by Maggie Wells
“Your father is waiting for you,” the older woman cooed.
Marlee felt her press something hard into the center of her palm and looked down to find a cellophane-wrapped butterscotch candy in her hand. The kind she used to sneak to them on the rare occasions when Marlee and Jeff came into the offices with their father. Hot tears stung her eyes, and her throat closed. Looking at the polished oak door her great-grandfather had made with his own hands, she felt a wave of longing for her brother threatening to swallow her.
Mrs. Devane patted the hand holding the candy. “You’ll be the next Masters at the helm of Timber Masters,” she said with quiet conviction. “I suppose it would be more appropriate for you to call me Gladys now.”
Marlee gulped the lump in her throat. “Thank you, Mrs. Devane.”
The other woman chortled as she headed back to her post. “We’ll work on it. Young Jeffrey almost had it down when he—” Gladys’s eyes widened as her brain caught up to her mouth, and Marlee noticed the sheen of moisture trapped behind the other woman’s spectacles. “You go on in, dear,” she said, her voice thick and hushed. “They’re waiting for you.”
Anxious to escape, Marlee failed to register the plural pronoun prior to opening the door and stepping into the confines of her father’s inner sanctum. She drew up short when she saw Henry seated in one of the club chairs facing his desk rather than the massive leather seat behind it. He was sharing a low chuckle with the white-haired man seated in the matching chair. Both men looked up, and Marlee recognized the town’s resident attorney, Wendell Wingate, by the polka-dot bow tie he wore with his pale gray summer-weight suit.
“Miss Marlee,” the older man called out, admiration lacing the greeting.
He braced both hands on the arms of his chair to rise, but she tried to wave him off. “Oh, no, Mr. Wingate. No need to get up. I’m sorry to interrupt. Mrs. Devane said to come in. It’s nice to see you again.”
Mr. Wingate pushed to his feet and captured her hands between his. “The day I don’t get up when a pretty woman enters a room is the day your daddy can build me a nice pine box.” He beamed at her. “Congratulations on your graduation, my dear, and welcome to the club,” he added with a wink.
“Thank you, sir.” She extracted her hands from his grasp then gestured for him to sit again. “Would you prefer I came back in a while?”
Henry shook his head. “No. I called Wendell in for you.”
He rose from his chair, then gestured for Marlee to take it. Tamping down on her disappointment, Marlee seated herself. “Oh?”
“Yes, it only makes sense.” Her father settled himself in the executive chair behind the massive desk. “Wendell has been handling the company’s legal matters for decades, but now we have you.”
A surge of panic had Marlee fighting the urge to jump from her seat. To counteract it, she folded her hands in her lap and waited patiently, exactly as her mother had taught her. “You can’t mean that,” she said with a nervous chuckle.
“Unceremoniously fired,” the older man said with a woeful shake of his head.
Appalled, Marlee gaped at her father. “But after so many years—”
He cut off her protest with a nonchalant wave of his hand. “Stop preying on the girl’s sympathies, Wendell,” he admonished. Focusing on her, he said only, “This has been the plan all along. Wendell here has his eye on a seat on the bench.”
“Oh.” She blinked twice as she felt another chance at charting her own course closing down on her.
If the only attorney in town wasn’t on retainer to Timber Masters, they’d have to engage someone from another county for counsel. Henry Masters didn’t give company business to anyone living outside the county that bore his family’s name. She cast about for something to say as her mind fought to recalibrate plans.
“You’re closing your practice?”
Mr. Wingate shook his head. “No. My grandson, Simon, has been with a lobbying firm in Atlanta, but he’ll be coming home to take over the firm.”
Marlee stared at him in shock. Wonder of wonders, Simon Wingate was coming to Pine Bluff. Wendell Wingate’s son, Dell Wingate, had been serving the district that encompassed Masters County in the Georgia General Assembly since the year after his twenty-first birthday. Dell’s son, Simon, used to visit Pine Bluff for two full weeks every summer, but as far as Marlee was aware, he hadn’t stepped foot in the town since the day his teenage rebellion won out over the wishes of his grandparents. Not even for his grandmother’s funeral. The snub had fueled the gossips for years after the event. He’d been in college then, Marlee recalled. At Yale. Another strike against him as far as the people around here were concerned.
“Wow. Simon. I don’t think I’ve seen him since I was in middle school.”
Wendell nodded, his genial smile fixed firmly in place, though it didn’t reach his eyes. “Yes, I think you would be about right.” He hesitated a moment, seeming to have lost his usual bluff and bluster. “But, boy, wait until he gets a look at you, young lady.” He winked at Henry. “Perhaps we can orchestrate a merger.”
Henry huffed a laugh but rolled his eyes. “Keep your sights set on the circuit court. You do more good for us in the superior court than as a matchmaker.”
Wingate chuckled and cast a long-suffering sigh in Marlee’s direction. “See how it is? His daddy would tan his hide if he ever heard him disrespecting his elders thataway.”
Marlee couldn’t help being amused at the byplay between the two men and the image of her quiet, kind grandfather ever getting the best of his bossy son. Still, she could play the game too. “Mama always says he’s incorrigible.”
“An understatement,” the older man concurred.
“Enough,” Henry grumbled. “Marlee, you’re going to spend some time over at Wendell’s offices. I need you to get up to speed as quickly as possible, and I can’t pull him away from all the drunk and disorderlies he’s set to defend.”
“Hey, now, the majority of my clients are employees of this fine company,” Wendell shot back.
Her father’s gaze drifted down to the stack of folders arranged on the corner of his desk, and Marlee gathered he was losing interest in the conversation now that he’d given his order. “Exactly why I need to get back to running this business.”
“I don’t want to be in the way,” Marlee said, dividing a glance between the two men as she searched for an escape hatch.
“You won’t be,” they said in unison.
Taken aback by how quickly and efficiently her father had managed to circumvent her every plan, Marlee dug in. “I understand you have a plan,” she said tightly. “But I was hoping to discuss something with you in private this morning.”
Her eyes bore into the top of her father’s head, but he didn’t notice.
Mr. Wingate, obviously accustomed to taking his cues from this man two decades his junior, rose from his chair. “I’ll give the two of you a moment,” he said as he buttoned his suit jacket.
“Not necessary,” her father answered, shuffling through the stack of folders, his mind fixed on his next task.
She bit the inside of her cheek to keep from screaming for his attention, as she had when she was a child. But she wasn’t a child any longer. And she wasn’t one of Henry Masters’s many pawns. Tipping her chin up, she drizzled extra honey over her words. “If you wouldn’t mind, Mr. Wingate. Please and thank you.”
The second the older man opened the office door, her father looked up from his work, impatience etched into every line on his face. “There’s no need to keep the man waiting, Marlee. His time is valuable, and you’d better believe he’s billing us for every minute of it.”
“I understand, but I need to tell you—”
“You think you want to get a job up in Atlanta,” he said, cutting her off. He lifted his head and met her eyes with a pointed stare. “But you don’t.”
/> “I do,” she argued.
“There’s nothing for you there,” he said succinctly.
The steely glint in his steady blue gaze made her gut twist. Pressure built in her chest. Her fight-or-flight instincts kicked into gear, and Marlee exhaled as she realized her father had somehow gotten to Jared Baker. Her fingertips tingled, but her hands felt tight and numb as she curled them into fists. If he’d managed to poison Baker against hiring her, Henry wouldn’t have thought twice about doing the same with every other decent firm in town. Now he had the nerve to sit there glaring at her as if she’d run over his dog then got out of her car and kicked the carcass.
“There’s nothing for me here.”
“Your place is here,” he replied, his voice quiet and uninflected. “That was the deal, wasn’t it? I send you to law school, and then you come back here to work for me.”
No, the deal had been she’d go to law school then come back to help her brother run the company. But their plan could never happen now. Neither would her new dream of a life free of Timber Masters and all that being one of the Masterses of Masters County entailed. Not as long as her father lived, at least.
Snapping her jaw shut, she rose and stalked to the door. When she reached for the knob, he called after her, “Don’t you want to guess what I told them?”
She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction, but she needed to determine if the situation might be salvageable. “What?”
“I told them I wanted them to liaise with you on Timber Masters’s franchising along the Eastern Seaboard.”
Whirling to face him, she gaped at the audacity of the play. “Franchising? We’re not the kind of business that can be easily franchised.”
“We are aware of that, but Jared Baker doesn’t have the first clue about my business. Either way, he was happy to swap a first-year associate for a chance to even talk about it. And I’m such a friendly guy and all,” he said, gesturing expansively. “We’re having drinks the next time I’m in Atlanta.” He picked up his pen and tapped the file in front of him, tsking softly. “So there you have it. You’re worth about two fingers of Glenlivet on the open market.”
“Wait a minute—”
“No,” he barked. “I won’t wait another second. I paid for your degree so you’d put it to work for me. And don’t you keep Wendell waiting another moment, missy. You hear?”
* * *
SHE SEETHED THE entire morning, miles from absorbing any of the words flowing from Wingate’s mouth. They hardly mattered anyway. She could read. Once she had the files at her disposal, she’d figure the business out on her own. At the moment, she wasn’t the least bit interested in learning anything her father’s toady had to teach her.
“Miss Marlee?” he called, gently breaking into her ruminations.
When she looked up, he closed the file he’d been droning on about, then fixed her with a kindly gaze. “Many people would kill to be in your position.”
“Excuse me?”
Though she had been woolgathering, Marlee had heard the man perfectly. She simply wasn’t sure how to respond when people said stuff like that to her. People assumed she led a charmed life, but they didn’t have any idea how it felt to be Marlee Masters.
“The first thing they taught us in school was to assume nothing, Mr. Wingate.”
“We’re colleagues now, Marlee,” he said, peering at her over the top of his tortoiseshell reading glasses. “Call me Wendell.”
She hesitated, transfixed by the warmth and... Did she see understanding in his brown eyes? “I’m not sure I can,” she confessed with an apologetic wince.
“Try it on for size. I’m sure it’ll grow on you.”
He said the last with such supreme confidence, she had to laugh. “I imagine it will... Wendell.”
“It’s my grandson’s name too,” he said conversationally.
To her recollection, the Wingates had only one son and one grandson. Puzzled, she gave her head a shake. “Simon’s?”
He nodded. “Wendell Simon Wingate the Third,” he intoned sonorously.
“‘The Third’?” she repeated. “All three of you are Wendell Simon Wingate?”
“Dell nabbed the nickname, and Simon’s mother categorically objected to calling her only child ‘Trey’ or ‘Chip’ or any of the other inanities used to differentiate generations, so Simon it was.”
“I see.”
“And I see too.” He removed the reading glasses and folded the temples in, then used them to point at her. “I see you clearly. I also saw your brother. I see your mother, your father, and I knew your grandfather about as well as any two men could know one another outside of getting biblical.” He halted a moment, his dark eyes steady on hers. “And I too can differentiate between the generations without the use of silly nicknames.”
He couldn’t have driven his point home harder if he’d used a judge’s gavel. Still, the man was quite obviously and unapologetically in her father’s pocket. Determined to proceed with caution, she gave him nothing more than a mildly interested, “Oh?”
“You and your brother were wary of your father’s plans and machinations. Hell, I often chafe against them myself, but I can tell you one thing—the man knows how to run a business.”
“I’ve never doubted my father’s business acumen,” she said flatly.
“Only his affection.”
His blunt assessment threw her off balance. “What’s your point?”
Wendell set his glasses atop the file he’d been trying to go over with her and folded his hands in front of him. “My point is, you can disagree with him, you can rebel and run away, you can denounce the name of Masters at the top of your lungs... Your father is a horse’s patoot most of the time, Marlee, but one day you will inherit all of this whether you want it or not.”
She blinked, taken aback. “He could leave it to someone else,” she argued. “Doesn’t he have some second-in-command he can bless with it?”
“He won’t.”
“He could sell it, stick Mama in rehab and take off for Las Vegas.”
“He won’t run away either.”
“I don’t want it.” She pushed back from the gleaming conference table, where they’d been seated adjacent to one another.
“He won’t care whether you do or not,” he reminded her. “You are a Masters. The last of the line,” he added with a sad twist of his lips. “I had a similar talk with your brother when he was finishing up school. You were born to be who you are, Marlee. You can’t change who or what shaped you in the past. You can only pin your hopes on the people who come after. Your father has been doing so since the day you were born.”
“Since the day Jeff was born, you mean,” she said with a bitter bark of a laugh. “He forgot all about me once he had his heir apparent.”
Wendell sat back in his chair, cocking his head to the side. “Funny how you never blamed Jeff,” he observed.
“It wasn’t Jeff’s fault.”
“True, but rational thought rarely plays a starring role when it comes to family dynamics.” His expression grew sorrowful and his eyes misty. “Jeff and I talked about this.”
“You did?” She wasn’t certain what he was referring to, but she leaned in, hungry for any scrap of the brother she missed so much.
The older man nodded, his gaze fixed somewhere in the distance. “He told me his kids would never wonder if he loved the company more than he loved them. Told me he’d sell it off right down to the last toothpick to reassure them.”
“His kids,” she whispered, devastated by the tragic loss of her imaginary nieces and nephews. “He wanted kids.”
Wendell sat up straighter, shaking his head to clear it. “Yes, well. The what-ifs are what makes it all so sad, aren’t they? The might-have-beens.”
“Should-have-beens,” she corrected.
He nodded
. “Yes. It’s often the loss of possibilities that breaks our hearts.” Picking up his glasses, he deftly unfolded them and shoved them up onto the end of his nose. “But we deal in facts, don’t we?” he said, shifting forward in his chair again.
Marlee couldn’t resist probing one more time. “Do you think Jeff killed himself, Mr. Wingate?”
The older man reared back, but he couldn’t quite pull off the appearance of genuine surprise she assumed he was hoping for.
Narrowing her eyes, she pressed harder. “You don’t, do you?”
“What I think does not matter,” he chided. “We are only concerned with what the evidence at hand will support. All we know for certain is two promising young men are dead, presumably by their own hand.”
“But you think it’s odd, don’t you?” she insisted. “Jeff and Clint Young were friends once, they both worked for Timber Masters—”
He cut her off. “Their place of employment is hardly a strong connection in this instance. Most of the residents of Masters County are employed by Timber Masters or adjacent companies.” She opened her mouth to say more, but he held up his hand to halt the flow. “And we were all friends with our peers when we were young, but we tend to grow apart as our lives progress. I seem to remember you and Mandy Duncan were thick as thieves when you were in high school. What’s she up to these days?”
Marlee blinked, thrown by having the tables reversed on her so deftly. “She’s still living here in town, isn’t she?”
He inclined his head in a half nod. “She is. As a matter of fact, she works for Timber Masters,” he added with a triumphant lift of his unruly eyebrows.
Pursing her lips, Marlee inhaled deeply through her nose as she prepared to concede. “Fine. Point taken.”
Wendell flipped a couple of pages without looking at them. “But I did hear she had a date lined up with Clint Young for the weekend after he died,” he said, glancing up at last. “I find it interesting he’d made plans to take Mandy out but decided to end it all instead.”
The implication hung between them for a moment. He pursed his lips, then said, “Perhaps I took the wrong approach with this. Rather than diving straight into Timber Masters itself, maybe we should start somewhat smaller and build up so you can get a feel for the scope of the work.”