Family Merger

by Leigh Greenwood

  “I heard you the first time, but you can’t really think I’ll just get up and walk out that door.”

  “It would be better if you waited until the morning.”

  “It would be better if this had never happened, but it has and I’ll deal with it. Now I want to see my daughter.”

  Kathryn didn’t move.

  “You can get her for me, or I’ll get her myself. It’s your choice, but I’m going to see her.”

  “I won’t let you yell at her, and I won’t let you force her to leave.”

  “I hope I won’t yell at her. I imagine she’s extremely upset already, but I can’t make any promises. How would you feel about leaving your only child in the hands of a stranger?”

  “I wouldn’t do it, but you’ve been doing that all her life.”

  This female didn’t fight fair. “My work makes it impossible for me to be at home all the time. My staff has been with Cynthia for more than ten years.”

  Kathryn got to her feet. “I’ll ask Cynthia if she wants to come down.”

  She left the room before he could make it plain that in this instance, at least, the decision wasn’t up to Cynthia.

  He was extremely tired, but he was too full of nervous energy to sit still. He got up and walked about the room. It was impossible not to notice that even though the furniture looked extremely comfortable and well used—the window treatments subtle, the carpets not new—everything had the look of being quite expensive. It was the kind of furniture that said I’m so expensive and well made I don’t have to look expensive. Ron had studied such things. The trappings of success he made sure he acquired. He hadn’t had anything when he was a kid. He was determined everybody would know that wasn’t the case any longer. He finished his water and set the glass in what looked like a candy dish.

  He wondered how things had gone with the meeting in Geneva. He was sure his colleagues Ted and Ben would do an excellent job of explaining why the two companies would do better under new management. It was just that he’d never before left the start of negotiations to anyone else. It was essential to know people’s starting positions, prejudices and all, if he was going to bring them together in the end. Part of his reputation had been built on personal attention to every detail. If Ron Egan came after your company, you knew you were going to be meeting with Ron Egan all the time. He wondered what his absence now would do to his reputation.

  Oh well, he’d be back in Geneva tomorrow. Or the next day. He could sleep on the plane if worrying about Cynthia didn’t keep him awake again. This was one merger that wouldn’t be easy. It wasn’t merely a matter of money or paperwork. It was people and politics. You had to find a way to bring both together, and nobody could do that better than Ron Egan. It was how he’d raised himself from a kid whose parents didn’t have enough money to buy him decent shoes or a winter coat to a man whose income had reached nine figures this last year.

  He turned abruptly away from a mirror that showed him a much too realistic view of himself. He had the look of a successful man—the clothes, the carriage, the confidence—but right now that left a bad taste in his mouth. His daughter had become pregnant. Worse, she had turned to a perfect stranger for support rather than to him. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to know something was wrong there. He was an expert when it came to analyzing people, figuring out what made them tick, knowing what to do to make them come down on his side.

  How had he managed to fail so badly with his own daughter?

  Why was she afraid of him? What would he have done if she had come to him?

  The door opened, and Kathryn reentered the room. Cynthia followed. Ron felt almost as though he was looking at a stranger.

  She had put on jeans and a T-shirt, allowed her dark-blond hair to fall over her shoulders. She displayed none of the sullen anger he’d seen the last time he was home. She faced him with a new calmness. Only her twitching toes—she was barefooted—betrayed any uneasiness.

  Ron hadn’t realized how much her facial features had grown to resemble her mother’s. It was almost like seeing Erin the way she looked the first day they met. Cynthia was tall with slim bones, though right now she carried some extra weight. He remembered how much being overweight had affected his life. It had to be worse for a girl. They were under so much more pressure to be slim.

  Like Kathryn.

  He cursed silently and brought his mind back to his daughter.

  In his mind she’d remained his little girl. He’d been too busy to realize she’d gone ahead and grown up on her own. And now she was in trouble, and he had to figure out some way to help her.

  “Why did you come?” Cynthia asked. “I don’t want you here.”

  “I’m your father.”

  “I’m sixteen.”

  Was there a single teenager in America who didn’t think turning sixteen made him or her an adult? “I’m still your father. If you hadn’t come home soon, Margaret would have called the police. I would have had the SBI and the FBI combing the state looking for you. You should have told me you were in trouble.”

  “You can’t do anything about it.”

  “I could have tried to help.”

  “I don’t need your help. I can do this on my own.”

  Despite the twitching toes, she didn’t appear frightened or overly angry. It was almost as though he were a momentary obstacle she had to deal with before she could move on.

  “When were you going to tell me about the baby?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “How were you going to keep it a secret?”

  “I’ll stay here until after it’s born. I don’t have to go to school when I really start showing. Miss Roper has people come teach us. I can get my GED.”

  He spent ten thousand dollars a year to send her to the best private school in Charlotte, and she was talking about a GED! Didn’t she have any idea how important it was to graduate from the right school? No matter what he had to do, he was determined Cynthia would do that.

  “We’ll worry about that later. Are you okay? You look pale.”

  “It’s because I’m pregnant.” Cynthia stumbled over the word that described her condition. “Mrs. Collias fixes meals especially for pregnant girls. She says she can make sure I have enough for the baby without getting fat.”

  Ron had almost forgotten Kathryn was still in the room. She had taken a seat near the door and was leafing through a magazine. She didn’t trust him alone with his daughter, but at least she had the decency to pretend she wasn’t listening to everything they said. He wondered if she was this protective of her other girls.

  “All expectant mothers are supposed to gain weight.”

  His wife had gained forty pounds then lost it within a few months.

  “If I get fat, I’ll never get it off.”

  Ron didn’t know how the conversation had drifted onto something as trivial as weight.

  “What about the boy?” Ron asked. “The baby’s father.”

  “He doesn’t know.”

  “You have to tell him.”

  “No, I don’t. It’s my baby. Besides, I don’t want to ruin his life, too.”

  “This is not going to ruin your life. I won’t let it.”

  “I’m a pregnant, unwed teenager,” Cynthia said, anger now rising to the surface. “There’s nothing your money can do to change that.”

  He felt as if he were being punished for working so she would never have to endure privation. “You still have to tell the father. It’s his baby as much as yours. He has a right to know.”

  “No, he doesn’t.”

  For the first time since seeing her, he sensed fear. “I’m sure he’ll guess when you don’t return to school.”

  “I told everybody we were moving to Connecticut.”

  Ron knew it would be impossible to keep her baby a secret even if they did move to Connecticut, but he would deal with that later. Right now he needed to get Cynthia home and settled into her own room. And he needed to get out of Kathryn Roper�
��s house.

  “Get your things,” Ron said. “I’m taking you home.”

  Cynthia pulled back from him. Something about her expression changed, something subtle that made her look less like a child and more like a woman.

  “I’m not going home. I’m staying here.”

  Ron knew his relationship with his daughter wasn’t the best in the world, but she’d never refused point-blank to do anything reasonable. “Why not?”

  “I just told you,” Cynthia said, sounding impatient. “I don’t want anybody to know.”

  “They’ll know soon enough.”

  “Not if I stay here and you go back to Switzerland. They’ll believe we moved to Connecticut, just like I said. I told them we were keeping the house with Margaret and everybody else in case we didn’t like it. I told them I didn’t want to go but some of your Yale buddies had talked you into it because it would put you closer to New York, that it would be good for your business.”

  Ron didn’t bother pointing out that such a story was so full of holes it probably wouldn’t last a day. The school would call if she missed more than one day without an excuse. Her friends would call. Neighbors would ask questions. There was no way she could keep her disappearance a secret.

  “Why don’t you let me take you home?” Ron asked. “We can both get a good night’s sleep and try to come up with a plan in the morning.”

  “A plan for what?”

  For the rest of your life Ron thought, exasperated. She didn’t appear to realize nothing would ever be the same after this. She would be a mother. That was a barrier that would separate her from her friends almost as effectively as moving to Connecticut.

  “Everything is going to be different after this,” Ron said.

  “I know that,” Cynthia said. “I’m not stupid.”

  “I never said you were, but even intelligent people can have trouble thinking through unfamiliar situations. There are so many things you can’t know at your age—”

  “If you tell me even once I don’t understand because I’m too young, I’ll walk out of this room.”

  “You don’t understand,” Ron said, “not only because you’re too young but because this is beyond your experience. Hell, your mother and I didn’t understand, and we’d been planning for you for three years.”

  “Age and experience have nothing to do with it,” Cynthia said as she got to her feet. “You’ve been a father for sixteen years, and you still don’t understand a thing about children.”

  “I don’t understand why you’re more upset about your friends knowing you’re pregnant than you are about having a baby. I half expected you’d be nearly hysterical begging me to help you get an abortion.”

  “I’d never do that! I want this baby. I need this baby.”

  “Cynthia, you’ve just turned sixteen. You’re in the tenth grade. How can you need a baby?”

  Tears sprang to her eyes. He reached out to her, but she backed away.

  “You never let me have a cat. I begged you over and over again, but you wouldn’t let me.”

  “I’m allergic to cats. You know that.”

  She started toward the door. “I would have kept it in my room. You never go there. I would have taken care of it myself.”

  She ran out leaving Ron wondering what had just happened. He turned to Kathryn who’d remained silent during the whole conversation, quietly turning pages in her magazine. Now she was looking at him with an expression of pity mingled with something that seemed to say You poor, dumb clod. You don’t have a clue, do you?

  “What? You’re looking at me like I’ve dribbled ketchup down my shirt.”

  “You don’t understand her, do you?”

  “Are you saying you do?”

  “Of course.”

  That irritated him. “There’s no of course about it. Has she told you something I don’t know?”

  “Not in so many words.”

  Erin used to say that. She said men weren’t supposed to understand women. “How about putting it into words a poor, dumb male can understand.”

  She stood and came toward him. She really was a lovely woman with a beautiful body. It was hard to concentrate on his daughter when he was having such a visceral reaction to this woman. Why wasn’t she married? What was wrong with the single men in Charlotte that she was left alone to oversee other men’s daughters?

  “Cynthia wanted something to love,” Kathryn said, “something of her own that would love her back.”

  “I offered to buy her a puppy, but she said she didn’t want a dog.”

  “Did you get her one anyway?”

  “No.”

  Kathryn sighed, and he felt even more out of it. “Now what?” he asked, becoming extremely frustrated.

  “She would have taken the puppy.”

  “She said she didn’t want it. She said she wouldn’t even give it a name.”

  “She would have taken it and been happy. Didn’t any one of those women you employ tell you that?”

  “I was in Chicago. My secretary talked to Margaret.”

  “Did it ever occur to you that since you’ve hired a staff to take care of your daughter, it might be a good idea to ask their opinion, maybe even let them handle the situation?”

  “Margaret has authority to buy anything Cynthia needs.”

  “Cynthia’s wanting a cat was a cry for help. She wanted more attention than she was getting.”

  “It was a cat, for God’s sake, not a security blanket.”

  “It might as well have been.”

  “Boys ask for dogs all the time. They’d never compare it to having a baby,” he insisted.

  “You don’t understand women.”

  “I know that.”

  “And you don’t understand your daughter.”

  They were standing there, facing each other like two antagonists squaring off over some kind of prize.

  “I know that, too.”

  “I expect you tried,” Kathryn said.

  “You’re too generous.”

  “You were probably too involved in your work to take the time to learn to really listen.”

  “I listen to her all the time.”

  “Maybe, but you’re not hearing her. You’re insensitive to women’s issues. You need to spend more time—”

  “I don’t have more time,” Ron broke in. “Do you have any idea how tough it is in the international market? Half the men out there would cut my throat if they could gain anything by it. And if I survive them, there’s a new, young wizard popping out of the woodwork every day brimming over with ideas of how to do what I do cheaper and faster.”

  “I’m familiar with the business world. My father has spent his whole life in it, and he’s just like you.”

  “So you’re telling me it’s hopeless?”

  “Not if you really want to try. If you don’t—”

  “Would I come halfway around the world if I didn’t?”

  She seemed to accept that. She turned away and walked toward a bookcase built into the wall. “I can recommend several excellent books.”

  “I don’t have time to read one book, not to mention several.”

  She turned back to face him, her expression impatient. “Then how do you expect to learn to be sensitive to your daughter’s feelings? You need training.”

  “Then you train me.”

  “I doubt I’d be able to do that.”

  “How hard could it be? I’m bright, I’m willing and I’m ready to start now.”

  Chapter Two

  “Are you sure everything went okay?”

  Ron had called Ted the minute he got back to the house. It was 7:21 a.m. in Geneva. Time to be preparing for the second day’s meeting. He was the one who was up past his bedtime. More than six hours past.

  “Lord Hradschin is in favor of the merger,” Ted said. “There’s nothing that old pirate likes as much as money.”

  There really wasn’t much that was difficult that had to be done during the first few day
s. It was mostly laying out the plans for the merger, explaining how they meant to restructure the company, answering questions, giving the costs and income projections. Ted was good at making difficult things sound simple and Ben could make you feel good about a root canal, but could they read the people, know who was going to be trouble, figure out the arguments necessary to bring them around, figure out how the politics played into the decision? That had always been his job.

  “Don’t move to a second point until you’re certain everyone understands the first one,” Ron said. “It’ll only get worse as you go along if they don’t.”

  He’d already rejected the idea of flying back to Geneva in the morning. Something had happened to him when Cynthia suddenly broke into tears and ran from the room. This wasn’t the same as having a tantrum, sulking or being obstinate. She was deeply hurt, and he had no idea how to fix it.

  Kathryn said she could teach him to understand his daughter if he really wanted to. He couldn’t imagine why she would have any doubt. He had left his meeting just as it was getting started. What more proof could she want?

  “Call me if you hit a snag. I’ll have my cell phone with me… No, I don’t know when I’ll be back. In the next couple of days, but I can’t say exactly when.”

  He was certain Kathryn would say he’d need more than one session, but he didn’t have time for more. If she was as good as she thought, she could teach him everything he had to know in a couple of hours. After that it shouldn’t take him more than a day to sort things out with Cynthia and get her back home.

  “I’ve got to go. If I don’t get some sleep, I’ll be a zombie. You’ve been wanting a chance to do this on your own, so make the most of it.”

  He hung up the phone and fell back on the bed without bothering to take off his clothes. He would undress in a minute, just as soon as the muscles at the back of his neck and shoulders unknotted enough for him to move his arms. Then it struck him, the million-dollar question.

  Had he screwed up so badly with Cynthia she wouldn’t give him another chance?

  He hoped not. Their relationship wasn’t perfect, but they’d been going along with only an occasional bump until this pregnancy thing happened. He couldn’t wait to get his hands on the boy who’d done this to his little girl. It was always the boy who was so anxious to have sex he didn’t stop to think of the consequences.