Her father was granted bail, and emerged from the courthouse pale, shaken, but determined to clear his name. He had done nothing to justify the indignity the Ironstones had heaped upon him after two decades loyal service. Miranda had been confident it would all be sorted out.
But what followed had been traumatic. And, in the end, Thomas Owen simply gave up. Miranda could still remember the set, serious face of the policewoman who’d knocked on the door to break the news that her father was dead.
Then came the funeral. Miranda’s hands grew clammy and nerves fluttered in her stomach at the memory of the last terrible occasion she’d seen Callum Ironstone—it still made her cringe. Devastated by her father’s death, her white-hot hatred boiling over, she’d confronted him in the stone-walled forecourt of the church.
The men beside him moved to cut her off. But she barged past them. Standing in front of Callum, she inspected him with angry eyes. “How could you take a good man’s life and destroy it?” she’d challenged.
His jaw had set, and his face had grown harder than the marble tombstones in the churchyard. “He stole money from me.”
“So you decided to teach him a lesson and humiliate him?”
A flush seared his carved cheekbones.
A man who resembled Callum—a brother perhaps—stepped forward. “Wait a minute, young lady—”
She brushed him aside, focusing all her emotion on Callum. “You killed him. You know that?” Tears of rage and pain spilled onto her cheeks. “He worked for you for twenty years, you gave him a gold watch, yet you never gave him a chance?”
Her father had been given no opportunity to avow his innocence. Callum had relentlessly pushed the police to the conclusion he’d wanted.
“You’re overwrought,” he said dismissively.
That made the ball of anger swell inside her. “And what’s going to happen to my mother, my brother?” Me? “Now that you’ve destroyed our family?”
Callum gave her a stony stare. He raised a dark, devilish eyebrow and asked sardonically, “Finished?”
She hadn’t been. Not by a long shot. But before she could vent any more he’d cut her off, snapping “Grow up” in a supercilious, condescending way that made her feel childishly inadequate.
Callum’s words had been unkindly prophetic. She’d had to grow up, and quickly. Much as Miranda loved her mother, she knew Flo could never be practical. Overnight Miranda had become the adult in the home. There’d been no choice.
And now that same man was trying offer her money. A bribe?
“No.”
Miranda felt Callum Ironstone start as she spoke. The sensitive skin of her nape prickled. A moment later a pair of bright blue eyes glared down at her. She’d never noticed their color before.
“What do you mean ‘No’?”
Closing the folder with a snap, Miranda slammed it down against the glossy wood. “I mean I have no intention of accepting your blood money.”
“Blood money?” he said softly, dangerously, and his gaze narrowed to an intimidating glitter.
She refused to be cowed. “Yes, blood money for what you did to my father.”
“Your father stole from Ironstone Insurance.”
Miranda shook her head. “You got the wrong man.”
“Give me strength.” Callum made a sharp, impatient sound. “You’re not a child anymore.”
“Stop it!” She put her hands over her ears.
Blue eyes bored into hers.
Feeling foolish, like the immature child he’d accused her of being almost three years ago, she uncovered her ears and dropped her hands out of his line of sight into her lap and curled them into fists.
With hard-won composure, Miranda said, “I’m sure being wealthy beyond belief means you’ve gotten used to throwing money around to make all your problems go away. But not this time. I won’t take a cent.”
His jaw had hardened. A shiver closely allied to fear feathered down her spine as he bit out, “Don’t you think it’s rather late for fine principles?”
Miranda stared at him blankly. “What do you mean?”
“You’ve conveniently forgotten?”
“Forgotten what?”
His lips compressed into an impatient line. “Taking money from me.”
“That’s a lie—I’ve never taken a cent from you.”
She’d die of starvation before she did that. He’d caused her family so much grief.
After the funeral, the house where Miranda had grown up with its apple orchard and paddocks had, by necessity, been sold along with her horse Troubadour and Adrian’s expensive racing bicycles. Her mother had never gotten used to the cramped terrace house in a rundown street south of the Thames that the three of them had moved into. Even with Adrian away during the term at the exclusive boarding school Flo had refused to countenance him leaving, space was tight.
Thankfully the lump sum Ironstone Insurance had paid out after her father’s death had been invested wisely, the interest paying for Adrian’s and Miranda’s education as well as a modest retainer to support her mother, though it left Flo only a shadow of the lifestyle she’d once taken for granted.
Yet as Miranda’s gaze remained locked with Callum’s, a deep sense of foreboding closed around her heart.
“So where did the funds for Greenacres come from?” he asked, naming the exclusive culinary school she’d attended. He held up two fingers. “Two years. And your brother’s schooling at St. Martin’s…”
No, please God.
It had been a shock to discover her parents’ precarious financial position after her father’s death. But at least her father had kept his life insurance up-to-date.
Voice trembling, she said, “My father’s life insurance policy paid f—”
“Your father’s suicide voided the policy.”
“No!” She realized she was shaking her head wildly. “That can’t be true.”
Yet even as she denied it, her brain worked furiously. What he said sounded perfectly logical. From the stories her father had told about repudiated claims she knew about fine print. So why had the company paid out the policy after his death when they’d fired her father…had publicly branded him a criminal? And why had she never questioned the settlement?
Because she’d trusted her father not to do anything that would leave her…them…so horribly exposed. Surely he would never have killed himself, cutting them off from the last lifeline available to them?
