Kristin examined her mom. She hadn’t seen her look so happy or so carefree since Douglas Richmond died. It did her heart good to see her like that.
“You’re looking great, Mom. And thanks for ordering. Is it sad that I’m so predictable?”
“Not at all. There’s safety in predictability. While you might have been more adventurous as a child, since you came home from college you’ve been careful and considered in your choices.”
And there was yet another reminder about how much Jackson Jones had changed her outlook on life. On everything, to be honest.
“I’m boring, aren’t I? Just say it,” Kristin said with a laugh.
“Careful, I’d say. But not afraid to say what you think, which is what I’ve always loved about you. Among other things, of course.” Nancy reached across the table and patted Kristin on the hand. “Tell me, darling. Was it Jackson Jones who broke your spirit?”
Kristin felt the air in her lungs leave in a giant whoosh, leaving her trapped in a vacuum where sound and logic temporarily ceased to exist. How on earth had her mother deduced that so quickly? She forced herself to draw in a breath, then another, and slowly the noise of the patrons around them, the music in the speakers, and the sounds of waiters moving about began to filter back in.
“What makes you ask that, Mom?” she asked, opting for deflection versus actually answering the question.
Her mother nodded. “Okay, I get the hint. Your response is all the answer I need. I always suspected that there was a man behind the change in you when you came home from college. I know your father paid your full tuition on condition that you didn’t date while you were studying, and I always wondered why. I guess we all know now, don’t we? Douglas probably didn’t want to take the risk you’d meet up with one of your half siblings. So, back to Jackson—shall we fire him?”
Kristin blinked hard, then stared at her mother in shock. “You’d do that?”
“He hurt my baby girl. Is he the kind of man we want looking after us? You tell me.”
“Mom, it was a long time ago, and we were very young and very different people then. If he steps out of line, then yes, we’ll show him the door, but Hector trusts him and you trust Hector, right?” Her mom nodded. “Let’s leave things as they are, okay?”
“One day, you’ll tell me what happened.”
“It’s water under the bridge now.”
“If you say so. Oh, look, here’s our lunch.”
They ate their meals and conversation turned toward the wedding, which Nancy and Hector wanted to celebrate on New Year’s Eve.
“It seemed appropriate to us that we see the New Year in as husband and wife. A symbol of starting our new life together. Obviously, we’d like to keep the guest list small and intimate. Invite just family and a few close friends. We’ll have it at home. And I’d like to ask you to do a favor for me.”
“Anything, Mom.”
“Would you be my maid of honor?”
“I’d be delighted. Does that mean I get to catch your bouquet?” Kristin smiled.
“Only if you want to,” Nancy said with a wink. “Of course, you’ll be partnered with Hector’s best man. I hope that won’t cause any issues.”
Kristin thought she’d met all of Hector’s contemporaries at some stage over the years. Their families had been good friends even when his wife was still alive. She’d died about fifteen years ago. How bad could it be to be partnered with someone his age? At least they’d hopefully be able to do a decent turn on the dance floor when the time came.
“Issues?”
“With Jackson.”
“He’s going to be Hector’s best man?”
“Not if you don’t want him to be. Hector and I discussed this, especially in light of your response to meeting him last week. Our wedding is going to be a wonderful celebration of the gift of our love but I don’t want it to be a trial for you. Hector agrees with me.”
“Mom, seriously, don’t worry. Hector must have whomever he wants as his attendant at the wedding. We’re all mature enough and sensible enough to be civil with one another.”
At her mother’s arched brow, Kristin felt a heated flush of embarrassment stain her cheeks.
“Okay, so I wasn’t acting mature or sensible last Friday, but Jackson and I have spoken on at least two separate occasions now and we’ve managed to be extremely adult about everything. Everything will be fine.”
Even though she spoke with confidence, Kristin couldn’t help but cross the fingers of one hand in her lap. Her mom beamed.
“Thank you, darling. You mean the world to me, and I hate seeing you unhappy. This past year has been tough on all of us, but you most of all, I think. I look forward to seeing that beautiful smile of yours more often.”
Kristin made a mental note to try harder for her mom and decided that a change of subject was in order.
“Have you decided what you’re going to wear? Will the wedding be during the day, or evening?”
“Evening, so we can party the night away. As to a dress, I thought the one I wore to the last Richmond Foundation dinner would be suitable. I’ve only worn it once.”
“Oh no, you can’t wear something you already own!” Kristin protested.
“Why not? It’s something old, like me,” Nancy said with a self-deprecating laugh.
“Because it’s your wedding. I know you and Dad had a whirlwind courtship and chose a registry office wedding, so I think you deserve to have all the trimmings this time around. And I’d like it to be my gift to you. Please, don’t argue with me on this. Let’s make a date to go shopping on the weekend. I’m sure we’ll find something that’s perfect for you.”
Her mom’s eyes filled with tears of joy. “If it means so much to you, then, yes, I accept.”
Kristin smiled at her mom and felt like she’d done something right for the first time in a long time. The wedding would be everything her mom’s heart desired, because she deserved the very best. Not for one moment had she faltered in her dignity or her love for her family. Not through the grief of Logan’s kidnapping, or the shock of having him return more than thirty years later. Nor when she was hit by the sudden death of her husband followed by the awful revelation about his second wife and kids.
Nancy Richmond was style and class and a mother’s love all wrapped into one incredible package. Kristin needed to take a leaf from her mother’s book and learn to cope the way she did. Maybe then she’d feel like she had some kind of control over her life again.
Back in the office, Kristin made a decision. It was past time she stopped shouldering all the responsibility of her department on her own. There were a couple of potential candidates in the finance team who could, and likely deserved to, take on the role left vacant by Isaac’s departure. People she knew and trusted to do the job right. It would surely be easier to fill one of their roles, either internally or by taking on a college graduate, than to allow a rank outsider into the company into a position of relative power. She made a call to the new head of HR and set out her parameters. She listed the three staff members in her department she thought might be suitable for the promotion and requested they be contacted regarding their interest in the role. By the time she got off the phone she felt like ceremoniously dusting off her hands and congratulating herself on a job well done. There, she was making changes and delegating control.
Her thoughts turned to her mom’s upcoming wedding, and she quickly searched suitable retail outlets that stocked the kind of thing her mom might like to wear for the wedding, and that would carry something she could buy for her role as maid of honor, too. She made a list and added them to the calendar in her phone, together with GPS coordinates so they could make the most of their day.
The wedding would be lovely, and her mom would look beautiful. She wondered just how much time she and Jackson would have to spend together at the event. Her
mom was big on observing old-style etiquette whenever she could and often said that people were sadly losing sight of the common courtesies and expectations of the past. They’d probably be expected to have at least one dance together. How would that feel, being held in his arms again? She pushed the thought away as quickly as it had surfaced, but not before she felt a definite kick of interest unfurl from deep inside.
She tried to tamp down the sensation but it stubbornly wouldn’t budge, so she defaulted to what had worked for her in the past. Anger. She got good and mad at Jackson Jones all over again. Heck, at all the men who’d let her down over the years, Isaac and her father included. But while Isaac’s betrayal had been a vicious blow, her father’s deception had been the cruelest. He’d been her rock. The measure by which any guy she went out with was compared to. And he’d turned out to be a fake. Well, she conceded, not entirely a fake because he had, apparently, loved both his wives and both his families very much. But he had deceived all of them with his duplicity and that had, directly or indirectly, brought Jackson back into her sphere.
Kristin got up from her desk and went to the window. It had started to rain. The dreary weather was a perfect representation of how she felt right now. She’d thought she had everything so right in her life. That she was achieving both her work and relationship goals. On the work front, they were now clawing to hold their place in the construction market, their strength having been undermined by the scandal of her father’s double life and the subsequent espionage attempt by Warren Everard, and her private life had imploded. All her hopes for her future washing away like the rain skating down the sheet glass windows facing her.
She drew in a long, deep breath and let it go again. It wasn’t like her to dwell on the past. But when the past came up to you and whacked you on the side of your head, you had to find a new way of coping. She would do that, because she was a survivor, she told herself sternly. She adapted. She thrived. She carried on. And she would do exactly that.
Eight
Jackson checked his email from home before the short commute into the office. He found it helped to be totally prepared; during his drive in, he could let his subconscious mull on any issues that had arisen and be able to act on them by the time he got to his desk. It was ten days since his dinner with Kristin and there’d been no further correspondence on the Richmond estate claim, so he wasn’t surprised to see a new email in his inbox from the claimant. It had several attachments.
He opened the email and scanned its contents quickly. The claimant reissued their demand for money with a repeat of the January 7 deadline for payment. Now, though, they added a threat to start leaking news about their claim and their mother’s affair with Douglas Richmond to the media if they didn’t receive at least half the payment by December 31. A bank account number was included in the email. He grunted. This really didn’t sit well with him. The matter needed to be put into the hands of the police, whose resources to trace who was behind the claim were far more extensive than his. But he had to be guided by the family’s wishes.
Jackson clicked on the attachments to view what were obviously scanned photographs of who he presumed to be Douglas Richmond, or someone who looked very much like him, and a much younger woman with blond hair and a pretty smile. In themselves, the photos were hardly incriminating, until you looked at the placement of Douglas’s hand on the woman next to him. His arm was around the woman’s back, but his hand was higher than her waist, almost under her breast, as if he were sneakily caressing her breast with his thumb. It potentially suggested an intimacy between them that might not have been immediately obvious to others around them.
If this photo had not been doctored in any way and indeed was that of a boss with a staff member, there were obvious questions to be asked. First, was the woman in the photo a willing participant in what was a very intimate touch, or was this a case of sexual harassment? Was that the reason behind the payment this person claimed Douglas had made to their mother? Jackson made some notes on his phone to follow up with the HR department at Richmond Developments on staff records from the time the claimant said their mother worked for the company. If he could establish her identity, it would also help track down the claimant.
By the time he arrived in the office, he had a to-do list as long as his forearm on the Richmond matter, which didn’t bode too well for any other client activity today. Still, Hector had built a great team in the practice and a lot of the work could be allocated to junior lawyers or interns, so that was exactly what Jackson would do where he could. He was relieved that his arrival at the firm had been well received. It meant he got the support he needed, when he needed it and, right now, it was important to him to get this matter with the Richmond family sorted out as quickly and calmly as possible. He owed it to them and to his friendship with Hector to get it 100 percent right all the way. And even though they’d cleared the air between them, he still had something to prove to Kristin, too.
He knew only too well how hard it was to earn trust from another person and how easy it was to lose it. He’d had to work darn hard to get Annie to look at him as anything other than a junior partner in the law firm where they practiced. She’d mentored him, encouraged him, coached him and done all the things that helped to make him a fine attorney. But she’d been dead set against allowing him to woo her.
It had taken a couple of years, but eventually he’d worn down her resistance and shown her that he was steadfast in his feelings for her and that the disparity in their ages meant nothing to him. It was only then that he’d learned about how she’d had a workplace relationship with an older man when she first passed the bar, and how she was unceremoniously dumped and fired when she’d gotten pregnant. Her trust had been shattered, and to protect herself and her special needs son she’d become careful about whom she allowed into her life and her heart.
Becoming a stepdad to a person only a few years his junior had brought its challenges, even if Ben had the mental age of a six-year-old. But his relationship with Annie’s son had grown to such a point that Ben looked forward to spending time with him and he with Ben, also. In fact, they had a special evening planned this week. Pizza and a movie marathon. Ben had mostly settled well into the residential care facility here in Seattle, but he looked forward to his visits with Jack.
Jackson settled at his desk and was halfway into composing an email to a forensic image analyst he worked with to see if the claimant’s photos had been altered—when the phone on his desk buzzed.
“Yes?” he answered, his tone short.
“Sorry, Mr. Jones. I know you asked not to be disturbed but it’s Mr. Ramirez on the phone, and it sounds urgent.”
“Thank you, put him through.” Jackson waited a couple of seconds until Hector came on the line. “Hector, how are you, my friend?”
“Not so good, I’m afraid.”
The man sounded terrible, his voice shaky and weak.
“Do you need my help?” Jackson asked.
“No, no. It looks like Nancy and I have a bad dose of stomach flu. We’ve seen the doctor, but we’ve been warned to remain isolated from other people for a few more days.”
“Sorry to hear that, Hector. Do you need anything at the house? Is Martha okay?” Jackson’s mind raced through the possibilities of what he could do to help out his friend if their housekeeper was also ill.
“No, she’s fine. She’s preparing meals for us and sanitizing everything we touch or use. The woman has been an incredible help. We’ll be okay. In fact we’re pretty much on the mend now, but I desperately need you to do a favor for us.”
“Name it.”
“We were supposed to be attending a gala for the Richmond Foundation on Thursday evening. We won’t be clear to socialize by then and I was hoping you could take my place. You don’t have to make any speeches or anything like that. Just smile and shake a few hands, thank the donors when they’re introduced to you by the organizers, t
hat sort of thing.”
Jackson knew what was expected of him. He’d attended many such events with Annie, who’d been the patron of a charity that worked to benefit children, like Ben, who’d been brain-damaged at birth.
“Hector, I have another appointment for that evening. Let me check with them, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”
They ended the call, and Jackson gave a sigh of frustration. It was always the way, wasn’t it? He had booked that evening to spend with Ben, and now this had come up. He couldn’t let Hector down, though, and it was part of his role as the family’s attorney to attend events like this. Hector had initially told him he was off the hook for this one because he and Nancy had been looking forward to it. Jack only hoped that changing the date on his stepson on short notice wouldn’t inconvenience or upset him.
Another phone call later, Jackson called Hector. “I’m good to go.”
“Excellent, thank you. Nancy and I do appreciate this.”
“Has Nancy asked someone else to go in her stead?”
There was a slight hesitation on the other end before Hector answered. “Yes, she has asked Kristin to attend.”
“Does Kristin know I would be escorting her?”
Again there was a small pause, as if he were conferring with Nancy, before Hector answered. “Not yet, but that won’t be a problem. Nancy tells me that you two have sorted out your differences, yes?”
“Yes,” Jackson said, although he didn’t for one minute believe that Kristin had forgiven him for what he’d done to her, nor likely ever would.
“Then that’s all settled. We’ll courier the event invitations to you and the car has already been booked. It’ll collect you first, then Kristin, and take you to the venue.”
For just a minute, Jackson wondered if he was being manipulated by his older friend who suddenly sounded a lot less shaky and weak than he had in the earlier call. But then he shrugged that off. Hector wasn’t into sneaky machinations. In fact, he was one of the most open and up-front people that Jackson had ever had the pleasure to know. But Hector was a romantic at heart, and if he’d thought he could engineer a reunion of long-lost lovers, he probably would have a stab at it. Jackson shook his head. No, he was being ridiculous. Hector was way too wrapped up in his own romance to be trying to engineer someone else’s. It would only be natural for Jackson and Kristin to attend in Hector and Nancy’s stead. He was overthinking things, the way he always did.
What Happens at Christmas… Page 7