Pain rent her anew, and her eyes burned bright with a fresh wash of tears. She had to gather some semblance of control. She’d done it before, in the awful dark days after her parents had died. She could do it again. Bit by bit, piece by piece, put herself back together again and learn to function as if nothing had happened. Grief was something you kept deep inside because if you didn’t, it would consume you whole.
She’d known all along that she and Will were not a forever thing. No matter that he’d touched her heart in such a way that she knew she’d never love another the same again. No matter that she’d shared her mind and her body with him in ways she’d always dreamed of. There’d been no foundation to their pretense. They’d been two adults who had come together with no illusions or promises between them.
That she was stupid enough not to be able to keep her mind separate from her heart was her own cross to bear. He, it seemed, had no such difficulty. She doubted she’d even touched his emotions. The way he’d ended their arrangement just now was a perfect example of that. And the way he’d just walked away from the very thing he said he’d wanted most left her head reeling.
The fact that he’d given up his rightful inheritance so easily didn’t augur well for the factory. She’d thought he was a better man than that. She’d believed longevity and loyalty had really counted in his world. How wrong she’d been.
She forced her eyes open and looked herself square in the eye. She’d known from the start that it was all make-believe, just as she’d known that when it was over, her heart would be irreparably broken. Now she needed to call on past reserves of strength to find some way to get on with it and to keep working with Will as if breaking off their fake engagement hadn’t been the worst thing that had happened to her since her parents died.
In the house she heard the sound of a key turning in the lock at the front door. She rapidly washed her face and threw on a light application of makeup, just enough to create a mask of normality for when she faced her brother. She was the grand master at putting on a brave face. Ten years of hard work at it couldn’t have been all for nothing.
She should have known her efforts were in vain.
“What happened?” Jason asked the instant he saw her.
“It’s nothing,” she said, shaking her head and hoping against hope that he’d leave it at that.
“It doesn’t look like nothing. Tell me, Maggie. What is it?”
“Oh, just that I’ve gone and done the stupidest thing in my entire life,” she said, her voice breaking.
Jason looked ill at ease in the face of her raw emotion.
“Don’t worry, I’ll get over it,” she hastened to add. “You know me. Tough as nails.”
Jason shook his head. “Get over him, you mean.”
Margaret swallowed against the lump in her throat. Under Jason’s inquiring eyes she could only nod.
“Ah, Maggie. Why did you have to go and fall in love with him?”
Jason held his arms open and Margaret walked into them, taking comfort in the strength of his hug. It felt strange to have their roles reversed.
“I couldn’t help it, Jason. I just did.”
They stood there for ages, just holding one another, giving and receiving comfort. Eventually Margaret pulled free from her brother’s caring embrace.
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
“Not saying, ‘I told you so,’ about him using me.”
Jason just shook his head. “You’re a big girl now, Maggie. But it’s about time you started to make your own mistakes instead of constantly picking up after mine.”
“What do you mean?”
“You need a life of your own. You’ve been so devoted to me and to making sure that our lives have gone on as close to normal as possible to before that you’ve completely forgotten to take time out for you. Maggie Cole got lost somewhere along the line.”
“I love you, Jason. I couldn’t let Mom and Dad down. I had to step up to the plate for you with them gone.”
“I know you did, and I appreciate everything you’ve done for me. Especially for giving up your own college dreams for me to go instead. But…” He grimaced. “I stopped needing you a long time ago. I’m twenty-four, Maggie. I have to stand on my own two feet and you have to let me.”
Fresh tears sprang to her eyes, but she valiantly blinked them back. He was right. She’d put her life on hold to support him and she hadn’t known when to stop. As a result she’d risked suffocating him. It was a miracle she hadn’t already.
“Okay, I understand. It might take me a while.” She smiled. “But I’ll do it. By the way, Will tells me that you might be cleared of wrongdoing in the fraud investigation. Why didn’t you tell me?”
Her voice rose a little, showing some of her frustration at being kept in the dark. After all the subterfuge from Will, was it too much to have expected her brother to have included her in what was happening? After all, it had directly affected her, too.
“He asked me to keep it to myself until we could identify the real culprit.”
“I’m so sorry I doubted you. I just—”
“I know,” Jason interrupted. “I programmed you to distrust me. But now maybe we can both take a new step forward.”
“Definitely,” she answered, pasting on a smile for her younger brother’s benefit.
Because no matter how many new steps forward she took with her brother, she’d still be without the one person who meant more to her than she’d ever believed possible. Will Tanner.
Thirteen
Telling her their arrangement was over had nothing on the past few days, Will thought to himself as he watched the sway of Margaret’s hips as she left his office with the work he’d just given her. He shifted slightly in his seat to ease the discomfort in his groin. The discomfort that despite every command known to man, paid no attention to him and ridiculously leaped to attention every time she was within a few feet of him.
She seemed to suffer under no such difficulty, he noted with a degree of irritation. Each day she serenely sat at her desk, turning out work of an exemplary level without so much as an error or transposition of characters anywhere. It was as if they’d never happened. As if the passion between them had never existed.
He should have been relieved. After all, he’d extricated himself from enough relationships to know that her response to this was indeed a blessing—especially as they continued to work together. But there was a part of him that had begun to sorely regret releasing her from their agreement. He knew it had been the right thing to do, but for the first time in his life the right thing had never felt so utterly wrong.
He missed her. There, he’d admitted it. He missed her in his bed—in his life. Sure, they shared office space, but it was as if she operated inside a protective bubble—immune to all around her. The elements that he’d grown to enjoy most about her—her humor, her wonder in things that were new, her ability to give and give—were now extinguished.
The office had become a somber place to be. The report he’d put in to Rafe and the Board had been met with some serious discussion. The general consensus, though, had been to accept his recommendations, and as if they’d sensed the writing on the wall, there had been a distinct rise in the ill feeling directed toward him by the staff since then. It was a good thing he had broad shoulders, he thought to himself.
It was just before lunchtime that Margaret came marching into his office. Her face more animated than he’d seen it in days—albeit the animation was, once again, anger. Anger directed squarely at him.
She threw a sheaf of papers onto the desk in front of him.
“What kind of game are you playing?” she demanded.
Will put down his pen and leaned back in his chair. “Care to explain your question?”
“This.” She gestured to the scattered papers. “You’re recommending the complete opposite of the last report. Are you trying to commit career suicide? Don’t you know that you probably risk totally alienati
ng your boss with this? From what I understand, Rafe Cameron is determined to dismantle what’s left of Worth Industries no matter what—even if a more profitable solution for us can be found. He certainly seemed keen enough to adopt your last report. Why are you even bothering with this one?”
He shrugged. “The report is what it is. I’ve compiled my most recent findings and presented them here.” He tapped the papers. “Are you telling me you disagree with my recommendation again?”
“Of course I’m not, but why didn’t you say this the first time around?”
Will leaned back in his chair and tucked his hands behind his head. “I didn’t have all the information at my disposal. Now I do. The other report was a preliminary finding. Obviously, since then, I’ve gleaned further information. I’m meeting with Rafe tonight to discuss it. I really think the factory is viable if, and that’s a big if, they make product changes and convert the factory for a more specialized high-tech use.
“Sure, it’s going to cost Cameron Enterprises a few cool million in updating the factory and continuing education for the staff, but long-term the gains will be huge. I’m hoping that’ll be the carrot that secures Rafe’s interest, besides the fact that doing this will ensure the community remains economically healthy with, hopefully, an even higher level of employment than Vista del Mar currently enjoys.”
Margaret just stood there looking at him as if he’d grown two heads. Eventually, she spoke.
“So you’re seriously going to pursue this avenue? It’ll mean everything to the staff here if it can go ahead. Lately everyone’s just been walking around as if they’re waiting for a guillotine to fall. Morale has been terrible,” Margaret commented. “Do you really think he’ll go for it?”
“No, probably not. But I couldn’t let this pass without bringing it to his attention.” He leaned forward and gathered up the papers. “Much as I appreciate the speed with which you’ve transcribed this, I don’t think I can give it to Rafe looking like this. I don’t want him to have any excuse to trash it before he’s even read the contents.”
She reached forward and snatched them from him. “Don’t worry,” she said. “They will be perfectly bound and back on your desk in ten minutes.”
Margaret went home later that day completely unsure of how she should be feeling. She was afraid to hope that Rafe Cameron would accept Will’s current proposal. Sure, on paper it all made sense and the forward projections were almost embarrassingly promising. But would Cameron go for it? It was pretty clear now that he’d had some agenda against Worth Industries long before he’d come back. Gillian’s acerbic editorials in the Gazette had probed his every decision for all to see. You couldn’t even go to the grocery store without overhearing people questioning his motives. No matter how much effort he was seen putting into Hannah’s Hope, everyone still suspected it was a smoke screen for whatever it was that he really planned to accomplish. And right now that seemed to be the total decimation of the only business that had kept the town alive. She doubted he’d even give Will’s new proposal the time of day, no matter how prudent the recommendations.
The thing that struck her most about today was Will’s total apparent commitment to this new course of action for the company. He was prepared to go head-to-head with Rafe Cameron over the whole thing, even knowing that his proposal was unlikely to be adopted. Maybe she’d made a terrible mistake in judgment about him after all. She’d been so quick to accuse him of being a corporate raider just like his boss. Wondering whether she’d gotten the completely wrong idea about him didn’t sit well with her. Nor did the awareness that he’d let her go on thinking that way.
Would she have listened to him? Let him persuade her thinking back his way? Or had he just been looking for a reason to end their arrangement—perhaps had wearied of her? She still didn’t understand his about-face on the farmland he’d talked about with such enthusiasm. It had meant so much to him on so many levels, and yet he’d let it go, just like that. It just didn’t make any sense.
Margaret went through the motions of preparing dinner for herself and Jason even though she’d had no appetite for anything lately. She was just about to remove the chicken cacciatore from the oven when she heard the roar of Jason’s motorbike coming up the driveway. She straightened as she heard the front door bang open on its hinges and the sound of Jason’s feet swiftly moving through the house.
“What’s wrong?” she asked as he came into the kitchen.
In response, he wrapped his arms around her and swung her in a circle until she was dizzy.
“Nothing’s wrong,” he shouted happily. “Everything couldn’t be more right!”
Margaret laughed as Jason set her back on her feet and she put a hand out on a nearby chair back to steady herself.
“Wow, what brought that on?”
She looked at her brother’s face. He hadn’t been this animated since he’d graduated college. For a second her heart squeezed. Right now he looked so much like their father with his big happy smile and dancing eyes.
“Good news. No, great news.”
“So tell me already,” she coaxed, still laughing.
“I’ve been cleared. Exonerated. Acquitted and, most important, vindicated, from all wrongdoing.”
“Jason, that’s wonderful news! I’m so happy for you. I should never, ever have doubted you.”
Unexpected tears filled her eyes and started to spill down her cheeks.
“Ah, Maggie,” he said gruffly, pulling her into his arms for a massive bear hug. “It’s okay. I know I wasn’t always an angel, but I meant it outside the courthouse the last time, when I said I would never let you down like that again. I guess from now on you’ll believe me, huh?”
She nodded and sniffed, pulling from his arms and searching out a paper towel to wipe her face dry.
“I didn’t mean to get all blubbery on you. I’m sorry. This is great news, so that makes these happy tears, okay?”
“Sure, whatever you say.” Jason grinned back.
“So tell me what happened,” Margaret said, reaching for her oven mitts. She took the chicken dish from the oven and ladled it onto plates.
“It was awesome,” Jason enthused. “She didn’t know it, but we had her neck in a noose.”
“She? Your supervisor?”
“Yep. She’s being grilled by Tanner now. From what we can tell, there’s a whole lot more that she’s been dipping her fingers into than what she tried to pin on me.”
“That’s terrible. And to think she was ready to let you take the blame for all that.”
Margaret added steamed green beans to their plates and took them to the table. Jason readily sat down and picked up his fork.
“And that’s not all,” he said, gesticulating with his fork. “Tanner commended me for my forensic accounting skills in uncovering the clues that led to the real culprit. You know, he might come across tough as nails, but deep down he does seem to care about people, doesn’t he? I mean, he was all staunch and tough on me when he thought I was in the wrong, but he was still man enough to shake my hand and apologize when he knew I wasn’t.”
The bite of chicken she’d just swallowed stuck in her throat and Margaret reached for her water glass to help swallow it. Now Jason was in the Will Tanner fan club? The irony would have been funny if it wasn’t so unbearably painful. The way Jason had described Will was spot-on.
When she didn’t speak, Jason continued, “You know, I was wrong about Tanner’s motives. He really does have our best interests at heart. I’m sorry I was so down on the two of you and you helping him out the way you did.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Margaret managed to say. “That’s all over now, anyway, except for the EA role.”
Jason shot her a sharp glance, but she was relieved when he didn’t press for more.
“He’s gone the full distance for me in this, Maggie. He’s recommended to the head of my division that I be offered a company scholarship to go back to school and specialize in forensic
accounting, since I seem to have a knack for it. Natural aptitude is what he said. Reckons I’ll be an asset to the company in the long term.”
Margaret could barely believe her ears. Somehow she must have said the right words and Jason, thank goodness, carried most of the rest of the conversation in his excitement at the new opportunities opening up for him. But had she heard him right? Was this the same William Tanner who’d manipulated the situation with Jason to coerce her into his arms and into his bed?
She had to admit that sleeping with Will was a choice she’d made on her own, but she was completely overwhelmed by what the day had brought. First the new proposal, and now this? It was almost too much to take in. As much as she was thrilled for Jason and his future prospects, what would happen to them if the factory was forced to close their doors and cease operations?
Either way, William Tanner would eventually head back to New York or whatever role Rafe Cameron had lined up for him next. And no matter how much she wished otherwise, he’d be taking her fractured heart with him.
When Jason offered to clean up after their meal she didn’t argue, which earned her a concerned look from her brother. And when she said she was heading off to bed for an early night he looked even more worried. But she couldn’t find the energy to tell him she was okay. Not when she faced another night lying in her bed, alone, staring at the ceiling and wondering how on earth she was going to get through the next day.
Will stepped out onto his terrace facing the ocean and sank into one of the chairs, nursing a shot of whiskey in a tumbler between his hands. He stared out over the darkened ocean as exhaustion dragged at his body. What a day.
Normally a day like today would have seen him pumped to the max, exhilaration oozing from every pore, and yet he felt flat. The meeting with Rafe had been short and sweet and to the point but Rafe had kept his cards close to his chest, refusing to make a decision at this stage of the game. And in many ways it was a game to him. The guy literally was a rags-to-riches story of success. Which made his fixation on Worth Industries all the more intriguing.
Bought: His Temporary Fiancée Page 14