The Beast of Stornoway

Chapter 75: Amani

Amani was scrolling through her emails and scanning in some documents for a few start-up companies. She rubbed her fingers over her eyes and sat back in the chair. She looked around Benny's office and smiled at the little family photo of him, Lydia and Van.

Van was a cute little chubby kid. He certainly grew out of that. She blushed and shook her head. They agreed to be friends, so she needed to stop thinking of him like that...for now.

It had been fairly easy to slip back into their routine and they'd been doing well to keep a boundary between each other. She touched her fingers to her lips, but it was so hard not to think of his soft lips pressed against hers or the way he slipped his tongue in her mouth.

"Oh, good! You're not in the fields," Benny exclaimed from the doorway.

She jumped out of her thoughts and looked up at him standing next to another elderly gentleman. "Yep, I'm here. What's going on?" She smiled and slid her hand away from her face.

"I thought it would be good for you to talk with Mr. McGarth about investing in Blarcum Industries," he said and held up a brown box. "And I have a package for you." He grinned as he and the older gentleman crossed the room.

"It's nice to meet you, Miss Blake." Mr. McGarth smiled and held out his hand to her. "I hope you don't mind the intrusion."

"Oh no, not at all," she returned the smile and shook his hand. "It's nice to meet you too, but I'm not sure about investing anything."

"You should definitely consider it. Blarcum shares are very valuable," he said and took a seat in one of the chairs in front of her desk.

"Right, I'll leave you to it then." Benny nodded and set the package on her desk. "I hope you invest, Amani. It's a good opportunity for you."

Amani frowned as he closed the door behind him. It might be a good opportunity, but she didn't know anything about investing or how to manage stocks. She always figured that was for people who had enough money to invest and she'd never made enough to think about doing that.

"I'm not sure I could afford to invest in Blarcum shares. Don't I need money in savings to do that?" She had money in savings now, but she planned to send most of it to her mother to help support her and the boys.

"You don't need money in savings to invest. You work for Blarcum Industries so you already own one share in the company," he explained and opened his laptop. He tapped on a few keys and looked up at her. "You can invest part of your salary to keep accruing shares. I can set up a completely separate investment account and manage it like I do for Lord Blarcum."

"What do shares do for me? Is it like stock? And how much of my salary do I need to invest?"

He smiled and his brown eyes twinkled in amusement. "You ask all the right questions. Now I know why Lord Blarcum wants you to do his research." He chuckled and clasped his hands together. "Right. Having a share in a company means you own part of it. Depending on what type of share you own, it will also generate dividends or cash back for you. Blarcum Industries provides its employees with one ordinary share in their company. These don't earn dividends, but they do appreciate in value over time," he explained and turned his laptop toward her to show her a graph of what he was talking about.

"You want to convert your ordinary share into a preference share. Blarcum's preference shareholders receive a monthly dividend and the amount depends on how many shares you own." He tapped the spacebar and the graph morphed to show the difference between the share types. "So if you invest in fifty preference shares your monthly dividend would be five hundred pounds."

"How much of the company would I own if I did that?"

He laughed. "Fifty shares would give you about .0005 percent ownership. That would hardly get you a seat at the directors table, if that's what you're after."