Sparks Fly with the Billionaire

by Marion Lennox

  ‘And I don’t even know if she’d have me,’ Matt muttered, and Margot’s eyes flew wide.

  ‘So you do feel...’

  ‘Of course I feel,’ he said explosively. ‘I feel and feel and feel and I have not one idea what to do about it. Yes, I’m like you, Margot, but you’ve spent sixty years thinking about it. I’ve barely started.’

  * * *

  There was something wrong. He felt it the moment he returned to the circus. Things were underway for the performance, everyone was busy doing what they needed to do, but there was a stiffness, a silence, a tension that he couldn’t place.

  Allie was preoccupied and silent. ‘Nothing’s the matter,’ she said stiffly in response to his fast enquiry. ‘We just need to make this performance as good as it possibly can be, or better. Your bow tie’s crooked. See you in the ring.’

  The show went on. It was magic, as usual. Allie did a short but wonderful show with her dogs. The camels were back at their best. The tumblers, the magicians, the clowns were all on top of their game, but still there was something...

  Previously at the end of each act, the performers would bounce out of the ring and be greeted with good-natured banter by those in the wings. Now they retreated to silence.

  It was as if the volume in the ring was still on normal, but behind the curtain the volume was set to mute.

  And the smiles were masks, Matt thought. He did his normal joke routines with Fizz and Fluffy. The clowns hurled themselves into their roles, but underneath the painted clown faces was almost tragedy.

  What was going on?

  ‘Are things okay with Henry?’ he demanded of Allie in a fast turnaround of equipment where they both had to work together.

  ‘He’s fine.’

  ‘Is he still coming home tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And Bella?’

  ‘She’s fine, too.’

  ‘Then what’s the matter?’

  ‘Nothing that hasn’t always been the matter,’ she told him. ‘We’re facing facts, that’s all.’

  He had no time for more.

  Finally it was over. Bows were taken, the crowd dispersed and the clearing up started.

  This was normally Matt’s cue to leave. He’d figured by now that he just got in the way when he tried to help. This was a well oiled machine, and he simply messed up operations.

  He didn’t leave tonight, though. He’d been watching Allie’s face all evening, watching the tension, watching pain. He was starting to know this woman. He was starting to hurt when she hurt.

  Was he throwing his heart in the ring?

  She wouldn’t know what to do with it, he thought grimly. The heart of a Bond? It’d only complicate her life. He’d do what he had to do on the sidelines and then move away—but he had a feeling that there was stuff to be done on the sidelines now.

  He headed over to the camel enclosure. Allie wasn’t there but she always came here last thing—he knew that by now. The dogs came to greet him. They had the run of the circus and without their sparkly ruffles they were two nondescript Jack Russells, seemingly empathising now with a worried mate.

  ‘You too?’ he asked as he sank down on a bench near the camels and both dogs jumped up beside him and put a head on a knee apiece. ‘You’re worried, too?’

  They didn’t move, just sat and waited and so did he, and ten minutes later Allie appeared with a bucket of feed and desolation written all over her.

  She stopped when she saw him. He expected the dogs to jump down to greet her but they didn’t. He had a weird feeling they were depending on him. She needs help. Fix it. We’re right behind you.

  ‘You want to tell me?’ he said and she stopped short. She stood with the bucket of feed in her hand, as if she didn’t know what to do with it. As if she didn’t know how to move forward.

  She’d shed her sparkles. She was back in her customary jeans and oversized jacket. She’d let her hair out from her performance hairstyle, but residual hairspray was making her curls hang stiffly, at awkward angles.

  She’d scrubbed her face free of make-up, but tonight her eyes looked even bigger without the kohl.

  Desolate was the only word to describe her.

  ‘Allie...’ He rose and lifted the bucket from her hands and set it on the ground. An indignant bray behind him reminded him of priorities. He turned and tipped the bedtime snack into the feed bin, the camels relaxed and he turned back to Allie.

  She was still standing where he’d left her. Motionless.

  Gutted.

  ‘Allie, tell me,’ he said and he couldn’t bear it. He moved forward to take her hands, but she did move then. She stepped back in a gesture of pure revulsion.

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ she whispered but by her expression he could tell she thought it was. ‘It had to happen. I...we knew. It was just, I thought we’d have another week before it began. Only of course you have to organise things.’

  ‘Organise what?’

  ‘Carvers rang Grandpa with an offer,’ she said dully. ‘It’s not much. They say we can’t even look after our animals. They say they’re not paying for our reputation—not when we let wild animals out. Wild—our camels! I’m sure it was Carvers who let them out, using it as a wedge to drive the price down. But Grandpa says what they’re offering is all we can expect, so he rang your bank and he accepted. What’s worse is that people from Carvers have told every single member of our crew what they thought of them—what their commercial value is. They’ve offered jobs to five. The rest...well, we all knew it. Anyway, Grandpa got your people here and he signed off on the offer. It’s done. We perform for one more week—that’s in the offer—but it’s finished.’

  ‘Allie...’

  ‘Is that why you took me away today?’ she demanded. ‘To get me out of the way?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘So your people could come in behind my back?’

  Your people...

  It would be his people, he thought. The team from Bond’s.

  Apart from his brief call to organise the chopper, he hadn’t been in touch with the bank for days. His foreclosure team back in Sydney would see no need to consult him if Henry received an offer. If Henry was willing to accept, a fast sale to one of the few potential buyers would suit everyone.

  It was inevitable, he thought bleakly. It was simply reality hitting home. But now...

  Now Matt was the villain of the piece.

  Your people.

  ‘Allie, I’m sorry. I didn’t know...’

  ‘That you were foreclosing? Of course you did.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know about today’s offer, though. But it does make sense. That’s why the team will have moved fast.’

  ‘Your team.’

  ‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘I told the team we were giving you two weeks before closing the place down, but we’ve been putting out feelers for buyers before this.’

  ‘Behind our backs?’

  ‘Henry knew,’ he said, firmly and surely. ‘It’s Henry’s circus, Allie. This is not deceit. It’s business.’

  ‘Then that’s why Carvers will have let the camels out. It’s been all over the local papers. Wild beasts from circus roaming town. It’s like Carvers wrote the piece. They’ll have done it to make sure they get what’s left of us for a rock-bottom price. I bet they’ve been planning it for months. And what they said... They told Fizz and Fluffy they were only fit for geriatric home entertainment—if not inmates. They were triumphant.’

  ‘My people would never have said that.’

  ‘No, but they stood in the background while Carvers said it.’

  ‘I’m so sorry.’ He hesitated, but then decided there was no choice but to be honest. ‘I’ve had my phone off, but Allie, if an offer was made, I
’d have talked to your grandfather, too, as I’m sure my team has. What they get for the circus goes against your grandfather’s debt. It’s in all our interests to get a fair price.’

  ‘But to do it so fast... Signing today, and while I was away...’

  ‘Maybe Henry wanted it that way,’ he suggested. ‘I’m sorry, Allie, but it’s your grandfather’s decision.’

  ‘I know—’ her hands working themselves into fists, clenching and unclenching ‘—Grandpa has the right. I can’t override anything he’s done.’

  ‘Would you want it overridden?’

  ‘Done differently. Done...with respect. If I’d known...’

  ‘Allie...’

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘There is life after this.’

  She looked at him, bleak as death. ‘Is that what you say to everyone you foreclose on?’

  ‘To be honest, Allie, it seldom happens. We usually do a thorough business appraisal of everyone we lend money to.’

  ‘Unless it’s a favour to your Aunt Margot.’

  There was a moment’s silence. A long moment. More than anything, he wanted to step in to her and take her into his arms. That wouldn’t be a usual banker/client gesture of reassurance, he thought, but then Allie wasn’t a normal client. With a normal client he could step away.

  Her body language said step away anyway.

  ‘They’re taking my dogs,’ she said, almost conversationally, and he stilled.

  The dogs. He glanced behind him and the dogs hadn’t moved. They were lying on the bench but there was nothing relaxed about the way they were lying. They were looking straight at him.

  Mathew Bond the Villain?

  ‘Grandpa listed all the animals in the asset sheet,’ she told him. ‘Well, of course he did. They’re half the reason people come to see us.’ She took a deep breath and stared, not at the dogs, not at Matt, but at the ground. ‘People from Carvers have been in the audience for the past few nights. They know what these guys can do. They know they’re worth their weight in gold and Grandpa’s signed them over. He didn’t realise, but it’s too late now. All our assets... All our animals. The camels. The ponies. And...and the dogs.’

  He stared behind him at the two nondescript Jack Russells. They were circus dogs, but they were also dogs who were loved as pets. He looked at the girl before him and he thought...her heart’s breaking.

  He moved. Whether she wanted it or not, suddenly he was holding her. He drew her against him, he held her tight, and he felt her body heave with silent sobs. She cried, but not in the sodden sense of the word. It was as if her body had gone into spasm.

  A breaking heart? It wasn’t an overstatement.

  The dogs... The animals... The contract...

  How could he solve this one?

  Maybe he couldn’t. If he knew his team, this sale would be watertight. They’d have brought lawyers. Henry was in hospital so they’d have requested certification of competency before Henry signed. Henry would have signed with as many witnesses as were needed to make things unbreakable.

  He thought suddenly of the camera in the audience, and he thought Carvers must have worked on this.

  What were you thinking? he demanded of the absent Henry. And then he wondered why he hadn’t handled this himself. It wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t extended the foreclosure time, if he’d handled the stripping of the circus himself last week.

  Or would it? Could he have sensed how much her animals meant to this woman?

  And now? All he could do was hold her and wait for the shudders to subside, for her to pull herself together and remember she hated him.

  She did pull herself together—sort of—but when she finally pulled away, he didn’t see hate. He didn’t see anger.

  All he saw was defeat.

  ‘I’ll talk to them,’ he said. ‘See if we can organise an exclusion.’

  ‘Are you kidding? They know the dogs are our biggest draw card. Besides, old man Carver hates Grandpa with a vengeance. Two circuses, vying for the same crowds for generations. You have no idea how much Carver will have delighted in today.’

  ‘Dogs shouldn’t be for sale. None of the animals should be.’

  ‘They are and they’ve been sold.’ She gathered herself, clicked her fingers and her dogs were instantly by her side. ‘The only way we could get out of it is if they won’t work. Carvers would never keep them then, but I’ve trained them to work for anyone. They’re wonderful, and now we’re paying the price.’

  ‘Allie...’

  ‘Enough. Matt, I need to say thank you. Thank you for your extraordinary generosity towards Jack’s waifs and strays. And...and thank you for your very nice kiss. It was...appreciated. Matt, the crew’s decided that we’ll stick it out for the next week. We won’t go out on a whimper, but Grandpa’s home tomorrow and if he’s home it’ll be his last week as ringmaster. We don’t need you any more. So thank you, but now it’s time for you to go back to being a banker, and for us...for the crew to have our last week being together and then move on.’

  * * *

  He left. She watched him until he was a faint, far off figure in the moonlight.

  She slumped onto the bench and her dogs draped themselves over her knees and she thought...

  No. She didn’t think.

  Her world was ending. Her circus was sold. It was the end of life as she knew it.

  So why should the hardest part of the night be watching one banker walk along the beach away from her?

  CHAPTER TEN

  FOR THE NEXT week there wasn’t a lot to do, except go back to his original plan when he’d come to Fort Neptune. Make Margot live.

  But it seemed Margot had made that decision all by herself, for she didn’t have time to die while she was angry.

  ‘I don’t understand why you can’t buy the circus outright,’ she snapped at him. ‘You have enough money...’

  ‘I should have bought it,’ he conceded. ‘But it’s too late now.’ The sale had gone through so fast he hadn’t seen the connotations. Sparkles was no longer a viable business, but for Allie to lose everything...

  She hadn’t lost everything, he reminded himself. Henry’s debts were sorted. Allie and her grandparents could move on, debt-free. Allie would have no further financial commitment.

  But she’d have emotional commitment as far as the eye could see. She was still committed to living with her grandparents and great-uncles and she was losing her dogs. The camels and ponies were bad enough, but the dogs?

  There was nothing he could do. The contract was watertight. All they could hope for was that somehow the animals proved unsatisfactory and were discarded.

  How unlikely was that?

  ‘It’s breaking your heart, isn’t it?’ Margot said and he realised he’d been staring into the dregs of his breakfast coffee for the last five minutes. ‘So do something.’

  He’d tried to. He’d rung the head of Carvers and offered to buy the animals back, no matter what the price.

  Ron Carver had simply laughed.

  ‘I’ve watched that damned little circus take the best spots, the best crowds, ever since I took over this business. Forty years of watching, and now it’s giving me pleasure to rip the guts out of it. Nothing’s for sale except what I discard. I’ll let you know when I’m in the mood for deciding what’s rubbish and what’s not.’

  Rubbish. The detritus of Sparkles Circus. The detritus of Allie’s life.

  He was being melodramatic, he thought grimly. Sparkles was a business and businesses closed down all the time. People moved on.

  Allie would move on.

  So what made his gut clench every time he thought of her?

  ‘I’ll take you to the circus this afternoon,’ he told Margot.

  ‘Duncan’s taking
me,’ she said, and he nearly fell over. Duncan, town mayor, long-time friend, had been excluded from Margot’s life for months. Last night Matt had arrived back at Margot’s cottage to find Duncan and his dogs just leaving. Duncan had given him a sheepish grin and he’d thought—whoa...

  Stupidly, he’d also had a very adolescent thought. Margot doesn’t need me either.

  He was used to being a loner. What was wrong with him?

  Duncan was taking Margot to the circus? How big a statement was that?

  ‘Maybe I shouldn’t go, then,’ he said slowly. ‘It’s time I backed away.’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake... It might be time Bond’s Bank moved away,’ she snapped. ‘But not us. We have a week left of Sparkles and I’m making the most of it. And you... Your bank has done what it had to do, so now you can close the door on your business dealings and be a friend. Or more. Don’t tell me you’re not personally involved. You kissed her in front of the entire town. You’ve fallen hard.’

  ‘I haven’t.’

  ‘If you can’t admit that to yourself then you’re a fool, and one thing I never thought to think was that my nephew was a fool. Help me get ready. We’re going to the circus.’

  * * *

  The circus was supposed to be sold out but somehow Margot and Duncan ended up where Margot always sat, in prime position. Matt, however, had no intention of sitting where he could be seen.

  Fizz saw his problem, though. ‘It might be your bank but this isn’t your fault, mate. Allie’s told us what you’ve done for the old animals. Come and stand in the wings. There’s a spot where Allie won’t be aware of you.’

  How did Fizz know he’d rather stay out of Allie’s sight? He hardly knew himself, but he stood in the wings that afternoon, that night, the next day...

  He watched Henry play his time out as ringmaster. He watched Fizz and Fluff play with their cannon for the final times. He watched Tinkerbelle and Fairy turn themselves inside out for their mistress and quiver their delight.

  He watched Valentino catch Miss Mischka, he heard the crowd gasp in wonder and he thought—don’t drop her. And then he thought—she’s falling anyway. What would her life be away from here?