Beaumont Brides Collection by Liz Fielding

cheque, offered her a way out.
    Just to prove to Melanie Brett that he could give her anything she wanted? Why did she find that so difficult to believe?
    Because she didn’t want to believe it?
    Fizz found herself dwelling on the memory of a pair of forceful grey eyes, a mouth that smiled so slowly that before you knew it, it would have stolen your heart. She gave a little gasp, then pulling a face at her own stupidity, stared at the sheet of paper she was holding as if that could give her the answer. But it couldn’t.
    She threw it down on her desk and walked across to the window to stare down at the lights glowing from the restored Victorian lamp holders along the pier and reflected in the sea, momentarily still on the slack of the tide.
    Could it be that she was making too much of the whole business? Looking for problems where none existed? Why couldn’t she just thank her lucky stars, take Luke Devlin’s money and welcome Melanie with open arms.
    She didn’t understand why was she hesitating. She had gained a little thinking time by convincing him that she would have to speak to her father, but she could have agreed to Devlin’s conditions on the spot. In retrospect she had been mad not to. Yet some instinct had warned her to play for time. Why, she couldn’t say. Except that his attitude to her, to her father had seemed so personal.
    She took the cheque he had given her from her bag and laid it on the desk, smoothing it out very carefully, studying the strong masculine handwriting, determination in every thick downstroke but with the occasional telltale flourish to warn that the writer had a strong imagination. It seemed to her a very dangerous combination.
    ‘What are you up to Luke Devlin?’ she asked out loud. ‘What do you really want from Pavilion Radio?’ The cheque, if it knew, wasn’t talking.
     

 
    CHAPTER FOUR
     
    AT seven-thirty the following morning Fizz put her head around the newsroom door. ‘Have you got a minute, Jim?’ she asked.
    Jim Ryan, a burly man in his late thirties, was sitting behind his desk organising the bulletins and “carts” for the major news and local current affairs programme on the hour. ‘Two minutes for you, Fizz, my darling,’ he said, easily, without looking up from his task. ‘What can I do for you?’
    ‘Tell me everything you’ve heard about the takeover at Harries Industries. Everything you’ve heard about Luke Devlin.’
    ‘The long version or the potted one?’
    ‘Which would you advise?’
    ‘Since nobody knows much, they’re about the same,’ he said, throwing her a grin. ‘Apparently we’re lucky the whole lot didn’t just go down the pan and that if anyone can dig Harries out of the red, Devlin can. The workers, at least those who have met him, are impressed, although naturally there have been rumblings of discontent. Everyone expects there to be some job losses.’
    ‘When are you going to do a feature on him, his plans, what it means for the town, that sort of thing? I assume you are planning one of your awesome face-to-face interviews?’
    Jim, the manager of news and current affairs at the station, had been with her from the beginning and was one of the few employees who knew that she, and not Edward Beaumont, was the boss. It didn’t stop him from pulling a face at her blatant flattery.
    ‘I’d certainly like to. I’ve been trying to get hold of Mr Devlin all week, but his secretary is a positive dragon.’ He finished organising his bulletins and swivelled around in his chair to give her his full attention. ‘Any particular reason for your interest?’
    Fizz side-stepped the apparently innocent query. Jim never asked innocent questions as many a local dignitary attempting to bluff his way through a budgetary fiasco had discovered to his cost.
    ‘I was certain you would have assembled a vast amount of information about him from your contacts.’
    ‘And information is power?’ Jim grinned. ‘What I’ve got is in that