by Annie Jones
Adam assumed she didn’t actually expect him to answer. Surely Dora had her own business opinions and theories.
He reached out and even in the darkness knew just where to find the light switch. It was a little like coming home to be here now. The comforting whirr of the fluorescent lights. The echo of their footsteps on the concrete floor. The familiar smell of the day’s baking still lingered in the air.
Adam looked at the key in his hand, then down the length of the hallway with office doors on both sides. Then he searched beyond to the factory proper at the far end. Whether Dora wanted a response or not, he felt he had to say one thing. “They made a success of it for a lot of years.”
“I know.” There was an uncharacteristic kindness to her voice. Then she cleared her throat and took a step down the hall. “I’ve seen the profit-and-loss statements for the last decade. Mostly loss the last few years.”
Adam squared his shoulders. “We can change all that.”
“Global can change all that.” She did not snap or come off defensive. If anything, Adam picked up a note of weariness, perhaps resignation in her reply. “And I know perfectly well what Global is capable of doing.”
So did Adam, which was why he wanted to hear what Dora had in mind before Global went after the Crumble. They couldn’t buy the company out if they didn’t want to sell. Since the company was privately held, they could not force a hostile takeover.
What they could do was look at the company from every angle and see how they could make their own Crumble Pattie, bypassing the Burdetts altogether and undercutting their sales. That could put them out of business a full six months to a year sooner than the family would have managed to close the doors themselves. Or Global could come in, make a nice offer to take over the factory, let them keep their good name and take the Crumble Pattie to a national market as “one of the Global family of fine foods.” They could save the company.
Except Adam suspected his father and brothers would not see it that way.
“On the up side of things, the Carolina Crumble Pattie factory turns out a very good product.” She walked to the first office door and stopped to face it. Adam did not have to share her line of vision to know what name was painted in gold and black on the frosted glass: Conner Burdett—President. “They are a widely recognized brand in the region and a ready and loyal workforce.”
“That hasn’t changed,” he reminded her.
“You don’t have to sell me on this company, Burdett.” A few more steps and a half turn put her in front of Burke’s office door. She reached out to brush her fingertips over the name there. “I just needed to clap eyes on the physical locality before I make a recommendation to the higher-ups.”
“And that recommendation will be?” Burke’s deep voice startled Adam but seemed to have little effect on Dora.
Adam turned around and planted his feet shoulder width apart. He supposed the two of them looked a bit like old-time cowboys calling one another out in the street. Adam, who felt his features probably seemed darker and more menacing in the narrow hallway, stood six inches shorter than Burke, the tall fair-haired man with broad shoulders and unblinking blue eyes.
Adam did not react to his brother’s looming presence with anything more than a quiet, “I suppose you want my key back?”
Burke let the door fall shut behind him. “I’d settle for an explanation for why you are here.”
“I’d rather give you my key.” Adam started to tug it off the key ring.
“Don’t bother. If I had been worried about keeping you out I’d have changed the locks.” That could mean more than one thing: the most likely being that Burke already knew about Adam’s connection to Global and had prepared himself to handle it; or he was just toying with his younger brother, letting Adam know he would never be intimidated by a stray like him.
“I assumed you came here because you were worried,” Adam challenged. “Somebody call and report seeing Dora’s car and my Harley in the lot?”
Burke shook his head. “I came out to meet with Josie Redmond about this fool barbecue deal Dad wants to throw.”
Adam stepped back. “Josie?”
“She should be out here after she closes up.”
“So, she is going through with that, then?”
“Was there ever any doubt?”
Yes. Adam had hoped she would turn his father down. Not just because he did not like the idea of her being in the middle of it all. Also since his brothers clearly had no inclination to organize the meal if Josie didn’t pitch in, the whole event might just fall quietly by the wayside. “When is this barbecue?”
“Saturday,” Burke said sounding more like a bull snorting than a man discussing a party.
“This Saturday?” Dora tipped her head and looked directly at the taller of the two brothers.
Burke nodded. Then he cocked his own head at the same angle as Dora’s and said, “You’re welcome to come.”
Adam had not introduced Dora on purpose. He didn’t plan on changing that now. “She won’t—”
“I might just do that,” Dora cut Adam off and held her hand out to Burke. “Dora Hoag.”
“Burke Burdett.”
Neither of them gave their business titles or bothered to share what relationship they had to the man they had in common, Adam. He couldn’t help but feel a little left out over that.
She held Burke’s hand longer than she’d ever held a handshake, or even eye contact with Adam. “Does your company do this kind of thing for the community regularly?”
“Never,” Adam muttered.
Burke did not let go of Dora’s hand but waited for her to slip it away. Then he added, “And the old man isn’t doing this for the community.”
Dora looked from the older brother to the younger. “Oh?”
Burke squinted Adam’s way. “It’s a big party to honor the return of the favored son.”
Adam pressed his lips together to spew out a curse. He caught a glimpse of his boss standing by watching with undisguised interest. Then he looked to Burke, who had spent a lifetime provoking all of the younger brothers and enjoying it far too much when Adam, inevitably, rose to the bait. He decided to forgo any gut reaction and respond with calm honesty. “Me? The favored son? Hardly.”
“These days you are.”
“No.” He refused to believe that. “Being the singled-out son is not the same as being favored. I’ve never been favored in this town for anything, unless it was to let everyone down.”
“That’s not how I recall it. The old man and I have always butted heads. Lucky tries to stay below his radar. And the Hound…” Even though they had outgrown and/or rejected the designations long ago, Burke still called each of them by their old nicknames.
“Cody,” Adam corrected quietly. “The old man has to be proud of Cody.”
“Yeah. Sure. Pleased that the Hound found his calling and that he married a really nice girl. But less pleased that they are waiting to start a family until they have a church and anything but pleased that his preacher son is trying to influence him to apply Christian values to running the business.”
“What’s wrong with that?” Dora asked.
Adam and Burke both looked her way.
Her expression had changed, brightened while at the same time appeared more relaxed than Adam ever recalled her looking in the past. “Global sprang from a family business founded on Biblical principles.”
Adam hadn’t known that. It certainly didn’t show in their current business model. Or did it? He had to admit to himself that he’d been so focused on his own goal he hadn’t given that much thought.
“Interesting.” Burke eyed her, sizing her up.
Burke sized everyone up. Adam had always had the impression that nobody ever measured up to his brother’s standards.
“Maybe you can tell me how that has worked out for—” he gave her an almost admiring smile “—Global, did you say?”
Adam cleared his throat to take the heat off Dora. �
�Okay, so the old man is on the outs with Cody. That doesn’t automatically move me up to the top of the heap.”
Top of the dog pile was Burke’s spot, and Adam concluded he wouldn’t be able to resist making sure everyone, especially the woman who had caught the older brother’s interest, knew it.
“No, that doesn’t place you on top in Dad’s eyes. But being the first of his boys to produce a grandchild does.”
Once again his family proved him wrong.
Adam shut his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose. Every disclaimer he could dredge up, from Nathan not being a Burdett by blood to wondering how their father could accept a child born out of wedlock, faltered unsaid when Burke leveled his gaze on Adam and added, “You don’t know what it means to him to hold at least one member of the next generation before he dies.”
“He’s too tough to die,” Adam blurted out, all cavalier and full of bluster. But the bluster came not from the well of anger that had sustained him for far too long. Just acknowledging that his father had any weakness, much less that he would not be with them for years to come, left Adam feeling like a six-year-old kid, lost and afraid. “He’s not…he’s not sick is he?”
“Yeah. Heartsick,” Burke said.
“Because of Mom?” Adam asked.
“Mom. You. The business. The town.” Burke did not look Adam in the eye as he went down the list. “Your coming back and that baby are the first bright spots he’s had in a very long while.”
Adam swallowed hard and clenched his jaw to force back the emotion rising from his chest.
“Maybe I shouldn’t be hearing this,” Dora said softly, but she made no attempt to leave.
“Maybe you should.” Burke did not say that he knew what she was up to, that he understood that she saw everything that mattered to him as a property, a product, an investment or a loss. “Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing if you knew a little about my father.”
Adam stepped up. “Burke, that’s not—”
Burke ignored him. “Everything that old man did, he did for this family. His family is still what matters most to him.”
“Easy for you to say,” Adam muttered, only, for once he felt no anger or animosity behind it.
“Maybe it is. Maybe it is easier for someone outside a situation to see it for what it really is. With that kid, you gave him the one thing no spreadsheet or year-end report or bank balance could ever provide—a glimpse into the future.”
Adam did not know what to say to that. He knew Burke was right about his father and the family, yet he seriously doubted his own role in that family. How could he and a child he had produced, not from love and commitment and honor, but in a thoughtless run of sinful self-indulgence, mean anything to Adam’s adoptive father? He meant the world to Adam already, of course, but to Conner Burdett? The child didn’t even carry the name.
Yet.
Yet? Adam had never had a genuine “lightbulb” moment—where his dim view of the world suddenly became bright and clear as daylight in an instant—until now. Now standing in this building where he had literally grown up, where he had played with his brothers as a child and fought with them as a young adult, and torn away from them as a determined business man with his own ideas, Adam understood.
He owed it to Nathan to give him not just a name but a place in this family. Nathan deserved his part of the legacy that was the Burdett family and the Carolina Crumble Pattie Factory. The good, the bad…and the delicious.
He chuckled to himself at that.
“What?” Burke demanded, probably feeling defensive over the idea that Adam might be laughing at him.
Adam shook his head. “Nothing. You just opened my eyes a little bit, big brother.” Adam slapped a hand on Burke’s broad shoulder, and slapped it hard. He cared for the big lug but he hadn’t turned to emotional mush. “I realize I have a lot more to accomplish while I’m in town than I had originally planned on.”
“Then get out of here and get to it.” He brushed Adam’s hand off, but he did it with respect in his eyes.
That was new, Adam noted. He decided to test the depths of that respect. “I will. But I have to finish the job I came here to do.”
Adam held his hand out to indicate Dora should accompany him down the hallway. “Ms. Hoag?”
“Hold it.” Burke put his hand on Dora’s arm. “You sold your shares in this place eighteen months ago. It’s not yours to show to anyone.”
“You plan to call security for your own brother?” Dora asked. She sounded more curious than concerned.
“No, ma’am.”
Adam tucked his thumb into the waistband of his favorite pair of broken-in black jeans. He stood his ground.
“I don’t need to call security to deal with my brother. I am the security that deals with him.” Burke managed somehow to take up the whole breadth and height of the section of narrow hallway where he stood. “He’d do well to remember that.”
“You haven’t bested me since we got into it right after I graduated high school. And may I remind you, you always had a few years and five inches, and—” Adam stopped to look his brother over, taking a moment to show he’d noticed the way age had thickened the older man’s midsection. He’d not gotten fat, by any means, but he wasn’t the lean kid he’d once been. “And a few pounds on me.”
“Not to mention a lot more smart.” Burke tapped his finger to his temple and grinned.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I have enough sense to offer to spend my evening with this lovely lady, showing her around the place and to tell you to get your tail out of here and go see how you can be of help to your son and Josie instead of hanging around where you don’t belong like some—”
“Watch it,” Adam warned.
“Stray dog,” Burke concluded. “Be a man, Adam.”
The knot in Adam’s gut rivaled his fist for size and tension. If his boss hadn’t been standing there calmly watching his every reaction, Adam might just have decked his brother then.
He eyed the bigger, beefier man head to toe and corrected himself. He’d have taken a swing at him. Made contact, even, then probably gotten the fire whipped out of him. Two years ago, even a week ago, Adam would have thought it would have been worth the pain and humiliation of defeat just to show his brother, or anyone, that he would back down to no one. Now?
Now Adam held his hand out to the man, not clenched in a fist but open and in a show of deference and gratitude. “I think I’ll just do that. In fact, why don’t we both be men and conduct ourselves and our business with one another the best way we know how. As Christians.”
Burke eyed the hand. He scratched his chin. Clearly he knew that if he took Adam’s hand now he was not just making an overture of reconciliation, he was pledging to act according to the principles they had both learned from their mother about morality, forgiveness and trust, among other things.
He hesitated, looked at Dora Hoag, who was studying him not unlike the way a scientist eyes a test subject, then he exhaled loud and gruff.
“Yeah.” He grabbed Adam’s hand and clamped down hard. “Okay.”
“You all right with this, Ms. Hoag?” Adam asked.
“He’s your brother. You tell me. Will I be all right?”
Adam chuckled. “If you can stand him, you’ll be fine.”
Dora Hoag had come to see the facilities. Adam knew she would reveal nothing about their business plans to Burke. Likewise, Burke would not tell Dora any secrets that might throw the deal in either direction. It would, in fact, be either a quiet tour or one that veered off into more personal territory. Who knew where that might lead? Maybe a year from now Adam would be in Mt. Knott running the plant and Burke would be traveling the country in charge of acquisitions.
Besides, Burke would be within his rights to throw them both off the premises. Leaving her here with his brother actually seemed the best solution.
“If you hurry you can get to Josie before she closes up.” Burke re
ached into his jeans pocket and pulled a folded piece of yellow legal paper out. “Give this to Josie. It’s more budget, cost-per-guest type of thing, than a menu. All I care about is, is there is enough food out here by noon Saturday to feed every hungry mouth that shows up. I’ll leave the actual food part up to her.”
Dora looked at him as if that had told her something significant about the man.
“What can I say?” Burke shifted his shoulders and settled his thumbs in his belt loops in an “aw shucks” manner that belied the hardened business acumen lurking beneath the surface. “I’m a number cruncher not a chef.”
“Don’t buy that act,” Adam told Dora with a smile.
She shook her head. “Don’t you worry about me.”
Adam laughed, quietly. “Yeah, he may be Top Dawg around here but I’ve seen you in action, Ms. Hoag. You are the Alpha Shark in a sea full of circling man-eaters.”
For half an instant it dawned on Adam that Ms. Hoag, not the savvy businesswoman, but the just plain old smitten woman, might not have wanted that kind of image put before Burke.
But she laughed, gave Burke a look that promised Adam meant every word then turned to the younger brother and looked him in the eye for the first time maybe ever. She said, “I will see you at the barbecue, Burdett. And I can make you this promise. I’ll give you my recommendation there, before I turn it official.”
It was a courtesy Adam had not earned by rank or familiarity, so he appreciated it all the more. Despite her claims of it not being personal, she was granting him the chance to know what she would say, what Global would most likely do, before anyone else knew.
Once that would have made him so proud, given him a sense of power over his family. Now it felt like a heavy burden to bear. Not because anything had changed about his father or his family or how they felt toward him. He was still the outsider. The one who no longer had a stake in their livelihood and who had never had a place in their hearts, the stray.
But Adam had changed, just a little.
He wasn’t a stray.
He was a father now, and he had to start acting like it, starting with going to Josie and supporting her in doing what she thought was right for herself, the people she cared about and her son. Even if what she thought was right meant catering to and collaborating with his family.