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 bull-headedness 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 immovable 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 Marie, 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.