by Roz Lee
CHAPTER TWO
Ford stared after Becky Jean. He’d heard the same sentiment a thousand times since he’d returned to Butte Plains earlier this week, so why did he have the feeling that, coming from her, the eulogy held a hint of warning? Was she implying he wasn’t a good man? Why would she think that?
Chalking the uneasy feeling up to grief and fatigue, he clicked the computer keys. No matter what he did with the factory, the workers needed to be paid. He’d never worked a day in the factory, but he knew how businesses operated. He just needed to figure out which account usually funded payroll and arrange with the bank to make the transfer—then he could get on with gathering the necessary financial statements needed to entice someone to buy Adams Manufacturing.
As he clicked through his father’s personal files, his mind kept returning to Becky Jean Parker. He had a hard time reconciling the steaming-hot woman from the cemetery with his long-ago recollections of the girl he remembered from school. She’d been a mouse, sitting at the back of classrooms, never saying a word he could recall. He could count on one hand the number of times he remembered interacting with her, and none of those had been particularly memorable. She hadn’t run with any of the popular crowds, hadn’t played sports, hadn’t attended the high school dances or other social functions. She’d been more of a ghost than a mouse—invisible, but there if you bothered to look.
He hadn’t bothered to look.
That’s not entirely true. There was that one time….
He’d shown up at the local photography studio to have his senior portrait made and she’d been there. Waiting his turn, he’d peeked to see who had the appointment ahead of him, and been shocked to see Becky Jean perched on a stool, smiling for the camera. She’d been wearing one of those black drape things leaving her slim shoulders bare. Her red hair hadn’t yet mellowed to the subdued auburn it was now. The curled ends had lain against her chest, drawing attention to the swell of generous breasts. A Mona Lisa smile graced her glossed lips, and her eyes had sparkled with intelligence.
Only he knew the reason for the slightly pained smile he’d worn in his senior portrait. He’d had a raging hard-on the entire photo session, all because of Becky Jean Parker.
Ford shifted, his dick as hard today as it had been back then. For years, he’d chalked up his response to teenage hormones, but seeing her, talking to her today, proved nothing had changed. She still stirred his blood in inappropriate ways.
As of today, Becky Jean worked for him. He absolutely wouldn’t take advantage of an employee. No way.
Another image came to mind—Veronica Ramsey. The younger sister of his business partner, Scott, she was beautiful and sophisticated. They’d been friends and fuck buddies for over a year. When he’d told her his father had passed away and he had to make the trip home for the funeral, she’d expressed her condolences, but hadn’t offered to accompany him. He’d momentarily considered asking her to but figured if he had to ask, then he didn’t want her there anyway. He’d begun to question if he even wanted her in his life. When it came down to it, they had little in common. Where he preferred to share a drink with a buddy or two, she preferred a party—the bigger, the better. Born into a life he’d never dreamed of, she’d dazzled him from the beginning, but it didn’t take long for him to see past the glitz. Once he had, he’d been surprised to see how empty her friends’ lives were. He wanted more for himself, but Ronnie wouldn’t take “no” for an answer.
He forced his attention back to the payroll situation. He had no business admiring anything about his new office manager. Becky Jean was his employee. She, and all the others, would expect to be paid this week. His father would kick his ass if he let them down.
An hour later, Ford had learned two things. He couldn’t sell the company, and he wouldn’t be leaving town anytime soon. Neither realization made him happy. In fact, they pissed him off.
Sitting back in the leather desk chair built to fit his father’s frame, not his, he scrubbed both palms over his face. Tension he’d been holding in his shoulders all day felt like cement blocks weighing him down. Why hadn’t his dad said something? How had the situation gotten this critical without Ford suspecting? Did anyone know? The employees? If anyone did, it would be the office manager.
Sitting up, he bellowed, “Becky Jean! Get your ass in here right this minute!”
Barreling around the corner, eyes wide, the woman skidded to a halt in the doorway. “What?”
“That’s all you’ve got to say? What?” He stood, knuckles digging into the oak desktop. “Where did the money go?”
Her eyes narrowed, her brows knit together. “Money?” One hand white-knuckled the doorframe.
“Umm. The petty cash is in the safe in my office?” Her voice trailed up and off.
“I’m not talking about the petty cash, and you damn well know it. Where. Is. The. Money?”
“I don’t… uh…. What?” She swallowed hard, let go of the doorframe, and tugged the hem of her suit jacket down. Squaring her shoulders, she glared at him. “Is there a problem, Mr. Adams?”
“Fuck, yeah! I mean… yes, Becky Jean.” He emphasized her name, infusing as much civility as possible into his cold-as-steel voice. Two could play this dignified business game. “There is a problem. There isn’t enough money in all the company accounts combined to meet this week’s payroll. I want to know where it went.”
All the blood drained out of her face, and she reached for the doorframe again. Her hand missed, but her shoulder caught, preventing her from falling. Ford rushed to her side. Wrapping an arm around her waist, he guided her to one of the green leather visitor’s chairs. Hoping his father hadn’t broken with Adams’s family tradition, he scooted around the desk and opened the bottom left drawer. Seconds later, he pushed a tumbler of Tennessee’s finest into Becky Jean’s palm. “Here, drink this.”
He held the glass steady while she sipped at the amber liquid. Making a face like she’d sucked a lemon, she pushed the glass away.
“Yeck!” She wiped her lips with the back of her hand. “What is that?”
“Whiskey.” He finished the two fingers with one swallow and rose to refill the glass—which he downed before returning to sit on the edge of the desk, with yet another two fingers of courage. Ford sipped at his third glass of whiskey, letting the first two work through his system while he studied the woman in front of him. Her eyes looked lost, but at least the color had returned to her cheeks. If she’d known about the company’s financial troubles, she did a hell of job playing innocent. Which made his father a better actor than he’d given him credit for. In their weekly conversations, the man had given nothing away concerning the dire financial situation.
“What the hell has been going on around here?” He congratulated himself on sounding close to reasonable—thanks to the alcohol dulling the sharp knife of betrayal.
“I don’t know.” She seemed fascinated with her hands twisting in her lap. “Is it that bad?”
“Yes. It’s that bad.” No wonder his father had a fatal heart attack. Ford was about to have a coronary himself. “What happened to the cash flow? From what I can tell, Dad has been dipping into his personal accounts to keep this place running for quite some time.” Which meant his mother didn’t have a penny to her name. Shit.
Becky Jean turned her face up to his. Even her misery didn’t dim her beauty. “I swear I didn’t know. Mr. Adams—your father—insisted on doing the books himself.”
“But the factory is still churning out product, shipping out orders. Or did I miss something in the production schedules?”
“We are shipping orders. Not as many as we did a few years ago, but we have clients.”
“How many clients?”
“One.”
“One?” Yep. He’d follow his father into an early grave. “What happened to the others? Adams Manufacturing used to be the leading supplier, worldwide, of baby bottle nipples.”
She shook her head. “We’ve been losing market sha
re for a few years. With the movement toward breastfeeding, people aren’t buying as many baby bottles as they used to.”
Any other time, he would have enjoyed watching her face flame at the mention of breastfeeding, but his present situation had trampled his libido into submission. “What about the agricultural market? Aren’t people still milking cows?” For as long as he could remember, their largest contracts had been for the teat cup liners used in milking machines. Not glamorous, but it paid the bills.
“It’s China’s fault.”
“China?”
“We can’t compete with their prices. Dairy farmers are just like everyone else. They don’t care where the product comes from as long as they save a buck.”
Shit. “The agricultural market was the cash cow, so to speak.”
“Yes. Farmland Supply didn’t renew their contract this year, not for any of the products we supplied them.”
He mentally ticked off the products he remembered—teat cup liners, rubber gloves, bottles, and nipples for hand-feeding orphaned and sick livestock and zoo animals. They’d supplied the large farm retailer with those and more for as long as Ford could remember. “So what are we producing?”
“Baby bottles and nipples, and not nearly as many of those as we used to.”
“China?”
She nodded. “Yep. Your father hired an independent lab to analyze the Chinese products, see what they’re made of. He was hoping to launch an advertising campaign to undermine consumer confidence in their products and shift the public back to products made here in the U.S.”
It was something, but without the agricultural component, Adams Manufacturing was doomed to fail. “Whose idea was that? The lab thing?”
“Mine.” She sighed. She’d appeared sad at his father’s graveside. Now, she looked defeated. “It was too little, too late, wasn’t it?”
“Yep.” He finished off the rest of his drink, savoring the smooth burn making its way down. He stood, circled around to his father’s chair, and sank into it. From the moment he’d comprehended the scope of the problem, he’d known what he had to do. He forced himself to say the words. “I’ll float the payroll out of my own pocket until I can figure out what to do with the— What’s left.”
“You’re going to close the plant.” Her voice held resignation rather than surprise.
He stared into the bottom of the empty glass then set it carefully in the center of the desk. Raising one eyebrow, he asked, “What choice do I have?”
“I don’t know. It’s just so many people depend on their jobs here. The whole town depends on Adams Manufacturing. This is going to hurt so many people.” She made it sound as if he’d said he planned to kick every puppy in town and drown all the kittens, too.
“I don’t want to, but unless you can come up with a way to keep this place running, and to turn a profit then I don’t see I have any choice. It’s already bled my father, and his widow, dry.” Visions of his mother moving into his spare bedroom formed in his head. Good God. “If I let it, it’ll do the same to me. I don’t see what the difference is between closing in a few weeks and closing a few months down the road when I run out of money, too.”
She brightened. “You’ve got enough money to keep the plant open?”
“Hold on a minute.” He held his hand up in stop-right-there signal. “I’ve worked damn hard for my money, and I’m not going to throw it down a dry well and hope it turns into water. I’ll contact the few remaining clients we have and negotiate final production numbers to get us out of our contracts. Once we fulfill those orders, we’ll shut down for good.”
She deflated, but at least she didn’t look like she might faint this time.
“I have to think about my mother, Becky Jean. I’ve got to salvage whatever I can of all this”—he swept his arm out to indicate the business—“for her.” He had to be careful or they’d both be wearing paper hats and flipping burgers before the year ended.
“What about the employees? The people who work here don’t do it because it’s the most fun they’ve ever had. They do it because they have families to feed.”
“I’m not a puppy kicker, Becky Jean!” Fuck, he was back to shouting. He cleared his throat and tried again. “If I could see a way to make this place turn a profit, I’d do everything in my power to keep it open.”
“No, you wouldn’t.” She straightened her spine. “You had every intention of selling this place, or closing it down when you came here. Don’t even try to deny it. I’m not stupid. You were looking for an excuse, and you found one.” She stood, her outrage making her seem taller, and, damn his libido, sexy as hell. “Go ahead. Shut the plant down. Put all these hardworking people out of a job. This town is hanging on by a thread anyway. The Adams family built Butte Plains. It’s only fitting an Adams be the one to cut the last thread.”
Pausing in the doorway, she drew her shoulders back and, lifting her chin, delivered her parting shot with the precision of a sniper. “You’ll find a pair of scissors in the center drawer.”
He jerked the drawer open, found the scissors—a big, sturdy pair, at least a century old. Holding them aloft, he worked the handles, enjoying the metallic rasp of the blades sliding against each other. “Snip snip,” he said loud enough to carry to the next office. She answered with a disgusted groan, followed by a door slammed shut.
Dropping the weapon of mass destruction to the desktop, he buried his face in his hands. He’d never seen a more alluring sight than Becky Jean with her panties in a wad. He’d be wise to keep an eye on sharp objects when she was around, but the probability of her doing him bodily harm didn’t keep him from imagining all her passion channeled into more pleasant activities.
This is so not the time, ole buddy. Once again forcing his thoughts away from Becky Jean and the way her shapely ass looked as she’d beat a hasty retreat, he made a mental note of all the things he had to accomplish before he could close the doors on Adams Manufacturing and get back to his life.
Grabbing his suit coat off the back of the chair, he called out as he passed the office manager’s closed door, “I’m going to the bank. I’ll be back.” With a little luck, his father had another account not listed on the company computer system. Maybe he’d set up a trust for his wife, or invested funds in something. Maybe he had a safety-deposit box full of cash. Stranger things had happened.
CHAPTER THREE
“You’re positive?” he asked the stout man who’d been his father’s banker for decades. “There are no hidden assets?”
“No, son. I’m sorry. I argued with your father many times over the last few years regarding his use of personal funds to keep the plant running, but he was adamant the place needed to stay open.”
Why? Ford couldn’t begin to follow his father’s train of thought—beggaring himself so the few remaining employees could keep their jobs.
“I refused to lend him money, hoping he’d come to his senses and close the place down, but he was determined to forge ahead. Said he was working on the problem and it was only a matter of time before he had what he needed to turn the place around.”
The lab reports on the Chinese products. Too little, way too late. “He had a plan, but I’m afraid it wasn’t much of one.”
“I’m truly sorry, Ford. Your father was the best of men.” He shook his head. “He was my friend as well as my client. This town is going to miss him.”
Ford fought the tears threatening to fall and cleared his throat. “That’s very kind of you to say.” He stood on weak legs and extended his hand across the solid oak desk. “Thank you for taking the time to see me today, Mr. Wheeler.”
They shook hands. “If there’s anything I can do for you…?”
Ford paused at the office door. “Lend me a few million?” he asked with a smirk.
“Anything but that,” the banker said.
So much for hidden assets. The extent of Ken Adams’s savings appeared to be the jar on the corner of his dresser where he deposited whatever chang
e he found in his trouser pocket at the end of the day. Rough estimate—ten dollars, minus the fee the bank would charge to count and roll it.
Retracing his steps back to the factory, three blocks south then four blocks east, Ford paid little attention to the businesses he passed along the way. His stomach rumbled, reminding him he’d missed lunch and he’d had no appetite for breakfast. Thinking to grab a sandwich at Marge’s Diner, he stood on the sidewalk, stunned, looking in the window at the vacant interior. The establishment had been a fixture in Butte Plains dating back to his grandfather’s days. Seeing it gutted, the familiar lunch counter and Formica tabletops gone, shook him almost as much as finding out his parents were on the brink of bankruptcy.
Turning from the disturbing carcass of a once-thriving business, he glanced up and down the block. Many of the stores he’d taken for granted as a kid were empty shells. With most of the shops closed, the place began to look like a ghost town.
What the hell happened?
Forgetting everything except his empty stomach for a minute, he made a left instead of a right, hoping to find another of his favorite eating establishments still in business. He almost jumped for joy when he spied the neon Open sign in the window of the Hanson’s Bakery. His mouth watered for one of Mrs. Hanson’s ham-and-cheese croissants. As he pushed the door open, his stomach growled again. Perhaps he’d have two of the delicacies.
Mrs. Hanson smiled at him from behind the ancient counter. Nothing had changed here, which he immediately recognized as part of the town’s problem. People were drawn to new and shiny, not outdated and dull, no matter how good the food.
“Ford,” the older woman said, her sympathy grinding against his last nerve. “I’m so sorry about your father. He was a good man.”
“The best,” he answered automatically. Hoping to change the subject, he pointed to the top shelf in the display case. “Can I get two of the ham and cheese, and a soda? To go.” He could eat and walk at the same time.