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‘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.
CHAPTER FOUR (#u8459be61-dc9a-5750-9fe6-41b61bef71f4)
AFTER LEAVING MARGOT, Allie headed back to the hospital. She reassured herself Henry was okay, she told her grandparents about the two weeks, she brought an exhausted and emotional Bella back to her caravan and settled her and told her the world wasn’t about to end, and finally she retreated to the sanctuary of her own little van, her own little world.
Her dogs greeted her with joy. Tinkerbelle and Fairy were her own true loves. The two Jack Russell terriers were packed with loyalty and intelligence and fun.
There’d never been a time when Allie hadn’t had dogs. These two were part of her act, the circus crowd went wild with their funny, clever tricks, and she adored them as much as they adored her.
She greeted them in turn. She made herself soup and toast and then she tried to watch something on the television.
It normally worked. Cuddling dogs. Mindless television.
There was no way it was settling her now. There was too much happening in her head. The loan. Grandpa. Margot.
Mathew.
And it was Mathew himself who was unsettling her most.
She had so many complications in her life right now, she did not need another one, she told herself. What was she doing? She did not need to think of Mathew Bond … like she was thinking of Mathew Bond.
‘It’s Margot,’ she told her dogs. ‘An old, dying woman playing matchmaker. She’s put all sorts of nonsensical ideas into my head, and I need to get rid of them right now.’
But the ideas wouldn’t go. Mathew was there, big and beautiful, front and centre.
‘Maybe it’s hormones,’ she said and she thought maybe it was. As a circus performer, hormones didn’t have much of a chance to do their stuff.
Hormones … Romance … It wasn’t for the likes of Allie. She moved from town to town, never settling and, as Henry and Bella had become older, Allie’s duties had become more and more onerous.
It wasn’t that she wasn’t interested in a love life. It was that she simply couldn’t fit it in. She’d had all of three boyfriends in her life and none had lasted more than six months. Trailing after a circus performer was no one’s idea of hot romance, and within the circus … Well, no one there exactly cut it in the sexy and available stakes.
‘So now I’m thinking about Mathew and it’s nothing but fancy, but oh, if I could …’ she whispered, and for a moment, for just a fraction of a lonely evening after a hard and frightening day, she gave herself permission to fantasise.
Mathew holding her. Mathew smiling at her with that gentle, laughing smile she’d barely glimpsed but she knew was there.
Mathew taking her into his arms. Mathew …
No! If she went there, she might not be able to pull back. She had to work with the man for the next two weeks.
‘This is nonsense,’ she told the dogs. ‘Crazy stuff. We’ll concentrate on the telly like we do every night. Half an hour to settle, then bed, and we’ll leave the hormones where they belong—outside with my boots.’
It was sensible advice. It was what a girl had to do—and then someone knocked on the door of the van.
Mathew. She sensed it was him before she opened the door.
He was standing in front of her, looking slightly ruffled.
He was wearing that fabulous coat again.
Mathew.
What was he doing, standing in the grounds of the circus at nine at night, holding a contract in one hand, knocking on the door of a woman in pink sequins with the other?
This was business, he told himself fiercely—and she wouldn’t be in pink sequins.
She wasn’t. She was still in her jeans. Her windcheater was sky-blue, soft, warm and vaguely fuzzy.
She looked scrubbed clean and fresh, a little bit tousled—and very confused to see him.
The dogs were going nuts at her feet, which was just as well. It gave him an excuse to stoop to greet them and get his face in order, telling himself again—fiercely—that he was here on business.
She stooped to hush the dogs and their noses were suddenly inches apart. She looked … she looked …
Like he couldn’t be interested in her looking. He stood up fast and stepped back.
‘Good evening,’ he said, absurdly formal, and he saw a twinkle appear at the back of her eyes. She could see his discomfort? She was laughing?
‘Good evening,’ she said back, rising and becoming just as formal. ‘How can I help you?’
He held up his contract and she looked at it as she might look at a death adder. The twinkle died.
‘What is it?’
‘It’s an agreement by you that these two weeks are not in any way a concession or notice by the bank that we’ve waived our legal rights. Our control over the circus starts now; you’re here for the next two weeks on our terms.’
‘I can’t sign that,’ she whispered. ‘Grandpa …’
‘You can sign it. You agreed before the show that you wouldn’t interfere with foreclosure. Your grandfather has named you on the loan documents as having power of attorney but, even so, we don’t actually need you to have legal rights. We don’t need to disturb Henry. As the person nominally in charge right now, all we’re saying is that your presence here for the next two weeks doesn’t interfere with legal processes already in place.’
She pushed her fingers through her hair, brushing it back from her face. Wearily. ‘Isn’t that assumed?’ she asked. ‘That the next two weeks doesn’t stop you from turning into a vulture at the end of it?’
He didn’t reply, just stood and looked at her. She looked exhausted, he thought. She looked beat.
She looked a slip of a girl, too young to bear the brunt of responsibility her grandfather had placed on her.
‘Have you told everyone?’ he asked and she nodded.
‘I asked Grandpa whether I should tell the crew, and he said yes. He’s known this was coming. He should have told us and he’s feeling bad. He asked me to give everyone as much notice as possible.’
So she’d had to break the bad news herself.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘So am I,’ she said wearily. ‘Do I have to sign this now?’
It could have waited until morning, he thought. Why had it seemed so important to get this on a business footing right now? Was it to make it clear—to himself more than anyone—that he wasn’t being tugged into an emotional minefield?
‘We might as well,’ he said. ‘Seeing I’m here.’
‘I’ll need to read it first. Are we talking a thirty page document?’
‘Two.’
