“He’s not on holiday, Elias. Magnus doesn’t know how to relax. They make whisky nearly everywhere in the States. He’s looking for a buyer, a white knight.”
And dear, dear Celeste was just eaten up with concern for poor Magnus? “I’m on his board of directors, Celeste. Without violating confidentiality, I can assure you the business is sound and Magnus has never mentioned looking for a buyer.”
“Elias, I love you dearly, but a gold-plated academic degree and a few quarterly meetings don’t give you the feel for the industry or for Magnus Cromarty that I have. I’m the tenth generation of my family to deal in top-quality single malt, and I tell you in strictest confidence that Magnus is about to step on a land mine. His books won’t show the problems he has in his warehouses.”
“His inventories are all regularly audited, and his products sell well.”
Celeste fell silent while the kilted waiter whisked plates from the table.
“We’ll take the rest of that fish in a box, please,” Elias said, “and the last of the steak.”
“Of course, sir. Are we having dessert this evening?”
“Celeste?”
She lifted her wineglass, holding it so that it caught the candlelight. “Perhaps a small serving of the chocolate truffle. Elias, I trust you’ll share a few bites?”
Would this meal never end? “Of course, and the sticky toffee pudding for me.”
The waiter left, and Elias waited for Celeste to drop the other stiletto. Magnus was so well rid of this woman, Elias would congratulate him on his good sense the very next time they spoke.
“Magnus has a ticking bomb in his warehouse, Elias. His bicentennial year is a disaster in the making. Some of his own employees have said as much. It’s getting grimmer by the year, and everything he’s tried has made the situation worse.”
Like all good liars, Celeste wove a plaid of truth and falsehood. Magnus did have a problem in the warehouse, but his employees wouldn’t say a word about it to anybody—if they even knew. The distiller alone was responsible for sampling casks as they matured and making adjustments as necessary. The warehousemen, distilling staff, and other employees would no more sample the inventory uninvited than a banker would help himself to a handful of cash from the till.
Celeste had also misrepresented Magnus’s efforts to deal with his ailing batch of whisky. He’d only recently become aware of the problem, and Magnus was the sort to gather information before taking action.
“What are you asking of me, Celeste? The distillery is all Magnus has, and he manages it without interference from me or the board.” A slight exaggeration.
She set down her wineglass and leaned forward. “Let me help, Elias. If Magnus will give me a controlling interest in his distillery—all I need is fifty-one percent—I can trade him comparable shares in the MacKinnon operation. I’ll quietly substitute some of MacKinnon’s best batches for the dreadful mistake Magnus would serve as his bicentennial batch. Somebody needs to do something about this now, before Magnus draws attention to the situation.”
The quiet substitution was easy. No distiller kept an entire year’s inventory in one warehouse. If a warehouse burned to the ground, flooded, or collapsed under tons of snow, the risk was shared by many businesses rather than wiping out one or two. Casks of whisky moved from place to place all the time, and Celeste has likely exploited that fact to get the whisky into the wrong casks in the first place.
But that other detail—give me a controlling interest in his distillery—was asking Elias to commit a sin worse than treason.
And asking so prettily too.
“Assuming the problem you allude to is real,” Elias said, “and not an overreaction to gossip or misinformation, your offer to help is appreciated. I can neither negotiate for nor obligate a business I do not own, however.”
The desserts arrived, Elias’s redolent of warm whisky sauce, Celeste’s glistening with rich, dark ganache.
When the waiter had withdrawn, Celeste lifted a forkful of truffle cake. “You can both negotiate for and contractually bind Cromarty Distilleries, Elias. If Magnus is out of town, then you have his delegation, don’t you? You’re authorized to act in his stead until he returns, and that means you more or less own the business until Magnus is back. I’m trying to save that business and offering you an excellent opportunity to both diversify and avoid a very public disaster. Magnus will thank you for it, once he accepts that he’s ruined a substantial portion of his most anticipated year.”
She made a quasi-erotic production out of nibbling her cake.
Elias toyed with his whisky sauce.
Other than Magnus, only the person who’d mishandled the whisky in the first place would know there was a batch going sour in the Cromarty warehouse. Celeste had incriminated herself with that admission alone, though Elias wouldn’t be able to prove her guilt.
“You have a memorandum of agreement drafted?” he asked.
“I do. Agreement in principle, good faith, due diligence, the usual safeguards. Cromarty’s will get an interest in MacKinnon’s equal in value to my controlling interest in Cromarty’s, and nobody needs to know that Magnus has a disaster literally brewing.”
Elias started on his sticky toffee pudding, which was some consolation for the whole bother of meeting with Celeste.
Her proposal presented several problems.
First, her memorandum doubtless held all manner of hidden traps and potholes. The Cromarty family attorneys would delight in finding those and neutralizing them.
Second, Magnus would be left with his ex-wife for a boss.
Which raised the third problem: Magnus would kill Elias, slowly and painfully, many times over, if Elias gave Celeste’s scheme even an appearance of approval.
“I’m expected elsewhere later tonight,” Elias said. “Send me your memorandum, though I make no promises or representations, Celeste. Liquidation of any significant asset requires board approval, as you well know.”
“And you have a board meeting next week.” She took another bite of her dessert, sliding the fork slowly from her mouth.
The waiter returned with the boxed leftovers and a bill, which Elias paid on the distillery’s credit card. This was business, after all.
Nasty business.
“What a marvelous meal,” Celeste pronounced when Elias had done justice to his sticky toffee pudding. “Will you walk me over to my hotel?”
“Of course. I’m parked on that side of the street.”
He tended to all the gentlemanly inanities his aunties had pounded into him from boyhood: held the lady’s lovely, utterly impractical silk jacket, held the door, offered his arm when they crossed the street. Celeste accepted each gesture as if indulging a favored vassal.
When they stepped back up onto the sidewalk, she kept her arm laced with Elias’s. His car sat like a trusty steed not twenty yards ahead, just beyond the hotel entrance.
“You know, Elias, I believe in mixing business with pleasure. Will you join me for a nightcap?”
Elias recalled his last discussion with Magnus, and two impressions came to mind. Magnus had warned Elias to be cautious where Celeste was concerned, though even a cautious man occasionally slept with the enemy.
And Elias liked sex rather a lot. Always had, something of a family tradition, said to date from the first earl of Strathdee and his countess, who’d been separated for nearly ten years early in their marriage.
Accepting Celeste’s invitation—the nightcap would be served in her suite, if not in her very bed—also created a tactical advantage: Adultery was considered proof that a Scottish marriage had suffered an “irretrievable breakdown.” Elias could cheerfully testify for Daryl MacKinnon, if that poor soul ever sought to divest himself of Celeste’s company.
The idea appealed—some.
Though Magnus had also said he did not want Celeste destroyed, an admission that had both pleased and surprised Elias. A year ago, Magnus would have delighted in Celeste’s downfall.
“Will you come upstairs with me, Elias?”
The aunties mentally booted Elias in the arse for even considering it. “I honestly haven’t got time, alas for me. Thank you for an enjoyable meal, and I’ll look for an email from you by Monday.”
“I’ve already sent it,” Celeste said, leaning up to kiss his cheek.
She prowled away, the street lights providing Elias an excellent view of her retreat. She had pressed close—provocatively close—but all that had earned her was a grease spot on her jacket where she’d mashed against the bag of leftover sesame salmon.
Chapter 11
What sort of man—what sort of idiot—informed a woman he wanted a future with her by scratching his sentiments on a pink sticky note while that woman did battle with her enemy?
A man in love, that’s what sort.
Magnus shoved a log into the guesthouse woodstove and resumed his place on the couch. He gravitated toward the corner where he’d cuddled with Bridget—more idiocy—and indulged in the further lunacy of wrapping himself in one of her quilts.
She was at the ranch house, having dinner with her brothers. Magnus was to join the family afterward for what amounted to a counsel of war.
His phone buzzed, and his heart leaped in hopes Bridget was summoning him.
Life was just full of disappointments. “Elias, greetings.”
“You owe me,” Elias growled. “You owe me until our progeny are squabbling over whose turn it is to visit us at Hogmanay.”
“We’ll be dropping in on them,” Magnus replied, “because I’ll be bringing the whisky as first footer, and you’ll be tagging along with me. What has you up past your bedtime now?”
“I had dinner with Celeste. She’s after your distillery.”
Magnus tucked the red and brown quilt closer. “Bold, even for her.” And he hadn’t seen that maneuver coming. “What’s her strategy?”
“She’s being gracious in victory. She gets a controlling interest in your distillery, you get a comparably valuable chunk of stock in MacKinnon’s, and she’ll keep her mouth shut about how you’ve wrecked an entire year’s worth of fine single malt. She’ll even give you a few barrels of decent MacKinnon to take its place.”
Magnus leaned his head back and studied the knotty pine ceiling paneling. “A controlling interest in Cromarty Distilleries? Let me guess, my stock is to be signed over to her personally, not to MacKinnon’s, so that when she leaves Daryl sitting on his arse in the dust, there’s no question the Cromarty stock is hers. My reciprocal interest in MacKinnon’s, however, will be held by Cromarty Distilleries, which means Celeste is essentially getting half my business plus fifty-one percent of whatever MacKinnon stock she transfers to me.”
“Took me an hour of puzzling out the fine print, but that’s essentially her scheme. There’s more.”
“With Celeste, there’s always more.”
“She knows you’re out of town and knows I have your delegation. She pressured me to sign a memorandum of understanding in your absence, agreeing to the deal in principle.”
The logs in the woodstove fell, sending sparks dancing up the flue. “Or she’ll start the talk about my bicentennial year being the most pathetic excuse for single malt ever to come out of an oak barrel. By the time I bottle it, I won’t be able to sell it as anything other than industrial disinfectant.”
Despair wound around Magnus’s mood, like the cold drafts that blew along the guesthouse floors. Who knew where they leaked into the dwelling, but even with the woodstove roaring, they were a reminder of snow on the ground.
Melting snow.
“Elias, I’m sending you a water sample. Please get it to the lab straightaway for analysis.” Delicious water, if such a thing were possible. Full of minerals, would be Magnus’s guess.
“I’m so touched. You said please. The aunties would be proud of you. What the fuckity-fuck-fuck-fuck am I supposed to do about your ex-wife?”
Dinner with Celeste had unnerved Elias, which was hard to do. “Nothing, at the moment, though I’ll get back to you in the next day or two.”
“You’ll get back to me? I’m supposed to facilitate a hostile takeover of your business, cast my ethics to the wind, betray half the elders on our notably spindly family tree, and risk Zebedee’s rare but substantial wrath, while you fish for trout—”
“I need to discuss the situation with Bridget. She has instincts I lack and whisky I love.”
“Bridget? She’s the cowgirl with the distill—”
Magnus disconnected from Elias to accept a text from Bridget: Get your handsome Scottish behonkus over here. Brothers are about to come to blows over the pumpkin pie.
Magnus was off the couch in the next instant. He paused only to close the dampers on the woodstove before grabbing his jacket and heading out the door.
Bridget had been parted from Magnus for a little over two hours, and the sight of him still did her heart good. He was in jeans and a flannel shirt rather than his kilt, which made it a little easier to resist hugging him in front of her brothers.
“I have never had pumpkin pie before,” Magnus said, sliding into the seat next to Lena. “Will I like it?”
Lena’s gaze was half worried, half bemused. “It’s mushy, like pudding, but good, like gingerbread and cinnamon toast. You should try it to be polite, but I can finish your piece if you don’t like it.”
“No fair,” Shamus groused. “Little girls get little pieces of pie. Big guys get—”
Magnus speared a bite of Shamus’s pie. “Big guys get a lesson in manners. The person who makes the pie deserves the biggest piece.”
“I helped roll out the dough,” Lena said.
Bridget set a good-sized slice of pie before Magnus, topped with whipped cream, ginger, nutmeg, and cinnamon.
“My thanks,” Magnus said, saluting with a forkful of spiced whipped cream.
No time like the present. “I got a call from Nathan Sturbridge today.”
Patrick shut off the water at the sink and turned, resting his hips against the counter and crossing his arms. “What the hell did he want?”
“Swear jar, Daddy,” Lena mumbled around her last mouthful of pie.
“He wanted to discuss a business proposition involving my grandpap’s land.”
Luke paused, his spoon poised above the bowl of whipped cream. “I don’t like the sound of that.”
“Princess, why don’t you take a dollop of whipped cream to the patient?” Shamus suggested. “Never met an ailment that didn’t respond to a judicious dose of whipped cream.”
“Tornada can have whipped cream?” Lena asked.
“One kitten-sized serving,” Patrick said. “If your uncle Luke is willing to spare a poor, three-legged feline even that much. Don’t let Tornada lick off the spoon.”
Luke passed Lena a spoonful of whipped cream. “I’ll expect Tornada to share a nice, juicy dead mouse with me some fine day. You be sure and tell her that.”
Lena grabbed the spoon and scampered from the kitchen. She’d been smiling, and watching her go, her uncles were smiling too.
“I love you guys,” Bridget said.
The words surprised her, but years ago, these three men—teenagers, then—had watched a younger version of Bridget with the same affection they showed Lena. They were good guys, and they were her family.
“I will kill Nate Sturbridge,” Shamus said. “If he’s rattled you so badly you’re getting all mushy on us.”
“What’s he done?” Patrick asked, taking Lena’s plate to the sink.
“Love you too,” Luke said, passing Patrick the empty whipped cream bowl. “Always have, so don’t think we’ll get stupid on you just when you need us most—except for Shamus. He’s always stupid.”
Shamus tossed a balled-up napkin across the table, Magnus winked at her, and Bridget nearly started bawling.
“Nate wants to put me in jail unless I give him a pipeline easement across my land. He doesn’t know the property is titled exclusively in my
name and thinks you three will convince me to agree.”
“As if,” Luke snorted.
“Like you were going to convince her to sell her distillery to me,” Magnus said. “This pie is delicious. The whipped cream needs a wee dram of an unpeated single malt.”
“Water’s different from business assets,” Luke said. “Water is where the whisky comes from and without water, there’s no good grass if you want to raise livestock.”
That Luke grasped how essential water was to making whisky surprised Bridget.
“Tell us about going to jail.” Patrick resumed his place at the table. “I want to hear all about that.”
Bridget didn’t want to tell them. Now that the moment was upon her, she couldn’t quite find the spin that would excuse her decisions, or make her look anything other than weak, stupid, and gullible.
Magnus regarded her over a half-eaten slab of pie. He wrote outrageously brave words on sticky notes, maybe he could…
“Sturbridge embezzled from the law office,” he said. “He did it in such a way that Bridget’s signature was on the relevant documents—a check for cash, a deposit slip that put client funds into the wrong account. Sturbridge used a signed blank check to move the money to where he wanted it, and he withdrew the actual cash, but he did so over Bridget’s signature.”
“Is that legal?” Luke asked.
“No,” Shamus replied. “No more legal than forging Bridget’s signature would have been.”
“I never have liked Nate Sturbridge,” Patrick said. “He was a year behind me in school and couldn’t keep his hands to himself. Judith didn’t like him, but the guy is always inviting me for a drink when I run into him in town.”
“Now we have to hate him,” Luke said.
“While you’re hating him,” Magnus interjected, “he’s threatening to have Bridget investigated for mishandling the funds. If she doesn’t let him negotiate this pipeline easement, that investigation will go forward, and Bridget will have to explain where the money went.”
“The money I don’t have, because I handed over all of my money to replace what Nate stole.”
Big Sky Ever After: a Montana Romance Duet Page 39