how quickly bad news travels.’
Scott threw off the thick leather gloves and tossed them on to the desk and stomped closer to her, but Toni stayed exactly where she was.
Scott was furious; when he spoke, each word was like a dagger stabbing at her forehead and penetrating her skull.
‘Intense? Is that how you would describe Travis? Intense? You want to know about my stepbrother?’
Scott was almost spitting out the words as he said the name.
‘That man hated the fact that his widowed mother married someone who he thought was totally beneath her in every way. Yes, that’s right. My dad was a boring academic type who wasn’t worthy to marry a woman with a title. How pathetic was that! And, even worse, the man had two children and expected him to play nice.’
Scott coughed. ‘Travis broke up his mother’s marriage and then used every trick in the book to turn my family against me, starting with my father and then my wife, Alexa. And I cannot forgive him for destroying something I thought was special.’
Toni sucked in some air. ‘You’re still in love with her. I understand. Really. You can’t just wipe away all of those years of your life that you spent together.’
‘Ah, Toni, believe me—I’m over Alexa. But memories have this habit of kicking you when you’re down. I haven’t forgotten what it felt like to find my stepbrother and my wife together in the boardroom. And what they were doing on that table had nothing to do with forward planning, unless it was to find a contract which would keep me as far away from London as they could come up with. Alaska fitted the bill nicely.’
‘Oh, Scott, surely you don’t think that they planned it?’
‘No, I don’t think—I’m sure of it. Travis told me to my face on the day we first met that he was determined to have everything that I had. Well, he got what he wanted.’
Scott stopped pacing long enough to count out the list using his fingers. ‘A controlling interest in Elstrom Mapping. My father gave his new wife half of his shares as a little wedding present and Travis a few more on his twenty-first birthday. All Travis had to do was persuade his mother to put the shares in his name, for tax reasons or some other excuse, and he had the shares he needed to sit on the board.’
‘But surely he couldn’t do that. You and your father ran the business.’
‘And how could I forget my father? He made sure that there was always some excellent excuse why my father should attend some function Travis had organised instead of seeing me. And when I complained? I was being childish and jealous. So, of course, when the position for CEO came up? He took my job. The only job that I had trained for and wanted since I could read a map.’
‘Oh, Scott, I can’t believe it.’
‘Believe it.’ He paused a moment and shook his head and blew out sharp and fast.
‘And then there was the lovely Alexa. She was the final trophy in his little collection. When he had Alexa he had the full set. He had everything he wanted. Everything he thought that I wanted. He had taken everything that mattered to me.’
Scott was pacing now like a caged animal. ‘But Travis had forgotten something rather important. Where do you go when you have everything that you have ever wanted?’
Scott whirled, one hand in the air.
‘I remember coming into this room on the day before I left for Alaska. Travis was sitting at the head of the table. Master of all he surveyed. And I looked at him and laughed in his face. Do you know why? He had no clue. None. About any of it. He didn’t know how to run a business. How could he? He had shadowed me for almost a year but that wasn’t nearly long enough. Sad thing was, Travis was clever enough to realise that he taken on too much too soon. But too arrogant to admit that he had failed.’
‘So what did he do? After you left?’
‘He did what any desperate fool does. He threw money at the problem. Brought in top consultants. Experts in new mapping technology. Anybody and anything that could give him a rope to hold on to so he could try and climb out of this pit that he had dug for himself and for Elstrom Mapping and have someone else to blame when it all went wrong.’
Scott gazed out of the tiny squares of mullioned glass on to the busy London street and his voice dropped to a sad whisper.
‘My father came back from Italy with Freya and walked in the front doors to find the bailiffs were already here to unplug all of the ludicrously expensive computer systems that Travis had ordered and never bothered to pay for or train anyone to use.’
Scott looked at Toni over one shoulder then turned back to gaze at the city street.
‘Travis was gone. Resigned. Walked out. Leaving Freya and my father to try and sort out the chaos that he had created and left for other people to deal with.’
‘Oh, no. That’s so cruel.’
‘Cruel and irresponsible,’ Scott agreed. ‘But if you’re looking for someone to blame for my father’s poor health, don’t look to Travis. Start with me. Because I saw it coming and did not do one thing to stop it.’
‘What do you mean, you saw it coming?’ Toni asked as she stepped closer to Scott so that she could see his face.
‘It was common knowledge that we desperately needed to invest in new mapping and survey technology. That was why I had spent three months studying the alternatives and putting together a proposal which would have taken us into the next generation of mapping.’
Scott turned and gazed at the imposing chair at the end of the table. ‘I stood here and spent an hour going through the detail. Freya loved it. But she was the only one. Alexa and my father sided with Travis. He couldn’t wait years. I wasn’t being adventurous enough. I needed to wake up and be more experimental. I was not the man for the job.’
The pain in Scott’s voice was so intense that Toni rested her hand over his in support and for a moment his gaze focused on her. ‘I walked out, Toni. I was so angry and bitter that I wanted Travis to fail and for the world to see it. Why should I stay and try and save the business when my father had chosen to put his trust in Travis instead of me? Let Travis bankrupt the business. Then they would see who was wrong and who was right!’
Scott gave a low shuddering sigh. ‘Not something I am proud of. He brought out an ugly side of me which I didn’t know existed.’
‘That was what he wanted to do, wasn’t it? Make things so impossible that you had to leave him in charge of the company.’
Scott flashed her a closed mouth smile. ‘Clever girl. He goaded me into it by forcing me to choose whether to stay and work with him or take off. So no, Travis Brooks is not my favourite person in the world. And now he’s back and he needs money. The question is—what will he do to get it this time? My ex-wife soon outlived her usefulness and he moved on to the next wealthy woman a year later. He had no use for her any longer. And I cannot forgive the man for that.’
Toni paced up and down the parquet floor several lengths, her head down but her gaze was wild as she mentally worked through the question and tried to come up with an answer.
‘Did Travis keep his shares in the company?’ she asked, blinking.
