Consequences

Part 82

Marina and Rafe dropped Isabelle off at the main doors. For a second Isabelle was tempted to change her mind. What if he reached the same conclusion as Marina and saw this arrival as both untimely and evidence of a cling woman? But before she could change her mind, Rafe had pulled away from the kerb and rejoined the traffic,

Isabelle inhaled, closed her eyes and then finding her courage put a finger to the intercom as it was now way past business hours. She should have thought this through some more before just showing up here. He'd said he had called a family meeting. She wasn't family.

It was Doug himself came down to let her in. "Are you alright? Didn't you get my message?" He was pretty sure he'd asked his secretary to call Isabelle to let her know he was going to be late back. He had hoped to make the call himself, but he had company at the time.

"Yes." Isabelle nodded, and hoped she wasn't being overly presumptuous. Turning up here, all but foisting herself on this family gathering. Intruding. Perhaps it was a mistake. Too late to do anything about being here. Isabelle took a breath. "I'm fine. I got your message."

Doug looked exhausted and anxious as he held the door open for her to enter the office building. Isabelle stepped into the atrium. Doug closed the door.

"What are you doing here?" Doug frowned at her.

"Your secretary said you were having a family meeting. I'm engaged to you." She stated succinctly. Well, that was a bit of a thin rope to hang on to, given neither of them had placed the notice of this engagement. Not that they had talked about it properly. But still, according to the newspapers they were engaged.

Doug smiled. He drew her into his arms and held on tight for a second. Standing in the atrium of the building Doug just held her. Close and tight. She'd come. Family. " Come on." Doug shepherded her toward the lift.

"So what's going on?"

With a sigh of apprehension he stated, "We aren't majority shareholders of the company, and someone is buying up shares pretty damn fast." Doug pressed the open button and waited for her to step in before following.

"A hostile takeover?" That made sense of the share patterns she'd seen during her analysis today.

"Feels like it." He looked at Isabelle and noted that she looked a lot better.

"Why aren't you majority shareholders?" She knew from what she'd read that the family owned 51% of the business the rest having been sold to share holders over the course the years.

"Jared gave Ailsa five percent, and she sold about one percent that to get revenue for her business."

"Oh." She looked worried, "And Ailsa is?"

"Jared's kind of half sister, I guess. Complicated!" Doug shook his head. "Anyway Ailsa needed to raise some capital and she sold 1% hoping to buy back equally quickly."

Isabelle frowned at that short sightedness. Then she smiled. "I have significant amounts of your shares. Around three percent, I think." She told him proudly.

Doug blinked at her. "Really?" He looked relieved, delighted and puzzled, "Since when?"

The door opened, and once again Doug waited for Isabelle to step out before following.

"I started building a portfolio on unlisted stuff pretty early on. You guys were good, and cheap when the shares were put up. I thought it was worth taking the risk, so I bought when you started, you were cheap back then so I bought loads. When you went onto the floor, I bought more cause the financial papers were suggesting the company was going places! Wasn't sure whether I'd get a quick fix, but it was worth a medium to long term investment. So I bought what I could, when I could. Small initially. But it has built. I started buying about three years ago."

"You bought into us three years ago?" Doug directed her toward the door at the end of the corridor. He was both flattered and impressed. How old was she three years ago? This woman was amazing, he thought, as he considered just how adept she must have been at juggling short, medium and long term goals and assets to make the most of what they had at the time.

Isabelle nodded. At the time it was a bit of a gamble, but the word on the ground was good. What was it they said at uni, buy on rumour, sell on fact. So she had bought on rumour. "I bought H2O when ever I could. Nothing huge, but if someone was selling and I could afford it, I bought. You guys are a touch pricey now!" Which is why, just recently after the fall out with Doug she had considered selling. It would have realized a hefty profit.