“What happened to your lip?”
“I was in a slight accident. It wasn’t a big deal.” Jessica hated the way he was checking her out, looking her over for blemishes as if she were a fine bred racing horse. She felt the familiar walls of being owned closing in on her.
“Sharon!” Harold called out. The double doors opened.
“Yes, Mr. Morgan?”
“Sharon, get Nate Goldberg on the phone and schedule Jessie for cosmetic first thing Monday morning. Then call Greg and—”
“Mr. Fletcher is on his way over,” Sharon assured him. “And I’ve reached all the board members except Peter to inform them of the emergency meeting at seven o’clock tonight. Will there be anything else?”
“Not now. Just make sure you get ahold of Peter. And where’s the meeting? Downtown?”
“No, I scheduled it for here, sir. Would you like me to change it?”
“Dad,” Jessica tried to cut in.
He waved her to keep silent.
“No, no. Here is good. Have the staff prepare the hearthside room. Seven o’clock, then. Send Greg in here when he arrives.”
Sharon nodded and left, closing the doors behind her.
“Dad, I’m not coming to the board meeting. Not tonight. Not ever. That’s why we need to talk. I’m declining my position on the board. I don’t want anything to do with the corporation. I’m a teacher. I’m happy, and that’s what I want to do with my life.” Jessica spoke fast, knowing he would bombard her with rebuttals and accusations the instant she stopped to catch her breath. It shocked her that he didn’t say a word.
“Come, sit down.” He motioned to the couch, his voice smooth as butter.
Jessica refused to sit down, refused to have her father soft-glove her the way she had seen him smoothly handle dozens of clients right before he moved in to close the deal.
“You don’t mind if I sit down, do you? It’s not every day a man’s daughter walks in his office after she’s been missing for fifty-four days. Fifty-four of the longest days of a man’s life, during which time he receives no word. No hope. Nothing to give him a shred of confidence his daughter is even alive.
“No word at all,” he continued, “except this.” He pulled from his pocket a well-worn piece of Jessica’s letterhead.
“Dear Father,” he read, “I’ve come to the conclusion that as long as I am under your roof, I will never become my own person. Please try to understand. I’m not doing this to hurt you.” He looked up, finishing the letter from memory. “I have to do this for myself. Please don’t try to find me. Love, Jessica.” He walked back to the couch and sat down. He looked at her with what may have been hurt in his eyes. Jessica wasn’t sure; she had never seen that expression on his face before.
“Dad, I need you to understand. What I said in that note is true. As long as I’m under your roof, I’ll always be your little girl. I’ll never be able to think for myself or stretch or become the person I want to be.” Jessica lowered herself onto the couch next to her dad. She wanted to take his hand in hers, but he never had been that kind of father. Even now he sat perfectly straight. “I meant what I said, Dad. I’m not doing this to hurt you. I’m doing this because I need to do it for me. Is there any way you can understand that?
Her father sat motionless, studying Jessica. “You can have whatever you want here. Why isn’t that good enough for you? Why did you mock me by disappearing? I hired private investigators. The best. Week after week they came up empty. Do you have any idea what you’ve done to me?”
For the first time, she saw her father’s point of view, and she felt badly. “I’m sorry, Dad. I didn’t think I had any choice. I had to vanish or I wouldn’t be strong enough to leave.”
“Why? You could have told me you wanted to be a teacher. I would have let you. I agreed to let you go to Oxford, didn’t I?”
Jessica shook her head. “Don’t you see? I don’t want to spend the rest of my life begging you for freedom and waiting until you ‘let’ me go where I want to go or do what I want to do. And even at Oxford I didn’t have my own life with Ruben following me everywhere I went.”
“What was wrong with Ruben? He was the best bodyguard on my staff. I thought you liked him.”
“Of course I liked Ruben. What I didn’t like was constantly being watched and followed. I knew that as long as I was under your control and your money, there would always be a Ruben or someone to report back to you everything I did. I don’t want to live like that. I can’t live like that. I needed to start fresh, all by myself. With no one trying to control me.”
She waited for his reaction. When he didn’t respond, she decided to make certain he understood her position.
“You need to know,” Jessica said, gathering her courage, “I’m only here until Sunday. I came back so that you and I, not the board of directors, but you and I, can resolve some outstanding issues. The first is that I choose to remove myself from the board of directors of Morgan Enterprises.” She stopped, realizing she didn’t sound like a small-town high school English teacher anymore. She had somehow switched into her young heiress jargon, the junior vice president role she had always hated. It scared her to see how quickly it all came back.
“We can talk,” Harold said calmly. “First we should have dinner. You might enjoy freshening up a bit. A swim maybe? A massage? The men will only be here for a short time for the board meeting. You might enjoy sitting in for five minutes. That’s all. Five minutes.”
“Dad, I’m not going to the board meeting. I’m not a child who can be bribed by a swim. Don’t you understand what I’m saying?”
“Yes, I understand. You’re not a child anymore.” His voice grew soft. “You’re twenty-five. Time to claim your inheritance. Go ahead, Jessica, take it and leave. Greg will prepare the papers for you to sign.” He looked defeated, not a familiar expression on the strong face of Harold Morgan III. Jessica wanted him to understand so he wouldn’t feel as hurt, so he would understand it wasn’t a betrayal of him, but a discovery of who she was.
“I don’t want the money. I left here with nothing. Didn’t you notice that? I took less than three hundred dollars with me when I left. That’s all. I’ve managed to live for nearly two months on almost nothing! I actually went a couple of days without food because I had no money. Dad, I don’t even have a car. And I’m so happy.”
Harold looked at Jessica with his brows furrowed. “How could you possibly be happy? You’re talking nonsense. And why go without food when you have at your fingertips all the money you could ever want? And you haven’t stopped to think about how all this has affected me. I’ve been miserable. Absolutely out of my mind miserable!”
“Dad, I am sorry I’ve hurt you. But I’m living the kind of life Mom had while she was growing up. I hang my clothes on the line in my backyard, I walk to work each day, and I have a garden. You know so little about me, about who I really am. If you did, you would know this is all I ever wanted. I’ve never been happier. And Dad, there’s one other thing.”
Harold Morgan shrugged his shoulders as if he couldn’t even begin to guess what other ridiculous conclusion his daughter had come to.
“I’ve become a Christian. One of those born-again kind.” A smile spread across Jessica’s face. “And I met a man who doesn’t know a thing about the money, and he loves me for me. Just for who I am. Can you imagine that?”
Harold looked at Jessica as if he had never seen her before in his life. “You’re talking like a crazy woman. What did you do? Get kidnapped by some maniacal cult and let them brainwash you? They have a leader, don’t they? He sent you here to get my money. That’s what it is, isn’t it?”
The office doors burst open, and her father’s fifty-two-year-old, energetic lawyer charged into the room, complete with briefcase and paisley necktie. “Jessica!” He dropped the briefcase and opened his arms to receive her embrace.
He had adored her since she was a child. Jessica had learned to go to Greg Fletcher for hugs rather than
to her father. If she had been the promiscuous type, she probably would have had an affair with Greg when she was in college. However, nothing of the sort ever happened, and she still thought of herself as a niece to Greg.
A long-distance runner, Greg’s trim physique was offset by a shock of pure white hair, which he wore neatly trimmed in the front and in a three-inch ponytail in the back.
“Jessica,” Greg let go and then impulsively hugged her again. “You’re back!” She caught the brief scent of cinnamon chewing gum on his breath, and suddenly she knew why she had felt so comforted smelling that scent on Kyle. Greg had been the only person in the corporation she had ever felt safe around. He was a man of integrity. Quite a rare thing in Beverly Hills and even more rare in Morgan Enterprises, her father’s electronics corporation.
“Let’s kill the fatted calf!” Greg said enthusiastically, lifting both his arms in the air. “The prodigal daughter has returned!”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Jessica lounged on the sofa in the middle of her old bedroom. A fire blazed in the corner fireplace, which had been added several years ago and was more ornamental than serviceable. She sat with her feet tucked under her, wearing a plush white robe and rabbit-fur scuffs. On the antique coffee table in front of her was laid out a full English tea, complete with currant scones, Devonshire cream, fresh strawberries, and cucumber sandwiches. The servant had poured Jessica a cup of tea, added cream and one lump of sugar, then left it for Jessica on the silver tray. And there it sat, getting cold.
She had called down for the tea because she wanted to eat something before driving back to the airport in an hour. Yet she couldn’t bring herself to touch any of it. Her mind was glutted with the events of the past two days. Jessica wished she could somehow pull a big plug and let all the information drain out through a strainer so she might save the really important things and let the rest go.
Someone knocked on her bedroom door. Jessica called out, “Come in.”
Greg entered and closed the door. “Tea time?” he asked cheerfully.
“Please help yourself,” Jessica offered. “I can’t quite manage to eat anything.”
Greg reached for a cucumber sandwich and popped the triangular morsel into his mouth. He settled himself in one of the plush wing back chairs and said, “So, you haven’t changed your mind?”
“No, I haven’t changed my mind.”
“Will you miss your home here?” Greg asked, pouring himself a cup of tea from the elegant silver pot.
“I didn’t before,” Jessica said. “When I was in Glenbrooke these past few months, that was my life and all this,” she motioned to the ornately decorated room filled with priceless antique furniture and designer linens, “was a fairy tale.”
“The princess leaves the castle and never looks back,” Greg quipped. He had on a pair of shorts, running shoes, and white T-shirt, looking like a track runner who had triumphantly broken the ribbon. He certainly didn’t look his fifty-two years.
“Only I looked back,” Jessica said.
“And you’re afraid that now you’ll turn into a pillar of salt and blow away.”
“What?”
“You know,” Greg said, “Lot’s wife. Sodom and Gomorrah. She looked back when she was supposed to flee, and she turned into a pillar of salt. Never mind. Do you want some fresh tea? This is cold.”
“Sure,” Jessica said. “Go ahead and ring for it. I’m going to get dressed.” She retreated to her bathroom with the sunken spa tub, exercise bicycle, tanning bed, and fresh flower arrangement on the counter. The contrast to her little bathroom in Glenbrooke, with the claw-foot tub, window with no screen, and chipped paint on the windowsill, was sharp. Only an hour earlier Jessica had emerged from the indoor pool and received a forty-minute massage and a facial. Now she stood in front of a half dozen mirrors and slipped her pampered body into a new sweater and the same pair of jeans she had worn all night in Mexico when the truck was stuck in the mud. The contrasts were a bit overwhelming.
Jessica felt she had done a pretty good job of keeping her perspective during the weekend. She had engaged in heated discussions with her father; negotiated with several of the older, more hard-nosed board members; and even maneuvered her way through a last-ditch effort from Peter, the head of their German division, to change her mind. Peter had taken her to dinner last night, and in the middle of their baked Alaska had proposed to her. When she turned him down, he said, “Your father will be disappointed. He said I was his final hope for keeping you in the corporation. Not that he was the only reason I proposed. I think you would make a fine wife.”
Greg had been the only clear-headed advisor throughout the weekend, and she had relied heavily on him.
With one last look in the multiple mirrors, she left her bathroom forever and felt glad that her little home in Glenbrooke had only one full-length mirror—and that was on the downstairs coat closet door. Too many mirrors, like too much self-evaluation, can lead to bitter discouragement. Jessica knew this only too well.
“You haven’t told me what you think,” Jessica said, joining Greg and one of the girls from the kitchen staff who had just brought in a fresh pot of tea. “Thank you,” Jessica said to the slender woman. “Do you want something to eat? Some strawberries perhaps?”
The girl looked startled at Jessica’s suggestion and politely declined, leaving the room like a spooked rabbit.
“Really, Jessica,” Greg said, pouring fresh cups of tea, “inviting the kitchen staff to join you in your room for some refreshment! You have changed, my girl.” He handed the china cup and saucer to Jessica. “And I, for one, think it’s wonderful. You’ve made some monumental decisions this weekend. I believe they’ll all be for your ultimate best. But then, I’m your lawyer. I’m supposed to tell you positive things like that.”
“So what you’re saying is that you don’t really think I’m making the right choice.”
“I didn’t say that. I’m just saying that I don’t know of any other woman who, given your situation, would make the choices you’ve made.”
“Greg, please tell me you understand why I have to walk away from this.”
Greg didn’t answer. He tilted his head and waited for her to explain. “To me, this is all a prison, a beautiful, luxurious confinement. Greg, do you remember ever hearing my mother talk about when she was a girl and she made applesauce from the apples off a tree?”
Greg shook his head and sipped his steaming cup of tea.
“Something inside me needs to do that.”
“Make applesauce?”
“Yes, make applesauce. Don’t you see? This prison is so confining, I can’t walk into the kitchen and do whatever I want. The kitchen help would order me to leave, or they would take over and make it for me. This lifestyle doesn’t match who I really am.”
Jessica sat back, not sure if she would ever be able to express to Greg or to anyone why she so desperately desired the kind of life Glenbrooke offered her. Maybe she was hoping to forge some emotional connection with her mother and the simple life she had known before she had married Harold Morgan. Maybe Jessica’s longing to escape the imprisoning way her father had ruled her life pushed her into the decision. Or maybe the choice to leave stemmed from the fear she had harbored that no man would ever love her for who she was rather than for what she possessed as long as she associated herself with her father’s enterprises and finances. Probably all of those motivations—and others that she couldn’t even express to herself—had urged her on.
“Then Jessica, for you, for right now, this is a good decision.” Greg interrupted her reverie. “As a matter of fact, as your friend, not your lawyer, but as your friend, I applaud you. Especially for your decision to make Christ the center of your life. That was my childhood training, you know. And in the past year, I feel that’s what I’m returning to. It seems as if God has been rather obstinate about bringing me back into the fold.”
“He is pretty relentless, isn’t he?”
Greg tipped his cup of tea toward her in a toast of agreement and took a sip. Placing the cup back on the saucer, he said, “Now. How about those papers we have for you to sign?” He fished out the stack of legal papers from his briefcase.
“Sign at the bottom of each page, Jess. That’s right. And this one, and this one, and two places to sign on this one. Wait, did you initial page six? Yes, okay. Good. Only a few more. And there you go!” Greg straightened the stack of documents and placed them back in his briefcase. “There. That wasn’t so bad now, was it?”
Jessica smiled and reached for a strawberry. “I guess not.”
“You have all the documents I gave you this morning?”
“Yes, in my purse.”
“You’re all set then.” Greg stood up and opened his arms, welcoming Jessica into his friendly hug one last time. She rose and hugged him and gave him a kiss on the cheek.
“Thanks, Greg. Really. Thanks for everything.”
“You will call me if you need anything, won’t you?”
“Of course. Give my love to Holly and the kids.”
“I will.” Greg looked as if he were fighting back some emotion. “You, Jessica Grace Morgan, are a woman of substance. I’m honored to know you.”
He sounded so chivalrous, so final in his good-bye, that it made Jessica feel a bit shaken. It had been one thing to run away in secret two months ago and live in hiding. It was completely different to walk away from all this and have her dad’s lawyer send her off with a poetic tossing of the coat over the mud puddle, so to speak.
“Do you need a ride to the airport or are you taking the limo?”
“Actually, Kyle rented a car for me. I need to drive it back to the airport.”
“So that’s his name,” Greg said. “Kyle must be quite a guy.”
Secrets Page 20