that?”
Malcolm tapped his pursed lips with a long, elegant finger. “Well, you have been overdrawn before.”
“I have not!”
“Perhaps you weren’t aware of the problem because your grandmother arranged with the bank to cover overdrafts in the past.”
She ignored the subtle yet pointed criticism. He was an employee, after all. If not hers, her grandmother’s. “It’s a couple of weeks until the next deposit from my trust fund, so I decided to get a cash advance on one of my credit cards. But weasel man confiscated them and would not give them back. Who does he think he is? I spent more money on shoes last year than he earned.”
“Please sit down, Dorian.” Malcolm waved her off his desk and into one of the straight-backed client chairs. “We need to talk.”
“Yes, we do.” She dropped into the chair, more confused now than angry. “Why would the banker do such a thing?”
“I’m afraid he was just following orders.”
“Whose orders?”
“Pru’s.”
Dorian’s eyes widened in disbelief. “My grandmother told some snotty little man to cut up my credit cards?”
“I’m afraid so.” Malcolm leaned forward and steepled his fingers on the parchment blotter. “And it’s not a ‘couple of weeks’ until the draft from your trust is deposited. It’s twelve weeks.”
“I’ve run out of money before. Granny Pru always covers my checks.” She pulled an iridescent red cell phone from her tiny designer bag. “I’ll just call her right now and get this mess straightened out.”
Malcolm frowned. “I’m afraid you can’t. She’s out of the country.”
“At the ranch?”
“She’s not out in the country, dear. She’s out of the country.”
“As in…” Dorian prompted impatiently.
“At the moment she’s on a Greek yacht in the Mediterranean, on the first leg of a rather long sea cruise. She instructed me to inform you she will be incommunicado for the next three months.”
Stunned by the financial manager’s bombshell, Dorian dropped the phone into her lap. “I don’t understand.”
“I believe your grandmother has cautioned you about your spending. Has she not urged you to live within your more than ample means?”
“Maybe. But she’s always advanced me money before when I ran out.”
Malcolm straightened his tie. “She said she warned you no more funds would be forthcoming if you were imprudent again.”
Dorian glanced at the ceiling and sighed. True. Two weeks ago she’d been summoned to the North Park town house and reprimanded for what Granny Pru called “living too high on the hog.” Having been dressed down before about her spending, she had scarcely listened. She’d been in a rush to meet her friends and make the opening of an exclusive new West End club.
“So what are you telling me, Malcolm?”
“You want the nutshell version?”
“Please. I’ve already had the lecture, parts one, two and three.”
“Simply put, you are out of money.” At her disbelieving look, he elaborated. “Strapped. Flat broke. Busted. The industry term for your current condition is insolvent.”
She laughed, relieving the tension that had built inside her. If she didn’t laugh, she might cry. And Dorian Burrell did not cry in public. She saved her tears for the lonely darkness. “You’re kidding, right?”
Malcolm’s brows lifted, reminding her he rarely dabbled in kidding.
Broke? She slumped in the chair. Having known nothing but wealth and privilege, she could scarcely conceive of the concept. Icy fear snaked through her. She was broke. “So what am I supposed to do now?”
“That’s what we have to figure out,” Malcolm said gently.
Her thoughts raced to make sense of an impossible, improbable situation. Would she be forced from the apartment her grandmother had given her when she graduated college? Part of a luxury West End renovation project, the penthouse commanded a fantastic view of the city and was close to the trendiest restaurants and night spots. Maybe she didn’t hold the deed or pay the bills, but she had personally chosen every item in her home, the only place she felt secure.
The houses she’d grown up in had never been homes. They’d been cold and empty, decorated by professionals, managed by housekeepers and cleaned by maids in gray uniforms. Her mother had floated through the artfully arranged rooms like an amorphous spirit, beautiful and not quite real.
Always untouchable.
“What about my apartment?” Dorian voiced her concern.
“Pru was explicit. You’re to continue living there.”
Relieved, she blinked back another sting of tears. This time they were tears of gratitude—even rarer for her than those of sadness or self-pity.
“But I have no money?” She would have figured her chances of uttering that particular combination of words in her lifetime were considerably less than, ‘I’m catching the red-eye to Mars.”
“Not until your next trust deposit.”
“Which is in September.
“Right.”
“This is June.”
Malcolm consulted his fancy desk calendar. “Correct.”
“I don’t believe this. What am I supposed to do until then? Did Granny Pru leave any words of wisdom before going incommunicado?”
“She said she was confident you could solve this problem on your own. You do come from strong stock, you know.”
“Please, spare me the salt-of-the-earth story. I know all about how great-grandfather Portis started out with nothing but a hundred dollars and a wildcatter’s dream. How he pulled himself up by his bootstraps to build one of the biggest, richest oil companies in Texas.” She pushed out of the chair and paced in front of the desk, her blond bob swinging.
As heir to the Chaco Oil fortune, currently controlled by her seventy-nine-year-old grandmother, she was well acquainted with family propaganda. “What the hell are bootstraps anyway?”
He shuffled papers in an attempt to hide his smile.
“I’m glad you think this is funny, Malcolm. Because I don’t.”
“I think your grandmother hoped you would look at the next ninety days as a learning experience.”
“Right.” Uncertainty coursed through Dorian, an unfamiliar emotion for someone who’d
