LITMIR.BIZ

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blew out a breath and adjusted his trousers.

      But Issy had changed. She wasn’t the sweet, passionate teenager who had once adored him, but a vibrant, self-aware and stunningly beautiful young woman—who detested him.

      Gio placed the brandy glass back on the tray, frustrated by the strange little jolt in his chest. He pressed the heel of his hand against his breastbone. He didn’t care what she thought of him. Why should he?

      Women tended to overreact about this stuff. Look at most of the women he’d dated.

      He always made it crystal-clear he was only interested in recreational sex and lively companionship but they never believed him. And recently the triple whammy of career success, reaching his thirties and inheriting a dukedom had only made them harder to convince.

      Angry words had never bothered him before when the inevitable breakup occurred. So why had Issy’s?

      Gio frowned and pushed the hair off his brow.

      Why was he even surprised by his odd reaction? Nothing made sense where Issy was concerned, for the simple reason that he stopped thinking altogether whenever she was around. He was probably lucky the sudden rush of blood from his head hadn’t left him with permanent brain damage.

      Gio brought his feet off the table and rested his elbows on his knees. He poured himself a glass of the iced water and gulped it down. Much more concerning was his idiot behaviour this afternoon.

      He’d decided at an early age never to be controlled by his lust or his emotions—yet he’d been controlled by both as soon as he’d spotted Issy downstairs.

      But then, this wasn’t the first time Issy had torpedoed his self-control.

      Images swirled of Issy at seventeen, her eyes brimming with adulation, her beautiful body gilded by moonlight, the scent of fresh earth and young lust in the air.

      She’d caught him in a moment of weakness ten years ago, but he still didn’t understand why he’d given in to her innocent attempts to seduce him. The way things had ended had been messy and unnecessary—and he had to take the lion’s share of the blame.

      He rolled the chilled glass across his forehead. Damn Issy Helligan. At seventeen she had been irresistible. How could she be even more so now?

      Standing, he crossed to the window and peered out at the tourists and office workers jostling for space on the pavement below.

      Why was he even worrying about this? He would never see Issy again. He’d offered her money, and she’d declined. End of story.

      But then his gaze caught on a familiar shock of red curls weaving through the crowd. With her raincoat barely covering her bottom, and those ludicrous boots riding halfway up her thighs, she stood out like a beacon.

      As he studied her, striding away disguised as a highclass hooker, a picture formed of Issy ten years ago, with the vivid blue of her eyes shining with innocence and hope and a terminal case of hero-worship. He heard the echo of her voice, telling him she would love him forever.

      And the jolt punched him in the chest again.

      ‘Iss, I’ve got dreadful news.’

      Issy glanced over as her admin assistant Maxi put down the phone, peering over the teetering pile of papers on her desk. Maxi’s small pixie-like face had gone chalk white.

      ‘What is it?’ Issy asked, her heart sinking. Had one of the company broken a leg or something equally catastrophic? Maxi was exceptionally calm and steady. Panicking was Issy’s forte.

      Issy steeled herself for very bad news. But, really, how much worse could it get?

      After her aborted singergram a week ago, the singing telegram business had dried up completely. The three grants they’d applied for had been awarded elsewhere, and all her sponsorship requests had come back negative. She’d spent the week frantically cold-calling a new list of potential but even less likely donors, while also arranging the schedule for a season of plays that would probably never go into production. And the boiler had sprung another leak. Not a problem in the height of summer, but come autumn it would be another major expenditure they couldn’t afford. Assuming they still had a theatre to heat.

      ‘That was the bank manager,’ Maxi muttered.

      Issy’s heart sank to her toes. Okay, that was worse.

      ‘He’s demanding payment of the interest in ten working days. If we don’t find the thirty thousand to cover the payments we’ve missed, he’s calling in the bailiffs.’

      ‘What the—?’ Issy shouted.

      Seeing Maxi flinch, she held on to the swear word that wanted to fly out of her mouth and deafen the whole of Islington.

      ‘That toerag,’ she sneered. ‘But we paid something. Not the full amount, I know, but something.’ Her fingers clenched so tightly on her pen she felt as if she were fighting off rigor mortis. ‘He can’t do that.’

      ‘Apparently he can,’ Maxi replied, her voice despondent. ‘Our last payment was so low it amounts to defaulting on the loan. Technically.’ She huffed. ‘Toerag is right.’

      ‘Remind me not to send Mr Toerag any more complimentary tickets,’ Issy replied, trying to put some of her usual spirit into the put-down. But her heart wasn’t in it, her anger having deflated like a burst party balloon.

      This wasn’t the banker manager’s fault. Not really. The theatre had been skirting the edge of a precipice for months; all he’d done was give it the final nudge into the abyss.

      Issy crossed to the office’s single dust-covered window and stared at the back alley below, which looked even grottier than usual this morning.

      Maybe a broken leg wouldn’t have been so bad. Three weeks laid up in bed on a morphine drip with excruciating pain shooting through her entire body couldn’t make her feel any worse than she did at this moment.

      She’d failed. Utterly and completely. How was she going to break the news to everyone? To Dave their principal director, to Terri and Steve and the rest of their regular crew of actors and technicians, not to mention all the ushers and front-of-house staff? They’d worked so hard over the years, many of them offering their time and talent for free, to make this place work, to make it a success.

      They’d have to stop all the outreach projects too, with the local schools and the church youth group, and the pensioners’ drop-in centre.

      She pressed her teeth into her bottom lip to stop it trembling.

      ‘Is this finally it, then?’

      Issy turned at the murmured question to see a suspicious sheen in her assistant’s eyes.

      ‘Are we going to have to tell Dave and the troops?’ Maxi asked carefully. ‘They’ll be devastated. They’ve worked so hard. We all have.’

      ‘No. Not yet.’ Issy scrubbed her hands down her face, forced the lump back down her throat.

       Stop being such a wimp.

      The Crown and Feathers Theatre wasn’t going dark. Not on her watch. Not until the fat lady was singing. And until Issy Helligan admitted defeat the fat lady could keep her big mouth shut.

      ‘Let’s keep it quiet for a bit longer.’ No point in telling anyone how bad things were until she absolutely had to. Which would be when the bailiffs arrived and started carting away crucial parts of the stage. ‘There must be some avenue we haven’t explored yet.’

       Think, woman, think.

      They had two whole weeks. There had to be something they could do.

      ‘I can’t think of any,’ Maxi said. ‘We’ve both been racking our brains for months over this. If there’s an avenue we haven’t tried, it’s probably a dead end.’ Maxi gave a hollow laugh. ‘I even had a dream last night about us begging Prince Charles to

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