When She Was Bad... (31 page)

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And to do that, she needed money. Her modest operating profit wasn’t anything like enough. The interest from back debts was crippling. Unless they had more money to pay it off, they would have to sell or fold. And this was her father’s company. Becky would never sell it.

There was only one acceptable result for her. Getting another refinancing loan, getting the money she needed, and finding a buyer for the tin mines. She thought that with another five years, the new, streamlined, luxury-goods Lancaster could start to once again build its way to dominance. Maybe add some more hotels. Her time in that tiny Oxford room had not been altogether wasted. Becky’s hotel was now a gem, admittedly a small gem, but a gem neeertheless. It was making a nice profit, and bookings were up substantially. But getting a hotel business was for the future.

Today was about impressing these suits. Today was about survival.

The phone by her bedside jangled with that double ring the Brits

used. She would never get used to it. Becky .picked it up. ‘If you’re ready, Miss Lancaster, we’re in the lobby.’ ‘Yes, thanks, Ken. I’ll be right down.’

Becky hung up. She had dark circles under her eyes, but that couldn’t be helped. She had worried about this meeting until late into the night and, anyway, the traffic noise had kept her up all night. Ken wouldn’t let them check into an expensive hotel. This one was in Lancaster Gate, and it had depressing faded wallpaper and no air conditioning. But they had to lead by example. Becky didn’t want to sack thousands of working men and then stay at the Iitz. It would have been better if the bankers had come to Yorkshire, but Becky was the one with the cap in her hand. She travelled to meet them.

She picked up her briefcase and headed downstairs.

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The head offices of the Limburgh Bank were located in the City. They had their own brand-new concrete monstrosity, complete with hideous pebble-dash ‘textured’ walls next to the dark glass revolving doors. Their lobby was full of pot-plants and trees in earthenware tubs with pebbles around the base. It reeked of money and impersonality. Becky composed herself and mentally retuned her pitch. These men wouldn’t care in the slightest about Lancaster’s history, about the ships it had turned out at breakneck speed for two world wars. None of that would matter.

Harold Boise, her director of mining, walked forward and announced their party to the receptionist. Becky had learned to let the men she employed do all the small errands. If she did it, she looked like a secretary or an intern. And that was still how most men liked to think of her.

Boise walked back. ‘They’re ready for us. Twelfth floor.’

The Industrial Loans Division was just as bad as the lobby. Aspidistras everywhere and ficus trees with waxy leaves. The men wore grey pinstripes, and Becky saw one lonely woman in a boxy green suit with a little shoelace tie at the neck of her shirt. Probably the office manager, she thought to herself rather bitterly. All the other skirts in here were parked behind cubicles, typing. She made a note to call her own personnel manager when they got back up to Yorkshire. Next time Lancaster did any hiring, she would send someone to the universities and pitch the jobs to women. If they ever got to actually hire anyone again.

‘Miss Lancaster?’ A lanky man ila his fifties, with Coke-bottle glasses and neatly combed white hair stepped forward. ‘I’m Matthew tKipon, Vice-President of Finance.’

‘You know Kenneth Stone, I believe, and these are Harold Boise,

who runs our mining division, and Miles Clark, head of shipping.’ He shook hands limply with all of them. ‘Follow me, please.’

The soulless meeting room had been furnished with every modern convenience. There was an urn of coffee, a yellow legal pad and pen next to each place setting, a projector and a plate of biscuits. Becky refused everything. She was introduced to a parade of bankers, and promptly forgot their names as soon as they were announced. But the important ones she wasn’t likely to forget. They sat at the head of the table, ranged opposite the Lancaster executives like poliiciam negotiating a peace accord, and stared intently at the figures Miles Clark was projecting on to the screen at the end of the room.

Sir Quentin Hope, the chairman of the bank. His presence in this meeting indicated how important it was. Matthew 1Kipon, whose City

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nickname was ‘Scrooge’. He thought Britain was heading into industrial disaster, and he had a terrible reputation for pulling the bank’s money out of any loan that looked even remotely shaky. And here was Becky asking him for more. Great. And finally there was Desmond Ferris, their best hope. He had been at Eton with her father and now headed the industrial investing team. She had smiled at him, hoping for a sympathetic glance, but so far nothing. There wouldn’t be any free rides here. She had to hope she could pull it out with just her numbers.

‘Yes, thank you.’ 1Kipon spoke up as Clark sat down. ‘Those projected sales are very interesting, but they are only projections. How can the bank be sure that you could complete your transformation on time?’

‘We will have excellent motivation. Your loan will enable us to find

the time to sell the mining division,’ Harold Boise said.

‘That is all very well, but—’

‘But you prefer more concrete figures.’ Becky spoke up, and her throat felt dry. Every man in the room swivelled to stare at her. ‘Let me see if I can help you there. Limburgh Bank will have our recent past record to go on. Mr Clark has prepared for the bank a summary of our cost savings over the past year, our return to profitability and our productivity increases. This dramatic programme will continue at the same rate.’

‘Indeed.’ Sir Quentin’s voice, silent during their whole long presentation, finally rolled out in a deep has, s. ‘But, Miss Lancaster, your operating profit is small.’

‘Yes, Sir Quentin, but compared to our large operating loss before Mr Stone and I took control, it is not a small achievement. If we improve at the same rate, we will make dramatic profits for ourselves and this bank in less than five years.’

‘You are proposing to dismantle one of Britain’s oldest companies, Miss Lancaster,’ Desmond Ferris said disapprovingly. ‘I wonder whether your father would have approved.’

Becky shivered. It was working against her. She looked the old buffer right in the eyes. ‘I think he would. I think he would have wanted me to save the company. In its hey-day, Lancaster was progressive. I want it to stay that way. And besides …’ she turned to Sir Quentin and smiled warmly at him … ‘my father was a gentleman, and gentlemen always pay their debts. Selling the tin mines to a company that can better use them will enable us to do that. Turning the shipping company into a more modern operation will then enable us to become truly profitable.’

‘How long do you think you will need the loan for?’

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‘A year, no longer, Sir Quentin.’

The older man seemed deep in thought. Finally he nodded and stood up. ‘Very well, then. One year, to the day.’

‘But, Sir Quentin, the bank’s exposure—’ Ripon hissed.

‘One year. And the interest rate will be a full point above prime.’ Becky felt Ken Stone stiffen beside her. She gently kicked him in the shins. This was no time to argue. They were in no position to. She jumped to her feet.

‘Thank you, Sir Quentin,’ she said.

‘Don’t thank me, Miss Lancaster. Make the bank some money.’ Becky sent her executives back to Yorkshire without her. Ken Stone knew what to do, and Harold had put together an attractive analyst’s report which would let them sell the mines. She hoped. She had made it easy for him to be motivated by tying a quarter-million-pound bonus for him into a successful sale at the right price. But whatever - she had to sit back now and let them do their thing.

The relief was so overwhelming that Becky felt wiped out by it. It was probably something like a marathon runner or a Boat Race oarsman, she thought as she jumped into a taxi for Paddington station. Your body put off all the exhaustion and aches until you were done with the crisis, and afterwards you wanted to sleep for a week.

Well, she didn’t have a week, but she might have a weekend. She wanted, desperately, to get back to Fairfield, to be away from her phone and her secretary’s buzzer and company reports and tours of the dockyards. She wanted not to see any union shop stewards, not to have to spend more hours with Ken rejigging their figures after the latest electricity shortage. It was May, ant it was sunny for once. She thought she might go out into Fairfield and check the gardens out. Maybe take a long bubble bath with some Floris bath essence. And after that, sleep.

She couldn’t even be bothered to go back to the shitty hotel and pick up her case. Miles Clark could do that for her. It was one of the small perks of being the boss. One day, she might even stop feeling apologetic about giving orders.

‘You can’t be serious.’

Lita looked at her lover through that thick fringe of her dark hair he loved so much. Maybe because he could control her with it. He liked to wrap its silky strands round the rough, thick skin of his fists so that he could move her head like a horse is moved by its reins. Lita would wriggle underneath him on his silk sheets, and her glorious, dark nippled tits would bounce as she squirmed, making him harder and hotter. Edward Kahn couldn’t believe how this woman made him feel.

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Sensations and lusts he had buried in business since the death of his wife more than twelve years ago. She was achingly young, but her determination matched that of any fifty-year-old senator he had ever met. He was addicted to her.

‘Why do you always say that to me?’ Lita fired back.

Edward drove her mad. He was ruthless and demanding and smart and infuriating. When she came over to the Olympia offices, most of the time he wouldn’t even see her. And he didn’t apologize for it. He expected her to make appointments, to run around him. Another man she would have dumped. But that wasn’t an option with Edward.

He had helped her start New Wave advertising agency. Provided her with her first four clients and funding.

‘But I want to do it on my own,’ Lita had said mulishly.

Edward had looked at her as if she were mad. ‘Oh, OK. I thought you wanted to succeed. Advertising is about contacts. But if you don’t want help, feel free to fail as independently as you like.’

She had bitten her cheeks with fury, but she knew he was right. Doheny never turned down a client that came on the recommendation of somebody’s friend. Or boyfriend.

Her first campaigns were for high-powered clients. Lita worked her magic, and increased sales and market share. She got more commissions after that. Her first act with her new money was to pay Edward’s loan

back. Her second was to hire Harry Weiss to run her office.

‘I believed you, you know, Lita,’ Harw, told her flatly.

‘I know. You couldn’t have done anything else.’ And as she talked to him, she realized she did know it. Edward had pointed this out to her, and he had been right.

‘I’m glad you saw the light. What changed your mind?’

She didn’t want to admit it had been Edward. ‘I just knew, Harry.’ Hiring Weiss made all the difference. He creamed off the best, most undervalued executives at Doheny. It gave her particular pleasure to hire Janice. But from the second she had founded the firm, Lita had only been marking time. She had known she was going to do this. And she was prepared to battle Edward over it.

He wanted to marry her. She knew it. He had already talked about it, and two months ago she had found the ring, in a coat pocket, one morning when he left at six to go to his office and she’d had a headache. Lita had tugged on the tiny silk robe he liked her to wear around the house, she thought because it barely skimmed the cheeks of her ass, and started to check out his pad. She had an insatiable curiosity to know everything about him. The thick chest and muscled arms and big, hard thighs were just the start. His dark eyes that swept over her, that felt like

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they could strip her nude when she was fully dressed, didn’t tell her anything like enough. She wanted to understand what drove him to such perfectionism, why he was trying to teach himself Latin, why, whenever he wasn’t at Olympia, he was out socializing and networking. He only seemed to stop for her.

It was intense to be pursued so relentlessly. Edward would walk through the door and grab her without breaking his stride, shoving her down on to the rush matting and pulling her clothes from her breasts, shoving up her skirt, plunging into her as though he’d had a raging hard-on all day and couldn’t wait even one second. He took her against the fridge, thrust her over her desk in the office when he came to pick her up late. He talked to her while he fucked her, low, breathy words that made her see herself the way he saw her, that turned her on so that she was slippery wet and impatient for him. Edward cupped her ass lightly while he talked about it, firm and flaring out, round, and jutting at him. He said he thought about her ass all day. He put his mouth above her nipples but didn’t kiss them, didn’t even flick his tongue over them, just stared at them, his breath hot over them, until Lita was moaning and writhing underneath him, begging for his touch, for him to take her.

But after all that, he hadn’t proposed. She was still waiting. And now she was about to challenge him.

Lita had the English papers delivered to her office in midtown every day. She had looked for stories on Rupert Lancaster, but he had disappeared. These days it was the snotty girl, Becky, who was getting all the press.

And Becky was in trouble, lita knew everything about Lancaster Holdings. She had even obtained a copy of the annual report, flown over to her from Companies House in England. For a few sweet months, as New Wave got off the ground, Lita had thought Becky might be bankrupted. But no. She had gotten herself a meeting with

her bankers. She might be able to pull the whole thing out.

Lira was not going to allow that to happen.