by Shelly Ellis
I am not my father, he wanted the room to say. I am my own man.
“All right, then let’s do this,” Evan finally said. “Have our people scour the country to find a space that’s comparable. And this time we’re not leasing it. We’re buying the warehouses outright.”
“Buying? Do we have the capital for that?”
“We’ll find it,” Evan said firmly. “We have no other option. I’m not going to allow our inventory to be held hostage by every guy who wants to make a buck and raise the rent on us whenever the hell he feels like it. I also want you to find out who’s the vendor for his refrigeration system. We’ll install it in our own facilities if we have to.”
Joe sighed. “Okay, if you think this is best, Evan.”
“I do.”
Joe stood from his chair. “I’ll have my people get right on it.”
“Good.”
Evan walked with Joe to his office door. He patted the older man on the back. Joe had been with the company for more than twenty years. Evan’s father had personally hired him. Evan considered Joe a family friend and knew him well.
“Look, Joe, I know you don’t like confrontation, but it has to be done this time. If this guy thinks he can play hardball with me, he has another think coming.” His jaw tightened. “I don’t respond well to threats and I’ll be damned if I let that asshole push me around.”
Joe paused in Evan’s doorway. He turned and eyed the younger man. His bushy eyebrows knitted together. “You’re sounding more and more like him every day.”
“Huh? More and more like who?”
“Your father,” Joe said quietly, nodding to an imposing portrait of the late George Murdoch that hung on Evan’s wall. It was the only holdover from his father’s old office.
Evan’s eyes widened with amazement. He watched as Joe walked out the door and shut it behind him.
“My father?” Evan murmured aloud.
Evan found that hard to believe. George had been a stern businessman—in some cases, even ruthless. Through sheer drive and a predatory instinct, in thirty years, George had grown the Murdoch family’s forgettable cookie shop on Main Street in Chesterton, which Evan’s grandfather had given his grandma Lucille to “keep her occupied,” to a chain of stores, and eventually to Murdoch Conglomerated, a two-hundred-million-dollar manufacturer of food consumer products and owner of several local food franchises.
Evan wasn’t like his father. Though he had respected the old man’s business acumen, he never wanted to be as cold or brutal as George had been. Hearing that he was starting to sound like George was unsettling.
Evan walked back to his desk and opened his calendar for the day on his computer screen to see what meeting he had next, but he was interrupted by the ringing of his cell phone. He picked it up and glanced at the number on his screen. When he saw who it was, he did a double take. It was his wife, Charisse. He was surprised she was up this early. Thanks to her hangovers, she didn’t usually rouse out of bed until noon and was only capable of holding a conversation after she downed two mimosas with a handful of aspirin.
“Hey, Charisse, what’s up?” he asked distractedly, scanning through his calendar. It looked like he had another meeting in an hour and more until 6 p.m. This was going to be a long ass day.
“Tell these people you’ll pay for it!” she barked into the phone.
Evan frowned. “Pay for what?” He had no idea what she was talking about. “What people?”
There was a pause. He could hear frantic voices in the background and lots of shouting. “Just tell them you’ll pay for the car, Evan. You know, this never would have happened if you would have just gotten me the convertible like I asked you to!”
He leaned forward in his chair, feeling the familiar coldness ease up his spine. Every time he got a call from his wife nowadays, it was bad news of some kind. Gone were the days that she called to say how much she loved him or that she couldn’t wait for him to leave the office so that she could see him. Now he waited for the call when she was asking him to bail her out of jail for taking out a pedestrian or plowing into a school bus.
“Charisse, where are you? What the hell happened?”
“I’m at the Jaguar dealership in Tyson’s Corner. I was trying to buy a new car and I had a little fender bender,” she answered breezily. “It wasn’t my fault, but they claim it is. Like they don’t have insurance.” She huffed. “Just tell them you’ll pay for the car!”
Evan closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Her voice was slightly slurred. She had been drinking again. He could tell, and chances were, if there was an accident, Charisse had been at fault.
“Here! Talk to him yourself!” Charisse said.
“Hello!” a man shouted into the phone. “Hello!”
“Hello, this is Evan Murdoch,” he answered resignedly. “To whom am I speaking?”
“This is Henry Franco. I am the manager at this dealership and this . . . this woman . . . your wife . . . she . . .” The man seemed at a loss for words. “Sir, she was test-driving one of our new Jaguar convertibles and plowed into several cars in our lot. She’s totaled more than two-hundred thousand dollars’ worth of merchandise! We can’t—”
“Have someone at your dealership calculate the total for all the damage and I’ll write you a check.”
“A check?”
“Yes, a check. I assume that’s acceptable. You don’t need a cash payment, do you?”
The manager seemed to hesitate. Evan knew how absurd it sounded. Who the hell wrote a check for that much money? But he would happily do it to make this go away.
And if there was anything the Murdochs did best, it was throw money at their problems.
“No, we don’t need cash, but . . . sir, it . . . it isn’t just about the money. Your wife”—the manager dropped his voice to a whisper—“your wife also seems to be intoxicated. I’m afraid we will have to call the police and report—”
“Come on now, is that really necessary, Mr. Franco? I’m sure my wife is very apologetic. I’m offering to pay for all the damage. You can have the check today. There’s no need to get the police involved.”
“B-b-but . . . but, sir, she’s obviously—”
“Look, how about this? I write you a check for the damage with some additional funds for your time and frustration. I arrange to have a cab pick up my wife from your location so that she gets home safely. That way she’s out of your hair. Or, we go with the alternative. You call the police and my offer to write you a check and pay for the damage in full is withdrawn,” Evan said. The steel in his voice that had emerged earlier during his conversation with Joe Cannon now returned. “And not only do I not write you a check, but I also sue you and your dealership for defamation. I will pay the best lawyers in town to make sure I not only own the car she drove and the ones she damaged, but also every goddamn car you have on your lot. How about that? Which of those two scenarios do you prefer?”
The manager cleared his throat. “The . . . the first one . . . I suppose.”
“Good. I’m glad we agree. Now please put my wife back on the phone.”
Evan heard some mumbling and then his wife’s voice. “So you’re going to pay for it then? They’re going to leave me alone and let me get the hell out of here?”
Evan sighed. “Yes, Charisse, I’m going to pay for it. But damn it, you can’t keep doing this,” he said through clenched teeth. “Your drinking has gotten way out of hand.”
“I’m not drunk!”
“Bullshit! You’re lucky you were on a car lot and you hit a couple of empty Jags. What if you had seriously hurt someone? You need to go to counseling, maybe even rehab. We’ll tell people you went on a cruise vacation. Something! Just get this shit under control and—”
“I don’t need a fucking lecture from the likes of you, Evan Murdoch! I like to have fun every once in a while and I drink occasionally. So what? That doesn’t make me an alcoholic. I’m just not boring like you! I’m not some anal-retentive workaho
lic who sleeps on a . . . a . . . pullout couch in his office three times a week! Hell, if you could live in that goddamn office, you would!”
A vein started to bulge along his temple. “My work has nothing to do with—”
“Thank you for your help, Evan. If I run into another car, I’ll be sure to call you again,” she snapped before hanging up on him.
He gripped his cell phone in his fist, wanting to hurl it at the office wall. Instead, he closed his eyes again, took several deep breaths, and calmly laid the phone on his desk.
“You should have let that manager call the cops,” a voice in his head insisted. “You should have let them arrest her. She could have gone to jail and some judge would have ordered her into detox. It probably could have helped her.”
But he never would have done that. He never would have risked his or his family’s reputation with such a public embarrassment. Charisse’s face would be plastered on the front page of The Chesterton Times. He could only imagine the fallout from such a scandal. No, he would continue to clean up her mess, just like he continued to pretend to most of the people in town that he and Charisse were blissfully happy and he wasn’t locked in an empty, sexless marriage.
Sex. He hadn’t had it in more than a year.
Damn, has it really been that long? he thought with a cringe.
His crazy work schedule since his father’s death had kept him so busy that he had been somewhat able to ignore that vital element that had disappeared from his life. But it was starting to get very old. His sexual frustration was building, scaling higher and higher like a pyramid. He could feel it.
He guessed he could break down and try to have sex with Charisse, but even if he could overlook her bitchiness, how sloppy drunk she could get sometimes (well, most of the time lately, quite frankly) was a major turnoff for him. She wasn’t the alluring blonde he remembered from years ago. Instead, a cold, moody lush had taken her place.
“There are other ways to handle this,” the voice in his head answered. “You could always have an affair.”
And if he wanted to make it even simpler, some men of means would just make a few phone calls and have an escort delivered to them. A woman like that would come prepared and be willing to fulfill Evan’s every desire. But Evan didn’t believe in getting a call girl. And he didn’t want to have an affair with a woman who wasn’t paid for her company either. He’d seen the way his father’s affairs had ravaged his parents’ marriage and lives. He had wanted different: a happy, monogamous relationship with the woman he was madly in love with. He hadn’t wanted to go down a path similar to his dad’s.
But you can’t go on like this forever, the voice in his head argued. You’re not a monk, Evan.
Just then, Evan heard a soft knock at his door, snatching him from his thoughts. He looked up to find his sister, Paulette, peering around the edge of his door frame at him.
“Hey, big bro! You busy?”
Seeing her standing there, his heavy mood instantly lightened.
“When am I not?” he muttered with a chuckle. He then slid back from his desk and rose from his leather swivel chair. The day was already hectic, but he could spare a few minutes for Paulette.
She pushed his door further open and stepped inside his office. “I didn’t want to just barge in on you, but your assistant wasn’t at her desk. I couldn’t ask her if you were occupied.”
“That’s because I am currently without an assistant, unfortunately.” He gestured to one of the upholstered chairs in the center of the room, offering his sister a seat.
She sat down and adjusted the front of her skirt. “Without an assistant? Why?”
He shrugged and took the seat across from her. “She just wasn’t working out. I’m looking for a new one though.”
Paulette narrowed her eyes at him knowingly. “Did you scare her off with your type-A personality, Ev? She didn’t have the patience for your color-coded systems?”
“Who knows!” He chuckled again. “So what brings you here today, Sweet Pea? I thought you were still busy settling into the house you and Antonio bought before you left for your honeymoon. I figured you’d be knee deep in swatches by now.”
“Well, I . . . you know . . . just wanted to stop in and see how . . . you know . . . you’re doing.”
“I’m doing fine.”
The two fell into an awkward silence.
“I also wanted to see how the business is, umm . . . is doing.”
“You want to know how the business is doing?”
That didn’t sound like Paulette. She had never expressed interest in the family business before. Hearing about stuff like sales figures and marketing plans had never been her thing. In fact, it always seemed to bore her to death.
“I don’t know,” she said, evading his penetrating gaze. She waved her hands nervously. “I was just . . . I was just wondering about stuff.”
“What stuff?”
“I had . . . I had read stuff in the local paper, you know, about Murdoch Bank and . . . and homes that are being foreclosed on. I just wanted to know . . . what’s . . . what’s happening with all that.”
“Nothing’s happening. They haven’t paid their mortgages and we’re foreclosing on their properties. It’s that cut and dry. Of course, no one likes to be foreclosed on, hence them running to the newspapers.”
She mumbled something, making Evan squint.
“What did you say? I can barely hear you, Sweet Pea.”
“I said I don’t think it’s that ‘cut and dry’!” she repeated louder. “These are people, Evan. Real people. Some of them have lived in Chesterton for decades. The economy sucks and they’ve fallen on hard times. I don’t understand why we’re being so . . . so mean to them. It’s not like we need their money. We have plenty! Why can’t we cut them a deal?”
“Paulette, sweetheart, we run a bank, and a bank is still a business. No bank is in the business of lending to people and simply forgetting that they owe money simply because they’re nice or they’ve ‘fallen on hard times.’ That would be a horrific business practice. We’d default within months.”
“But if you’d . . . if you’d just give them a bit longer, if you’d just give them a chance, Ev, you’d—”
He held up his hand, stopping her. “Where is all this coming from?”
“What do you mean?”
He lowered his hand and leaned forward in his chair. “Why are we even talking about this? What brought this up?”
“I-I told you. I read about it . . . in the . . . you know, in the paper. That’s all.”
He could see her wavering. She was hiding something, but Paulette had never been a very good liar when she was put on the spot. He watched as his little sister gnawed her bottom lip and fidgeted. Finally, she threw up her hands in capitulation.
“Don’t do it, Ev! Please don’t kick Lee out of her house!”
“This is about Leila?” His face hardened. The bulging vein along his temple returned. “That’s why you came today? Wait.” He narrowed his eyes. “Did she put you up to this?”
“No, she didn’t put me up to this! I-I wanted to do it.” Paulette grimaced. “Please don’t get mad. I didn’t want to tell you who it was because I knew you’d react this way.”
“How can I not get mad?” he shouted. He rose from his chair and fought to regain his calm, but it was a struggle. “I cannot believe Leila did this. It’s completely out of line! What the hell was she thinking, coming to you about bank business? I already told her we were going forward with the foreclosure! So she thought she could go whining to you about it? She thought she could manipulate you?”
“She wasn’t trying to manipulate me! She didn’t ask me to do this! I’m doing it because I want to do it!” Paulette insisted, glaring up at him.
Evan didn’t believe that for one second.
Leila couldn’t get him to change his mind so she’d decided to target the kind-hearted, weaker one in their family—Paulette. Desperate times called for desperate
measures and desperate Leila had decided to latch on to his naive little sister. How could she stoop so low?
“Well, I’ll tell you this. Now that I know that she went behind my back and approached you, I’m definitely not changing my mind,” he declared. “Besides, it’s out of my hands—our hands—as I had already explained to her.”
“It’s not out of our hands! Our last name is on that bank! If we said something, they would—”
“We aren’t saying or doing anything! We are going to stay the hell out of it! Look, Sweet Pea—”
“Stop calling me that!” She fisted her hands in her lap. “Stop calling me that stupid fucking nickname! Stop talking to me like I’m some little girl, Evan! You sound just like Dad!”
At that, he flinched.
“Fine then, Paulette. Is that better?” he asked sarcastically, raising his brows. “Paulette, you’ve taken no interest in the family business, in any of the subsidiaries, until Leila Hawkins came crying to you! Stick to what you know. All right? Stay out of it!”
“Stick to what I know?” Paulette shot to her feet. “So I guess I should stick to shopping and getting my nails done! I should be like Mom and sit around, look pretty, and shut up? No, Ev! I own part of this company, just like you do! This is my legacy too! And Leila is my friend!”
“Your friend? You’ve barely spoken to her in ten goddamn years!”
“And why is that?” she yelled. “Why haven’t any of us spoken to her? Because you shut her out! You basically banned us from talking to her, and I’m not doing it anymore! Just because you’re pissed off at Leila, doesn’t mean all of us have to be! This has nothing to do with business! You’re angry that she rejected you and married someone else! You just want to get back at her, and I wish you would grow up and—”
“The answer is still no,” he said, his tone colder than a sheet of ice. He silenced Paulette with his hardened gaze.
Paulette grabbed her purse. “Fine,” she muttered before stomping to his office door. “You have a nice day, asshole!” She then slammed the door behind her, making the frame rattle.