Mergers & Acquisitions

by Jennifer Griffith

  Aero. Aero Jantzen. Sometimes when I looked at him he had hero written all over him. I probably had smitten written all over myself.

  We pulled up at a heavy iron gate, and he put in a code. Gated communities elicited a heavy sigh from me. This place, with all its mature trees and beautiful walkways, probably had wicked-high home owners’ association fees, I thought as we left the gate behind us and motored down a secluded lane. Not to mention location. We were so near the Huntington Gardens we could have probably smelled the azaleas from the hedges if it had been springtime.

  After the gates rolled shut behind us, I kept looking around for the types of homes in this subdivision. However, no other houses came into view. I peeled my eyes in the late morning sun, but all I saw were trees and gardens and gazebos and flowered walkways and …

  Holy smokes, what was that?

  “Welcome to Holland House.” He pulled into a cobblestone circular driveway and put the car in park. “It’s a little much, but we call it home.”

  My body super-glued itself to the upholstery of the car. Before me stretched a mansion reminiscent of the kind I’d seen only on British television period dramas.

  “Is it a hotel? You live in a hotel.”

  “With twenty-six bedrooms and eighteen bathrooms, it almost could be.” He got out and came around to get my door.

  I don’t know how I managed to peel myself out of the car and wobble toward the front doors, considering all the grandeur looming in front of me. The bricks alone—

  “And it’s just you and your grandma.” Every window of the natural brick edifice had white casing, black shutters, and a window box spilling over with autumn flowers. Two stories, it had balance and grace, with it’s eleven windows on each wing from this massive, pillared front entrance. I’d done a quick count to discover that number. For all its monstrous size, it didn’t look the least bit gaudy.

  “Georgian architecture?” I followed him into a grand foyer with a broad staircase that begged to have someone slide down the banister.

  “Exactly. The symmetry is a dead giveaway. You know architecture, huh?”

  Lucky guess, truthfully. But wow. My eyes darted from scene to scene, from chandelier to chair rail to ceiling medallion to perfectly placed coat rack to—

  “I guess you can see what I mean by it’s too big for just two people.”

  “I thought Ryker—”

  “He lives over the garage in a separate quarters built when the previous owners— before my grandfather— kept a chauffeur. You’ll probably be shocked to know that Ryker’s favorite movie is Sabrina, so he insisted on the garage apartment.”

  “I’d say pretty much nothing about Ryker shocks me anymore.” I was still gawking like a gawky buffalo, wandering through the parlor— or whatever this perfectly appointed room was— trying to take it all in without knocking over some priceless relic.

  “Grandma? Grandma Trixie?” Aero called out into the hallway, then waved me toward a seat on a couch as he left.

  I flopped down on the velvet surface in sheer wonder while he disappeared down a hallway.

  Aero Jantzen owned this place. I could hardly breathe. This room alone was twice as big as my whole apartment in Old Town. Granted, I had the hot tub at my disposal, but this was incredible.

  Then again, another incredible thing was that Aero, when he’d come and eaten Thai Hut with me in our swimsuits on my old couch, hadn’t batted an eye or looked askance at the dumpiness of my place by comparison. He was rich without being haughty. How rare.

  Yeah, very rare, like pretty much everything else about Aero Jantzen.

  Who had offered me his mother’s ring.

  That thought ping-ponged around in my ribcage for a long moment, and I couldn’t get it to calm down.

  “She’ll be here in a few minutes. She played tennis this morning out back and needs to freshen up.” He plopped down beside me and put his feet on the marble-topped coffee table. I wanted to shoo them down, but then I re-listened to what he’d just said: that there was a tennis court out back.

  Of course there was.

  Marvels.

  “So now you see why I couldn’t tell you.”

  “Why you wanted to buy the painting— and why you’d give almost anything for it?”

  “Not ‘almost.’ Why I would give anything for it.”

  I nodded, my heart pinching. “She must have been frantic.”

  “Faked a heart attack, so yeah. I’d call that frantic.”

  So, she had faked it. I’d wondered, but in no way did I blame her.

  Aero sprawled out against a throw pillow that had to be made of silk, and he looked so at-home that I exhaled and felt myself relax against the silk pillows, too. Man, the fabric of the couch set his features off nicely. I let myself look at his face’s many virtues for a minute. I especially liked the little divot in his upper lip where the two sides met in the center. I’d felt that divot pressed against my own upper lip, and remembering how it felt made me lift my fingers to my own. He was so gorgeous, and more gorgeous than ever, now he that was in his own element.

  King of his domain. And mercy, what a domain.

  “Not ‘almost,’ huh? What lengths were you willing to go to, exactly?”

  “Oh, you know. The usual. Create a shell corporation and have it buy the building and then kick you out as a renter.”

  “I have a three-year lease.”

  “I would have figured out a way.” He leaned forward and ran a finger up and down my forearm. “I’d have created a second shell corporation to sue you into bankruptcy.”

  “I could have acted as my own lawyer.”

  “Well, then I would have bribed a city official and gotten your building condemned. Or your business license revoked.”

  “You had all manner of dirty tricks planned.”

  “I’m a genuine dirty trickster.”

  That hung in the air for a moment while I wondered again what I was going to do— about the painting. Now that I knew it was Trixie and it would mortify her if the word got out she was the model, I was even more torn.

  “She felt that strongly about her identity being kept secret?”

  “Stronger.”

  “She was ready to kill for it?”

  “I had to protect her from her own instincts.” He squinted his eyes menacingly, and then relaxed into a laugh. “I guess it’s pretty clear I love my grandma, eh? Does that score me manliness points? Probably not. Should it? Probably.”

  Definitely.

  I found myself releasing every single remaining atom of hard feelings about his attempts to sabotage me. It was one thing to have a weird obsession with a nude painting. That, I had a problem with. But if he was going great guns at me to protect his grandma, he could throw money and rings at me all day long.

  About that ring …

  “Well, look-a here. It’s the one and only Miss Jilly. I have been wanting to see you ever since the other night. It looks like my grandson has finally convinced you to take that ring. Is that so, hon?”

  I shot a glance at him to gauge his reaction. He didn’t react. I spun in the agony of suspense.

  “Or is it that my grandson simply finally convinced you to let him buy your painting. He’s very persuasive. I can’t blame you for giving in to his charms.” She winked at him, but her smile faded when she saw that we weren’t playing along.

  “About the painting, Grandma … ”

  “She didn’t let you buy it from her?” Her voice faltered, and she pressed her hand to the back of the sofa, clearly trying to steady herself.

  “Please don’t be angry, but I know the identity of the model for the painting.” I watched as the muscles in her neck flinched and fear took over her face for a moment. When she shot a look of betrayal at Aero, I had to speak up. “Aero didn’t tell me, I promise.”

  “Only three people on planet earth knew the identity of the Woman Draped in Red, and one of them has been dead for several years.” She meant Yuber. Her tone
came out measured, strained. “And I sure as shooting haven’t told a soul.”

  Aero, however, knew how to assuage her. He stood and led her to a seat on a pretty, vintage chair. “Did you ever see Mars Yuber after the portrait was painted?”

  “Never. In fact, I assumed the portrait was covered over with oil paint because he’d been too poor to buy new canvas. I assumed he’d protect me that way. I shouldn’t admit this— Mummy and Father would kill me— but I called him up once, right before my wedding. I asked him about the painting. Mars swore he was going to destroy it because of … well, because.”

  Feelings left over from that first love long ago prickled in the air. To be honest, initially I hadn’t banked on that. I’d figured it was some kind of academic exercise. But I should have guessed, considering the look on the face in the painting.

  Looking at Beatrice Jantzen now, in the light of this sunny room, I did, in fact, see echoes of the girl in the painting from fifty years ago. Her hair, silvery white, she styled differently now, of course. But if I looked, I could imagine the graceful neck and feel the intensity of the eyes.

  Those eyes were filled with anxiety now.

  “So you never saw him again. Even after the call.”

  “Never. I knew of him, but we weren’t in contact anymore after that. My parents basically put me in solitary confinement the second they thought I was falling in love with a ne’er-do-well artist as the world was exploding in student protests. Berkley wasn’t a good fit for my family’s heritage, anyway, so I came to USC.”

  Going south to USC didn’t land her far from Watts and those riots, but those seemed different somehow, in my perception of history.

  “Part of me wanted to see Mars again, but then I met your grandfather. Everything else faded away. I only had eyes for him. We were married, and your dad was born soon after, and your aunt Tildie. You never knew her, of course. We lost her too young.”

  Wow, there was a lot of heartache in the world. A little voice told me— possibly a whisper from that Van Gogh this morning— don’t waste the time you have been given to love.

  I got it, I got it.

  “When I heard he’d disappeared and died alone, my heart broke for Mars.” She sighed. “No one should have to die alone. He possessed such a sensitive, impressionable soul.”

  As I watched, I thought I could see her mind spiraling through the past, with some regrets— regrets she might not need to feel.

  “What if we told you he didn’t die alone?” I bit my lip, hoping for a way to say this right. Trixie brightened, so I forged onward. “Or that he didn’t die at all?” Gently, gently, I could reveal this.

  She cocked her head to the side. “How would you possibly know this? Investigators looked into his death thoroughly. It was all over the news for six months a few years back.”

  Aero stepped in. “This morning Jilly received a phone call.”

  “What kind of a phone call?” Worry tinged her voice. “Wait. No— don’t tell me. I haven’t had breakfast, and it’s nearly lunchtime, and I have to take some of my heart medications with food.”

  “I can order in—” Aero offered.

  “No. You know I’ll cook.” She got up and bustled toward the door. “It’s been nice having that teenager here. Ryker is a very satisfying person to cook for.”

  When she was gone, I looked at Aero. He stood up and helped me to my feet. “She’ll cook for a while and process information. She loves being in the kitchen. It’s how she unwinds, and it’s how she shows love, and how she finds joy.”

  “We’ll talk over lunch,” I said.

  “It could be an hour or more. Can you spare the time?”

  “So she’s not the type to pop open a can of chicken noodle soup and drop a slice of bread in the toaster?”

  He gave a dry laugh.

  “This is important. The gallery will keep.” I would never make him face this alone, not when the whole thing had been my fault in the first place.

  He stood up and offered me a hand up. “Do you want to see the back yard?”

  Yes, I did. And, speaking of riots, I still had a million questions rioting in my mind. Of course, I wasn’t sure how to bring up any of them, especially the meaning of the amethyst ring he’d offered, whether it was part of the payment for the painting, or whether it was a faux offering of himself. Or a sincere one. Or somewhere in between. It ate away at me. But there was no tactful way or easy moment to broach the subject, and now still didn’t feel like the time.

  We’d walk and talk, and I’d look for the moment.

  Out back, there stretched a long patio with stairs leading down to a pool area. A tennis court sprawled in the distance under the shade of some towering trees. Aero led me down the stairs, past a potting shed, veering off to the right of the tennis court, and through a maze of hedges into a wooded area.

  “This was my favorite place as a kid.”

  “I’ll bet you played here.”

  “Actually, I collected bugs.”

  “In jars?”

  “How did you know? Old mayonnaise jars.” He described his different collections— ants, moths, grubs, beetles. “Grandma and my mother both lost their cool when I brought in termites I’d found on a tree. They immediately called an exterminator to deal with the dangerous vermin. I held a funeral.”

  I pictured young Aero, his blue eyes rimmed with tears at the unjust murder of his termite colony.

  “How many acres is this place?”

  “Only ten. Feels like more most of the time.”

  Only ten acres. In Pasadena. Shazowie. I didn’t even let my mind start the spiral through what that property value could amount to, but I might have gasped, because he put up resistance to my shock.

  “Come on. The Huntington Gardens are over a hundred acres. We’re not Huntingtons.”

  Please. Hardly anyone alive these days fit that wealth league, but it seemed like Aero might be in an echelon I’d never even brushed shoulders with when I worked at BGG.

  Meanwhile, I was still dying over how beautiful the whole place was. Flowers and trees covered the acreage everywhere I looked.

  “It’s incredible here, you know.”

  “Believe me, I’ve never taken it for granted. I knew my home had a sense of magic even as a kid.”

  I dove in and asked him something different, something that had played through my mind a lot of times but that I’d never brought up because it seemed too personal. Now that we were here in his private, childhood place, I could ask. “When you found out your mom and dad had died, how did you handle that? You don’t seem like you harbor anger. Most people would.” Having both parents killed by a terrorist could ruin a kid. “I mean, look at Bruce Wayne. It turned him into Batman.”

  “How do you know I’m not secretly a vigilante bent on justice?” He raised an eyebrow, and I gazed into his face. It was too kind to belong to a deeply disturbed billionaire. “Handling it, though?” He waved a hand at the woods. “You’re looking at it. I turned inward toward home. The first thing I thought when the sadness and shock wore off was that I would eventually have to be the man of the family.”

  “At nine?”

  “Maybe it all didn’t dawn on me at once, but it did grow there little by little.”

  “And this kept you from being angry?”

  “I had an education to work toward, then a business to run, grandparents I’d have to provide for. Take a second and ponder the taxes on this place, would you? I didn’t have the luxury of, or the time for, anger. I had grown up work to do.”

  Get to work. Forget yourself. Your feelings matter, but they shouldn’t control your actions. It sounded like a healthy way to get through things, especially for a kid.

  Wow. Aero. I took his hand, possibly with the subconscious hope that some of his amazingness would transfer into me. He stopped walking and turned to face me.

  “I had to look forward and work to keep New Holland Savings alive. For this.” He waved his free hand in a sweeping
gesture at the grounds of Holland House. “It was my grandmother’s home.”

  “You’re so passionate.” I liked it a lot. “You’ve poured your soul into your family and its legacy.”

  “What about you, Jilly? What else besides art are you passionate about?” He stepped closer and looked down into my eyes.

  Besides the growing passion I was feeling for Aero as he toyed with a strand of my hair? Hardly anything I could name at the moment. Just being around Aero made all my nerve endings stand at attention. I touched his wrist.

  “Honestly, even though I didn’t foresee this even six months ago, I’d have to say Red Drape.” I touched his wrist, drawing a little line along where his skin met his shirt’s cuff. “The gallery has become a lot more than I ever could have imagined it to be.”

  “You’re happy, then?”

  I gave a self-conscious shrug, knowing that my face must be glowing as I talked about Red Drape and the changes it had made in my life and my peace of conscience.

  “When the idea first appeared— from you, thank you very much— I initially only saw it as a ticket out of BGG and its flashing neon vacancy sign over the room labeled moral compass.” Did my little joke even make sense? I didn’t know, but I was forging onward. “But then, when your other idea, of helping unknown artists bring their work to the marketplace, took root, and as I implemented it I could see the good it was doing for their confidence and their artistry, I realized there might be a bigger reason for my doing this, something better than just an escape from my humdrum life.”

  “You’re helping people, and it feels meaningful.”

  Yes. He got me. Suddenly I knew what Ryker meant all those times he’d said that phrase.

  “It’s amazing, and most people probably don’t realize this, but no matter who you are or how successful you look from the outside, you need reassurance. Everyone needs to be noticed and loved. Even famous people.”

  “Who get all kinds of notice.”

  “Maybe, but not always for their hearts. Usually it’s for their looks, or their ability to look like something. Do you know what I mean by that?” I saw from the slow nod of his head that he understood. “They feel validated, but only for external, shallow things. All of us need to be validated for who we are, not just how we look or what we can do. Art is a revealing of that essence. The inner reality of a soul.”