Читать книгу Greek Doctor: One Magical Christmas - Meredith Webber, Meredith Webber - Страница 5

‘SO I DON’T know what to do!’

Mak stared at his only sister in disbelief.

Never in his life had he heard this strong-willed, determined, driven woman admit such a thing.

‘Have you talked to her?’

Helen shook her head.

‘I’ve written, I’ve sent emails, and heard nothing in reply. I can hardly just go out there and land on her doorstep. What if she shut the door in my face? Besides, it’s impossible for me to get away. Since Dad’s death I’ve been running the business and trying to keep Mum going—you know how she is—the two deaths coming so close together, it’s as if she’s given up living. Look at Christmas—her Christmas productions rivalled the Oscar presentations. Feast and family, that was her mantra. This year she’s doing nothing and when I suggested I do it, she just shrugged.’

Mak was still puzzled. Yes, Helen was busy and, yes, his mother did seem to have understandably lost her zest for life, but did that add up to so much consternation? Wouldn’t time—?

‘There’s also the cousins,’ Helen muttered.

Ah!

He waited for Helen to explain, knowing she would, eventually.

It came with a sigh.

‘The cousins are doing their best to take control of the business and if we lose control of Hellenic, Mum will have to watch all Dad built up go into other hands. She’ll feel as if his whole life was for nothing.’

While Helen paced the office at the top of Hellenic Enterprises city headquarters, Mak considered what he’d just learned. With his father’s blessing, he’d gone into medicine rather than following the parental footsteps into engineering, but as well as Helen, half a dozen of his cousins, children of his father’s sisters, had entered the family firm.

And held shares in it!

He frowned, realising that, although still part of the company, he knew less and less of what went on within it these days, his studies and work leaving him little time to read the company reports. And his father’s unexpected death had left him with a lot of problems to sort out, as he was the executor of his father’s personal estate.

‘Can they take over? I mean, do they have the power to do that—the majority of shares between them? And what would it mean if they did?’

‘They can if they get that woman to vote with them in the extraordinary general meeting they’ve called for January, and the way they are talking they already have her vote in the bag.’

‘You know this for certain?’ Mak asked, aware of the bias Helen felt against ‘that woman’.

‘I’m pretty sure and equally sure money has changed hands. Con was out there just last week, ostensibly to check on the experimental power plant but he’s never been interested in geo-thermal power before.’ Helen hesitated before adding, ‘And there was a rather large item in his expenses, listed as a donation.’

Mak felt himself frowning.

‘Did you ask him about it?’

‘How could I?’ Helen muttered. ‘I shouldn’t have seen the information—not until the next board meeting when we all table our expenses.’

‘You were spying on him?’ Mak couldn’t hide his disbelief.

‘I was not—it was just that Marge, Dad’s old secretary, alerted me to it as she typed up the agenda.’

Which was the same as spying, Mak considered, but that wasn’t the issue right now.

‘Maybe Con really was checking on the power plant, and the donation was just that. After all, he’d hardly bribe the woman with the firm’s money.’

‘Well, he wouldn’t use his own,’ Helen snapped. ‘You don’t know Con like I do—he’s changed since he married for the third time. I reckon his wife keeps her hands on the purse strings. He’s as tight as a—as a you know what.’

Mak considered his easygoing cousin and wondered if the third wife might not be on to something—keeping control of Con’s spending. Was she also behind the push to take over the company? It didn’t seem like something Con, or any of the cousins, would instigate…

‘This is all supposition, Helen. Let’s give Con the benefit of the doubt for the moment. And in any case, why are you worried about a takeover?You’d still be part of the company, probably still CEO, as I can’t see any of them wanting that job.’

‘I wouldn’t stay,’ Helen said, her face pale and her lips tight. ‘I know how they think and the way they see the future. Heaven knows, we’ve argued it often enough in board meetings. If they take over it will be the end of Dad’s dream to produce clean power, for one thing. They see that as someone else’s job or something for the future. Anything experimental is expensive, and there’s no certainty of a return. The cousins want profits that are guaranteed and they want them now which would mean taking the firm in a different direction, looking more towards structural engineering than Dad ever did, and probably merging with a bigger firm.’

Mak understood what she was saying but his mind had snagged on the earlier conversation—at the thought of money changing hands, and Con’s third wife, and manipulative women in general. The juxtaposition had prodded another thought in his mind—a very unwelcome one.

Theo had been shameless in his pursuit of women, casually promiscuous, but he had always been careful, assuring Mak that he always took precautions—that he wasn’t totally irresponsible.

So had this pregnancy been planned—not by Theo but by the woman in question? Had she seen an opportunity to either trap Theo into marriage, or to benefit in some other way?

She’d benefit all right if the cousins gave—or had already given—her money for her votes, benefit at the expense of Helen and his mother, at the expense of his father’s dreams and at the expense of their small family unit, which had always been so tight.

Mak felt anger stir at the thought of a deliberate pregnancy, having been caught up in similar circumstances himself, years ago. Although no one, he was sure, could be as devious as Rosalie had been! However, to be fair, the ‘money changing hands’ scenario was only supposition on Helen’s part. As far as he knew, this woman hadn’t made any move to ingratiate herself with the family—in fact, the opposite was true, which brought another problem in its train. Mak’s Greek genetic heritage was strongly aligned to family values—family made you what you were, and children needed family.

She had a name, of course, the woman, but it was never mentioned in the family—particularly not in Helen’s hearing. Any more than Theo’s reputation as a ladies’ man was discussed in Helen’s hearing. To his sister, her only child had been perfect in every way—handsome, clever, loyal, a loving son and an obedient grandson, following the family tradition by studying engineering—the designated successor to his grandfather, the designated heir to the massive conglomerate of businesses that made up Hellenic Enterprises.

But Theo was dead, killed in a motor vehicle accident that had also taken the lives of three of his friends. Four young people tragically dead because of speed and alcohol, and Mak, who as a top emergency room doctor saw far too many young lives wasted this way, had felt more fury than grief when first he’d heard the news. Grief for his nephew, and his sister’s suffering, had come, but the fury had returned when Mak had learned that Theo had been irresponsible enough to leave behind an unborn child.

A child who would be family…

‘What stage are you at with the exploration teams out there?’ he asked Helen, as an idea that filled him with horror started to form, unwanted, in his head.

‘We’ve found hot rocks close to the surface and although the exploration teams will remain out there, we’ve sent more men in to build the experimental power plant. Now it’s nothing more than pipes and pumps but once we’re satisfied that the rocks are suitable for our needs, we’ll go ahead with a proper set-up.’

‘So, you’ve the first crews, and more men for the power plant and the likelihood that even more men will be going out there shortly. And if a power plant goes ahead, some of those men will be there permanently so families would be joining them. I’d think you must be putting pressure on a lot of the town’s resources but in particular the medical services if there’s only one doctor in town.’

Helen nodded, but it was a vague reaction, and Mak could almost see the cloud of grief that still enveloped her.

‘Helen?’ he prompted, but gently this time.

She nodded again.

‘We are,’ she said, visibly pulling herself together. ‘In fact, Theo suggested the company fund another medical practitioner, if only for the duration of the exploration, but he might have had an ulterior motive—that woman might have been prompting him. The company could certainly afford it but how do we find out if that’s what the town really needs?’

Mak knew how they could find out because there was already a raging argument going on his head. Go out and check on things for himself? No way, he was on study leave, it was midsummer, the temperature would be up in the stratosphere, he had his thesis to complete. On the other hand, the family was important to him and right now it appeared to be falling apart. Helen, on whom he had always relied to keep things running smoothly, was struggling—physically as well as emotionally, he suspected. His mother—well, if ever anyone needed some new interest in her life, it was her and surely a great-grandchild could supply that interest…

He’d have to think about it.

There was no time to think about it.

‘I don’t know what to do,’ Helen said, taking the conversation back to where it had started, but now her voice was a feathery whisper, filled with pain and loss. ‘I’ve lost my son and now I’ll never know my grandchild.’

‘I’ll sort it out,’ he heard himself say. ‘I’ll go tomorrow and that will give me the whole weekend to sort out somewhere to stay and introduce myself to Dr Singh.’