Saralyn sailed in first. She looked as though she’d stepped off a Paris runway in her fuchsia suit dress with matching shoes and hat. Rebecca wondered, as she often did, how the woman managed to pull it off. Self-conscious, she brushed her hands down the simple burgundy sheath she’d chosen because it was one of Isaac’s favorites. Unfortunately, he hadn’t even noticed.
“Good morning, children,” Saralyn said, filling the room with her presence. She pressed a kiss against Isaac’s cheek and then against Rebecca’s.
“You’re in good spirits this morning,” Isaac said, surprise evident in his voice. Rebecca was surprised, too, since she knew that Saralyn hated the changes Abraham had made to the board.
“I’m doing what a woman has to do,” Saralyn said, removing her hat. “We have to take care of things in your father’s absence.” She placed her hat on the table in front of the chair where she usually sat, which was to the right of Abraham’s chair at the head of the twenty-foot mesquite conference table with granite inlay.
Rebecca wondered what Saralyn had up her sleeve. Her mother-in-law was used to things going her way, and right now they weren’t.
Casually, Saralyn fingered her long tresses until they lay perfectly across her shoulders. Then she moved to stand next to Abraham’s chair. “You should sit here,” she said to Isaac, pointing at the chair Abraham had vacated only recently.
Isaac, who sat in his usual chair to the immediate right of his father’s, said, “I’m more comfortable where I am. Let’s leave Dad’s chair vacant until he gets back.”
Saralyn turned toward Rebecca. “Please talk to your husband, darling. He doesn’t seem to understand that impressions are everything. We need to let those Thomas interlopers know where they stand from day one. That way there’s no confusion.”
Rebecca had to smile. Saralyn did not disappoint. She turned to her husband. “Saralyn’s right, Isaac. For all intents and purposes, you’re Abraham until Abraham can be here himself. He’d want you in his chair.”
Isaac flashed those cold eyes at her again and she flinched.
“Look, you two,” Saralyn said, glancing from one of them to the other, “I don’t know what that look was about but I do know that this is not the time for you two to engage in some petty bickering between yourselves. We need to be united now more than ever. You’re going to have to put your marital squabbles on hold. We don’t have time for them.” She gave them each a pointed stare. “Can I count on you two?”
“Yes,” Rebecca answered first, avoiding Isaac’s eyes.
“Son.” Saralyn tapped her fingers on Abraham’s chair. “I’m waiting.”
“You know you can count on me, Mom,” he said.
She nodded. “Good. Then get your rear out of that seat and into this one. We all need to be situated before the others arrive.” After Isaac moved to his designated chair, Saralyn pointed to the one he had vacated. “You sit there, Rebecca.”
After Rebecca had done as directed, Saralyn glided into her own chair. “Now we’re ready to face the world and our enemies.”
Isaac looked at his mother. “Dad invited these ‘enemies’ to the table, Mom. We can’t keep them away.”
“Don’t remind me,” Saralyn said. “There were other ways your father could have assuaged his guilt. Why didn’t he just write them a check, a big, big check? I think that would have satisfied them. There was no reason for him to bring them into our lives, our business. He was wrong to do it.”
Rebecca glanced at her husband to see what he was thinking.
“According to Alan,” Isaac said, “there’s nothing we can do.”
Saralyn frowned. “Alan’s not the only attorney in Atlanta. If we don’t like his answers, we’ll find another attorney with better answers. Your father never took no for an answer, and neither should we.”
Rebecca thought Saralyn made a good point. She didn’t know about the other Thomases, but she knew she didn’t trust Michael. His hatred of Isaac was too deep. She’d never feel safe with him in their lives.
Before Isaac could respond to his mother, the door to the boardroom opened and in walked Michael. “Good morning,” he said, as if his presence were expected and welcome. “I’m Michael Thomas,” he said, extending his hand first to Saralyn.
“You don’t belong here,” she said with disdain, not taking his hand.
“Nice to meet you, too, Mrs. Martin,” Michael said, not missing a beat. Then he turned his attention to Rebecca. “I know it’s early, but happy anniversary,” he said with a wink. “I hope you like this year’s gift better than you liked last year’s.”
Isaac jumped out of his chair. “How dare you?” he said, standing nose-to-nose with Michael.
Michael didn’t back up an inch. “How dare I what? Be your bastard brother?” He glanced at Saralyn. “Or enter your adulterous husband’s building?” He then turned back to Rebecca, who shot fiery darts at him with her eyes. “Or maybe you’re daring me to seduce your sweet wife again?”
Isaac raised his hand—
Saralyn and Rebecca came up out of their chairs. “No,” they yelled at the same time.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Smiling, Michael rubbed his jaw. “So big brother has an awesome right hook,” he said to Isaac. “Not bad.” His smile turned ruthless. “Maybe I should be the one to call security. I believe you just assaulted me.” For effect, he let his eyes roam the room. “All of this could be mine someday, thanks to you.” He clapped his hand against his forehead. “What am I saying? This will be mine someday.”
“Over my dead body,” Saralyn piped in.
Isaac shot his mother a glare. “This is between him and me,” he told her. “Stay out of it, Mother.”
Michael glanced in her direction. “Yes, Stepmom,” he said to the woman whose outfit had to cost more than his mother’s entire wardrobe. “Stay out of it.”
Rebecca stepped between the two men. “You both need to take a step back.” When neither man moved, she added, “Literally.”
Michael grinned at her. “I like it when you go all home girl on me, Rebecca,” he said to irk her. “It gets me hot.” He turned to Isaac to get in another jab. “She’s perfect isn’t she—a perfect lady during the day and a perfect freak at night?”
Isaac raised his fists again. “You—”
“Isaac, no!” both women screamed as Isaac quickly pushed Rebecca out of the way and lunged at Michael. Caught off balance, Michael fell to floor with Isaac on top of him, the women yelling for them to stop. Rebecca grabbed Isaac by the collar in an attempt to pull him off Michael. Saralyn stood with her arms folded, apparently happy to see her son get the best of her stepson.
The conference door shot open.
“Michael!”
“Stop it now!”
“What’s going on here?”
Michael recognized the voices of his mother and sister. He turned and saw them standing in the doorway, mouths open, aghast at what they were seeing. The MEEG attorney, Alan Weems, stood with them.
“This is not what Abraham wanted,” Alan said, taking control of the situation by first pushing Rebecca away from Isaac and then pulling Isaac off Michael. Then he extended his hand and helped Michael up from the floor. He looked at the two brothers. “You’re behaving like children,” he told them. “This room is not soundproof. Everybody along this hallway could hear you. I can only imagine what they’re thinking.”
Michael straightened his clothes. “I thought you rich people were more in control of your emotions and actions than poor working stiffs like me.” He shrugged, rubbing his jaw again. “I guess I was wrong.”
“That’s enough, Michael,” his mother said, her voice full of disappointment. He hated when she used that tone. “You shouldn’t be here.”
Michael turned to her. “Why not, Mama?” he said, angry with what he interpreted as her putting Abraham’s wishes above her children’s needs…again. “I’m Abraham’s son. I have as much right to be here as the rest of you.”
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“You have no rights,” Saralyn said. “If it were left to me, none of you would be here. I have no idea what Abraham was thinking. This will never work.”
“Everybody needs to take a deep breath,” Alan said. “This has to work,” he said to Saralyn. “It’s what Abraham wanted.”
She folded her arms across her chest. “This company has other priorities beyond what Abraham wants,” she declared.
Alan nodded. “You’re right.” He glanced at each person in the room. “Why don’t we all take a seat?”
“He shouldn’t be here,” Saralyn said, pointing at Michael.
Alan ignored her. “Everybody please take a seat. We can and will conduct this meeting professionally and in an orderly fashion.”
Seeing Isaac take the seat at the head of the table, Michael proceeded to the chair at the opposite end, facing him. Two could play this game. Rebecca and Saralyn sat on either side of Isaac. His mother and Deborah sat on either side of him. That sides had been chosen was clear from the seating arrangements. There were three empty chairs between Saralyn and Deborah, and three between Rebecca and his mother.
Alan, the mediator, chose the middle ground. He took the center chair on the side with Saralyn and Deborah. “Look,” he said, as he glanced around the table, “this is not an ideal situation for any of us, but it’s our reality until Abraham returns to the helm. You all may not like each other, but if you care anything about this company, you will find a way to work together.”
“I’m not sure I agree with that,” Saralyn said. “We know this company inside and out. We don’t need them. And he”—she pointed to Michael—“doesn’t even belong here.”
Michael leaned back in his chair and propped one leg over the other. “Seems somebody is forgetting etiquette class.”
“Michael—” his mother chided.
He shrugged as if he didn’t know what he’d done to incur her wrath.
“What are you going to do, Saralyn?” Alan asked, so clearly exasperated he didn’t even wait for an answer. “There’s nothing you can do if you care about this company. Any infighting at this point with Abraham out of commission will be read as instability by our business partners and our competitors. Do you want that?”
“But—”
Isaac covered his mother’s hand with his own. “He’s right, Mom. It doesn’t matter how we feel about each other. We have to present a united front. The vultures will swoop in at any sign of weakness. We all lose if that happens.”
Saralyn sat back in her chair, quieted for now. Rebecca said nothing. Michael surmised that, like him, she didn’t have a vote in what went on.
“Now that we’ve settled that issue,” Alan said, “let’s move on to the business at hand.”
Michael watched the faces of the folks present at the table more than he listened to the attorney. Saralyn Martin was everything he hated in a woman. She thought she was better than him and his family. She especially thought herself better than his mother. She and Abraham would have to pay for that attitude.
Isaac, on the other hand, had impressed him. He rubbed his chin again. His older brother could land a punch. Not bad for a man who’d been born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Isaac was made of sterner stuff than he’d thought. Michael glanced at Rebecca, who paid him no attention. No, she kept her attention on Isaac. She’d fought for her man, so maybe she really did love him. And Isaac’s reaction to his taunts suggested that he loved Rebecca as well, though there was something in the way he refused to look at her that made Michael think there might be a problem in paradise.
He spent the rest of the meeting contemplating ways to exploit the problems in Isaac and Rebecca’s marriage to his advantage.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Josette stepped off the hospital elevator, unsure she was doing the right thing but positive something had to be done. If she weren’t pregnant, she could let things slide, but she was going to be a mother, and mothers couldn’t afford inaction. Not if they loved their children. She rubbed her hand across her tummy. And she desperately loved her child. If she didn’t, she would have walked away from her marriage to Michael as soon as she’d learned of his relationship with Abraham and Isaac. But the child growing inside her kept her from making rash decisions. Yes, her emotions were all over the place, but somehow she was grounded enough to know that fighting for her marriage was the right thing to do.
There had been something about Michael that attracted her. She wasn’t so superficial as to fall for him because he’d romanced her. No, there was a vulnerability in him that she saw from the first. Of course, he’d tried to hide it. But she felt closest to him then. Those times when his vulnerability showed had been infrequent since his kinship with Abraham became public knowledge.
She walked to the reception desk. “I’m here to see patient Abraham Martin. I’m his daughter-in-law.” That was the truth.
“He’s in intensive care,” the nurse at the desk said. “That’s on the fourth floor. Take the elevator around the corner.”
Josette rubbed her stomach as she made her way to the elevator and up to Abraham’s floor. The nurse there directed her to his room. Josette stood at his door looking at him. It seemed that he was asleep, and she guessed he was. A coma was a deep sleep, wasn’t it?
She walked over to the bed and pressed a kiss on Abraham’s forehead. “Hi, Grandpa,” she said. She reached behind her, pulled a chair up close to the bed and eased down into it. As she sat before the sleeping Abraham, she began to weep quietly. This man was her father-in-law, her unborn child’s grandfather, and her husband hadn’t bothered to tell her.
When her tears finally subsided, she felt a little better. “Abraham,” she said, “I need you to wake up. Your first grandchild needs you to wake up. You started something when you acknowledged Michael and Deborah as your children, and you need to wake up so you can finish it. Things are not going well without you. Though he’d never admit it, Michael is a wreck. I’m afraid he’s going to repeat your mistakes.”
She looked up at Abraham, hoping her declaration would awaken him. She found him still sleeping. “I’m a wreck, too, and it’s all your fault. Why did you treat your children so badly?” She grabbed his hand and squeezed it. “You have to get better, Abraham, so you can fix this mess. Michael is bound and determined to make you pay for your indifference to him and Deborah. He’s crashing your board meeting this morning. He wanted me to join him but I refused. I can’t take the drama. The baby can’t take it.”
She brushed away the tears that streamed down her face. “I don’t want to leave Michael,” she said, “but it’s like he’s pushing me away intentionally. One day he’s going to wake up, and the baby and I will be gone. Maybe that’s what he wants. Maybe he feels he doesn’t deserve to have a family. Maybe he doesn’t know how to be a husband and father, since you were never there. That’s why you have to get better, Abraham. You weren’t there to teach Michael how to be a man when he was a boy, so now you have to help him learn it as an adult.
“He’s going to fight you all the way, but you owe me and you owe him. I’ll never do to my child what you did to Michael. I don’t see how you could do it—walk away from your son. It’s hard for me to reconcile that man in the magazines all buddy-buddy with Isaac with the man who refused to acknowledge a son and daughter for thirty years.” She gave a bitter laugh. “What kind of man does that make you?”
Josette sat back in her chair. She realized she was directing all the anger she felt toward Michael onto Abraham. He did share some of the blame for the problems in her life, but Michael was a grown man. He had to deal with being a husband and father regardless of how his relationship with Abraham progressed. Maybe she should be having this conversation with him.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Deborah tried to present a calm demeanor, when she actually felt anything but calm. Saralyn Martin was a piece of work, sitting through the entire meeting staring at her, Michael, and her mother as though they were gum s
tuck to the bottom of her new Gucci pumps. If nothing else, the woman’s attitude made her glad Abraham had not reached out to them when they were children. The hatred coming from this woman would devastate a child.
Deborah glanced at her mother and was proud. Leah Thomas held her head high and wore a serene expression on her face. Saralyn Martin might have more money and live a more glamorous lifestyle, but her mother had more class, hands down. Saralyn Martin lacked the simple “home training” that her mother had instilled in her and her brother.
Well, she had to be honest. Michael seemed to have forgotten a bit of his “home training,” otherwise she, her mother, and Alan would not have found him tussling on the floor when they entered the boardroom. Talk about embarrassing! She could kill Michael for acting a fool in front of these people. He was only showing them what they expected to see.
“We all have our parts to do,” Alan was saying. “And we have to support each other.”
“I think what you mean, Alan, is that we all have to rally around Isaac now that he’s stepped in for his father,” Saralyn said, stressing the his to exclude Abraham’s other children. Deborah couldn’t help but roll her eyes. The woman was pathetic.
“True,” Alan said. “Isaac is at the helm of MEEG until Abraham gets back. And his job is to keep the ship on its current course, not change it. This is a temporary change of leadership, not a final one.”
“I understand, Alan,” Isaac said. “I wouldn’t want it any other way.”
Deborah had been studying her half brother throughout the meeting but hadn’t gotten a good read on him. All she could surmise was that he and Michael must have inherited their temperaments from Abraham, since both of them had been tussling on the floor.
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