Sparks Fly with the Billionaire. Marion Lennox

has the right,’ Allie admitted, deciding a girl had to be fair. ‘Margot, you’ve been wonderful. I gather you persuaded Bond’s to finance us all those years ago. I’m so grateful.’

      ‘Yet you come here looking for more,’ Mathew demanded and there was such anger in his voice that she stared at him in astonishment—and so did Margot. Whoa.

      ‘I’m not here looking for more money,’ Allie said through gritted teeth. ‘Or … not much. I didn’t know about the loan, but I’ve been through Grandpa’s files now and I’m horrified. The circus can’t keep going—I know that now—but what I want is permission to continue for the two weeks we’re booked to perform in Fort Neptune. We have sold-out audiences. That’ll more than pay our way. If we need to refund everyone, it’ll eat into your eventual payout and we’ll have a town full of disappointed kids. If we can keep going for two weeks then I can give the crew two weeks’ notice. The alternative is going back tonight and saying clear out, the circus is over and letting your vultures do their worst.’

      ‘Vultures …’

      ‘Okay, not vultures,’ she conceded. ‘Debt collectors. Asset sellers. Whatever you want to call them. Regardless, it’s a shock and we need time to come to terms with it.’

      ‘You’re foreclosing on the loan?’ Margot said faintly. ‘On my loan?’

      ‘It’s not your loan,’ Mathew told his aunt. ‘You asked Grandpa to make the loan to Henry and he did. The circus can’t keep bleeding money. With Henry in hospital, they don’t even have a ringmaster. How the …’

      ‘We do have a ringmaster,’ Allie said steadily and turned to Margot. She knew what she wanted. Why not lay it on the table? ‘This afternoon your nephew put on Henry’s suit and top hat and was brilliant as ringmaster. He’s here to take care of you. Could you spare him for two performances a day? Just for two weeks and then it’s over?’

      ‘Mathew was your ringmaster?’

      There was a loaded silence in the hot little room. Margot had been huddled in an armchair by the fire, looking almost as if she was disappearing into its depths. Suddenly she was sitting bolt upright, staring at Mathew as if she’d never seen him before. ‘My Mathew was your ringmaster?’ she repeated, sounding dazed.

      ‘He made an awesome one,’ Allie said. ‘You should come and see.’

      ‘I did it once,’ Mathew snapped. ‘In an emergency.’

      ‘And I couldn’t come,’ Margot moaned. ‘I’m dying.’

      ‘You don’t look dead to me,’ Allie said, and she wasn’t sure why she said it, and it was probably wildly inappropriate, cruel even, but she’d said it and it was out there, like it or not. ‘If you’re not dead then you’re alive. You could come.’

      To say the silence was explosive would be an understatement. She glanced at Mathew and saw him rigid with shock.