Free Soliman, Wendy - The Name of the Game (BookStrand Publishing Romance) by Wendy Soliman

never do anything in that room, except sleep.”
    “In that case, how can she expect you to believe that she’s carrying your child?”
    “For you to understand that, I need to tell you a bit more about the setup at Interactive.”
    “Why?” Ashley’s frowned, wondering what that had to do with anything. Matt waved a placating hand in her direction.
    “Bear with me, darling, it’s relevant, I promise you.”
    “All right,” she said. “I’m still listening.”
    “As you know, the company was established by my grandfather and his brother before the war.” Ashley nodded. “Upon my grandfather’s death, his fifty percent share in the company was left to my father. My great uncle’s fifty percent was split equally between his two sons. Charlie’s parents were killed in a car crash when he was eight, and his father’s twenty-five percent was held in trust for him until he was twenty-one.
    “Now, this is where it gets complicated.” He smiled at her, but his focus was distant, his mind clearly dwelling somewhere in the past. “My Uncle Peter, our accountant, kept his twenty-five percent intact. What you may not know is that he was a bit of a lady’s man in his day. His first marriage ended in divorce, and his wife named Eve’s mother, Stephanie, when she sued for that divorce on the grounds of adultery. Eve was Stephanie’s daughter from a previous marriage. Anyway, to cut a long story short, when his marriage to Stephanie came to an end, Stephanie wisely asked for shares in the company as part of her settlement. When Eve and I married, Stephanie passed the five percent she’d managed to obtain on to her daughter as a wedding present.”
    Ashley listened in rapt silence. She’d known that Eve was a nominal director of the company, but she didn’t play any active part in its running.
    “In the true manner of a woman scorned, Stephanie violently detested and bitterly resented Peter and hoped, by passing those shares to Eve, to exact further revenge by giving me extra power within the company.”
    “I didn’t realize that there was a power struggle between you. I know you and Charlie don’t always see eye to eye, but I thought you still got along okay.”
    Matt harrumphed. “Not exactly.”
    “You hide it well.”
    “Years of practise.” He smiled at her and took a long sip of wine. “When my father died, I received forty percent of his shares. The other ten percent went to my mother for the residue of her life, at the end of which they revert to me. But in the meantime, we’re stuck with a bit of an impasse. I have forty percent plus my mother’s voting rights, giving me exactly fifty percent. Peter has his twenty and Charlie twenty-five, and so—”
    “And so Eve’s five percent represents the balance of power.”
    “Exactly. It’s vitally important to any decisions about the company’s future, and everyone knows it.” Matt grimaced. “Especially Eve. Charlie’s very gung-ho and wants to push ahead with expansion plans on our own. I don’t think we’re in a strong enough position to do that, but that’s not what he wants to hear.”
    “Can’t you get Peter to side with you?”
    “No, I gave up on that long ago. Peter doesn’t want anything to change.”
    “But it has to.” Ashley wrinkled her brow. “We can do so much better if we amalgamate with another local company and combine the business on our respective books. Surely he can see that?”
    “Afraid not. He’s still stuck in the past, but if there has to be change, then he’ll do whatever Charlie suggests, simply because he associates me, though Eve, with Stephanie.” Matt expelled a long breath. “There’s always been competition between Charlie and me.” Matt shrugged. “If I said black was white, then Charlie would disagree on principle.”
    “I can see your difficulties with family squabbles over the company but don’t understand about the baby. If you haven’t slept with Eve, then whose is it?”
    “I’m