Читать книгу Small-Town Dreams and The Girl Next Door: Small-Town Dreams / The Girl Next Door - Kate Welsh - Страница 9

Cassidy Jamison stared at her grandfather and only one word came to her mind. Betrayal.

“Naming Jonathan Reed as the next vice president of Information Systems wasn’t an easy task. We had several excellent candidates but…”

Cassidy saw her grandfather’s mouth moving as he heaped praise on his new vice president, but the buzzing in her ears drowned out the actual words.

She was honest enough with herself to admit that Jon had worked hard, too, and that he would make a good VP. But she would have done just as good a job, and she had worked just as hard as he had. Harder, in fact! Cassidy hadn’t taken a vacation since joining the company out of business school six years earlier. The Mickey Mouse ears perched atop Jon’s monitor were a constant reminder that he and his family had flown off to Disney World last year while she’d worked a seventy-hour week to keep ahead of the problems that he’d been able to leave behind.

But even that didn’t bother her all that much. What hurt, what felt as if it had crushed her spirit, was that her grandfather had broken his word. He had promised the promotion to her.

She heard a door shut firmly and she blinked, looking around. The meeting was apparently over, and she and the all-powerful Winston Jamison were alone in his oak-paneled office.

“You made your surprise evident,” he snapped.

Cassidy stood and smoothed the straight skirt of her dress-for-success, navy power suit. At five-foot-nine she was easily able to look him in the eye without looking up—the very reason she’d stood.

“Surprise, Grandfather?” Cassidy arched an eyebrow, an action stolen directly from the man before her. “That’s all I gave away? Then I did rather well, don’t you think? Because what I felt was shock! No! Call it what it is—betrayal.”

Her grandfather ran his fingers through his impeccably styled hair. “This is business, Cassidy. Not betrayal. And it was the most difficult decision I’ve ever made.”

“Business? You set me up! You told me that vice presidency was mine. I’ve worked practically around the clock since Harold Overton died. No one has put in more time or seen to it that their teams completed more projects on time than I have.”

Winston Jamison nodded his head, his white hair gleaming in the sunlight that streamed in his office window. “That’s all true but there were other considerations.”

“What other considerations? Dedication? Education?” she asked, knowing full well she was ahead in those areas, as well. She’d carried two majors trying to please him and herself at the same time.

“Jon is a family man. He’s stable. Trustworthy—”

“And I’m not trustworthy?”

Her grandfather looked pained. “No, of course I trust you. It was a judgment call. That’s all. You’ll just have to accept that.”

“Accept that my own grandfather lied to me. Accept that he played fast and loose with a solemn promise as well as the truth. You know, Grandfather, if you treated any other employee the way you have me, you’d be in court faster than a lightning strike can fry a PC.”

Winston’s eyes widened and his face grew red. “Are you threatening me, young lady?” His tone was one she recognized. She had heard it for twenty years, each and every time he needed to haul out the big guns to manipulate her into compliance with his will. His expression was the same.

Disapproving.

Judgmental.

“Don’t try that attitude and tone with me. It won’t work this time,” she growled and leaned her hands on his desk, which put her practically nose to nose with her new nemesis. “Who was it you called the morning Harold died? Who had to cancel her vacation immediately to take over his workload because—let me make sure I get the wording just right here—’ Cassidy, you’re the only one I can count on.’ Too bad you didn’t call Jon. His vacation wasn’t scheduled for another two weeks. But then, he got his time off, didn’t he.”

Her grandfather looked down at his desk and fidgeted with his calendar. “His children were counting on that trip.”

“I was counting on mine. Just as I was counting on that promotion. And my vacation weeks the two years before that. Vacations you begged me not to take.”

“I needed you here—not gallivanting off to some uncivilized place on the globe.”

“Well, you obviously don’t need me around here as much as you’ve led me to believe all these years. And since I have six weeks’ vacation coming to me, you’ll see me then. If I decide to come back!”

Her grandfather stiffened, his bushy eyebrows drawn together, his gray eyes almost as sorrowful as she felt. “I did need you. I do. I was just trying—”

“Don’t, Grandfather,” Cassidy snapped, cutting him off before he could do what he did best—entice her into believing him once again. “Don’t say anything else,” she said, her voice suddenly—maddeningly—full of despair. “Please. It’s too late for explanations and more promises. Way too late.”

With that, angry at both herself and the old man, she turned and rushed from the room, closing the door with a definite thump. She made it as far as the hall to the elevator before the burning started in her stomach, before tears of pain and utter desolation dammed up in her throat, and before she felt each beat of her heart inside her head.

She’d given up her dreams. He’d said that without her he couldn’t run the business he’d spent a lifetime building. And out of gratitude—out of a need to be loved—she’d tucked away her charcoal, pencils and paints and had gone to work for him.

In her little German sports car some minutes and a minor traffic jam later, Cassidy sat in the parking lot and stared up at her apartment building. She’d thought of it as a haven not five minutes earlier. Now its white facade looked cold. Empty. And she knew the inside of her own apartment would be even worse. Gray and depressing. She couldn’t make herself get out of her car.

Her stomach started to burn again, so she grabbed the roll of antacids that she always had sitting on the console and popped one in her mouth. She looked at the roll. Really looked at it this time. She’d stopped last night on the way home to buy it. It was nearly gone. How could that be?

Rubbing the heel of her hand where her stomach constantly stung, Cassidy remembered her doctor’s diagnosis of an ulcer. He’d prescribed medication just last week. Cassidy had never taken the time to fill the prescription. Apparently he was right. She really did need it.

Half an hour later, a prescription bottle and a new roll of antacids on her passenger seat, Cassidy started her car and wondered what to do next. Her grandfather had beeped her no less than ten times since she’d left his office. Her beeper was now turned off, as was her cell phone. She picked them both up off the passenger seat and glared at them. Sometimes these well-touted modern conveniences felt more like a pair of handcuffs chaining her to Jamison Steel.

But right now she was on vacation.

Without ceremony she tossed the offending technology into the backseat and determinedly put them and the company out of her mind.

For the first time since her childhood when she woke up with her grandfather sitting at her bedside in a Colorado hospital, she had no one planning her next step in life. No. This next move was all her own to make.

Rather than feeling free, Cassidy felt suddenly very alone. With her grandfather out of the equation, she had no one to rely on. He was all she had. Her friends were really more acquaintances, and most of them, save a neighbor or two, worked at Jamison.

She looked at herself in the rearview mirror, narrowing her blue eyes. When had she gotten so drawn looking? She fussed with her short, straight, blond hair for a second and bit her full bottom lip. What do you want, Cassidy Jamison? Where do you want to go?

“I want to get away from the rat race,” she said aloud to the near-stranger in the mirror. “I need time to just think.”

A penny winked up at her from next to the nearly empty antacid roll in the console. She remembered a scene from a book she’d read several years earlier. The hero had flipped a coin—a penny—and had driven toward his uncertain future, giving the coin the power he no longer felt over his life. At each crossroad, he’d let the penny send him wherever it chose. Right then, feeling adrift, she felt an acute kinship with that character and decided her discarded penny just might know more than she did about her life’s choices.

She picked it up, turned it over in her hand and stared down at old Abe Lincoln’s coppery visage. Above his head were words she’d seen all her life and never really read. In God we trust.

Cassidy wondered suddenly if there was a God. She remembered vaguely her parents talking about Him. But God hadn’t been part of her upbringing under her grandfather’s rule. Recalling her father’s calm, easy smile, she wondered if maybe that was part of her problem. She flipped the coin. Caught it. Slapped it down on the back of her hand. “If You’re up there, God, send me where I need to go. Heads north, tails south,” she called, then peeked. Honest Abe stared up at her again. “North,” she said, then wondered once again if she or some higher power had control of her destiny.

Winston Jamison turned from the window that looked out over Rittenhouse Square when a sharp knock echoed through his office door. “Come,” he called.

His longtime secretary walked in and as far as his desk. She stood, arms crossed, and glared at him. “She hasn’t answered her pages or her cell phone. I’ve tried her apartment. No go there, either.”

“Where could she have gone?”

“Well, I doubt she went to cry on a friend’s shoulder. Thanks to her hours these last several years, she hasn’t got any close friends.”

Rose had been with him for years. He’d kept her with generous raises and stock options. He’d kept her because he couldn’t intimidate her. But just now, he wished he’d fired her thirty years ago at the first sign of insubordination. He scowled, knowing it wouldn’t cow her in the least. “I’m sure there’s a saltshaker in that credenza over there. Care to throw some into the wound?”

She tapped her foot and moved her hands to her ample hips. “Don’t think I’m not tempted. Why on earth did you do it?”

“I didn’t have a choice. The job would have been too much for her. I did it for her own good.”

“You told her the vice presidency was hers. You told me it was hers. Why the last-minute change? I’ve never known you to vacillate like this.”

“I was trying to save her from herself. And from me. I love that girl, Rose. This place is dragging her down. The circles under her eyes have circles.”

“So this was for her own good? That child was in tears! I’ve never seen her cry in all the years I’ve known her!”

He winced. “I was wrong to insist she come in to the business. I’m trying to right a wrong.”

“Oh? Now you see it, when you managed to ignore a double major and her real talent? What, pray tell, caused this sudden revelation?”

He knew he deserved her scorn, but he felt the need to squirm and didn’t like it in the least! Instead he walked to his desk and sat in his big leather chair. “I overheard a conversation she had with her doctor last week. She has an ulcer, Rose. And it’s my fault.”

She sat in the chair where Cassidy had been sitting just a few hours earlier. “But to pull the rug out from under her like that was cruel.”

“It was a last-minute decision. I just couldn’t let her take on more. But I intended to explain. I really did. But she started shouting. Then I did. I lost sight of what I wanted to say and defended my choice instead. Before I knew it, she was storming out. By the time I calmed down enough to realize what had happened, she was gone.”

Rose shook her head in disgust. “For your sake, I hope she isn’t gone for good.”

“You know, Rose, if I knew where she was, that would be okay with me. Just so she’s happy.”

Dusk had just settled into darkness when the six-lane interstate Cassidy was traveling narrowed rather abruptly to one lane in each direction. She drove about ten miles farther, getting anxious about the denseness of the timberland that now surrounded her.

When the Pocono Mountains had loomed ahead of her at the Lehigh Tunnel, she’d gotten excited about the possibilities they held. She’d decided to really cut loose on this vacation and pick up a sketch pad and some charcoal. Since then, she’d seen numerous valleys and stark slopes of bare deciduous trees dotted with deep green pines that she itched to sketch.

But when that vast expanse of trees had formed a dark, oppressive tunnel with no evidence of a town or resort anywhere, the countryside had become frightening. Then, just as she decided to turn around because civilization had not made its presence known, the car that had been her stalwart companion for nearly five hours suddenly coughed and bucked as she crested a hill. It settled down again when she pressed a little harder on the accelerator, but whenever she slowed down to stop and turn around, it nearly stalled.

Cassidy was left with a dilemma: she had to continue on or risk getting stuck right there, which she feared was miles from nowhere. Just the thought of breaking down amidst the darkness and thick woodlands turned up the acidic burning in her stomach another notch. The pounding in her head seemed to turn up its volume by a hundred decibels, as well.

Several hundred yards farther down the road, a sign proclaimed that the town of Mountain View, Pennsylvania, population three hundred, was only a couple of miles ahead. Reassured, she had traveled on about a mile before the car bucked again.

Cassidy could just see the tiny town, a few lights winking in the distance, when the car stalled for the first time. She got it started, but several hundred yards farther down the road it coughed again and stalled. After several tries it did turn over, but continued to buck and cough as she lumbered down the road. She barely was able to limp the car into Earl’s Car Emporium in the center of town. No sooner had she pulled to a stop than the engine died.

Cassidy would have felt more confident in Earl’s had the weathered wood and faded sign looked the way they did for quaint effect rather than from years of neglect and aging. She got out to look around. Rusting and greasy car parts overflowed several fifty-five gallon drums next to the rustic building. The sound of country music, a metallic pounding and the odd grumble, floated out of a crooked doorway in what she thought was a converted barn.

The disgruntled voice was not reassuring.

“Mr. Earl?” Cassie called over the music as she gingerly pushed open the door. “Hello. Could someone help me?”

“Eh? What’s that?” a gravelly voice called. “Oh, well, hey there, girly. What can I help you with? Directions to Appleton?”

“Actually, my car’s acting up.”

Cassidy watched as a man in a greasy hat peered over the lifted hood of a car. When the mechanic came out from behind his current project, she remembered her grandfather describing someone as a long drink of water, and knew the description fit Mister—.

“Mister Earl?” she asked, and hoped he was better at his work than he was at keeping clean. Cassidy pulled off the glasses she only wore for driving and perched them on top of her blond head.

The man’s pale blue eyes crinkled at the corners in a smile that he didn’t betray with his mouth. “Just Earl. Earl Pedmont,” he said, and offered her his hand.

Cassidy automatically reached out to shake it. But Earl only awkwardly squeezed her fingers. When his eyes rose to look into hers, it was his look of consternation that made her realize her error. And his.

He smiled in obvious discomfort, let go and stepped back, tipping his cap in a surprisingly courtly manner. “How do, little lady.”

Cassidy looked down at her now-greasy hand, then back up at Earl, trying to hide her annoyance. “I’ve been better,” she answered truthfully. “As I said, my car is acting up. It started a few miles ago. Coughing and bucking. For a while it evened out when I accelerated. Then it started stalling, no matter what I did. I barely made it to town.”

Earl nodded. “Hmm. Let’s take a look,” he said as he turned toward the door and made his way outside.

She followed, trying not to cringe at the idea of his coveralls coming in contact with her creamy leather interior when he climbed into her pride and joy.

After starting the car and listening to the engine run a few seconds, then stall, he pursed his lips and nodded sagely. “’Pears to me you’ll be spending some time here in Mountain View, little lady. ‘Less you got a husband who can come get you, that is.” He gave her a friendly gap-toothed smile.

“No husband,” she answered, ignoring the pang in the region of her heart. Sometimes her life seemed so empty. What good was earning tons of money with no time to spend it and no one to spend it on? Especially when you didn’t earn all that money in a way that was in the least fulfilling.

“That’s good. That’s good,” Earl replied, still grinning.

His grin suddenly made Cassidy nervous. “Why do you say that?”

“Wouldn’t want him to be worrying ‘bout you being stuck here so far from home. Ain’t a nice world no more for young ladies. Guess since you don’t have a husband, you’ll be staying with us for a while.”

She looked around what she could see of the town. Stay? Here? Was he crazy? When the mountains had loomed ahead, a picture of her next few weeks had flashed into her head. A luxury suite. A chic hotel shop where she could buy a sketch pad and some clothes. A four-star restaurant, or maybe even room service for her meals. Calling this a one-horse town would be kind.

Cassidy looked back at Earl’s smiling face and wondered why he looked so pleased. “What’s wrong with my car?” she asked, trying to ignore the thought that had rocketed into her brain. What did one do in Mountain View, PA? Watch the grass grow? The frost settle?

“Could be the fuel filter. That’d be the cheapest. Could take a few days to get one up here. But then, it could be the pump or the carb. That’d take longer. But then, could be somethin’ else altogether. Won’t know till I get to workin’ on it.”

Cassidy blew out a breath. “How long will it be until you can look at it?”

“Hmm. Well, I got several folks in line ahead of you. Guess I could squeeze you in late day after tomorrow, or the next morning.”

Cassidy’s head started pounding harder. “Look, I’ll pay you double your labor rate to take a look at it tomorrow.”

“Sorry, little lady, but a promise is a promise. Can’t put you ahead. Just wouldn’t be fair. But don’t you worry none. I got me a good supplier. Bet it won’t take long at all to get hold of any part I’ll need. And once I get going, I’m real quick.”

Again Cassidy looked around at the tiny hamlet where she’d landed. “I’ll pay triple,” she offered.

Earl shook his shaggy head. “Nope. Late day after tomorrow at best.”

Cassidy squeezed her temples. Whatever had happened to her grandfather’s axiom that everyone had a price? Looking at Earl Pedmont’s set features, she decided he’d never heard of that particular rule of life. She felt as if she’d fallen down a rabbit hole.

Earl took off his cap and scratched his head. “You’ll be needin’ something to eat and somewhere to stay. Maybe you ought to go on down and see Irma Tallinger. She runs the café and the Mountain View Hotel. She’ll fix you right up. Her place is just there up the road a piece,” he said, pointing toward a flickering sign.

Cassidy saw the old sign but she saw nothing that looked like a hotel. She gave one last glance at her traitorous car, then turned to trudge toward the café Earl had recommended.

Her head ached. Her stomach burned. At least, she consoled herself, walking down the side of a road without sidewalks put her in no danger. Traffic in the booming metropolis of Mountain View was as nonexistent as foreign car parts.