with Mr. Collins now. I understand the collection is on loan to the Sydney Art Gallery at the moment.”
“But it wasn’t my father’s to give. It was supposed to be mine.”
She fought to keep the panic from her voice. Without the collection, she really had nothing.
“Under the terms of your mother’s will, it was your father’s to dispose of at his discretion. While she stipulated her preference that it be given to you when you reached your majority, it was still left to your father to decide in the end. Some years ago, he mentioned to me that he had some concerns that you might feel compelled to break the collection up and he wanted to avoid that at all costs. Moreover, he wanted to be certain you were settled before entrusting it to you. In all fairness to your father, he honestly expected your trust fund to support you for your lifetime. Hardly anyone foresaw the long-term ramifications of the global financial crisis until it was too late.”
Piper slumped in the chair. Her life couldn’t get any worse, could it?
“There is one other thing,” the lawyer said carefully, making all the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.
Piper sat up. She didn’t like the way he’d prefaced what was coming next. There was something in his posture and tone that warned her that what she’d learned already was small-fry compared to what was coming next.
“Tell me,” she demanded. She may as well get it straight on the chin now.
“Your trust fund. With your withdrawals and the depreciation of the investments’ value over time, it became overdrawn. Mr. Collins had taken charge of your father’s affairs by that point, and personally advanced money to the fund to cover the shortfall when he was made aware of the situation.”
“Just how much money did he advance?”
The lawyer named a sum that caused black spots to swim before her eyes.
“So you’re saying he advanced several hundred thousand dollars to my trust fund?”
Wade had been the one responsible for the money she’d used to finance schools and health clinics, food and clothing and farm supplies in the counties she’d visited in the past four years? She was struck with an urgent need to understand the conditions of the loan and expressed as much to Mr. Chadwick.
“The loans were rather open-ended. As your trustee, your father entered into deeds acknowledging the debt between the fund and Mr. Collins. Obviously Mr. Collins has the right to recall those loans, with interest, at any time.”
“So no repayments have been made to date?”
“None, Mr. Collins hadn’t requested such repayment.”
“Not at all?”
She was confused. How could anyone afford to make such huge sums of money available like that and not expect something back in return?
“No, not at all.” Chadwick hesitated a moment, his mouth twisting into a moue of regret. “Until now.”
“Now?” she gasped. “He wants me to repay the debt now?”
“Yes, Miss Mitchell, I’m afraid so. And he has specified it must be repaid in full.”
Three
In full? Piper vibrated with ill-concealed anger, earning a look of concern from the elderly man across the table from her. No wonder Wade had arranged to not be at the appointment with her, the rat.
“Thank you,” she finally managed to say through gritted teeth. “Could you tell me exactly when Wade Collins made that specification?”
“We received his instruction this morning.”
This morning? It was unbelievable. While she’d been sleeping in, or even while she’d been lazing about in her bath, he’d been demanding she clear a debt he knew full well she had no ability to repay.
Forcing a smile on her face, she stood and offered her hand to the man who’d been her father’s longtime legal counsel.
“Is there anything I can do for you, Miss Mitchell?”
“Short of conducting a miracle, I doubt it.”
She kept her composure until she got outside the office and saw the car Wade had ordered for her waiting in the loading zone outside. Every instinct within her urged her to turn in the opposite direction and to keep walking. To put as much distance as possible between herself and the awful truth about her financial position. But where would she go?
The driver of the car got out and came around to the passenger side, opening the door for Piper and waiting until she’d settled herself in the soft leather. The drive back to the house passed in a blur. She couldn’t have said whether they’d taken one route or another but when they drove into the long driveway that led to the imposing stairs and entrance to the house, Piper found her eyes locked on the building she’d grown up in.
The immaculate white painted woodwork, the wraparound verandas on the ground and next story, the green-capped pinnacles that marked the four corners of what had begun as a two-story farmhouse. She’d taken every part of it for granted. Its history, its shelter, its place in her life.
She had thought she’d changed, but she hadn’t changed at all. Even without a home to call her own, she’d still assumed she had the money to make a new one. But now she didn’t have even that. And all because she’d been so stupidly presumptuous as to believe her security would never end.
So what now? She didn’t even appear to own the clothes on her back, and Dexter had destroyed what little she had owned.
Piper slowly moved up the stairs and let herself in through the front door. She started as a tall shadow materialized from the formal parlor on her left.
“Wade,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting you here.”
“I managed to clear things up at the office earlier than I’d anticipated.”
Her eyes raked his face for any sign of the man who’d deliberately advanced money to her only to recall it when he knew she was at her lowest ebb. Just how long had he been prepared to go on making money available to her? she wondered. If she hadn’t come back when she did, how much would she have ended up owing him?
It didn’t make sense. She had no way of paying him back. Why would he want to have such a hold over her when it was outside the realm of possibility that she’d ever earn enough money to settle the debt?
“Is that right?” she replied, fighting to keep her voice level when all she wanted to do was bombard him with angry questions.
“I take it the news at the lawyer’s wasn’t good?”
“You take it correctly.”
“We should talk.”
“No kidding,” she said with an insolence she was incapable of hiding.
Wade gestured for her to precede him into the parlor and waited until she was seated before he lowered
