Good Girl or Gold-Digger?
‘If you hadn’t got cold feet over poor Tabitha, you’d be safely married off by now and Mummy would be happy,’ Antonia pointed out.
Maybe, but Felix certainly wouldn’t have been. His marriage would have been an utter nightmare. For a moment, he wondered if he should’ve told his family the truth about Tabitha. But then they would’ve been even worse, treating him like a victim, crowding him and pitying him, and he would’ve hated that even more than he hated their constant attempts to fix him up with someone. On balance, it was better that they thought him a heart-breaker who just needed the right woman to tame him.
Except he didn’t need anyone. He was perfectly happy with his life as it was: with a job that fulfilled him, and dating women who understood right from the start that he wasn’t looking for long-term, just for fun. Because he was never, ever going to put himself in another situation like he had with his ex-fiancée. He would never let his heart be that vulnerable again. ‘Maybe,’ he said.
‘Come on, Felix. It won’t be so bad.’
Oh yes, it would be. His mother must have introduced him to every single blonde with long legs in the whole of Gloucestershire, because she thought he liked leggy blondes.
Well, he did.
He just didn’t want to get married to one. Didn’t want to get married to anyone.
‘Toni, I really am busy, so I’ll call you later, OK?’
She sighed. ‘OK. But you’d better, or I’ll ring you.’
‘Message received and understood. Bye, sweetie.’
He put the phone down and leaned back in his chair, frowning. Time to find a cast-iron excuse to avoid his parents. The sad thing was, he would’ve enjoyed a weekend in the country, had it been just the family there. He liked his parents and his sisters, and even his brothers-in-law were good company. But Sophie Gisbourne had decided that her only son needed to be married, so she always insisted that weekends at their Cotswolds estate would involve a house party. And every time she invited a ‘suitable’ woman to be his partner at dinner—with the subtext being that she would be a suitable partner for life as well.
Sometimes Felix thought that his mother had been born two hundred years too late. She would’ve made the perfect Regency mama, brokering marriage and offering advice to friends. But in this day and age it was just infuriating. He went into the small kitchen and made two mugs of coffee, adding sugar to his PA’s mug before returning to the office. ‘Here you go, Mina.’ He noticed that his PA looked uncharacteristically upset. ‘Are you OK? What’s wrong?’
Mina flapped a hand at him. ‘Don’t mind me, it’s silly.’ There were tears in her eyes. He perched on the edge of her desk. ‘Talk to me. Someone’s ill? You need time off?’
‘No, nothing like that. Mum sent me this.’ She handed him a sheet of newspaper that had clearly been folded neatly and sent through the post:
VANDALS PUT FAIRGROUND MUSEUM IN A SPIN
‘She used to take me there when I was little. It’s a really magical place.’ Mina’s mouth compressed. ‘I can’t believe vandals would wreck it like that.’
Felix skimmed down to the picture of a woman sitting on an old-fashioned fairground ride, looking heartbroken. There was something about her, something that made him want to see what she looked like when she smiled.
Which was crazy. You couldn’t make decisions on the basis of a photograph of someone you’d never met. He wasn’t that reckless.
Besides, she wasn’t his type. For the last three years he’d dated mainly tall blondes with long legs, plus the occasional redhead. But petite and brunette was definitely out: it would remind him too much of Tabitha.
But it seemed that the fairground needed rescuing. That was his speciality: rescuing businesses before they went to the wall. And this was a business with a difference, something that might give him the challenge he felt that his life had lacked lately. It wouldn’t hurt to take a look.
When he’d finished reading the article, he looked at Mina. ‘Do you know the Bells?’
She shook her head.
‘Can you get me the manager’s number?’ He smiled at her. ‘This looks as if it could be an interesting opportunity.’ And if he checked the place out for himself at the weekend, that gave him a valid excuse to avoid his mother’s latest ‘suitable women’ onslaught without hurting her feelings.
Just perfect.
Chapter Two
‘SO THAT’S us,’ Bill said with a smile. ‘Well, me, anyway. You really need to meet my number two.’
Daisy Bell: the woman from the photograph, according to the article. Deputy manager of the fairground.
Felix was annoyed with himself for being so keen to meet her. For all he knew, she could be married or involved elsewhere. And he wasn’t in the market for a relationship anyway.
But her face had haunted his dreams for the last week, and his heart rate speeded up a notch at the thought of finally meeting her.
‘She’s supposed to be here, but she’s obviously forgotten the time,’ Bill said.
How on earth could she forget a meeting that might make the difference between the museum being a going concern or heading straight for bankruptcy? This really didn’t gel with the picture of the devastated woman in the paper. Or had it been a set-up? Drag in a pretty woman with tears in her eyes to give a human dimension to the piece and the saps would be flocking here in droves, wanting to protect her and invest in the fairground…
No, he was being cynical, letting his past get in the way. William Bell seemed genuine enough. And Daisy had been dressed in trousers and a plain shirt, not a floaty dress and impractical heels. She wasn’t the frivolous, frothy type that Tabitha had been. Just because Daisy was petite and brunette, like his ex-fiancée, it didn’t mean that she shared the same personality traits: shallower than a puddle and a liar to boot.
But, now he’d started on that train of thought, he found it hard to stop. Why wasn’t she at this meeting? Maybe the fairground wasn’t really that important to her. Or maybe she didn’t pull her weight, and her uncle put family loyalty before sound business practice and let her get away with it because she batted her eyelashes at him and told him he was her favourite uncle. Well, Felix was good at pruning dead wood and giving more able people a chance to prove themselves. If he was going to invest in the museum and turn the business around, and Daisy turned out to be a liability, he’d give her her marching orders. Very, very quickly. Pretty or not.
‘It’s going to be quicker to fish her out of the workshop,’ Bill said. ‘And I can show you round a bit at the same time.’
Felix’s expectations hit a new low as they reached a single-storey building with breezeblock walls and a corrugated-iron roof. What was Daisy doing in the workshop—chatting up the mechanic when she was supposed to be working?
But as Bill opened the door Felix could hear someone singing—a female voice, giving a surprisingly good rendition of ‘I Can See Clearly Now’.
‘I thought as much,’ Bill said with a wry chuckle. ‘Her work’s going well and she’s lost track of time. You can always tell, because she sings. It’s when things go badly that she’s silent.’
‘What’s going well?’ Felix asked, mystified.
‘Work on the engine.’ Bill looked puzzled. ‘Didn’t I tell you she’s my chief mechanic as well as my number two?’
‘No.’ Felix blinked. It hadn’t been on the website, either, or in the article. ‘Mechanic?’
‘A word to the wise: she’s a bit touchy about sexism,’ Bill said. ‘And she gives as good as she gets—it comes from having three older brothers.’
‘Right.’ Felix mentally readjusted his picture of Daisy. A mechanic and a bit touchy: to him, that suggested a woman with muscles, cropped hair, probably a nose ring or a tattoo, and an attitude to go with it. But the woman in the photograph hadn’t looked like that. She hadn’t been wearing a skirt, admittedly, and her hair had been pulled back from her face, but she hadn’t looked butch.
He was definitely missing something here. But what?
When they entered the building he could see feet sticking out from under an engine, wearing Doc Martens—bright purple ones. Each one had a stylised white daisy painted on it.
His mental picture took another shift. He could hear his mother sighing and saying, ‘Most unsuitable.’
Oh, for pity’s sake. He was too old to rebel against his parents. He was thirty-four, not fourteen.
But he had a feeling that, with footwear that unusual, Daisy Bell herself would turn out to be equally unusual. And she was the first woman who’d intrigued him this much in a long, long time.
A large ginger cat was curled on top of the engine. ‘Tell her she’s got visitors, lad,’ Bill said.
To Felix’s surprise, the cat leapt down from its perch. A couple of seconds later, he heard a bang, followed by ‘Ow!’ and the singing stopped.
‘Daisy. It’s half-past ten,’ Bill called.
‘Oh, blimey. Tell me he’s not here yet and I’ve still got time to tidy up?’
There was a grating sound—something rolling over concrete, Felix guessed—and then a woman emerged from under the engine.
The woman from the photograph.
She was wearing an oversized engine-driver’s cap that covered her hair completely, an extremely shapeless and unflattering—not to mention dirty—boiler suit, and her face and hands were covered in oil. Face to face, she looked younger than he’d expected, though the newspaper report hadn’t mentioned her age. She was in her very early twenties, he’d guess: too young and inexperienced for her position as Bill’s second in command.
She couldn’t be more than five feet four.
Not blonde, and not long-legged. Completely not his type. But the second that Felix met her sea-green eyes he felt as if there was some kind of connection between them. He couldn’t define it, but it was there, zinging through him.
‘Actually, love, he was early,’ Bill said. ‘Felix, this is my niece, chief mechanic and number two here, Daisy Bell. Daisy, this is Felix Gisbourne.’
Oh, no. Why hadn’t she guessed that Bill would bring the man to meet her if she wasn’t in the office on time? And why on earth hadn’t she thought to ask someone to come and fetch her at least half an hour before Felix Gisbourne was due, so she could at least have greeted him with a handshake? Daisy wiped her hands on a rag, inspected them briefly and knew they didn’t pass muster.
‘Sorry.’ She grimaced. ‘I don’t want to cover you in oil. Better take the handshake as read.’
‘Of course.’ Felix gave her a polite nod.
He was nothing like Daisy had imagined. She’d expected someone nearing his fifties, not someone who looked as if he was around her own age, almost thirty.
And he was the most gorgeous man she’d ever seen. Tall, with dark hair, fair skin, dark grey eyes and a mouth that promised sensuality—the kind of looks that made women take a second glance at an ad in a glossy magazine, even a third. He could’ve made a fortune as a model.
Maybe he had been a model at one point. He certainly knew how to dress. His suit looked as if it was made to measure; it was teamed with a white shirt, sober tie and shoes which Daisy guessed were handmade and Italian. His outfit looked as if it cost more than the salary she drew each month.
He was absolutely immaculate—flawlessly groomed, clean shaven, and those shoes were polished to a dazzle. This was a man for whom appearances really mattered. The kind of man, she thought with an inward grimace, who’d expect the women he associated with to wear designer dresses and spend hours at the hairdresser’s and beauty salon—which was so not her. She revised her earlier thought about Felix being a potential investor in the fairground. No way would a man who dressed so fastidiously muck in, in case he got his hands dirty. If he insisted on being anything more than a sleeping partner in Bell’s, it wasn’t going to work.
‘Are you all right?’ Bill asked.
‘Yes. I just hit my head when Titan smacked me in the ear.’
Felix stared at her, as if he was wondering whether he’d been transported into some strange parallel-universe. ‘The cat smacked you in the ear?’
‘It normally means he’s hungry or someone wants me,’ Daisy elaborated. ‘If I’m working on one of the engines, I don’t always hear people come in. So they tell him to fetch me. He kind of thinks he’s a dog. Or maybe a human, I’m not sure.’
A second later, the cat leapt from the engine onto her shoulder; absent-mindedly, she scratched behind his ears and he began to purr.
‘Or Captain Flint?’ Felix suggested, the corners of his mouth tilting.
Long John Silver’s parrot. Daisy’s smile was genuine for the first time. If the man had a sense of humour, it would take the edge off his pristine appearance—and it meant that maybe she could work with him. ‘I’ve been trying to teach him to talk, but I’m afraid he’s sticking with “meow” rather than “pieces of eight”.’
‘Daisy, would you show Felix round for me?’ Bill asked.
‘Course I will.’ She looked at her uncle, narrowing her eyes slightly. He really didn’t look that well. She made a mental note to have a word with Nancy and find out what Bill wasn’t telling her about his health. Maybe it was just the worry about the fairground and whether their new visitor was going to invest in them or consider a big sponsorship deal. She could identify with that; she hadn’t slept particularly well for the last few nights, either.
So she’d better put on a good show when she took Felix round the site, because she had no intention of letting her uncle down, or the part-time staff and volunteers who’d stood by them for years. If getting Felix Gisbourne to invest in them meant schmoozing, then she’d schmooze to Olympic gold medal standard.
Gently, she lifted the cat from her shoulder and set him back on the engine. ‘We’re going walkies. See you in a bit, OK?’
Titan purred.
‘I’ll bring Mr Gisbourne back to the office when I’ve shown him round, Bill.’
Bill smiled at her. ‘Thanks, love.’
When Bill had left the workshop, she turned to Felix. ‘What would you like to see first, Mr Gisbourne?’
‘Felix,’ he corrected. ‘I prefer informality.’
‘With that suit?’ She clapped a hand to her mouth in horror as soon as the words were out. So much for the promise to herself to schmooze the guy. Why had she opened her mouth? ‘Sorry. Forget I said that. Please,’ she added belatedly.
‘Whatever. Just walk me round and tell me what I’m looking at,’ Felix said.
‘OK. First off, this is a working museum, so our collection here is original rather than replica. But we believe that it’s better for them to be used than just moulder away in glass cases while people look at them and think, “So what?” We want people to enjoy them, just like they have for the last hundred or so years. To get the real experience of an old-fashioned fairground.’
‘You have rides dating from the 1800s?’ he asked, sounding surprised.
‘Yes. The gallopers date from 1895.’ She shrugged. ‘But I imagine you saw them in the paper.’
He nodded. ‘Have they found whoever did it?’
‘Not yet. Though, when they do, I’d like to have them under my command for a week,’ Daisy said.
‘So you could teach them a lesson?’
‘It depends what you mean by lesson. When I saw what they’d done, I admit I was furious. But when I’d calmed down a bit, I realised that if they’re the kind who enjoy smashing things up, it’s a fair bet they’ve grown up where nobody around them respected anything and they’ve learned to value nothing. If they worked for me, it’d give them a channel for their energy, and they might learn that they have a talent for something. It’d give them some self-respect—and that’s the first step to being able to respect others.’
‘So you’d let them off without punishment?’ Felix said.
She spread her hands. ‘Chucking kids in jail won’t solve the problem—if they’re stuck somewhere without an outlet for their energy, they’ll brood and get more resentful, and they’ll lash out as soon as they’re out again. I want to show them that there’s another way. Give them an interest and a stake in things. They’re not going to destroy something they’ve spent time building—they’ll want to protect it.’
He nodded. ‘So you see the good in people.’
His face was impassive; was he saying that was a bad thing? Maybe it was, where business was concerned. ‘Look, I’m not naïve enough to look at things through rose-coloured glasses, but seeing the good in things is a lot healthier than being cynical and believing that everyone’s out solely for what they can get.’
‘Indeed.’
‘There’s good and bad in everyone. The trick is finding how to maximise the good and minimise the bad.’ She stopped, realising that she was getting carried away. ‘Anyway, you didn’t come here to listen to me on my soapbox. You want to see what we have here.’ She took him round each ride, explaining their history as she did so. ‘All the ones before 1935 were built by our family’s firm. Though I couldn’t resist the 1950s dodgems when we had the chance to buy them.’
Felix asked lots of questions as they walked round; each one seemed to be more critical than the last. By the time they reached the last ride—Daisy’s favourite, the old switchback gondola—she’d had enough of his blatant criticism, and her intention of schmoozing him dissolved. She faced him, folding her arms. ‘You seem to have a problem with just about everything I’ve told you, and I get the impression you think that Bill and I are amateurs. Let me tell you, he’s run this place for nearly thirty years, and I’ve been working here for ten of them. He does a damn good job and you’re judging him unfairly.’
‘I’m assessing the business. It’s what I do—and I’m good at it,’ Felix replied, looking completely unfazed.
‘This is what we do, and we’re good at it,’ Daisy countered, lifting her chin and wishing that she was six inches taller and fifty pounds heavier. If she were five feet ten and hefty, maybe he’d take her seriously.
‘You might be a brilliant mechanic and understand everything to do with how the rides work and their history, but your business sense leaves a lot to be desired—and so does Bill’s. There are lots of areas where you could be making money and you’re not taking advantage of them, and you’re definitely not using your assets to their full potential. That’s why you don’t have the money to cope with any setbacks, such as the vandalism. Your margins are way too tight.’
‘This is heritage, Mr Gisbourne,’ she said frostily.
‘Felix,’ he corrected.
Daisy deliberately didn’t repeat his first name. ‘The whole point of this place, Mr Gisbourne, is to make our heritage accessible to people. There are so few of these rides left, and even fewer of them are in working order; quite a few of those here were just left to rot, and we’ve rescued them and restored them.’
‘Without enough money to run the place, you’re not going to be able to make it accessible to people or afford the restoration costs. You’ll go under. So you need to compromise.’
‘That’s why we’re looking at sponsorship deals.’ It was the whole point as to why he’d come to see them, wasn’t it? To see what they could offer him and what he could offer them?
His eyes narrowed as he looked at her. ‘You’re not a woman who compromises easily, are you?’
Daisy thought of her ex-boyfriends and how the last three had tried to change her. If a man couldn’t accept her for who she was and wanted to make her into a different person, someone she wasn’t, then she wasn’t interested. And the same went for her business. If the price of his investment was changing Bell’s, making it all about the money instead of all about the heritage and fun, then she wasn’t interested. If she had to, she’d take a part-time job to earn extra cash that she could feed into the fairground, to give them a breathing space until they found a sponsor who understood where they were coming from. ‘I’m glad you realise that.’ She lifted her chin a fraction higher. ‘And don’t be fooled by my name. I’m not a delicate little flower.’
‘Daisy.’ He tipped his head on one side. ‘You’re right. “Boots” suits you better.’
‘Boots?’
He indicated her Doc Martens. ‘And then there’s the Cockney rhyming slang.’
Daisy roots: boots. She knew that. Although normally she loved puns, and adored tormenting her brothers with them, it annoyed her that Felix was being clever with her. She was about to say something tart when he spoke again.
‘Have dinner with me at my hotel tonight.’
It sounded more like an order than a request, raising her hackles higher still. Why did he want to have dinner with her anyway? Was he trying to come on to her?
‘A working dinner,’ he clarified.
She could feel the blush staining her cheeks; clearly he’d worked out what she was thinking. Well, of course he hadn’t been coming on to her. Men like Felix Gisbourne dated glamorous women who wore high heels and nail polish and earrings and expensive hairdos. He wouldn’t be interested in the likes of her.
Besides, she wasn’t interested in him as anything more than an investor. Couldn’t be. The fairground was too important.
‘Sure. I think Bill’s free, too.’
‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I was thinking just you and me. If you’ve been working as his number two for as long as he says you have, then you’ll have the answers, and I won’t have to drag him away from his family.’
Another assumption: that she didn’t have anyone in her life to be dragged away from. Then again, he was right, so there was no point in arguing; she had no plans to spend her evening with anyone other than Titan.
‘By the way,’ he added, ‘the hotel isn’t really a jeans and boiler suits place.’
For a moment, she thought about telling him to get lost. In a truly pithy manner.
But then she thought of Bill, and the people who depended on them for jobs, and forced her temper to simmer. ‘Just tell me where and when to meet you.’
‘Seven o’clock.’
He named a hotel five miles away, on the coast, the poshest one in the area; its restaurant had two Michelin stars. And it wasn’t really within cycling distance—not with a skirt on, anyway—so she’d better organise a taxi. ‘That’s fine,’ she said coolly. ‘I’ll see you at seven.’
His smile did weird things to her stomach. Oh, this was bad. She had to ignore the surge of attraction. Even if there hadn’t been a business deal in the way, they were too different for it to work, because she wasn’t suitable girlfriend-material.
‘I’ll look forward to it, Boots.’ He sketched a salute, following up with another of those devastating smiles. She’d bet he knew the effect it had on women. ‘I’ll find my own way over to Bill.’
‘I’ll take you.’
‘You’re busy. I wouldn’t want to disturb you.’
Too late. He already had disturbed her.
‘À bientôt,’ he said softly. ‘Seven o’clock. Don’t be late.’
Like she had been for their meeting this morning? That had been an aberration, she thought. As Felix Gisbourne was about to find out.
Chapter Three
DAISY headed back to the workshop and grabbed her mobile phone. She speed-dialled her sister-in-law, willing Alexis to be there; she almost sagged with relief when the line connected and the answering machine didn’t kick in.
‘Lexy? It’s Daisy. I need your help.’
‘Sure, hon. What’s up?’
Before she’d had children, Alexis Bell had been a make-up artist—a seriously good one. If someone could make a silk purse out of the sow’s ear Daisy knew herself to be, it would be her sister-in-law. ‘I need a makeover. And I need it, um, right now.’
‘Excuse me? Am I hallucinating, or have you been drinking?’
‘Neither.’ Daisy explained the situation.
‘He said what?’ There was a dangerous edge to Alexis’s voice.
Daisy repeated it.
‘When are you meeting him?’
‘Seven.’