She had to remember that Jess had never seen her in anything but jeans and the exceedingly casual clothes worn in a small coastal town. As he had just pointed out, they hadn’t gone anywhere more sophisticated together. He hadn’t intended to be condescending on the phone. He’d been trying to reassure her.
Sweet man.
Sweet man, hell. It would be a pleasure to shake him up a little. Jess Winter was entirely too sure of his own judgments.
Reaching for the phone again, Elly dialed Sarah Mitchell’s number. When her friend answered after a couple of rings, Elly burst into speech.
“Sarah, do you want to handle the shop for me on Friday and Saturday as well as Monday?”
“Well, sure, Elly. That’s no problem. What’s up? Going out of town early?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact. I wanted a chance to do some shopping in Portland before I go to San Francisco.”
“Okay. I’ll take care of The Natural Choice. You won’t get any argument from me. I can use the money; you know that.”
“Great. Oh, Sarah?” Elly remembered something. “How did the outing go?”
“You mean with Damon Carrington? Don’t ask.”
“It didn’t work out?” Elly thought of Compass Rose’s violent reaction to the man.
“It wasn’t that bad, I guess. We went to the section of beach near your place. You know that cove with the big rock sitting in the middle of it?”
“Sure.”
“Well, the tide was in, so we couldn’t get near the rock to check out the tidepools. The breeze was cold. And Compass Rose had a fit. All in all, not a memorable outing. Haven’t seen Damon since.”
“Oh. I’m sorry, Sarah.”
“It’s probably just as well. If you want to know the truth, there was something about him that reminded me a little too much of Mark.”
“How’s that?”
“You know, all surface glitter and no depth.”
“I think that was Ann Palmer’s reaction, too,” Elly said thoughtfully. “Maybe we country women are a little more astute when it comes to judging men than city boys like to think we are. I know one city male who’s going to find out that he’s got a few things to learn about a particular country woman.”
“Jess?”
“How did you guess?”
Sarah laughed. “A hunch. He’s going with you to San Francisco?”
“I can’t seem to stop him. The thing is, he’s never seen me out of a pair of jeans.” Unless you counted the times he’d seen her naked, Elly amended silently, her cheeks warming.
“He doesn’t know you once lived in San Francisco? That you worked there?”
“Somehow the subject has never arisen.”
That was the truth, Elly realized as she hung up the phone. Jess had only seen her in her small-town setting. He’d assumed she’d always lived on the coast and hadn’t seemed interested in hearing too much about her past. Since Elly no longer had any real interest in her own past, that arrangement had suited her fine. Besides, she had sensed that Jess had liked her the way she was. She fit his inner concept of the kind of wife he wanted. There had been no point in telling him that she’d once lived quite a different life-style. She had been cautious about jeopardizing his image of her.
But his comment regarding her feeling underdressed in San Francisco was really too much. If Jess Winter was going to find out just what Aunt Clara and the family were like this weekend, he might as well learn that there was another side to Elly Trent, as well.
Elly stayed by herself in a Portland hotel on Friday evening. She wanted time to assess the purchases she had made that day and play with makeup. She hadn’t delved into blushers and eye shadow for quite a while. The tiny Italian shoes were going to hurt her feet, but she vowed to ignore the pain. She would be back into moccasins on Tuesday. Recreating the elegant chignon she used to wear when she worked in San Francisco took a little practice, but eventually she was satisfied with the results. The peach silk blouse, narrow white wool skirt and soft peach jacket were nothing short of perfect. She hardly recognized herself.
On Saturday morning Elly put the whole look together, examined herself in front of a mirror and declared herself satisfied. She looked very “Big City.” She drove to the address Jess had given her with a sense of grim anticipation. Whatever else happened this weekend he was going to learn that he didn’t know everything there was to know about Elly Trent.
It wasn’t until she stood in the hallway of Jess’s expensive apartment building that Elly had a few second thoughts. Hesitantly, she raised her hand and then, telling herself it was too late to change her mind, she knocked. The door was opened almost immediately, and Jess stood staring down at her. He was dressed to express quiet corporate power, from his gray vested suite to his subdued silk tie. She found herself staring back. Neither one of them commented on the other’s attire.
“Am I on time?” Elly asked sweetly, glancing around the sophisticated living room.
“Yes.” He shut the door and stood with his hands behind him on the knob. Jess watched her survey the room. “You’re on time.”
“I didn’t want to interfere with your schedule.” She swung around, smiling brilliantly.
“I rarely let anyone interfere with my schedule. Let me grab my flight bag and I’ll be ready to go.” He walked past her, heading for the bedroom.
Elly experienced a moment of trepidation as she heard the coolness in his voice. This wasn’t quite what she had expected. On the other hand, she hadn’t been certain exactly how he would react to the “other” Elly Trent.
He hadn’t even kissed her hello.
“Where’s your suitcase?” he asked as he returned.
“Downstairs in my car.”
He nodded. “We’ll put your car in my slot in the garage. We can take the Jag to the airport.” With calm efficiency he went around turning out lights, picked up a file folder lying on an end table and then he held the door for Elly.
Slightly bemused by his attitude, Elly stepped meekly out into the hall. Wasn’t he going to say anything at all about the way she looked? She waited for some comment all the way to the airport.
“I don’t know if I ever mentioned it or not, but I used to work in San Francisco,” she said later when they were strapped into their seats aboard the southbound jet.
Jess glanced up from the papers he had removed from the folder. “Did you?” He didn’t seem particularly interested.
“I had a job with a large corporation. I was working my way up through management when I decided that wasn’t what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.” God help her; she was starting to babble. Why was she telling him all this? He hadn’t asked. She had wanted him to ask.
“I had no idea.” He went back to the file he was studying.
“Well, I didn’t just spring into existence at the age of thirty behind my cash register.”
“Apparently not.”
Elly gave up. Subsiding into a thoughtful silence, she accepted a glass of juice from the flight attendant and contemplated the seat in front of her. Damn it, she could be aloof and cool, too. That attitude went with her clothes and hairstyle, didn’t it?
It wasn’t until she walked into the hotel room that afternoon and took in the significance of the double bed that Elly began to have a few doubts about her own ability to maintain the arrogant, feminine facade. Of course Jess would expect her to stay in the same room with him. After Wednesday night he had no reason to think otherwise. If she admitted the truth to herself, she couldn’t deny that was the way she wanted things, too. But she felt strangely unsettled. The only solution she could discover was to retreat further and further into her sophisticated, cool image.
“When’s your meeting with Harrigan?” She stood in front of the mirror, tucking wayward tendrils of hair back into a chignon. She watched Jess as he crossed the room to pick up the phone.
“In an hour. I’m going to call him now and let him know I�
�ll be on time.”
“You mean that we’ll be on time.” Elly turned to confront him, frowning faintly. “I’m going to this meeting, too, Jess.”
“There’s no need for you to be there.”
His casual dismissal of her role in the proceedings almost took her breath away. “May I remind you, Jess Winter, that I am the major stockholder of Trentco? If I may be blunt about it, Harrigan works for me. And as long as you’re playing financial consultant, you damn well work for me, too! I’m going to attend that meeting between the two of you. Do I make myself clear?”
He glanced at her as he dialed Harrigan’s number. One brow rose consideringly. “Very clear, boss. You must have been hell to work for back in the the days when you were climbing up through the management ranks.”
Elly felt as if he’d slapped her. She watched, shocked, as he spoke to Matt Harrigan. Hell to work for. Was that how he saw her in her new clothes and elegant hairstyle? She had wanted to appear sophisticated and dynamic. But perhaps she was coming across as cold and hard-edged. He had described his ex-wife that way. Belatedly Elly recalled that when Jess had met Marina she had been an executive in a large corporation.
Perhaps she was beginning to remind him of Marina Carrington.
Quite suddenly, Elly saw her attempt to impress Jess in a whole new light. What if everything she had done today had only served to make him think of Marina? Elly could have wept in sheer frustration. She began to feel trapped by the image she had created. On top of that she didn’t know how to breach the barrier that seemed to be between herself and Jess today. She thought of the rather daring, off-the-shoulder black silk dress she had bought to wear that evening and shuddered. She was very much afraid it would make her look like a very expensively attired witch.
Resentment picked her nerves, making her feel restless and defiant. She had a right to dress the way she wanted. If she were to marry Jess she would continue to dress this way on the occasions when they traveled. Damn it, she couldn’t go through her whole life terrified of saying or doing something that reminded him of Marina. She was an individual in her own right with all the corresponding rights and privileges.
“Four-thirty will be fine. We’ll meet you downstairs in the lobby.” Jess paused, flicking a glance at Elly’s warning expression. “Yes, Elly’s coming along, too. Says she wants to be there. Pointed out that all things considered, she’s the boss.”
Elly could hear the faint sound of Harrigan’s laughter on the other end of the line. He said something that made Jess grin reluctantly before he replaced the phone. He stood with his hands on his hips, feet slightly apart and regarded Elly thoughtfully.
“Harrigan says you’re the one who hired him.”
Elly lifted her chin, daring him to criticize. “He seemed like the right man for the job. I had to make a decision when my uncle died, Jess. The family was at each other’s throats, bickering constantly about the fate of the company. No one was doing anything constructive for Trentco. I, ah, came down to San Francisco and made what I guess you’d call an executive decision. I put Harrigan in charge and went back home.”
“How did you know him in the first place?”
“He’d been working for my uncle. I knew Uncle Toby trusted him and had been more or less grooming him to take over the responsibility of running Trentco.”
“You authorized one hell of an incentive package for Harrigan, apparently. Good salary, bonuses, a lot of decision-making power.”
Elly couldn’t tell if Jess was criticizing her or not. “It seemed like the right thing to do at the time. I have faith in Harrigan, and I’d like to give him a chance to revive Trentco. There are a lot of people’s jobs at stake, Jess. People who worked for my uncle for years and who were fiercely loyal. A lot of them would go if the company were bought out. It seems wrong to sell off a company that’s been in the family for so many years. I know my aunt and a lot of the others are only thinking of the immediate profit, but there’s another generation coming along. Kids like my cousin Dave. In a sense, Trentco is part of their heritage. Someday one of them may want to take a crack at running it.”
“It comes down to the fact that you don’t want to sell.”
“Exactly.” She wondered if he were going to advise her otherwise. “My uncle left me the controlling portion of shares because, even though he knew I didn’t particularly want to run the firm, I’d keep it safe for the next generation. It’s a responsibility I can’t just walk away from, Jess.”
“I know.”
She relaxed a little. “I’m glad you understand.”
“Let’s go meet Harrigan.”
Matthew Harrigan was in his early thirties, an intelligent, aggressive man who could also be quite charming when he chose. He was dark-eyed, attractive and recently married. Elly was a little disappointed that his wife hadn’t accompanied him. She said as much as she introduced him to Jess.
Harrigan chuckled. “Diane said she preferred to stay clear of the screaming match. I guess she thought your aunt and uncle and some of the others were going to be here.”
“The screaming match comes later,” Elly said. “Jess has invited them all to dinner.”
Harrigan regarded the older man with blatant admiration. “Brave man.”
“Are they that bad?” Jess led the way into the quiet atmosphere of the hotel lounge and seated Elly.
Harrigan eyed him thoughtfully. “I think you’ll be able to handle them. Elly does it the easy way by putting a lot of distance between herself and them.” He smiled at Elly. “A policy her Uncle Toby would have understood even if he would have been disappointed.”
Jess’s eyes narrowed. “Disappointed?”
“Didn’t you know? Toby Trent had always hoped Elly would assume control of Trentco. He claimed she was the only one in the family who had a head for business. Elly very gently tried to tell him she didn’t think she wanted the job, but Toby was as stubborn as everyone else in the family. He figured if he left the shares to her she wouldn’t have any choice.”
Cool curiosity dawned in Jess’s eyes as he glanced at Elly, who was concentrating on the glass of Napa Valley chardonnay she’d ordered. “But Elly went ahead with her own plans?”
Harrigan grinned, either unaware or choosing to ignore the tension at the table. “Elly had already made her decision. Toby figured the move to the coast was merely a passing fancy that she would outgrow. He figured she’d return after his death.”
“But she didn’t.”
“She came back long enough to put me in charge, an act for which the rest of the family isn’t prepared to forgive her.” Harrigan’s eyes lit up as he broke into laughter.
“Perhaps,” Jess said coolly, “they’ll change their minds this evening.”
Elly winced at his unruffled confidence. Jess simply didn’t know what he was going to be facing.
But Elly did have an idea of what she was going to be up against, and in the end she dressed to meet the challenge. There was no point reverting to her casual seaside look. The damage had probably already been done, as far as Jess was concerned. She might as well finish off the evening the way she had started the day. Feeling as if she were writing her own unhappy ending, she disappeared into the hotel bathroom shortly before dinner to dress.
When she had bought the coolly elegant yet undeniably sensuous silk, she had imagined overwhelming Jess with the impact. Now she slipped into it feeling as if she were dressing for battle. She knew she had become quieter and quieter during the afternoon. So had Jess. The result had been an almost complete cessation of communication. Elly didn’t want to think about what would happen when they eventually returned to the room that evening. How did you go to bed with someone with whom you weren’t on speaking terms?
Jess took one look at the distant, serenely aloof vision that appeared from the bathroom and nodded once. His eyes gave no indication of what he was thinking, but Elly shivered as she saw the ice in them. She began to pan
ic about what would happen later.
“Ready?” he asked, making a final adjustment to his tie in the mirror.
“Yes.” At his lack of response to her elegant armor, Elly retreated even further behind it. Her sole goal in life focused on a grim determination just to get through the evening.
Jess’s expression darkened, but he said nothing. He merely reached for his keys and opened the door for her.
The ring of stubborn, hostile Trent faces waiting downstairs in the lobby of the hotel was enough to make Elly feel even grimmer than she already did. As she always did on those rare occasions when she was pushed into a corner from which there was no escape, she fought back with a kind of grim determination. She was a Trent, too, and there were times when she could be just as stubborn as the rest. This time the war was waged with cool hauteur and almost savagely polite manners. Challengingly she made introductions.
Aunt Clara stepped forward first, a battleship moving into combat. She examined Jess with a critical eye. She was dressed in the customary knit suit that sheathed her elderly figure. Her gray hair was pinned into a severe bun, and her eyes sparkled with the prospect of battle.
“I do hope you will listen to reason, Mr. Winter, since Elly obviously will not.”
“I always listen to reason,” Jess murmured and then proceeded to dispense his most charming smile. “Especially when it’s all int the family. “
To Elly’s surprise, Aunt Clara blinked under the impact of the smile and then stepped back to introduce her husband and the remainder of the small landing party. She had brought only the most formidable members of the clan with her tonight, Elly observed as she went through the ritual of introductions. In order, she greeted Clara’s husband, Uncle Frank, who always backed his wife’s judgments; Aunt Alice and Uncle Jim, who had their eyes on a yacht that they hoped to buy with the profits from Trentco’s sale; and cousin Cathy, who had no interest in business and even less in thinking of the future. She had just been through a divorce and was bent on restructuring her social life. Cathy was a likable woman, but she tended to live very much in the present. Her two young children were part of the reason why Elly wanted the family to hold on to the company. If it were sold tomorrow, Cathy would have the profits spent by next Thursday. There was no malice in Cathy, but it simply wouldn’t occur to her to sock the money away for the children’s education.
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