“You look nice,” he said. He always acknowledged when he thought JJ had done well in any way, but he didn’t heap praise. He made sure she understood that serious responsibility came with the wealth and privilege she enjoyed, remarking that he had indulged his son, JJ’s father, too much.
“Thanks, Lucas.” After college, when JJ had come into the business full time, it became obvious that the affectionate “Granddaddy” she had always called him made it difficult for others to understand the authority she had. However, the more formal “Grandfather” fell oddly on Southern ears.
Instead of taking a seat, she leaned one hip against the desk, hoping to make the point that although she had come at his request and was prepared to listen, she hadn’t come to chat. “What’s up?” She smiled a let’s-move-this-along smile.
Lucas pushed back in his chair and allowed his elbows to rest on the wide chair arms. Despite his man-at-ease posture, JJ recognized an alpha male proclaiming his territory. A tiny tingle ran up her spine.
The tingle was her only warning that the foundation of her life was about to crumble.
Chapter 7
JJ STOOD IN HER BEDROOM AND CONSCIOUSLY LET GO OF yesterday’s memories. Smiley would never sleep in his dog bed again. She would never see that SEAL again. She would never believe her grandfather was on her side again. All that had happened yesterday was over. The only thing she could do was move on. JJ breathed deeply to ease the tightness in her chest and picked up Smiley’s bed.
Downstairs, she deposited the bed and four others she had gathered from around the house in the laundry room. Smiley, wherever he was, was out of pain now. She hoped someone was with him, someone to throw a ball so he could play his beloved fetch. She refused to dwell on how achingly silent the house was without him.
Beds large enough to accommodate a golden were not cheap. She would have Esperanza wash the covers tomorrow and donate the beds to a rescue organization for goldens in Smiley’s name.
Yes. That would be the first item on the list. With that thought, JJ immediately felt better. In fact, she needed to make two lists, one for herself and one for Esperanza, the housekeeper who came in a couple of times a week. At the thought of two lists, JJ felt more firmly in control, more able to focus on the future rather than the past. Less cut in two by the hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach.
She loved lists. Her employees teased her, saying she had so many that she had to make lists of her lists to keep up with them. They weren’t completely wrong.
She set two list pads on the table in the breakfast nook. She could have retrieved her PDA, but nothing was as satisfying as watching a pencil-and-paper list grow.
From a glass-front cabinet, JJ drew her favorite of her grandmother’s hand-painted porcelain mugs: the one with a delicate spray of lily of the valley. JJ couldn’t use one of the mugs without thinking of her. Her grandmother had been an ardent gardener and student of the art of flower arranging who had refused to drink from crockery, saying coffee only tasted right in porcelain. JJ had found the floral theme mugs, each one a work of art, in Belgium.
From the breakfast nook where she took her coffee, JJ could see the dark evergreen of the fall-blooming camellia sasanqua under which Smiley was buried.
Yesterday’s warm, sunny weather was gone. Today, fat white blossoms brought down by the morning’s heavy drizzle littered the pine needles and obscured the proof that the ground had been disturbed. Already the evidence of Smiley’s life and death was vanishing.
JJ took a swallow of coffee and picked up her pencil.
When she had twenty-nine items on her list and eleven on Esperanza’s, JJ put down her pencil and glanced at her watch. Seven-fifty. A little early to call anyone on Sunday morning, but Vanessa Clemmons was head of the real estate agency and understood that business came first.
“Good morning, JJ!” Vanessa seized the initiative before JJ could speak. Salesman to the bone, she sounded like nothing could have thrilled her more than to recognize JJ’s caller ID. “How are you?”
“I’m fine, thank you. Hope you’re well. How is Harold?” Harold was Vanessa’s husband. Vanessa asked about JJ’s grandfather and how business was at the “car place”—colloquial for car dealership. They agreed the long Indian summer Wilmington had enjoyed had come to an end and Christmas was right around the corner. They traded a few more of the social niceties without which business in the South could not be conducted before JJ said, “Vanessa, I apologize for calling you on a Sunday morning. I won’t take but a minute. I’d like you to find me an apartment.”
A pause. “For yourself?”
“For myself.”
“Hmm.” The line was silent while Vanessa absorbed that. “Well. Frankly, I think it’s high time. Any requirements?”
“I’d like something immediately… and I’d like not to be the object of speculation. That’s why I called you.”
JJ had been the subject of gossip, most of it friendly, some of it not so much, all her life. People could hardly be blamed for finding everything a Caruthers or a Jessup did newsworthy. There were richer people in Wilmington and more distinguished families, but few were so visible to so many people as the owners of a hundred-year-old car dealership whose TV commercials ran every day.
Vanessa was right. JJ should have moved out years ago, right after college, but since she hadn’t, suddenly getting a place of her own would attract a lot of attention.
The real story, that the future of Caruthers was threatened, was bad enough to make the banks that held their loans nervous. Automobile makers were going bankrupt, and dealerships were being forced out of business. The economy would eventually turn around, but it would take fancy footwork to keep Caruthers afloat until it did. But the real story would be nothing compared to the wild stories about a rift between her and Lucas that could circulate.
“When you say ‘immediately…’” Vanessa probed delicately.
“I mean today wouldn’t be too soon.”
“Are you set on an apartment?” Vanessa inquired. “Let me tell you why I’m asking. Lauren Babcock—you know her, don’t you? She wants me to list her beach cottage.”
Lauren Babcock! JJ had seen her just last night, she remembered guiltily, and had been so wrapped up in her own problems that she hadn’t crossed the room to speak to her—although she should have. Lauren had lost her grown daughter back in the summer. JJ had sent flowers and a handwritten condolence card. Still, she should have taken the opportunity last night to speak to Lauren and express her compassion personally.
There was always a huge outpouring of sympathy when a death occurred, but after the reality settled in, the bereaved were often treated as if their grief was an unmentionable disease, as contagious as it was embarrassing. JJ understood why. People never knew what to say and somehow seemed to feel avoidance was better than any possible verbal faux pas. They were wrong.
When her parents died, JJ had endured the other little girls staring at her with round, shocked eyes, pointing and whispering behind their hands. Clumps of little boys had scattered at her approach, taking to their heels as if fearful of getting caught. One little boy, who had once made excuses to sit by her, had turned and walked away when he saw her coming.
Only Bronwyn, her college roommate, had ever wanted to know how JJ felt to lose her parents at the age of nine.
Yes, JJ knew Lauren, and she didn’t bother to think to herself, “Small world.” The world of eastern North Carolina society was small. To her list JJ added: 30. Send “thinking of you” note to Lauren Babcock.
“The thing is,” Vanessa’s voice continued, “this is a terrible time to list beach property. I hate to see it sit unsold or to sell for much less than it should. She doesn’t need to liquidate. I think she’s just reacting to the death of her daughter. Right this minute, the cottage has too many memories, but one day, those memories might be precious.”
“The cottage is on Topsail Island, isn’t it?” JJ liked the thought of helping Lauren out b
y saving her from a bad decision but Topsail was thirty miles north of Wilmington, and when traffic was heavy, the better part of an hour away. “I don’t think I want to commute that far.”
“Hear me out. The cottage comes completely furnished, turnkey ready. You won’t even need to buy towels. It was redecorated a couple of years ago, so it’s fresh and—you know Lauren—top of the line. I don’t know any place else you’ll find to rent furnished, and that’s what you’re used to.”
“I don’t think I’m ready to buy.”
“That’s good, because I don’t think she’s ready to sell—even if she says she is. I’ll work a deal that leaves you free to move and her free to sell. Let me call her and tell her it’s you. Oh, wait. I know how you love dogs. She’s not going to allow pets.”
“Smiley’s gone.”
“I’m sorry. You’re not going to get another one?”
“It wouldn’t be fair to the dog. I just don’t have time for one.”
“In that case, I think I can sell her that with you there, she really can safely put the cottage out of her mind—and I think that’s what she really wants.”
JJ couldn’t help but smile to hear Vanessa’s salesman wheels turning. “What are you going to sell me on?”
“Privacy,” Vanessa answered without hesitation. “The cottages on either side are closed for the winter.”
JJ and Vanessa discussed rents and a few safeguards before hanging up. Vanessa promised to call as soon as she had talked to Lauren.
The feeling of constriction in JJ’s chest eased for the first time since her grandfather had called her into his office yesterday. Well, for the second time, if you counted the few hours she’d spent with the Navy SEAL, Davy No-last-name—but she wasn’t going there.
“What time did you get in last night?” Lucas asked when he came into the kitchen a little after eight. He was dressed in the same slacks and gray and slate-blue, diamond-patterned golf sweater as yesterday.
Before she rose to pour him some coffee, JJ made a note on the separate list she was making for Esperanza to lay out fresh clothes for him.
Her grandfather was no male chauvinist. He believed women could do anything men could. He had never expressed the smallest doubt that JJ could inherit and command Caruthers. He would have rejected any notion that women existed to serve him. And yet, if he had thought about it, which he didn’t, he would have believed he would be invading her territory had he poured his own coffee when she was there to do it.
The simple truth was some woman had always been there to put whatever he needed into his hand. His wife had bought his clothes and laid out what he was to wear every day, made his appointments, handed him his medicine and vitamins to take, bought the gifts he gave, and written his thank-you notes for the gifts he received.
When her grandmother had known she was dying, she had carefully instructed JJ on all she would need to do for Lucas. Lucas had become so lost, so befuddled, and then so sick that JJ had done it.
“Around four-thirty.” She set the coffee—his mug was a blue delphinium—in front of him.
“What were you doing out so late? I don’t like the idea of you being alone on the road at that hour. Anything could happen. You should have gotten a room.”
“I had a lot to do this morning, but the drive home also gave me time to think about our discussion yesterday.” Lucas looked at her expectantly, his green eyes sharp under his bushy white brows. “I’m not agreeing to your demands,” she told him. “Howev—”
“Whether you agree or not,” Lucas interrupted, “one year from today, if you’re not married, I’ll start selling off the business. If you are married and remain so for a year, I’ll put the business in your name.”
“However, I’m not opposed to marrying.” Although Lucas’s timing couldn’t be worse. “I know you don’t believe me. You think I don’t act like a woman who wants a husband, but until the car business recovers more, I don’t see how I can do more. If finding time for a boyfriend is this hard, imagine how hard finding time to keep a husband happy will be.”
Lucas’s bushy white brows lowered in a scowl. “You’re giving your life to that business! Do you think the day will come when it will give you your life back?”
JJ let that go by. Lucas had raised her to think of Caruthers first, but now that she did it, he wanted more. JJ’s fingernails cut into her palms as her hands unconsciously curled into fists. Her jaw clenched, and she fought to keep her voice level. “Anyway, looking at it objectively, I haven’t been successful at finding a husband. I realized I shouldn’t refuse, sight unseen, the men you picked out.”
Lucas humphed, the grooves around his mouth going deeper. “Nothing like a wedding to make a woman think of marriage. Is that what changed your mind?”
JJ crossed her arms. “Hardly.”
He gave her a sharp look. “Did something happen last night?”
Only wild, no-holds-barred sex with a stranger. Only the discovery that she was more dangerously like her parents than she had ever believed and that she must guard more scrupulously against emotion-based decisions if she hoped to live up to her responsibilities. JJ willed her expression not to change. “Like what?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t expect you to give in this easily.”
JJ allowed herself a tight, cold smile. “Rest assured, Lucas, I haven’t given in. However, if I’m going to begin dating seriously, I need a place of my own. I don’t need a grandfather keeping track of what time I come in—or with whom.” And the real reason: if she saw Lucas every day, her anger would boil over and she would do something rash.
“You’re going to move out? But this is your home.”
“Correction: it’s your home. And, as you’ve forcibly reminded me, Caruthers is your business.”
“Now wait a minute. You’re taking this the wrong way.”
“Did you think I would meekly continue to live here while you attempt to coerce me into living my life on your timetable?”
Lucas’s intensified frown told her that was exactly what he had thought.
All his life, Lucas had issued orders and people had done as he said. Smart as he was about making money, careful as he was to treat his workers his idea of well, he had one weakness as a manager: he didn’t anticipate how others would react emotionally. If he thought something was a good idea, he thought they should think it was equally good and be grateful.
JJ watched his face as he sought for some bargaining chips. There weren’t any. JJ was of age, and she had her own money, the Jessup fortune, a legacy from her grandmother. She almost felt compassion for him as she saw how slowly he thought through his options and how poorly he hid the sadness in his eyes. Almost.
“I’m not going to back down,” he said at last.
“I don’t expect you to.”
“Then why…?”
JJ shook her head. He didn’t get it. Even when it was brought to his attention, he didn’t understand that his actions had caused her to withdraw from him. If she tried to explain her feelings, he would only say she was wrong to feel that way.
For the first time, JJ felt a measure of compassion for her father. He had been forced to rebel to obtain any autonomy. One of his most important acts of rebellion had been marrying JJ’s mother, a totally unsuitable woman.
On the drive home, through the darkest hours of the night, JJ had considered—and discarded—the same course. Her father had been heedless of the destruction left in his wake. JJ wasn’t. Her mother had married her father for his money, as she freely admitted, and with no thought to the responsibilities she would acquire. Chaos had followed.
Hundreds of people, if you counted all JJ’s employees and their families, depended on JJ to get this right. She had chosen, instead of mindless rebellion for which others would pay or committing acts that harmed no one but herself, to direct her anger toward its cause. Between yesterday and today, something had hardened within JJ.
There was no point in trying to explain why
she was moving out. If she tried, they would only get into a shouting match.
JJ rose and carried her mug to the sink where she rinsed it and set it in the dishwasher. “You have my cell number. I’ll write down the address and landline number. There are frozen dinners in the freezer if you don’t want to go out to eat. Esperanza will be at church right now, but I’ll call her later and arrange for her to start coming in every day.” JJ smiled coolly as she replaced the sponge. “Is there anything else I can do for you before I leave?”
Lucas Caruthers looked at the set face of his granddaughter. She had the sort of warm, apricot complexion that didn’t pale easily. Except for her eyes, which she had gotten from him, she looked more like her mother, who had had a drop or two of Indian blood. He could see it in the strong curve of JJ’s cheekbones and in moments like this when she could look so unmovable she appeared graven. He understood her, he thought, but he hadn’t anticipated that she would move out as part of accepting his challenge.
JJ’s problem was that there weren’t a lot of men who were her match in drive, strength of character, and powerful will. Without some sort of come-ahead signal from her, most men weren’t going to make a strong enough play to get themselves noticed. Lucas had hoped that if challenged, she would finally start looking at men as suitors. If she applied herself, he felt sure she would find someone worthy, someone to share her life with, someone to be there after he was gone.
He had thought long and hard before offering her the choice of finding a husband or losing Caruthers. He didn’t believe in empty threats, didn’t think he could have gotten by with one anyway. But he had tried every way he knew to make JJ see that she was letting Caruthers consume her.
He understood her drive—she got it from him—and, to an extent, he blamed himself. She was what he had trained her to be. But even when the tide of his young manhood had been in full competitive spate, he had had extracurricular activities. He’d loved taking the Daddy Carbucks, his twenty-six-foot Chris-Craft out to the Gulf Stream for some deep-sea fishing, and if he used the trips to do a little business, that was okay. He didn’t invite anyone who didn’t love the big sport fish as much as he did. There’d been other leisure activities that he wasn’t so proud of, but the point was, he had them.
Mary Margret Daughtridge SEALed Bundle Page 63