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He got a job the moment he turned sixteen and worked as many hours as he legally could—and some he couldn’t—eventually leaving school with no qualifications to his name. He went straight into a construction company as an apprentice and worked his way up until his estranged grandmother died, leaving him a relatively good sum of money.
He got together with Declan Tierney, his good friend, and together they formed their business. Declan’s father was putting up the majority of the startup money under the condition the business be named after them, and Alan agreed.
Alan worked hard as a labourer until an accident on site resulted in temporary paralysis on his entire left side.
Hm.
Funny how there were accidents of people close to Tierney on his work sites.
Not funny har-har, just… funny.
After several months, Alan regained most of his usage of his body back but decided to continue with the office work instead. Allegedly, according to the tabloid I was reading, that led to him taking a greater percentage of decisions than he had before, causing a ton of friction between him and Declan.
Now that was some gossip I could believe.
If it was true that he wanted out, Declan would have to buy him out the same way Alan had bought in. Only now, of course, it would be serious money, and that was money I was willing to bet the other man didn’t have.
And if he did have it, he had it tied up in something like the old school development or buying the bed and breakfast.
I couldn’t find an actual figure for the business, but there was no doubt the two of them were very wealthy men. Declan Tierney had offered me a million pounds without batting an eyelid, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if that was cash.
Which meant he would have owed Alan a very, very large amount of money.
That begged the question—did ownership of the business now go to his wife, Stephanie?
If so, she might have had the biggest motivation of them all.
That said, the chances of me finding anything out about their marriage on the internet was quite slim, so that was going to have to be something we sniffed out in real life.
If Gwen was right that they were in the middle of an acrimonious divorce, Mrs Tierney was about to be the talk of the town.
And I wanted to be a part of that conversation.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Ihadn’t been in a beer garden in a very, very long time.
Not because I didn’t like beer gardens. As far as they went, they were absolutely the best place to get sozzled—as long as you had suncream, of course.
I was blonde, I was pale, and UV rays had an inexplicable attraction to me.
Suncream was a must, even if it was a bit cloudy.
Yes, the sun could burn you through the clouds.
Ask me how I knew.
Sigh.
I’d just never had time to go out like this before. I was always working, and when I wasn’t working, I was sleeping. I’d done little more than merely survive over the past few years, and that was a sorry state of affairs for someone who wasn’t even thirty yet.
Now, as I opened the gate to the beer garden that was attached to the back of The King’s Head pub, I couldn’t help but smile.
Sure, my life might have been kind of falling apart, but I was about to have dinner and drinks in a beer garden with an old friend and her kooky grandma, so it wasn’t allthatbad.
Ash and Gwen were sitting at a table in the corner, and Ash waved me over with a beaming smile as soon as she saw me. “You’re here!”
I grinned and hugged them both. “Of course I am. I have to tell you everything I discovered today, don’t I?”
