fingers biting painfully into her sides. Then, abruptly, he released her and stepped away, his sudden retreat setting off a wave of relief so powerful her legs threatened to buckle. He ran a hand over his hair and adjusted the knot of his tie—as if smoothing his appearance would somehow make him appear less brutish.
‘Seven days, little lady.’ His voice was gruff. Menacing. ‘And then I collect.’ He jutted his chin in the direction of the paper on her desk. ‘That’s a copy, of course. You can assure your lawyer that I have the original tucked away safe and sound.’ He sent her a hard, chilling smile then showed himself out, leaving her office door standing open in the wake of his exit.
Emily sagged against her desk, just as Marsha rushed in.
‘My God!’ the younger woman exclaimed. ‘What on earth happened in here? The look on that man’s face—’ She stopped, her eyes growing rounder as they took in Emily’s slumped posture and the pallor she knew without the aid of a mirror had stripped the colour from her cheeks. ‘Emily...?’
Rousing herself, she pointed a trembling finger over Marsha’s shoulder. ‘Call Security. Tell them to make absolutely certain that man leaves the building.’
Marsha hurried back out and Emily moved on shaky legs to the other side of her desk. She picked up her phone, pulled in a fortifying breath and dialled her father’s mobile number.
The call went straight to voice mail.
Surprise...not.
She slammed the phone back down, frustration, fury and a host of other feelings she didn’t want to acknowledge building with hot, bitter force inside her.
Her eyes prickled and the threat of tears was as unfamiliar and unwelcome as the nausea had been.
What had Maxwell done?
Her lips trembled and she pressed them together, closed her eyes and pushed the heels of her hands against her lids.
She knew what he had done.
He’d borrowed a monstrous sum of money to enter a high-stakes poker game and put up his fifty per cent shareholding of The Royce as collateral.
And then he had lost. Spectacularly.
She wanted to scream.
How could he? How could he?
No wonder he’d been incommunicado this last week. He was hiding, the coward. Leaving Emily to clean up the mess, like he always did.
Bitterness welled up inside her.
Why shouldn’t he? She was his fixer, after all. The person who made things go away. Who kept his image, and by extension the image of The Royce, as pristine and stain-free as possible. Oh, yes. Her father might be a selfish, irresponsible man but he wasn’t stupid.
He’d finally discovered a use for the daughter he’d ignored for most of her life.
Emily dropped into her chair.
It wasn’t unusual for Maxwell to disappear. As a child she’d grown to accept his fleeting, infrequent appearances in her life, sensing from a young age that she made him uncomfortable even though she hadn’t understood why. As an adult she’d hoped maturity and a shared interest in The Royce’s future would give them common ground—a foundation upon which to forge a relationship—but within the first year after her grandfather’s death it’d become clear her hopes were misguided. The loss of his father had not changed Maxwell one bit. If anything he’d become more remote. More unpredictable. More absent.
It was Emily who had run the club during his absences, assuming more and more of the management responsibilities in recent years. Oh, Maxwell would breeze in when the mood took him, but he rarely stayed at his desk for more than a few token minutes. Why stare at spreadsheets and have tedious discussions about staffing issues and running costs when he could be circulating in the restaurant or the Great Salon, pressing the flesh of their members and employing his innate silver-tongued charm?
Emily didn’t care that her job title didn’t reflect the true extent of her responsibilities. Didn’t care that for seven years her part-ownership of the club had remained, by mutual agreement with her father, a well-guarded secret. She knew The Royce’s membership wasn’t ready for such a revelation. The club was steeped in tradition and history, mired in values that were steadfastly old-fashioned. Its members didn’t object to female employees, but the idea of accepting women as equals within their hallowed halls remained anathema to most.
Emily had a vision for the club’s future, one that was far more evolved and liberal, but changes had to be implemented gradually. Anything fundamental, such as opening their doors to women... Well, those kinds of changes would happen only when the time was right.
Or they wouldn’t happen at all.
Not if Carl Skinner got his grubby hands on her father’s share of The Royce. There’d be no controlling Skinner, no keeping the outcome under wraps. It would be an unmitigated scandal, ruinous to the club’s image. There’d be a mass exodus of members to rival establishments. In short, there would be no club. Not one she’d want to be associated with, at any rate. Skinner would turn it into a cheap, distasteful imitation.
Oh, Lord.
This was exactly why her grandfather had bequeathed half of the club to Emily. To keep his son from destroying the family legacy.
And now it was happening.
Under her watch.
She reached for the phone again, imagining Gordon Royce’s coffin rocking violently in the ground now.
Her first call, to the bank, told her what she already knew—they were at the limit of their debt facility. Raising cash via a bank loan wasn’t an option. Her second call, to The Royce’s corporate lawyer, left her feeling even worse.
‘I’m sorry, Emily. The contract with Mr Skinner is valid,’ Ray Carter told her after she’d emailed a scanned copy to him. ‘You could contest it, but unless we can prove that Maxwell was of unsound mind when he executed the agreement there’s no legally justifiable reason to nullify the contract.’
‘Is there nothing we can do?’
‘Pay Mr Skinner what he’s owed,’ he said bluntly.
‘We don’t have the money.’
‘Then find an investor.’
Emily’s heart stopped. ‘Dilute the club’s equity?’
‘Or convince your father to sell his shares and retain your fifty per cent. One or the other. But whatever you do, do it fast.’
Emily hung up the phone and sat for a long moment, too shell-shocked to move. Too speechless to utter more than a weak, distracted word of thanks when Marsha came in, placed a cup of tea in front of her and said she’d be right outside the office if Emily needed to talk.
Alone again, she absentmindedly fingered the smooth surface of the pearl that hung from a silver chain around her neck.
An investor.
Slowly the idea turned over in her mind. There had
