The assistant turned up her nose and left in a flurry of discontent, leaving Diane alone in the doorway. Diane waited silently, not moving, her heart pounding in a wild, unnatural rhythm as she continued watching Rick. “Have a seat,” Rick said, his large, tanned hand indicating a leather chair close to his desk. His actions had become smooth and mechanical but he could not hide the tense muscles in his chest and arms. “What can I help you with?” The words were brisk, curt.
Diane took the seat proffered her in a slow, controlled movement, giving herself some time to regain her composure. “I’m a reporter,” she said, fighting to control the slight tremor in her voice, “and I’ve been given the assignment to find out what you’re doing back here. We’d like to know what you’re up to now that you’re running the R & J.”
Rick’s dark brown eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Is that the truth or did you need a reason to come and see me?”
Diane stared at him in astonishment. The bitterness. It was still there. After three and a half years, she could still sense it. The realization startled her. “I am a reporter,” she replied stiffly, “and I am here to cover a story. I can assure you there would be no other reason I’d come see the R & J or its major stockholder.”
If Rick heard the biting tone in her words, he chose to ignore it. “On the contrary, Diane. You have a very good reason to come and see me.”
Diane stared coldly at him. What in the world did he mean by that? “Believe it or not, I don’t. I’m here solely on my editor’s prodding. He would like to know what’s in store for the R & J now that you’ve taken over your father’s position.”
“You’re hiding behind your editor now?” he questioned.
The molten anger Diane had long since buried began nearing the surface. What right did he have to be so bitter? He had been the one who had left her. “I can assure you,” she said finally through clenched teeth, “that it is my editor who sent me here. I guarantee I have no personal interest in you or this company whatsoever.” Three and a half years and here she was reacting to him as if he had never left. Get control of yourself, she inwardly chided. Don’t let him realize the effect he had on you.
Rick stared at her for a long, uncomfortable moment as if reading her as he could so easily before. He lifted his dark brows skeptically while he leaned back in his seat. The silence stretched between them as his dark eyes studied her. He disliked her, it was evident—for the indefinable reason she had mulled over again and again and would never know. But there had been that second, that one fleeting moment when he had first seen her, when it had been different. “So,” Rick stated finally, the word callous and cynical, “you’ve managed to move up in the world. You’re a reporter now. You’ve come a long way, Diane. Only a few know the price you’ve paid to get there.”
Diane lifted her head toward Rick’s, watching him in uncertainty. The price? What did he mean by that? She knew he wanted her to question him about it but she wouldn’t stoop to his level. He had no right to treat her this way. “It seems I have caught you at an inconvenient time, Mr. Embleton,” she said, lifting herself from the chair. “Perhaps I will have to try again later when it won’t be such an imposition.”
She began to leave when Rick’s voice stopped her. “What is it you’d like to know?”
Diane hesitated beside the seat, waiting for a few seconds before she sat back down again, her eyes level with Rick’s brown ones. A battle with the eyes. Diane had heard the term before but she had never participated in one like this. She met Rick’s challenging gaze with as much fortitude as she could muster. “As I said before, my editor would like to know what’s in store for the R & J and what your plans are with the company now that you’re back.”
“Plans,” Rick echoed dutifully. “We’re expanding as my father hoped to do.” He waited for a moment with controlled patience as Diane quietly recorded the information. “We’re seeking investors and then rebuilding and enlarging the office complex. What else would you like to know?” The question sounded condescending.
Diane pretended to be unaffected but her strained emotions were getting harder and harder to control. Rick’s actions were subtly demeaning and cruel—and undeservedly so. “How long do you plan to stay?”
“Long enough to get it done.”
Diane lifted her head, almost ready to question him further about his stay, but then she stopped herself. He obviously didn’t plan on revealing anything of substance. “One more thing,” she said. “There are some rumors circulating around that you are making some changes in management, possibly thinking of letting a longstanding employee go—your father’s general manager, if my understanding is correct. Would you care to shed any light on that?”
Rick’s brows narrowed dangerously as his eyes raked over her features in a scathing glance. “Who told you that?” he questioned, his voice laced with scarcely suppressed anger.
Diane, astonished by his intense reaction, took a moment before answering. “Does it matter who told me?”
Rick stood angrily, marched over to the door and then slammed it with a sharp bang. Diane jumped at the sound, confused as she watched him take his place once again. “Who told you I was letting our general manager go?” he repeated the question, his dark eyes boring through hers.
“I don’t see why it matters,” Diane said. “If it’s the truth, which I’d surmise at this juncture that it is, it will be public knowledge soon. You of all people should understand that your actions will be under public scrutiny, especially in a place like this.”
“If this leaks out,” he cut back sharply, “and I know you’re the cause, believe me when I say I’m not going to sit back and let you get away with it.”
Diane shook her head in disbelief. “Threats? You’re threatening me?”
“They’re not idle threats, either,” Rick said coldly. “If this story gets circulated, rest assured I’ll make sure you never write another one in this town.”
Diane hardly knew how to react. “I can’t believe this. I repeat a bit of speculative gossip and you’re suddenly acting as if I’m the cause. It’s true, then? You are going to lay off J. D. Keaton?”
Rick’s unflinching reaction to the statement told her the truth.
“Let me see if I understand this correctly,” Diane said, pursing her lips in disapprobation. “This man, who’s been around since this company’s inception, is being let go by another man half his age, a man obviously too absorbed in greed and newfound power to look past his own selfish interests. Do I understand your desire to want to keep this quiet?”
Rick’s features only hardened further.
“All you care about is ballooning your newfound wealth. Don’t worry if what you do hurts anyone but make sure no one hears about it. People might not look favorably on the R & J.”
“Don’t play games with me, Diane,” Rick warned. “It is no longer your business. If you make it your business, I guarantee you’ll regret it. I’ll uncover the truth—the past, everything—if you print one word of this.”
“I have nothing to hide.”
“Nothing?” he questioned bitterly. “You’ve effectively buried your mistakes of the past?”
Diane could only glare at him, inwardly seething at his unhidden hostility, hostility that had no basis whatsoever. “Mistakes of the past?” she repeated angrily. “Look, Rick, I don’t know why you hate me and I don’t particularly care but I’m beginning to understand the real you. All you care about is yourself and all you’ve ever cared about is yourself. It’s funny it’s taken me this long to understand that.”
Rick remained still as he studied her, his dark eyes following a trail down her stiff, upturned face to the base of her throat. A small muscle along the outline of his jaw tensed and hardened. “It would seem to me that you’ve got that last statement turned around,” he remarked coldly.
Diane stared at him angrily. All the negative emotions of the past three and a half years suddenly pooled inside her, almost suffocating her. Sh
e attempted to pull herself together before she picked up her purse and tucked it under her arm. “If that’s all, Mr. Embleton, I must be going. Thank you for your time. You’ve gotten off to an excellent start with the PR, don’t you think?” She turned and without a backwards glance, marched out of his office and down the hallway, clenching and re-clenching her fists, shaking slightly from reaction. She hated him. She hated him for what he had done to her in the past, for what he was doing to her now and for everything he had become—a cold, ruthless business man, a cynical, uncaring, dispassionate reflection of the man he had once been. She would—and could—fight him. She’d fight him for herself and whoever else he might hurt. She’d fight him with the only thing she had.
Diane stopped to call her editor right outside the office building. “Carl,” she stated succinctly. “I’d like to do an editorial along with the story you assigned me. Is that okay? Yes. Yes, just now. Okay. I’ll do that. I’ll have everything in before noon.” Her boss had been more than a little surprised at her abrupt change of attitude, she concluded as she turned off her phone. She turned and walked toward her car, her mouth set in angry determination.
A short, succinct article about Rick’s return and plans had been completed a half hour later. The editorial Diane did with it, written after four calls to disgruntled R & J employees, took the majority of her time. Three and a half years of subdued emotion outlined her words, creating a biting tone she would have never believed herself capable of. The words seemed to flow. They were derogatory, demeaning and hopefully explosive. She’d turn the whole region against Rick Embleton—the “dispassionate son” of a good man, the late John W. Embleton, who had done much good before his death.
She had pounded the keyboard almost angrily as she had typed. “The late John W. Embleton of R & J Enterprises, once a well-known and highly respected businessman, would be distraught to see his reputation of trustworthiness shattered by his son only two short years following his death,” she began heatedly in the first paragraph of the editorial. Under the guise of editorial, she continued to spin a heartrending account of J. D. Keaton, the man who would be fired from his long-held position at the company despite the company’s solvent financial future. She focused on the humiliation, the sense of defeat, the loss of recognition he would experience after the years and years of unflagging service in building the R & J. “Embleton, Jr., in the name of progress, is intent on expanding, uncaring of the destruction left in his wake,” she wrote.
The small vent to her bitterness, once started, grew like a leak in a dam until it gushed from a reservoir of emotion she thought she’d long since drained. As she continued line by line, she came to a startling realization. She not only wrote for J. D. Keaton but for herself. Rick had destroyed a part of her life in the same destructive way he now ran the R & J. After Diane had finished, she felt mentally exhausted and physically weak but purged of the emotion that had plagued her—and hopefully purged of Rick J. Embleton for the rest of her life. She wanted nothing more to do with a man as hard, emotionless and unfeeling as Rick had become.
Chapter Two
“We’ve had a few calls, several emails and a couple of texts in response to your article,” Diane’s boss, Carl Randall, informed her as he swiftly walked by her computer terminal the following Monday. “You did an excellent job, much better than I expected. Keep tabs on the story and keep up the good work.” The compliment, despite its drawbacks, had been the first Diane had ever received from her young, sandy-haired employer.
“Thank you,” she countered as she watched his thin, wiry frame—always filled with an intense, animated energy—disappear behind his office door. She let out a sigh before sinking her head into her upturned hands. The emotion-filled weekend had left her fatigued, drained and empty. She could hardly concentrate on her follow-up story, thrown together after several calls from other employees working at the R & J. Her confrontation with Rick had taken an exhausting toll on her; her usual energy reserves had been spent. In reality, it hadn’t been the cathartic weekend she’d hoped for but one spent in turmoil as she tried to reconcile her past relationship with Rick to her new, most recent experience with him.
Try as she might, she couldn’t come to terms with what had happened. She went over and over, again and again, every particle of their conversation at his office—every nuance, every subtle meaning or gesture she remembered he’d made. Still, it didn’t make sense. She could not piece together the exact reason for his intense dislike of her. All she knew was that it existed. She didn’t want to care—even tried and pretended not to—but she did. She felt completely unsettled by her continuing vulnerability to him.
Diane had finally made it over to her grandfather’s on Saturday, the day after her initial interview with Rick, and had spent the day cleaning, shopping and running errands for him, sporadically telling him of her uprooting encounter with Rick. Of all people she knew, her grandfather was the most concerned about her wellbeing. He had been her sole confidante to see her through the whole sordid affair with Rick, including the time he had left her.
Since Diane’s early teen years when she had come to live with her grandparents, after both her parents had passed away in a tragic auto accident, her grandfather had nurtured, loved and cared for her, trying to fill the void that had been mercilessly thrust upon her. Diane loved him for that. After she had grown and had gone through college, she purposefully settled near him, hoping to return his care and affection from years gone by. She allowed him to retain his independence with his small car repair business while she kept a watchful eye upon him as old age—and the death of her grandmother—began slowing him down.
His interest and concern in her life more than repaid her feeble efforts, especially when he became a needed sounding board to get her through the emotionally unsettling times of late. He had listened, with patience and concern, as she had told him of her confrontation with Rick, hashing and re-hashing the unpalatable details. She didn’t know what she would do without his support.
“Diane, call for you on line two,” came her co-worker’s, Liz’s, voice from behind her, interrupting her distracted reverie. “Can you take it?”
“Got it,” she replied. Diane instinctively punched the flashing button on the phone as she held the receiver to her ear. “This is Diane.”
“Diane? This is Rick Embleton.”
Diane tensed, her chest constricting in discomfort as she held her breath for a moment before letting it escape in a slow, unsteady stream. “What do you want?”
“I read your article. I guess you didn’t believe I would follow through on my threats.” His voice seemed strangely sad and resigned, not laced with anger and fury as she had anticipated it would be. The whole somber tone of his voice surprised her and she felt completely taken aback. She sat still and motionless in her chair.
“I don’t see that I have anything to fear,” Diane finally responded, breaking the silence that had stretched between them. “I wrote the truth.”
“The truth? You’ve undermined and essentially destroyed my reputation and the reputation of my company—degradation, I might add, that is without merit—and you call it the truth?”
“Without merit?” Diane echoed in astonishment, anger making her more combative. “You’re saying your employees’ fears, fears of losing their jobs and their positions in the company, are unfounded and without merit?”
The pause which followed her question seemed interminably long. Diane could only picture Rick’s features, which would be stern and impenetrably grave. “I can hardly believe your true concern lies with the employees of my company. I’m only one but I am one who knows what you’re trying to hide. I will, however, consider retracting my determination to expose you if you do a follow-up story, one more amenable to me and this company. That’s the only way I’ll drop this matter. It’s your last chance. I won’t make you another offer. I hope you’ll consider the health and welfare of your grandfather in making this decision.”
&nbs
p; Diane’s chest heaved in silent agitation after his warning, especially after it included someone she loved. What he thought he held against her she could hardly guess but he obviously felt he wielded enough power to make good his promises. The more persistent his threats, however, the more adamant she became about holding to her position. “I’m sorry, Rick, but I have a job to do. I intend to follow through with it and you’re not going to stop me.”
“If that’s how you feel, I have nothing more to say. I’m sorry, Diane, truly sorry.”
Rick hung up. To Diane’s amazement, his voice had indeed sounded remorseful, tinged with genuine regret. She still could not fathom what his intentions were or the enigmatic undertones accenting his words. She stared at the phone in distraction for several minutes after the call, carefully reviewing their previous year-long relationship. What in the past did he feel he held against her? What had she done which could hurt her now? She could think of nothing to betray her—no action, conversation or event which could injure her in the public eye. Then what did he feel he held over her? She didn’t know and she couldn’t guess. She shook her head in a feeble attempt to regain her concentration, forcing herself to return to her work.
The rest of the day dragged slowly by. For some indefinable reason, Diane could not shake off the resulting turmoil after Rick’s call. His farewell played again and again in her mind, upsetting her: “I’m sorry, Diane, truly sorry.” A persistent feeling of dread seemed to increase with every passing minute until she could hardly concentrate. Her head ached with tension and unease. Was she truly worried Rick could hurt her? Was that her problem? “Liz,” she finally said to her co-worker. “I’m taking off a bit early. Tell Carl, will you?”
“Okay,” came Liz’s distracted voice as she concentrated on her work.
Where Lies End Page 2