book.’
‘You gave her a copy?’
‘Forgive me for being a smug mother, but I wanted her to know that you’d made the original for Toby.’
‘If I was Toby’s mother I’d be smug. Has Connie found him, by the way? He was running around in his pyjamas a little while ago.’
‘Forget Toby for a moment. This woman has it in her power to give you the kind of publicity money can’t buy.’
She wanted to tell Fran that she didn’t want any kind of publicity. She wanted to say, Don’t do this to me. I’m not you…
But her cousin was glowing with happiness, wanting so much to include her in her joy, so instead she smiled and said, ‘Well, don’t just stand there. Lead the way.’
CHAPTER TWO
‘FOREST FAIRIES?’
Sebastian closed his eyes. Maybe this was all a bad dream, he thought. Maybe, if he concentrated very hard, he’d wake up in the pastel-free zone of his loft apartment…
Nothing doing.
When he opened them, the display of neon-bright, fairy-bedecked birthday cards was still there.
A week ago he’d been sitting in his Wall Street office, the fate of major corporations in his hands. All it had taken was one phone call to change his life from the American dream to a British farce. He just wished Matty Lang were here to see what the ‘big-shot New York banker’ had come to.
She, he was certain, would have enjoyed the joke. With her there he might have been able to see it for himself.
‘They were our most profitable line…’
Blanche Appleby, Uncle George’s secretary since time immemorial, hesitated, unsure exactly how to address Sebastian now that he was a head taller than her and, in his real life, the vice-president of an international bank.
He let the image of Matty’s smile fade. ‘It’s still Sebastian, Blanche.’
She relaxed a little. ‘It’s been a good many years since I called you that.’
‘I know, but you don’t have to go all formal on me just because I’ve grown a few feet. I’m still going to need you to hold my hand on this one. I know nothing about the greeting card business.’ Knew nothing and cared less. But he was stuck with it.
‘What about the staff?’
‘I’ll talk to them all later, when I have a better idea what’s—’
‘No. What do you want them to call you?’
He stifled a groan. Life was so much simpler in the US. There he was simply Sebastian Wolseley, a man defined by what he did and how well he did it rather than by the fact that one of his ancestors had been the mistress of Britain’s merriest monarch.
As Viscount Grafton, his title was a courtesy one, one of his father’s spares, passed on at birth to keep him going until he inherited the big one. He’d made damn sure that no one in New York knew about it. And perhaps that was a small upside.
Baiting minor aristocracy was a blood sport in the British media; any coverage of his involvement in Coronet Cards was likely to be of the mocking variety. Since it would be the Viscount they were mocking, he might just get away with it.
It would be worth any amount of mockery if it meant no one in New York discovered that he’d put his career at the bank temporarily on hold to rescue Forest Fairies from fiscal disaster.
‘What did the staff call George?’ he asked.
‘Everyone but the senior staff just called him Mr George.’
Paternal respect for the Honourable George, what else?
‘Maybe in another twenty years,’ he said. ‘For now I’d prefer it if everyone just called me Sebastian.’
‘Everyone?’ She sounded slightly shocked.
‘If you’d pass that on.’
‘Well, if that’s what you want.’
‘I do.’ Then, since there was no point in putting off the inevitable, he indicated the display of birthday cards, paper plates, napkins and balloons strewn across the conference table that took up one end of the office. ‘You say these were Coronet’s bestselling lines?’
Maybe he should have made more effort to hide his disbelief.
‘You’ve never seen the television programme?’ she asked, surprised.
‘I don’t believe so.’
‘No, well, I don’t suppose they’re on American television.’ Her tone suggested that their transatlantic cousins didn’t know what they were missing. ‘They were very popular here, which is why George bought a twenty-five-year licence to use the characters on a range of cards and party products.’
That got his attention. ‘Did you say twenty-five?’
‘Forest Fairies parties have been very popular with three-to six-year-old girls.’
‘George bought the rights to produce this stuff for twenty-five years?’ he persisted. ‘How much did it cost the company?’
‘It was a very good deal,’ she said, instantly protective. ‘The line was the mainstay of the business for several years.’
The fact that she appeared to be referring to all this success in the past tense finally got through. ‘Was?’
‘Sales have declined somewhat since the TV programme was dropped from the schedules,’ she admitted.
Sebastian was torn between relief that there would be fewer Forest Fairies in the world and despair that the one item keeping the company afloat was in decline.
It was a close call.
Distracted by a howl of frustration, Matty gave up any pretence of working. All morning she’d been stopping her mind from wandering off to think about Sebastian Wolseley. The sexy way his eyes had creased as his face had relaxed into a smile. The way his eyes changed colour.
Back in New York, he’d still be asleep, and that was a tantalising thought, too. It was so easy to imagine him lying with his face in a pillow, his long limbs spread-eagled across a wide bed.
She saw him in one of those vast loft apartments, with light flooding in from floor-to-ceiling windows across acres of floor space, ‘An Englishman in New York’ playing on an expensive stereo.
And she smiled. So few people were able to handle the wheelchair without embarrassment, but he’d passed every test with flying colours.
The journalist who’d been so anxious to interview her about her work hadn’t been able to get away fast enough. Promising to phone. And maybe she would. ‘Plucky wheelchair-bound woman illustrates cute book…’
