Page 54 of Convenient Rivals

“Oscar?” said his mother. “You will address the CEO as Mr Montgomery. How long have you been here?”

“Two years.”

“Then you should know better. Show some respect for your superiors.”

“Mother, everyone calls me Oscar here.”

“Why?” she asked, looking so horrified he might as well have said he was going to drown a bag of puppies.

“Because it’s my name,” he quipped. “You know, the one you gave me.”

“Don’t be facetious,” she said, narrowing her eyes.

“Georgina, we’re all good. I know what my mother’s like. Take a break.”

“Do you need tea or coffee first?”

“We can get our own.” He smiled.

His mother looked like she was about to collapse in shock, but Oscar was more than happy to get his own coffee. Josh never let him, but Georgina twigged what he was doing and suppressed a smirk as she left them to it.

“Did you want tea, Mother?”

“Not if I’ve got to make it myself.”

He chuckled, and she glared at him.

“Why are you ignoring me?” she asked.

“I’ve been busy. We have a regulatory investigation which has taken up all my time.”

Partly true, so he wasn’t outright lying to her. They needed to talk about the trust fund, but he wasn’t getting into it now, and certainly not in his office where he could be overheard.

“What does the regulator want?”

“Barty Balfour.”

She flinched. Yes, she had every reason to. It was because of her wanting to one-up Lavinia Balfour that he’d been lumbered with the guy.

“The dismissal was legitimate, wasn’t it?”

“Of course it was. It’s how he got the job that they’re looking at, as well as seventy other people in the company. Do you realise how much work this is going to be?”

“Why didn’t you say anything to me?”

“I didn’t want you feeling guilty.”

Yes, he was being a bitch by saying that, but his mother had a lot to answer for, and if she felt guilty about causing him all this crap as well, then he would not feel bad about it. If she hadn’t been so pushy, he would never have hired Barty. There was one thing he wanted to check, though.

“Did you know he had a gambling addiction?”

His mother’s silence gave him his answer.

“And yet you still insisted he work here, with all this temptation. He owes money to a mobster. You know that as well, don’t you?”

“What?”

“He owed a million pounds to the bloody mob, and who was the one who had to pay it off?”

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