Lacybourne Manor (Ghosts and Reincarnation #3)(147)

Once inside his office, he picked up the newspaper that Mandy had put on his desk and opened it to the page to which she’d folded it back.

Cursed Reincarnated Lovers Stalked by Evil Socialite, read the headline.

He skimmed the article and his eyes narrowed on the words.

He didn’t bother to finish it and threw the newspaper in the rubbish bin.

He barely settled into his chair when Mandy positively stomped into his office.

“Mr. Morgan…” she said threateningly and he knew her resignation was nigh.

“Mandy,” he cut her off, again coming to an instant decision and putting it into action. “I need you to run an errand for me.”

“Mr. Morgan,” she said more forcefully, not wishing to be denied her moment.

He interrupted her again. “I want you to find the best jeweller in Bristol or Bath or Cheltenham, I don’t care where it is. Go to London if you need to. Take a company car and when you get wherever you’re going, chose an engagement ring for Miss Godwin.”

Mandy’s mouth snapped shut with an audible clatter of teeth and her eyes bugged out.

Colin carried on, “It has to be something… unique. I don’t want her to see her ring on someone else’s finger. It has to be quality but should not be ostentatious. However, I don’t care what it costs. Can you do that?”

His secretary stared at him and gone from her face and frame were the frustrated anger with which she’d stomped into his office.

“I… I’ve never met her,” she stammered. “How can I possibly choose a ring for her?”

Colin looked her directly in the eye. “It will be from me and for that reason I have every faith in you.”

Her eyes slid back into her head, no longer popping out in an alarming fashion and then they filled with tears. “Oh, Mr. Morgan. I would be delighted… honoured… thrilled.” Then her body jumped and she whirled. “I’ll go now,” she announced to the other side of the room and rushed across it then stopped and whirled around again. “The phone is ringing off the hook.”

“Let it, you’ve more important things to do than talk to reporters.”

She nodded in happy agreement and ran out of the room.

The minute the door clicked behind her, Colin wasted no time and picked up his phone and called Sibyl.

“Colin!” she cried out his name as greeting. “You would just not believe what’s happening here. Rick has barricaded us in the house. The reporters are storming the door as we speak!”

Colin mentally added something else to his to do list.

“Don’t talk to anyone,” he ordered.

“I can’t,” she told him. “Rick won’t let me, he’s been entirely obnoxious. He’s bossier than you. I thought, after yesterday, that he’d…”

Colin cut in to her tirade. “Let me talk to your mother.”

“Mags?”

Colin was silent for he needn’t answer, Mags was, indeed, her mother.

There was a pregnant pause and then, “What has she done now?” Sibyl’s voice was leery and more than slightly annoyed.

“Pass the phone to her,” Colin ordered.

Surprisingly without further comment, Sibyl did as she was told. He heard a rustle and then a quiet, “Mother, what have you done?”

Without answering her daughter, Mags came on the line. “Colin! It’s all adventure here. I must say, you live an exciting life.”

“Marguerite, have you been talking to the reporters?”

“Me? No siree. Especially not today, your beefcake bodyguard will only allow us out of the library for bathroom breaks and even then, he’s escorting us. I tried to shock him during my last one but he’s unshockable.”

Colin mentally added a rise to Rick’s salary to his to do list. He thought, vaguely, that this feminine trio was going to bankrupt him.

However, he’d heard Mags say something damning.

“What about yesterday?”

“Sorry?”

Colin prayed for patience. “Yesterday. Did you talk to the reporters yesterday?”

“Me?”

Colin’s prayers went unanswered.

“Yes, you.”

“No, no, er… not me. I didn’t talk to the reporters yesterday. They came to the Centre, after the police but I didn’t talk to them and I know Sibyl didn’t and… well it was all a big hustle and bustle about the carrier bags and…”

She’d left someone out.

And she was a worse liar than her daughter.

“Put my mother on the phone,” Colin ordered.

“Phoebe?”

He ground his teeth.

Then through them, he remarked, “Yes, Phoebe does happen to be my mother.”

“I can’t imagine why you’d want to talk to Phoebe,” she declared with sham innocence.

“Put her on the phone.”

“I think she needs a bathroom break,” Mags stalled.

“Put her on the phone.”

There was a pause and then a grumbled, “Oh, all right.”

Then there was another rustle and he heard, “It’s your son,” and then more in the background as the phone was passed, “You’re right, Billie, he is ruthless.”