The Marriage Solution

“I could pay the debts for you. ” HELEN BROOKS Title Page CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN Copyright

“I could pay the debts for you. ”

Carlton continued, “And give your father the house. I could pay everything off.”

“I don’t understand,” Katie said weakly.

“I think you do. I want you, Katie. I want you very badly.”

“You’re seriously saying you want to buy me? You want me to be your mistress?”

“No!” The explosion was immediate. “I want to marry you—after which, every debt would be cleared. The grand sacrifice, or a way of escape.... Decision time, little Katie White!”

HELEN BROOKS

lives in Northamptonshire, England, and is married with three children. As she is a committed Christian, busy housewife and mother, her spare time is at a premium but her hobbies include reading and walking her two energetic and very endearing young dogs. Her long-cherished aspiration to write became a reality when she put pen to paper on reaching the age of forty, and sent the result off to Harlequin.

Helen Brooks now concentrates on writing for

Harlequin Presents®, with highly emotional, poignant yet intense books we know you’ll love!

The Marriage Solution

Helen Brooks

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

‘I NEED to speak to David White now.’

Katie raised an eyebrow at the phone as she moved it back an inch or two from her ear before answering the hard male voice in a polite but firm tone. ‘I’m sorry, I’m afraid my father can’t be disturbed at the moment. Can I take—?’

‘The hell he can’t!’ Now the voice was patently insulting with a thread of undeniable steel in its dark depths. ‘Put me through, Miss White.’

‘I can’t do that.’ She had straightened, her slim body held tight and still and her voice cool. ‘I’ve told you, he can’t be disturbed—’

‘He’ll be more than disturbed when I’ve finished with him.’ She flinched visibly even as she wondered what on earth her father had done to make someone so mad. ‘And I’m not asking, Miss White, I’m telling you. Put me through—’

‘No.’ There was a split second of icy silence before she followed through. ‘My father isn’t well; the doctor is with him now.’

‘The doctor?’ She heard him swear under his breath, a particularly explicit oath which would have been quite at place in a rugby club changing-room, before he spoke again in clipped, measured tones that suggested barely controlled rage. ‘Then when he has finished with the doctor I expect a call immediately. Is that clear?’

‘Now look, Mr...?’

‘Reef. Carlton Reef.’

‘Well, I’m sorry, Mr Reef,’ she said stiffly, ‘but I have no intention of bothering my father with mundane business matters today. I presume it is business you wish to discuss with him?’ she added icily.

‘Dead right, Miss White,’ he shot back tightly. ‘And, for your information, the loss of a great deal of money due to your father’s stupidity and crass ineptitude I do not consider mundane. I can be reached in my office for the next hour, after which the matter goes into the hands of my solicitors and I won’t be accepting any calls from that point from either your father or his lackeys. Is that clear enough for you or shall I repeat it?’

‘Mr Reef—’

‘Which daughter are you anyway?’ he interrupted her abruptly. ‘Katie or Jennifer?’

‘Katie.’ She took a deep breath as she leant limply against the wall and prayed that the shaking which had begun in her stomach wouldn’t transfer itself to her voice. This was incredible, monstrous—there had to be a perfectly simple explanation. ‘Mr Reef, I’m sure there’s a mistake here somewhere.’

‘So am I,’ he agreed coldly, ‘and your father is the one who made it. I won’t be made a fool of, Miss White, and I thought your father had the sense to realise that. One hour—doctor or no doctor.’ And the phone went dead.

She remained staring at the receiver in her hand for a good thirty seconds before she recovered sufficiently to replace it and sink down on the nearest seat in the massive wide hall. This would have to happen today, with her father so ill.

The pains that had started in his chest during breakfast as he had read his paper had culminated within minutes in his writhing on the floor in agony, with Katie kneeling at his side as their housekeeper had frantically called the family doctor, who was also Katie’s father’s close friend, and fortunately lived in the same exclusive avenue of large detached houses. He had arrived within two or three minutes, just as the housekeeper, Mrs Jenkins, had taken the call from this Reef man, who had insisted on speaking to one of the family when Mrs Jenkins had told him that her employer wasn’t available.

She had to get back to her father. She took a long, shuddering breath and levered herself off the seat before she hurried back to the breakfast-room, opening the door gingerly as she peered anxiously at him, now seated in an easy-seat to one side of the large bay window. ‘What’s wrong?’ She spoke directly to Dr Lambeth as he turned to face her. ‘Is he all right?’

‘No.’ Her father’s friend’s voice was flat. ‘No, he isn’t, I’m afraid, Katie. I’ve been warning him for months to get checked out but due to his own particular brand of bullheadedness he refused to listen to me. I’m going to call an ambulance.’

‘No way.’ Her father was as white as a sheet and his voice was a mere whisper of its normal, steel-like quality but his face was as determined as ever. ‘If I have to go to that damn hospital, I’ll go in your car, Mark.’

‘You won’t.’ Even as her father spoke Mark Lambeth lifted the extension at his elbow. ‘I’m not being responsible for your having another attack on the way, David, and that’s final. There is equipment in the ambulance that you might need. Now don’t be such a damn fool. If you are too stubborn to think of yourself, think of your daughters, man.’

‘Dad?’ Katie’s eyes were wide as she stared down at the man whom she had always considered as unmovable as the Rock of Gibraltar. Her father was never ill; she couldn’t remember him ever being less than one hundred per cent fit in the whole of her life. In fact, he looked on even the most severe illness as a weakness that was easily banished through sheer self-will, and was scathing with those lesser mortals about him when they couldn’t accomplish what he apparently found easy to do. ‘Dad, what’s wrong?’

‘It’s his heart, Katie.’ Mark Lambeth answered again, and it was in that instant that Katie realised how serious things were. Her father wouldn’t have tolerated being sidestepped in the normal run of things and Mark, old friend that he was, wouldn’t have attempted it. ‘He’s had several warnings and now—’ He stopped abruptly at the look of horror on Katie’s face. ‘Now he will have to come into hospital,’ he finished flatly.

The ambulance was on the doorstep within four minutes and her father totally refused to let anyone but Mark accompany him to the hospital. It hurt, but he had been hurting her all his life and, if Katie hadn’t exactly got used to it, she had learnt how to endure it without letting her feelings show.

She stared for some minutes down the long, wind-swept drive after the ambulance had departed, her thoughts in turmoil, before turning and re-entering the house where Mrs Jenkins was hovering anxiously in the hall. ‘Oh, Katie, I can’t believe it.’ The small woman was nearly crying as she wrung her hands helplessly. ‘Not Mr David.’

‘He’ll be all right, Mrs Jenkins.’ Katie reached out and hugged the woman she had known most of her life and who had been something of a substitute mother since Katie’s own mother had died when she was ten. ‘You know Dad; he’s as strong as an ox.’

‘Yes, he is, isn’t he?’ Mrs Jenkins swallowed deeply and made for the kitchen. ‘I’ll fix us both a strong cup of coffee and then we’d better try to contact Jennifer. Do you know where she is?’

‘On an assignment in Monte Carlo, I think, but the paper will have her number,’ Katie said flatly as Mrs Jenkins’ words reminded her of the telephone call of ten minutes ago. Carlton Reef. She’d have to phone him and explain somehow. He surely wouldn’t expect her father to phone him from the hospital, would he? She recalled the hard, cold male voice and the barely controlled rage evident in every word, and shivered helplessly. But then again...

It took her nearly ten minutes to find his number in her father’s address book on his desk in his study due to the fact that it was under a firm’s name rather than his own. ‘Tone Organisation. Chairman and Managing Director, Carlton Reef,’ she said thoughtfully as she read the scrawly handwriting.

She had been sipping Mrs Jenkins’ scalding hot coffee as she hunted and it had had the effect of stilling the trembling in her limbs and calming her racing heartbeat a little. In spite of her brave words to the housekeeper she was desperately afraid for her father, and the suddenness of it all still made her faintly nauseous as she made the call.

‘Tone Organisation. Can I help you?’ As the uninterested voice of the telephonist came on the line Katie took a deep breath and forced herself to speak quietly and coolly.

‘Can I speak to Mr Reef, please?’ she said politely. ‘He is expecting the call.’

‘I’ll put you through to his secretary.’

A few more seconds elapsed and then a cultured, beautifully modulated female voice spoke silkily. ‘Mr Reef’s office. Can I help you?’

As Katie gave her name and a brief explanation to the disembodied voice she felt her stomach tighten in anticipation of what was to come, and it was with a sense of anticlimax that she beard the secretary’s voice speak again a minute or so later. ‘I’m sorry, Miss White, I understand that Mr Reef was expecting your father to call.’ It was said pleasantly enough but with just the faintest condemnation in the soft tones. ‘He really can’t spare the time—’

‘My father has been taken into hospital,’ Katie said tightly as she felt her face begin to burn with impotent anger. ‘I’m fully aware of what Mr Reef was expecting but he’ll have to make do with me, I’m afraid.’

‘Just a moment.’ There were a few more seconds of silence and then the secretary spoke again, her voice faintly embarrassed now. ‘I’m sorry, Miss White, but Mr Reef said he did make it plain to you that it is your father he needs to contact. He doesn’t think there is any point in talking to you.’

‘Now just a darn minute.’ Katie fairly spat the words down the phone. ‘My father has been rushed to hospital with a heart attack and that creep you work for hasn’t even got the decency to talk to me? Whatever he is paying you, it isn’t enough for working for a low-life like him.’

‘Miss White—’

‘Look, this isn’t your fault but I see no purpose in continuing this conversation,’ Katie said stiffly before slamming the phone down so hard that the small table quivered under the force of it.

The pig! The arrogant, cold, supercilious pig! She tried to take a sip of coffee but her hands were shaking so much that she couldn’t lift the cup, which made her still angrier. A combination of shock at her father’s sudden collapse and rage at Carlton Reefs total lack of sympathy brought the tears she had kept at bay so far burning hot into the back of her eyes. She sat for long minutes trembling with the strength of her emotions before she wiped her wet eyes with a resolute hand and dialled the number of the local hospital with her heart in her mouth.

She was put through almost immediately to Mark whose calm, unflappable voice reassured her somewhat. ‘It’s as I expected, Katie,’ the doctor said gently. ‘His heart is struggling a little—I’ve recognised it for some time—but with certain medication or perhaps even an operation he can carry on more or less as normal.’

‘Did he have a heart attack?’ she asked nervously.

‘I won’t lie to you, Katie; you’re over twenty-one and well able to take the rough with the smooth from what I’ve seen of you. Yes, it was a heart attack. He’s all wired up at the moment and the results aren’t too good but they’re far from fatal, so don’t let your imagination run riot. He’s been working too hard of late but you can’t tell him. At sixty he’s no spring chicken.’

‘No...’ She smiled shakily. ‘Can I come and see him?’

‘Leave it for now,’ he said gently. ‘He’d hate you to see him at the moment; you know how he is.’

Yes, she knew how he was, Katie thought painfully as the shaft of agony that whipped through her body made her gasp. If it had been Jennifer here he would have allowed her to see him, but the simple fact was that he didn’t rate his younger daughter at all. She shut her eyes tight and forced her voice to remain normal. ‘But he’s in no danger?’ she asked quietly.

‘Not now.’ Mark’s voice was soothing. ‘I only wish I could have got him in here months ago.’

‘Thank you, Doctor.’ She could feel the tears bubbling to the surface and knew she had to finish the call quickly. ‘I’ll phone later, if I may?’

‘Of course. Goodbye, Katie.’

‘Goodbye, and thank you.’

She sat for long minutes in the overwhelmingly male study before wiping her eyes for the second time, phoning a local taxi firm and checking the address of the Tone Organisation in her father’s smart address book. Somehow, during that telephone call with Dr Lambeth, something that had been forming slowly through the last few years of her life crystallised in her mind.

She was aware that her father treated her with an offhand, almost casual and often slightly caustic tolerance that was totally absent from his dealing with her older sister. Jennifer had chosen a career in the cut-and-thrust, dog-eat-dog world of journalism and was doing wonderfully well. This her father could both understand and respect. Whereas she...

She blinked as she laid the book down on the desk. She had chosen to work with physically handicapped children in a local school after finishing her degree at university, despite better, more up-market job offers. The hours were long, the salary low and the mental and physical exhaustion that were part of the job sometimes seemed too much to bear but the rewards... She straightened her back as she stood up. The rewards as the children under her care learnt to live to their potential were enormous and something that her father would never understand, she thought painfully.

‘Where are you going, Katie—the hospital?’ Mrs Jenkins met her in the hall as the taxi driver rang the bell. Katie’s neat red Fiesta was sitting in the drive but she knew she was in no fit state to drive herself.

‘No.’ She smiled as she answered although it was an effort. ‘Dad doesn’t want any visitors although Dr Lambeth said he isn’t in any danger.’

‘Thank goodness.’ Mrs Jenkins shut her eyes for a moment and then smiled mistily at her. ‘I told you, didn’t I?’

‘Of course you did.’ Katie smiled back at the homely face she had come to love over the years. ‘I have to sort out some business affair of Dad’s—you know, that other phone call? It’s urgent and I can’t really leave it but if anyone should phone you know nothing about it. OK?’

‘Of course, my dear.’ Mrs Jenkins understood her perfectly. ‘Anyone’ meant one person and one person only. ‘I wouldn’t say a word. We just want him to get better, don’t we?’

Their house was situated on the outskirts of London, in a pleasant suburb with gracious tree-lined avenues and large houses in their own immaculate grounds. As the taxi ate up the miles into the capital the general vista changed to miles and miles of identical terraced dwellings, rows of shops broken only by the odd garage and, eventually, blocks of office buildings, neutral and blank in the cool March air.

The taxi stopped at a particularly imposing high-rise monstrosity and she saw the sign, ‘Tone Organisation’, with a little quiver of her nerves. But she wasn’t backing out now. Her father might not think much of her but that didn’t matter. This was something that needed to be done; Carlton Reef had made that plain. It wouldn’t just go away—or, rather, he wouldn’t just go away, she corrected grimly as she stared up at the tall building.

She needed to buy her father some time. She stuck out her small chin aggressively and leant forward to the driver. ‘Could you wait?’ she asked firmly. ‘I shan’t be long.’

‘No problem, miss.’ She received a toothy grin. ‘You’re paying.’

The offices were busy and full but by the time the smart lift had carried her up to the top floor all was hushed opulence and quiet elegance. She found the secretary’s office with no trouble and prepared for battle as she opened the door, but the office was empty, the interconnecting door with the office on the left partly open.

‘I don’t care what it takes.’ She knew that voice, she thought blindly as her stomach dropped into her feet. ‘This is one hell of a mess, Robert, and you do what you can to get us out of it. Get back to me.’ The sound of a receiver being banged down made her flinch but in the next instant the doorway was full of a big male body and a hard square face was staring at her with something akin to amazement in the narrowed eyes. ‘Who the hell are you?’

She realised that she wasn’t dressed in office mode, but the worn denims and thick jumper that she had donned that morning were ideal for her work, as was the no-nonsense hairstyle that held her long honey-blonde hair in a severe French plait at the back of her head. But in this world of pencil-slim skirts and the latest designer suits she was sadly out of place.

She lifted her chin a fraction higher and stared straight into the piercing grey eyes that were watching her so intently. ‘I’m Katie White, Mr Reef, and I want a word with you.’ She was glad her voice didn’t betray her—inside she was a mass of quivering jelly. ‘I have to say you are, without exception, the rudest, most objectionable man I have ever had the misfortune to come into contact with. My father is in Intensive Care at the moment with a heart attack—not that I expect you to be interested in that—and other than wheel the bed down here I had no alternative but to come here myself, as you wouldn’t accept my call.’

‘How did you get past Reception and my secretary?’ he asked grimly, without the flicker of an eyelash.

There was something in the complete lack of response to her tirade that was more daunting than any show of rage but she forced herself not to wilt as she continued to face him. ‘Reception was busy; a party of Japanese businessmen had just arrived,’ she answered shortly. ‘So I just slipped into the lift once I’d found your name and floor on the notice-board. And your secretary—’ she glanced round the large room with her eyebrows raised ‘—is your problem, not mine.’

‘I see.’ He continued to survey her from the doorway and she was forced to acknowledge, albeit silently, that he really was the most formidable man she had seen for a long, long time. He was tall, very tall, with a severe haircut that held his black hair close to his head and accentuated the hard, aggressive male features even more. He could have been any age from thirty to forty—the big lean body was certainly giving nothing away—but the overall air of control and authority suggested that he had learnt plenty in the school of life.

‘Well, Miss White, now you’re here I suggest you come and sit down so we can discuss this thing rationally,’ he said smoothly, after several seconds had passed in complete silence. ‘You’re obviously upset and I would prefer the dirty linen to be kept under wraps, as it were.’

‘I couldn’t care less about your dirty linen,’ she shot back furiously, incensed beyond measure as he shook his dark head lazily, a mocking smile curving the full, sensual lips for a brief moment.

‘I was referring to yours, not mine,’ he said laconically. ‘Or, to be more precise, your father’s.’

‘Now look here—’

‘No, you look here, Miss White.’ Suddenly the relaxed façade was gone and the man standing in front of her was frightening. ‘You force your way into my office unannounced, breathing fire and damnation, when, by rights, it should be me squealing like a stuck pig.’ He eyed her furiously. ‘I’m sorry to hear that your father has had a heart attack, if in fact that is the case,’ he added cynically, ‘but that is absolutely nothing to do with me. The loss of a good deal of money and, more importantly, Miss White, my business credibility is, however, everything to do with him.’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’ She had taken a step backwards without realising it and now, as he stared into the big hazel eyes watching him so fearfully, Carlton Reef forced himself to draw on his considerable store of self-control before he spoke again.

‘Then let me explain it to you. Shall we?’ He indicated his office with a wave of his hand, standing back from the doorway and allowing her to precede him into the room.

‘How much do you know of your father’s business affairs, Miss White?’ he asked her quietly, once she was seated in the chair facing the massive polished desk behind which he sat.

‘Nothing,’ she answered honestly. ‘My father—’ She stopped abruptly. ‘He isn’t the sort of man to talk about business at home,’ she finished flatly. Or, at least, not to her, she amended silently. Never to her.

‘And this heart attack?’ He eyed her expressionlessly. ‘It’s genuine?’

‘Of course it’s genuine,’ she answered in horror. ‘What on earth do you think—?’ She shook her head blindly as words failed her. ‘No one would make something like that up,’ she finished hotly.

‘You’d be surprised,’ he said sardonically. ‘When the chips are down most people would do just about anything.’

‘Well, I wouldn’t.’ She glared at him fiercely. ‘You can ring the hospital if you like and speak to Dr Lambeth, my father’s friend. I presume you would trust a doctor at least?’ she finished scathingly.

‘I trust very few people, Miss White.’ He shifted slightly in the big leather chair, leaning back and surveying her through narrowed grey eyes.

‘Like my father.’ The words were condemning and he recognised them as such.

‘You don’t approve?’ he said mildly. ‘You’re an optimist, Miss White—a very dangerous thing to be in the business world.’

‘Well, as I’m not in the business world I wouldn’t lose too much sleep over it,’ she replied carefully. ‘And I wouldn’t describe myself as an optimist anyway; I just think most people verge on kindness given a chance.’

He shut his eyes for a split-second as he shook his dark head slowly, the gesture more eloquent than any words, and then opened them to stare directly into the greeny-brown of hers. ‘What world are you in?’ he asked quietly, his eyes wandering over the pale creamy skin of her face and stopping for an infinitesimal moment on her wide, generous mouth. ‘You do work for a living?’

‘Yes.’ She straightened a little in the chair as she rebelled against the questioning. ‘But I don’t see how that affects why I’m here today, Mr Reef. You said on the phone that my father had lost you some money...?’

‘Lost me some money?’ he repeated sarcastically. ‘Well, that’s one way of putting it, I guess. A little oversimplified but nevertheless... Have you read the morning papers?’ he asked abruptly.

‘The morning—?’ She hesitated at the change of direction. ‘No—no, I haven’t. My father was reading them when he—’ She stopped again. ‘When he collapsed,’ she finished flatly.

‘They nearly had the same effect on me,’ he said drily, and then shook his head at her outraged expression. ‘And I wasn’t belittling your father’s condition, Miss White. Here—’ He thrust a newspaper at her abruptly. ‘Read that.’

She glanced at where he was pointing but the black letters were dancing all over the page as she tried to read them and she looked up after a moment, her eyes enormous in her white face. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t take anything in.’