“We’ll do our best.” Harvard looked highly amused.
Rachel just glared at both of them.
Jonathan wasn’t intimidated. She’d long been aware that her ability to intimidate didn’t work on immediate family, and she hated it. What was the point of having a superpower if it only worked with some people?
“Has Mother told you all the childhood stories about our Rachel?” Jonathan asked with a wide grin.
“Be careful what you say, Johnathan,” she warned. “Payback’s a bitch—called Rachel. I know where all your skeletons are hidden. Don’t forget it.”
“You don’t scare me,” the idiot said. “I was there when Mother brought you home from the hospital, and all you did was poop and wail. And I was also there when you used to take a stuffed rabbit everywhere because you were scared of Talbot House. Don’t even get me started on the times you lost it. I swear you woke ghosts with your screaming.” He looked at Harvard. “I was always the one who had to hunt the damn thing down, and do I get any appreciation? No.” He beamed at her, clearly enjoying himself. “She still has it, you know. The bunny.”
Harvard chuckled, and Rachel elbowed him. It was like elbowing a tree.
“I wish Sebastian were here,” Jonathan said of their younger brother, who was off researching in Borneo. “He could tell you about the time he was dragged along when she bought her first bra. It traumatized him for years. A preteen boy shouldn’t have to suffer the lingerie department at Selfridges. Especially seeing as Rachel only wanted a bra so she could beat Cousin Samantha in the race to get one first. Oh!” His face lit up. “I must tell you about the time she made Seb and I spray tan her. We all ended up looking like Oompa-Loompas. Mother wasn’t happy at all. Father found it quite funny though. Took forever for that stuff to fade.”
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“That’s it,” Rachel snapped at them. “I need a drink.” She shrugged out of Harvard’s hold, ready to head straight across the room to the bar her mother had set up.
“Rachel,” Harvard called after her, “can you get me my usual?”
His sparkling eyes told her he found it funny that she had no idea what his usual was, and she couldn’t exactly shout back across the room to ask him.
Instead, she inclined her head and smiled sweetly. “Of course.” She turned toward the bar, hoping they had pink umbrellas for the drinks, because Harvard was getting all of them.
Harvard watched her walk away, graciously accepting congratulations from family members as she weaved through the crowded room. Her dress clung to the curves of her ass as her hips swayed. Man, she made his mouth water. Even when she was plotting to poison him.
“You’re keeping her safe, right?” Jonathan said, his eyes on Rachel too. “I mean, I know this isn’t exactly a dangerous assignment, but some of the jobs Benson Security have taken over the years have gone downhill fast. I worry about her.”
“I won’t let anything happen to her,” Harvard assured her brother. “Now, is there any chance you could introduce me to some people? There’s no way in hell Rachel’s going to do it.” He glanced over to where she was talking with another one of her cousins. “I figure I have about half an hour before she sneaks off and leaves me stranded in Surrey.”
Jonathan gestured around the room. “Who do you want to meet first?”
“Everyone who’s on the board and works for TayFor.”
“We call those people the partial board.” He nodded. “Of course, I work there, as do Mother and Sebastian—when he’s in the country. Sebastian isn’t a member of the board yet, as he’s under thirty. That’s the age we inherit our company shares, which gives us a place at the table. But, of course, you know all this. And your investigation has already cleared us, or we wouldn’t be having this conversation in the first place.”
Harvard kept his eye on the room as they spoke, ensuring no one was close enough to overhear them. “With Rachel going undercover, we had to clear her immediate family. It would have been too complicated otherwise.”
“Find anything interesting while you were digging around in our lives?”
“You sing Barry Manilow in the shower.”
Jonathan’s face turned beetroot. “How on earth do you know that?”
Harvard chuckled. “Rachel told us.”
“My sister will be the death of me,” he said, before muttering, “If I don’t get her first.”
“There are seven members on the partial board, aren’t there? And fifteen on the general board of directors, which includes all family members with shares. Is that right?”
“Not quite.” His lips quirked. “There are eight on the partial, and sixteen on the general. You’re forgetting Rachel. As of Monday, she’ll be working at TayFor, and she still has her shares, which gives her a say in the company. Father was on both boards, but he retired after his heart attack last year. Now he’s only the chairman of the general board.”
“And the largest shareholder.” Something Harvard had flagged as a possible motivation for the theft of industrial secrets. Perhaps the thief wasn’t driven by greed, but rather by feeling slighted at the power Roger Ford-Talbot wielded. That was why he’d asked his team to keep an eye out for family members who held a particular grudge against Rachel’s father. So far, nothing had come up. But they were still digging.
“Yes,” Jonathan said. “Father is the largest shareholder by far. Uncle Theo would have been second, but he kept losing wads of his shares in his divorces—until he wised-up and had them written into a prenup. Now his first wife, Aunt Anne, has more shares than he does and more power within the board.”
“How does Theo feel about that?” Harvard glanced over at the man.