by Jackie Braun
“But you haven’t talked to him.” It was more statement than question. “Avoiding him, Kate?”
She merely smiled. Avoiding the unpleasantness that was bound to ensue was more like it. But her day of reckoning would soon be at hand.
Chapter Seven
Kate had barely stepped into the front parlor of her father’s home on Sunday when her stepmother ambushed her with a hug.
“Katherine! Happy birthday, sweetie!” After kissing her cheek, she whispered in her ear, “Your father is pretty upset that you haven’t returned any of his calls for the past week. I’ve told him to be on his best behavior. This is a celebration, after all. But you know how he can be when he’s in one of his moods.”
Kate’s already unsettled nerves jangled upon hearing the news, but she smiled and whispered back, “Thanks for the warning.”
She and Eliza had little in common, but they were very genuinely fond of each other. Her stepmother wasn’t the evil sort made famous in fairy tales, even if her affair with Kate’s father had begun shortly before her parents’ divorce. Kate had never held Eliza responsible for the breakup. Her parents’ relationship had been strained for years by that point. While Kate could have blamed her father for his workaholic ways, her mother’s withdrawal—and her unwillingness to get help for her depression, Kate could admit now—had played a big part, too. Her mother hadn’t put much effort into saving their marriage until it was too late.
If Eliza had one fault, it was that her guilt over Kate’s mother’s suicide had caused her to dote on Kate and worry about her almost as much as her father did.
Holding Kate by the shoulders, Eliza made a tsk sound. “You look so tired. You need more sleep. And a good concealer.”
Her stepmother’s lips pursed. Fine lines feathered out around them. Even the most skilled plastic surgeon could not completely thwart the aging process, though her stepmother had paid enough to let them try. Unlike Kate’s mother, Eliza was eager to do whatever it was that would make Jonathon happy. And having a beautiful wife made him happy.
“You know what you need? A vacation. I highly recommend that spa in Aspen that I visited in May. I came back looking five years younger and feeling better than I have since my twenties.”
Kate let out a startled laugh. “Eliza, I just started a new job. I can’t get away for a vacation.”
“Shh!” She glanced behind her to the hallway that led to Kate’s father’s study. “Let’s not bring that up, all right?”
“I won’t, but you know he will.”
“I’ve asked him not to.”
Even Eliza’s considerable powers of persuasion met their match in Kate’s father. But Kate smiled. “Do I really look that bad?”
Her stepmom wrinkled her perfectly sculpted nose. “Kate, with your bone structure, you can never look bad. But more sleep, a facial, and a seaweed body wrap wouldn’t hurt. I’ll book you a suite at Awakenings Spa & Resort. My treat. Consider it another birthday present.”
“That’s kind of y—”
Eliza went on before Kate could finish. “Ask for Vivian when you go for a facial. The woman is amazing.” She laid a hand against Kate’s cheek. “You know, now that you’re thirty, you need to start taking better care of your skin.”
Because she’d said it with real concern, Kate wasn’t insulted. “Thanks, Eliza. But as I said, a vacation will have to wait.”
“That’s right, dear,” her father interrupted as he strode into the room holding a glass of what Kate assumed was aged scotch. The pricey spirit was his drink of choice, while Eliza preferred vodka martinis. “Kate remains gainfully employed. According to Collin, you’re the new vice president of operations.”
So, Collin had reported back to her father on her job, had he? She’d expected as much. Although after the unpleasant exchange outside human resources, she’d wondered if maybe he would be hesitant. He’d implied she’d slept with Brody for her job. Surely that wasn’t something he would want her father to get wind of.
“Hello, Dad.” Because it was expected, she brushed a kiss against his cheek. “You’re looking…rested.”
Except that he wasn’t. He looked tired despite having had more than a week to do whatever he wanted now that he wasn’t running a company.
“Katherine, how could you go to work for that…that upstart? I know it’s not about the money. You have the trust fund your mother’s parents left you.”
“You’re right, Dad. It’s not about the money. It’s about Douglass Shipping. It’s about everything Great-granddad, Granddad, and you worked to build. I couldn’t just walk away without trying to save it, to keep Brody Flynn from selling it off piece by piece.”
“I know you mean well, and I appreciate the sentiment, but for God’s sake, Katherine, you’re working for the enemy! Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
“I’m working at the company my family built,” she responded evenly, borrowing from the script she’d rehearsed in her head on the way over.
“Well, it no longer belongs to our family. He stole it out from under me!”
If not Brody, someone else likely would have come along and challenged her father’s ownership. She’d seen enough of the financial reports to know that he had made some unwise decisions over the past few years, decisions that had left the shipping giant vulnerable to takeover. Pointing that out now wouldn’t earn her any points. So she held her tongue except to say, “He and his investors bought up a majority of the stock.”
“It’s more than that.”
“What are you saying?”
“He didn’t just want Douglass Shipping. He wanted to hurt me. It’s personal, Katherine.”
Personal. Hadn’t she thought that, too, that first day in the parking garage? Brody had seemed so angry when she’d compared him to her father. But she’d seen no real evidence of her father’s accusation since then. And her own digging on the internet hadn’t revealed anything, either.
He shoved a hand through his hair, leaving it an unruly mess. She hadn’t seen him this upset since…the day of her mother’s death, she realized. He’d rushed to Mom’s apartment, arriving at the same time as the paramedics and police. He’d held a shattered Kate in his arms, stroked her hair, and promised over and over that he would keep her safe. Well, he was tearing her a new one now.
“You’ve played right into his hands. The bastard is using you to get to me!”
He set his drink down on a side table with such force that scotch sloshed over the rim. Eliza, who had spent the past several years furnishing the house in pricey selections from around the globe, hurried over to pick up the glass and blot the liquid with a cocktail napkin.
“Jonathon, be careful!” she admonished. “This table is made of Carpathian elm.”
“I don’t give a damn about the table. I care about my daughter.” His tone softened. His expression lost its hard edge. And just like that he was back to coddling her. “If anything happens to you…”
“Dad, Brody’s a businessman, not a serial killer.” Kate forced out a laugh, hoping the joke would lighten the mood. It didn’t. The tension only grew heavier once Eliza excused herself. Alone with her father, she tried to reassure him. “I know what I’m doing, Dad. I’m not working for the enemy. I’m working at the corporation I’ve always hoped to run one day.”
He pinched his eyes closed before letting out a weary sigh. “You’re not going to run anything. He plans to gut it. Sell everything to the highest bidders he can find. He doesn’t care about Douglass Shipping.”
“Perhaps not. But I do.” She reached for her father’s hands then and gave them a quick squeeze as she said a second time, “I do.”
“Oh, sweetheart. Caring isn’t enough.”
“I know.” She swallowed, plowed ahead. “Remember the report I wrote up on the hubs and some of the other faltering divisions? Brody has expressed interest in my ideas.”
Her father’s eyes widened in seeming surprise, and he pulled his hands away. “Interest
?”
“Yes. He’s given me another week to do whatever updating is necessary to reflect the company’s current situation. Did you…” Her voice wavered and she had to start again. “Did you ever read the full report?”
“I thumbed through it right after you gave it to me, before I passed it on to Goldman.”
“Thumbed through it?” It was just as she’d suspected, but that didn’t make hearing it any less hurtful. “You thumb through a magazine while you’re seated in a waiting room. It’s a way to pass time. I spent weeks poring over the financial data from the previous six quarters.”
Eliza returned then with a cloth in one hand and a can of furniture polish in the other. She cleared her throat to draw their attention. “Your grandmother called to say she is running a little late. After I clean this, how about I pour you a drink, Katherine?”
“In a minute,” Kate replied, returning her gaze to her father. This conversation had been put off too long already.
He sighed heavily. Again, she was struck by how tired he looked. “I planned to give it a proper going-over, but I was a little busy, as you may recall, trying to stave off Flynn’s attack.”
Busy. An oft-used excuse she remembered well from her childhood. One that still made her feel marginalized. She called him on it now.
“Would you have been too busy to give it your full consideration if one of your cronies had given it to you?”
Eliza had finished wiping up the end table. From the corner of her eye, Kate saw her down the scotch that remained in her father’s glass in a single gulp. No doubt bracing herself for the confrontation to come.
“That’s not the issue.” Impatience colored his tone.
She pretended not to hear it and asked, “What about Collin? If your golden boy had been the one to author the report, would you have given it your undivided attention then?”
“This isn’t about Collin.”
But she pressed, “He’s working for Brody. Are you upset with him?”
“He has a job to do.”
As curious as she found her father’s reply, she couldn’t afford to be sidetracked. “My ideas have merit, Dad. Brody thinks so. He thinks—”
Her father cut her off with a snort. “Don’t be so naive. Even assuming your ideas have merit, what he thinks is that they will make the company more profitable for when he finally sharpens his ax and takes it apart.”
She didn’t want to believe Brody would do that. Regardless, she wouldn’t let it happen.
She twisted her ring, screwed up her resolve. There was another matter that needed settling. “I have a question for you, and I want an honest answer. If Brody hadn’t come along, if the company had been stable and remained under your leadership, would you have let me take over? Eventually, I mean. When you retired.” Her heart thudded painfully as she awaited his reply.
“Katherine, sweetheart…” His tone turned placating now. She wished he’d remained impatient with her. That was so much more palatable than this. Sure enough, he reached out and stroked her hair in much the same way he had the day she’d found her mother.
“Would you have?” she pressed in a hoarse whisper.
“There’s no need to get into that now.” He pulled his hand away, waved it in dismissal, and something inside Kate broke. He might have sidestepped her question, but she had her answer.
“At least Brody Flynn takes me seriously,” she said quietly.
“Oh, Kate,” her stepmother moaned. Eliza knew now that the can had been opened, the worms would start wriggling out, and a peaceful family dinner would be unlikely.
“Sorry, Eliza. But it’s true,” she murmured.
“I take you seriously,” her father argued. “I paid for your education. Offered you an internship even though you turned it down to work for a competitor,” he reminded her pointedly. “And after you earned your degree, I gave you a job.”
“One without very much responsibility and even less authority,” she shot back, folding her arms over her chest. Absently she was aware of the thunk-thunk-thunk of her heart beating beneath her forearm.
“You always say that, but your grandmother excelled in the position I gave you. Are you discounting her contributions to the company?”
“Of course not.” Her grandmother remained a force to be reckoned with despite her advancing age. “But I want…more.” She dropped her arms to her sides. “I wanted to follow in your footsteps, not hers.”
Her statement caused him to scowl. “Being in charge isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. You have no idea the kind of stress that comes along with that sort of responsibility.”
And he didn’t think she could handle it. In his eyes she would always be just like her mother. Emotionally fragile. Unstable.
“Brody thinks I can handle it.”
Her father made a scoffing sound. “Are you sure about that?”
She resented the question. Resented even more the doubt that had crept in.
“Brody Flynn has ulterior motives,” her father insisted. “Do you honestly believe just because he gave you an impressive title and more responsibility he’s going to hand over the reins of the company someday? That’s assuming, of course, that there will even be a company whose reins can be handed over.”
“Jonathon, please,” Eliza pleaded. “It’s Katherine’s birthday. Can’t this discussion wait until another time?”
“It’s all right,” Kate told her stepmother. To her father, she said, “I don’t expect Brody simply to hand over the reins. My goal is to be in a position to buy Douglass back when the time is right.”
Her father’s expression sharpened. “Do you…” he began, only to stop and clear his throat. “How do you intend to do that?”
Having a goal and having a plan were two different things. While she had the former, the latter was a hazy patchwork of thoughts at best. But she pressed on. “Well, he’s a businessman. He bought the company to make a profit. But I don’t think Brody’s lifelong ambition lies in logistics. Eventually, he’s going to want to move on. So, while my immediate goal is to ensure he sees the value in essentially keeping Douglass whole, my long-term goal is to raise the capital necessary and make him an offer.”
Just that quickly, her father’s smile turned indulgent. “Of course.”
“You don’t seem to agree.”
“Oh, I do. We have the same goal, Katherine. We just have different ideas of how to go about it.”
She was still puzzling over what he meant when Eliza pressed a glass of wine into Kate’s hand and a refilled glass of scotch into her father’s. Reaching for her own goblet of chardonnay, she said, “Now that that’s settled, I think this occasion calls for a toast.”
Her father raised his tumbler of scotch. “To my lovely daughter on her thirtieth birthday.”
Eliza smiled. “Yes, to Katherine.”
Kate tapped her glass to theirs, but made a toast of her own before taking a sip.
“To the future of Douglass Shipping.”
Kate planned to stay for dinner. Her grandmother was en route and her stepmother had gone to a lot of trouble ensuring that all of Kate’s favorites were on the menu. But before she’d taken more than a couple sips of her wine, her father mentioned that Collin had been invited as well. Kate’s appetite fled. No way could she sit through a meal seated across from him. Pleading a migraine, she left.
She’d hoped to avoid Collin altogether, but wouldn’t it just figure that his sporty red foreign coupe pulled up the circular drive before she could hop in her convertible? As tempted as she was to leave without saying a word to him, she waited while he parked, got out of his car, and crossed to where she stood.
“Happy birthday, Katherine!”
She stepped back before he could kiss her cheek and replied, “Thank you.”
“I was worried I would be late, but I see you just got here yourself. Did you run into that traffic backup on 41, too?”
She shook her head. “Actually, I’ve been here. I’m just
leaving.”
“Leaving? Right now? But you’re the guest of honor. You can’t take off before dinner.” He cocked his head to one side. “God, I hope it’s not because of me. Because of the way I behaved the other day after the interviews. I apologized then and I will again now, if you’d like.”
It was on the tip of her tongue to point out that he’d only apologized at the office in order to save his job, but she decided to let it go. “There’s no need for that.”
He nodded, looking relieved. “So we’re good then?”
“We’re fine.”
“If we’re fine, why are you leaving?”
She opted not to play the headache card with him. Bad enough she’d had to pull out something so lame with her father, especially when it would only serve to confirm his concerns over her fragility. Come Monday he would be calling her with a list of specialists and insisting she make an appointment.
So she told Collin, “I visited with Eliza and Dad. We toasted my birthday, but I can’t stay for dinner. They’re expecting you, though. You should go in.”
Of course she wasn’t rid of him so easily. “I think I know the problem.”
“There’s no problem.”
He continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “Are you suffering from a case of divided loyalties, perhaps?”
“My loyalties are where they’ve always been.”
“Mine, too. With your father.”
Kate had meant the company.
Collin continued to study her. “Let me guess. You and your father had a fight. It doesn’t surprise me. Jonathon was pretty upset when I spoke with him earlier in the week.”
“Yes, thanks for that, by the way.”
“The relationship I have with your dad has nothing to do with the relationship I have with you. He doesn’t want you working for Flynn.”