

‘I don’t have heavies.’

‘I’ll call the police.’

‘I have the right …’

‘You have no rights at all,’ she yelled, and she’d really lost it but right now she didn’t care. ‘The moral high ground is mine and I’m taking it. Get off circus land, Mathew Bond. I’ll sort this mess, somehow, some way, but meanwhile I have my grandfather in hospital, I have a circus to tend and you have no place here.’

She grabbed his half-full mug and her spilled one and she thumped them both into the sink so hard one broke.

She stared at the shattered remains and her face crumpled.

‘Well, that’s one thing you won’t be able to repossess,’ she said at last, drearily, temper fading, knowing she was facing inevitable defeat.

Enough. She stalked out of the caravan and thumped the door closed behind her.

Business shouldn’t be personal, Matt thought bleakly. He didn’t do personal, and he didn’t cope with emotion. It had been a huge mistake to come here himself. He should have sent his trained, impersonal staff who’d do what had to be done and get out of here.

That was what he had to do now, he told himself. Do what had to be done and get out of here.

So he did.

He filed his papers together, making sure every page was in order and the file was complete. He rolled down his sleeves, he buttoned his shirt and he put back on his grey silk tie.

He put on his cashmere coat and walked out of the caravan, out of the circus, out of personal and back to the controlled world of Mathew Bond, banker.

Henry was lying in his hospital bed, and he looked old and white and defeated. Bella just looked sick.

The doctor she’d met on the way in had given her good news. ‘There doesn’t seem to be any damage to his heart. We’re fairly sure it was simply a bad attack of angina, but your grandmother says he’s losing weight. He’s running a slight fever and we need to get his angina under control, so we’d like to keep him in for a few days, run a few tests, see if we can get him looking a bit stronger before we send him back to the wilds of circus living.’

He won’t be going back to the wilds of circus living, Allie thought drearily, but she pushed the ward door open with her smile pinned in place and spent the first few minutes telling her grandparents of the unlikely success of their banker as a ringmaster.

It made them smile—but the big issue couldn’t be avoided.

She didn’t have to bring it up. Mathew was right. Both Henry and Bella had a clear idea of what was happening, and why.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ she whispered, holding her grandpa’s hand, and he snorted.

‘Telling you wouldn’t have made a difference. We figured we’d keep the circus cheerful and functioning right up till the moment they pulled the rug.’

Great, Allie thought bleakly. They had two weeks of advance bookings. Almost every show for the time they were in Fort Neptune was sold out. She couldn’t conceive of folding the big top tomorrow and leaving a gap in the heart of the town at the height of summer.

She couldn’t bear thinking today had been their last day.

And wages? To go back to the crew now and say it’s over, no more pay as of now …

Was there any money to pay wages already owed? She should have asked. She should have demanded to see what powers Mathew had.

Her head was spinning, and Bella put her wrinkled hand on hers so there were three hands combined, Henry’s, Bella’s and Allie’s. ‘It’s okay, dear,’ she said. ‘Something will come up.’

‘Something already has come up,’ she muttered. ‘Mathew Bond.’

‘But he has to be a nice young man. He’s the great-nephew of Margot and Margot’s lovely. Why don’t you talk to her?’

‘Mathew says she’s dying.’

There was a pause at that. A really long pause.

Then …

‘Just because you’re dying, it doesn’t mean you’re dead,’ Bella said at last, with a lot more asperity than usual. ‘Your grandpa and I are almost eighty and if people treat us like we’re on our last legs we might as well be. Don’t you think Margot would want to know how appallingly her nephew is acting?’

‘He has the right …’

‘The moral right?’ Bella said. ‘Maybe he has and maybe he hasn’t. We’ve given his aunt a lot of pleasure over the years. At least he can let us have our last two weeks here without refunding tickets. Bond’s is huge. Our loan must be a drop in the ocean. Go and see Margot, love. Talk to her.’

‘But she’s dying,’ Allie repeated, horrified.

‘Yes, but she’s not dead,’ Bella repeated impatiently. ‘Just like our circus isn’t dead until we take down the big top. And just like your grandpa isn’t dead yet. He’ll be fine, Allie, love, as long as he has hope.’

‘That’s blackmail. You want me to front a dying Margot and her cashmere-coated nephew so Grandpa will get better?’

‘That’s the one,’ Bella said and beamed.

‘You’re such a good girl,’ Henry said and gave a wee feeble cough and sank further back into his pillows.

Allie glared. ‘You’re a fraud. Grandpa, was that collapse real this afternoon?’

‘Of course it was,’ Henry said, affronted, possibly with stronger affront than the wee feeble cough signified should be possible.

‘Go and see Margot, Allie,’ Bella urged. ‘It’s the least you can do.’

‘I …’

‘At least talk again to the nephew.’

She did have to do that. There were so many complications.

‘Do you know where Margot lives?’ Henry asked. ‘The second house from the point along the esplanade. It’s a little blue fisherman’s cottage.’

‘You’ve been there before—asking for money?’

‘I had to keep the animals safe,’ Henry said, and suddenly his old eyes were steel. ‘I did that for you.’

And he had, Allie thought. Henry was an old-fashioned ringmaster, with old-fashioned views on circus animals. It was her distress that had made him retire them.

It was her distress that had put them into this mess?

‘They’re still okay,’ she said carefully, feeling weird.

‘We know. We get updates,’ Bella said, beaming. She dived into her purse and produced photographs, and Allie found herself staring at pictures of lions and monkeys and two gorgeous, healthy elephants. Maisie and Minnie. She’d adored these animals as a kid. She’d fought for them.

That fight had got them into this mess. What would happen to them now?

‘You need to talk to Margot,’ Bella urged again, and Allie shook her head.

‘I need to talk to Mathew.’

‘Same thing,’ Bella retorted. ‘He’s staying with her.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Of course we know. We were expecting …’

‘Enough.’ Allie put up her hands in surrender. ‘I don’t want to know what you were expecting. At least, I do want to know, but I’m not the least sure I can trust you two. I may not want to trust Mathew Bond either, but at least he gives me facts. I’ll see him. Meanwhile, you stay well, both of you, and no more conniving. I’ll do my best to see what I can save, but you need to leave it in my hands.’

She kissed them both and left. She headed down to the beach and took herself for a really long walk. She thought about elephants and lions and monkeys. She thought about a circus she loved, a team she loved. She thought about a circus sold out for two solid weeks.

And then she went to face Mathew.