Native Affairs

by Doreen Owens Malek

  If Tim had managed ScriptSoft profitably, she would never have come back home again.

  Ann turned a corner and headed back to the business district, crossing the railroad tracks that bisected the island. To the south of them lay Hispaniola, the Cuban-Indian shanty town where Heath had lived when she’d first met him.

  She had no idea where he lived now.

  Downtown Port Lisbon had changed; there were new high-rises along the main street and a traffic light at the corner by Burdine’s department store. Ann parked in the lot behind the refurbished Acadian-style building that housed the law firm handling Tim’s bankruptcy. She glanced in the rearview mirror to tidy her hair, got out of the car and straightened the tailored jacket of the lightweight wool suit she was wearing.

  She felt like she was about to face a firing squad. As she walked toward the entrance, she concentrated on the lunch she was to have with her old friend Amy later that day and forced herself through the lobby and into the elevator that led up to the lawyer’s office.

  Harold Caldwell’s secretary ushered Ann right inside as soon as she announced her name. From Caldwell’s grave expression she knew that the situation had not improved since she’d last spoken to him.

  “Mr. Caldwell,” Ann said, extending her hand.

  “Miss Talbot. Have a seat.”

  Ann sat in the leather chair in his comfortable office, glancing out the picture window at the bay below and around the room at the tasteful paintings, standing plants, inlaid oak desk and Oriental rug. Caldwell shuffled a stack of papers and cleared his throat. Ann met the eyes of the lawyer, a well groomed, graying man in his fifties wearing the traditional pin-striped suit and conservative tie.

  “You know the purpose of this meeting, Miss Talbot,” he finally said. “I’ve already told you most of what you need to hear over the phone, but there are several documents that you must sign, and also the matter of your brother’s confinement. Where shall we begin?”

  “I’d like to get my brother out of jail.”

  “Do you have fifty thousand dollars?” Caldwell asked, raising his brows inquiringly.

  “No, but I thought bail could be arranged through a bondsman. Isn’t that the usual practice?”

  Caldwell frowned. “It’s been difficult to find a bondsman to put up the money. Your brother is regarded as a flight risk.”

  “What?” Ann said indignantly. “That’s preposterous.”

  Caldwell stared at her. “Apparently you aren’t aware that when Tim was arrested several months ago for writing bad checks to a casino, he fled the jurisdiction.”

  Ann closed her eyes.

  “You haven’t been in close touch with your brother, have you?” Caldwell asked gently.

  “No. Not lately. He avoids talking to me when he’s having... difficulties.”

  “Well, he’s having very severe difficulties now. Unless you can come up with the cash to foot his bail, he will probably remain where he is.”

  “I live in an apartment in New York, Mr. Caldwell, so I don’t have equity in a home or other property to mortgage. I have a few thousand in savings and that’s it.”

  “Your writing career is not lucrative?”

  “I’ve just begun it, Mr. Caldwell. I was a researcher for a publishing house before I started writing. Now I’m working on my third book and my first one just came out late last year. Royalties take a long time to arrive and the advances from the publisher are just enough to live on in the meantime.”

  “Excuse me for being so personal, Miss Talbot, but your father was a very wealthy man. He left you nothing at all?”

  “I wanted nothing, and he knew that. He left everything, the business and his real estate holdings, and all of his investments, to Tim.”

  “And you didn’t even supervise your brother’s actions?”

  Ann looked away from the lawyer’s probing stare. “Tim is a grown man and, for personal reasons, I wanted to be divorced from ScriptSoft and anything else associated with my father. I’m sorry if you can’t understand that.”

  “But you must have known about your brother’s problem,” the lawyer insisted.

  “I felt that it was his business,” Ann replied shortly. “What else do we need to discuss?”

  Caldwell shrugged. “I told you most of it on the phone, as I said. ScriptSoft is insolvent, the people on the board of directors are suing your brother for mismanagement, and the Securities and Exchange Commission is preparing to prosecute him for stock fraud.”

  “Is there any good news?”

  Caldwell sighed. “Not much. A fresh infusion of several million dollars would save the day, allowing the present management to pay the company’s debts, trim the staff, sell off the stagnant real estate and reorganize. Short of that, the bankruptcy court will take over to portion out the meager assets to the creditors, most of whom won’t get very much because little is left.”

  “What about Tim?”

  “If he can’t make bail, he will remain in jail until his trial and then he will probably be convicted and do ten to fifteen years.”

  “What happens if he pleads guilty to a lesser charge? Won’t that help?”

  “He’s still likely to do time. The courts are cracking down on these manipulators. I’m afraid the eighties are catching up with us. I’m sorry.”

  Ann shook her head. “How could this have happened to ScriptSoft? Didn’t anybody else at the company know what Tim was doing?”

  “He was very clever, Miss Talbot. He inflated the stock, sold it off high and progressively drained the company. He owned the majority of the stock and as the controlling interest he had a free hand. By the time the board figured out what he was up to, it was too late. I assume from what you’ve just said that you were never informed or consulted about his management policies.”

  “No. I owned the stock but never paid attention to the value of it. When the reports came in I threw them in a drawer.”

  “Because there was bad blood between you and your father?” Caldwell asked.

  “Yes,” Ann said crisply in a tone which indicated that Caldwell was definitely not to pursue this line of inquiry.

  “I remember Henry Talbot,” the lawyer mused. “He was an astute businessman, very active in this community. I played in golf tournaments with him from time to time. He had to take it easy even then— his heart was never very good.”

  Ann said nothing.

  “I must say I’m very sorry to see his company come to this. It was once very prosperous, and your mother one of Port Lisbon’s leading hostesses. She was a lovely lady and I was saddened to hear of her death.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Cancer?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did she suffer long?”

  “It seemed long.”

  “What a shame. She was so young.”

  There was a tap on Caldwell’s door and Ann was grateful for the interruption of his funeral dirge on the downfall of her family. He got up to have a hastily whispered conference with his secretary, and when he came back he was holding a slip of paper and wearing a strange expression.

  “What is it?” Ann asked.

  “I can’t believe this,” Caldwell said, shaking his head. “You have a visitor, Miss Talbot. A benefactor who read about ScriptSoft’s impending bankruptcy and Tim’s arrest in the Miami newspapers. He says he is willing to refinance the company and pay your brother’s bail in the bargain.”

  “What?” Ann said sharply, sitting up straight.

  The door opened behind Caldwell and standing before her was Heath Bodine.

  Chapter 2

  Ann would have known him anywhere. His lush black hair was shorter, there were a few lines around his eyes and mouth, and his lean body now had the hard muscularity of full manhood, but he was just as gorgeous now as when she had last seen him.

  “Hello, Ann,” he said quietly, his wide, heavily lashed dark eyes fixed on hers.

  Ann was stunned, speechless. She couldn’t look away from
him. Her heart began to pound and she put her hand to her throat.

  He was wearing brown pants with a beige, raw silk sweater and the same type of leather moccasins he had favored as a youth. His dusky skin was tanned an even deeper shade of amber than she remembered and the gold watch on his wrist gleamed against it. He seemed even more vibrant than her vivid memory of him, and she felt like a shadow by comparison with the vitality he brought into the room.

  “Heath told my secretary that he is an old friend of yours,” Caldwell said. “I imagine you have a lot to catch up on so I’ll leave you two alone. Ann, we’ll talk later, I need your signature on some documents.”

  The lawyer was gone before Ann could say a word. She stared at Heath, her mouth dry, her palms wet, acutely conscious of her own haggard appearance and reduced circumstances.

  “Are you the benefactor Mr. Caldwell mentioned?” she finally managed to whisper.

  “I am.”

  “Is this some kind of cruel joke? Why on earth would you want to help me?”

  “I have my reasons.”

  “I can just imagine what they are,” Ann said bitterly.

  “You don’t have the first idea,” he replied flatly, his eyes narrow and hard.

  “Go home, Heath. I need a lot of cash and even if you had it, I wouldn’t take it from you.”

  “Why, Princess? Is my money tainted?”

  His use of his former nickname for her hurt more than she would have believed possible.

  “Your money is nonexistent,” she said bitingly, feeling the need to hurt him back. “You were very pretty, Heath, but very poor. That’s why my father objected to you, remember?”

  “Your father objected to the fact that my old man was a drunk and my mother the friendliest woman in town, not to mention that less than desirable Seminole blood flowing through my veins. But that didn’t matter to you when we were between the sheets, did it, Princess?”

  “Let’s not do this to each other, Heath,” Ann whispered, swallowing hard. He had hardly been with her a minute and already they were drawing blood.

  “Why not? Is it too late to tell the truth?”

  “It’s too late for everything.”

  “But not too late to write a check. You’ve been out of touch; Annie, I’m not the same lowlife you left behind in Hispaniola when you skipped town.”

  Ann heard the flinty edge in his voice, saw the steel gleam in his eyes. “Must we play this game? I know you hate me, Heath, so exactly what are you doing here?” she asked wearily.

  “I’m here to save your bacon, Annie. Isn’t that what one old friend should do for another?”

  “We were never friends.”

  “We were much more than that,” he said in a low tone, holding her gaze.

  Ann looked away from him. “Do you have seven million dollars?” she asked in a scoffing tone.

  “Yes.”

  She looked back at him in amazement. He was completely serious.

  “Find that hard to believe, do you, rich girl?” he said sarcastically. “Oh, excuse me, I guess that term doesn’t apply to you anymore, does it?”

  “There’s no point to this exercise, Heath. You’ve obviously come to torture me but you will have to get in line. My brother and all of his creditors are way ahead of you.”

  “Don’t you want to hear my generous offer?”

  “No.”

  “You don’t think I mean it, do you? Well I do, and I have the money.”

  “How did you get it?”

  “Ah, so you are curious. Do you think I stole it?”

  Ann didn’t answer.

  “That would be in line with the Talbot opinion of me, wouldn’t it?” he said nastily. “Though it seems your brother is more into larceny than I am these days.”

  That was a low and calculated blow, and Ann bit her lip, still saying nothing.

  He stared hard at her, then seemed to relent, looking down pensively and then up again at her face.

  “You recall I was always good around boats. Anyway, after you left me at the altar, so to speak, I joined the navy. While working for Uncle Sam I invented a new type of sealing valve that prevents water from getting into a boat’s motor, and I later sold the patent to a private company for several million dollars.”

  Ann listened, astonished that she had never heard about this upward turn in his fortunes.

  “I invested the money in Bimini Boat Works, and built it into a multi-outlet facility with marinas all over the Keys and mainland Florida.”

  “You’re Bimini Boat Works?” Ann said incredulously. She had seen the company’s billboards and advertisements everywhere since she returned to Florida.

  “I take it nobody told you,” he replied flatly, reading her stunned expression.

  “I don’t think anybody knew. My mother’s been dead for five years and my brother Tim hasn’t been in Florida much since my father passed away. He ran ScriptSoft from Massachusetts.”

  “Ran it into the ground, you mean. And you haven’t exactly been in touch, have you?” he said with a thin smile. “Couldn’t wait to scrape Hispaniola from the soles of your shoes, Princess?”

  “That isn’t fair, Heath. I didn’t want to see anybody. My memories of Port Lisbon were...very painful.”

  “Oh, not as painful as mine, lady,” he said softly, watching her face. “Not as painful as mine, I was the one who got dumped, remember?”

  “You don’t know what happened, Heath. You never heard the full story,” Ann protested.

  “Oh, I’m sure you’ve got some lovely explanation all worked out, something classy and reasonable to satisfy your delicate conscience. You wouldn’t want to think of yourself as a woman who would lead a man on to the brink of distraction and then ditch him for a better deal, would you? You could never live with that.” He leaned against Caldwell’s desk, folding his arms and crossing his legs at the ankle in a characteristic posture.

  “You won’t believe anything I say, so why should I try? You just want to enjoy my downfall and your corresponding triumph.”

  “Quite a reversal of fortunes, isn’t it, Princess?” Heath said softly, a dangerous light in his eyes that Ann recalled very well. He had looked like that when her father had threatened to separate them, all those years ago.

  “I can see that you’re savoring every second of it.”

  “Tell me Annie,” he said tauntingly, “would you have called me up for a loan if you’d known I was flush?”

  “Go to hell,” Ann said.

  “Ah, that’s my girl. I don’t know what you’ve been doing while your brother was pissing away your company but it obviously hasn’t killed your spirit entirely.”

  “So that’s why you’re here?” she said dully. “To witness my humiliation?”

  “Partly.”

  “Well, you’ve done so. Now you can go.”

  “But I’m not finished yet. Don’t you want to hear my generous offer?”

  “No.”

  “I see. It’s okay with you if your dissolute brother remains behind bars? I can get him out, you know. I can get him out and hire the best lawyers to defend him. They’ll help him to plead reduced capacity because of his gambling addiction. He might not spend a minute more in jail.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I’ll get to that.”

  “Tell me now.”

  “All in good time. I can also save ScriptSoft, buy the majority interest and open up the cash flow to pump up the stock price. The ScriptSoft scandal would vanish from the papers, and the board of directors would get happy. They might even drop the charges against your brother, who knows? It’s possible the SEC could go easy on him if the company shows recovery, what do you think?”

  “What do you want, Heath?” Ann said again, tightly, barely able to speak.

  “I want you to marry me.”

  Ann stood abruptly and tried to push past him. He grabbed her arm and held her in a viselike grip.

  “Let me go.”

  He di
dn’t move. “I can remember a time when my touch was not so repulsive to you,” he said silkily.

  “I said, let me go, or I’ll scream for Caldwell,” Ann vowed, struggling silently as his fingers dug into her wrist.

  “Do you think I would care?” he said. “After waiting all this time to see you in this position, do you think I would actually give a damn?”

  Ann yanked hard and he released her abruptly at the same time so that she stumbled. He watched, refusing to aid her, as she grabbed a plant stand and righted herself. She paused breathlessly for several seconds before saying, “I don’t know what position you imagine I am in, Heath, but I’m certainly not desperate enough to marry you and fulfill your most elaborate revenge fantasies. I know you would love to make me dependent on you and force me to pay every day of my life for what you think I did to you.”

  “What I know you did to me, Princess,” he said softly. “And regardless of my possible motives, do you have any choice but to accept my offer?”

  “I always have a choice,” Ann said proudly.

  “Really? Do you know what will happen to your brother if he remains in prison? As I recall, he looks a lot like you. The cons really love to get their hands on those blond and beautiful types. It’s their favorite kind of fresh meat.”

  Ann looked sick.

  “You were quite close to Tim when you were kids, weren’t you? I seem to remember that you were very fond of him.”

  “Shut up,” she said.

  “It’s a shame he was so weak, isn’t it? Maybe it was because your daddy gave him everything, including his company. When you have to earn every dime yourself, you’re not likely to throw it away at the gambling tables. Timmy got quite a reputation as an easy mark, did you know that?”