A Winter Flame Read Free

again in his office. Eve looked up at the ceiling to see if there were any candid cameras recording her reaction to all this.
    ‘So, let me just get this straight in my brain,’ Eve said, tapping both sides of her head simultaneously. ‘My aunt Evelyn wants me – and this Jack Glass – to finish
off a theme park which she started to build and then run it as a business concern.’
    ‘Correct.’
    Eve laughed. ‘Well, I presume she’s left us a fortune to be able to do that.’
    ‘Yes, that’s also correct.’
    Eve nearly fainted.
    ‘Subject to all the expenses being approved by you and Mr Glace and myself,’ went on Mr Mead. ‘Obviously you won’t be able to take the monies and spend them on cruises
and fine wines.’
    ‘How much did she leave?’ said Eve in a voice shocked into temporary laryngitis.
    ‘A very considerable sum,’ said Mr Mead. ‘I don’t have the exact figure in front of me because interest accrues at a daily rate, but I will have for our next meeting.
It’s quite a few million pounds.’
    ‘A few mill . . .’ Eve couldn’t even finish the word. This is what lottery winners must feel like – seeing all those numbers on the screen that matched their own and yet
there was a membrane as thick as a plank of wood over the part of their brain that let them absorb the information. ‘Mr Mead, you cannot be serious,’ she gulped, like a bustier,
Yorkshire version of John McEnroe. For a moment she thought her life had been hijacked by a computer game – ‘Zoo Tycoon’ or the equivalent ‘Christmas Park Tycoon’.
People inherited jewellery and nick-nacks from old aunts, not ‘quite a few million pounds’ and future expenses for reindeers.
    ‘A fifth percentage of the revenue earned by your venture will be split between your aunt’s affiliated charities: The Maud Haworth Home for Cats and the Yorkshire Fund for Disabled
Servicemen. Any remaining profit, of course, will be equally divided between yourself and Mr Glace.’
    It was sinking in, slowly but surely, that Mr Mead was not as barmy as Aunt Evelyn. Not that it mattered. Eve had little interest in being part of such a ridiculous scheme. She was happy as she
was, with a good, profitable events-organizing business, and didn’t need or want to change professions and work alongside a total stranger. She was a lone wolf in business and always would
be. Jack Glass, whoever he was, could have the bloody thing. It all sounded far too good to be true – and that was a sure sign that there must be catches as big as man-traps waiting for her.
Little old ladies who bought stuffed elks from the internet did not know the first thing about building theme parks – how could they? She had obviously just flung her money at a ludicrous
self-indulgent project – what a total waste of a fortune.
    ‘I’ll think about it, of course,’ said Eve. She wasn’t that daft to dismiss it all out of hand without looking through the paperwork, but really it was madness. A theme
park in Barnsley wouldn’t work. People would laugh their socks off at the incredulity of it. A seasonal theme park was especially dodgy – who would want to see Santa in August?
    She left Mr Mead’s office determined to let the mysterious ‘Jack Glass’ take the helm and go bankrupt after three months – because that is surely what would happen. But
by the time she had got to her car, Eve Douglas’s brain was fast at work and a sea change of mind had already happened.

Chapter 2
    Try as she might, she could not sleep that night. As if she were in a courtroom, a defence barrister popped up in her head, in full wig and silk ensemble, and presented his
case.
    ‘If a ninety-three-year-old woman can do most of the hard graft of planning and starting off such extensive building work, I put it to you, Eve Douglas, that you could not possibly reject
the challenge of finishing off what your aunt had begun and make yourself a zillionaire in the process. This is the