Читать книгу Because of Audrey - Mary Sullivan - Страница 11
ОглавлениеCHAPTER TWO
AUDREY’S HEADY PERFUME followed Gray out the door, trailing him like a scarf that wrapped itself around his shoulders with comforting hands. Nuts.
Nothing about Audrey said comfort. Words that came to mind were sexy and strange and disconcerting, but comforting? Never.
The black eyeliner slanting up at the corners of her violet eyes made them exotic. In the middle of her pure, clear-skinned face, the effect was violently erotic.
Unnerved to feel anything good about the woman, he ordered himself to snap out of it.
She had the power to hurt his family, and he wouldn’t stand for it.
Babies. Gray laughed. She’d called her plants her “babies.” Nutbar. Defeating this woman was going to be a piece of cake.
At least in grilling Audrey, he’d calmed down enough to see his father without confrontation.
Gray drove to his parents’ home. At thirty-six, he shouldn’t be living with his mom and dad, but they were getting on in age, and he felt better being around in case something happened to one of them.
Set apart from town on its private cul-de-sac, the gray stone house with the white trim and black lacquered front door spoke of well-bred money, of discreet, respectful living.
He’d had a good upbringing. So why was he screwed up these days? Why so neurotic?
The garage door was open and Dad was inside. Good. There were things that needed to be said.
“Dad?” he called.
Dad had his head buried inside a deep box. “Aha!” He stood, triumph and a childlike joy lighting his face. “Here they are.”
“We need to talk—”
“Remember these?” He held an old snorkel set of Gray’s in his hands, the rubber of the ancient flippers dry and cracked.
“Yes, I remember. I must have been nine or ten when you bought them for me.” He didn’t have time for this. They had issues to settle. Huge issues.
Dad wore an old cardigan, ratty around the edges from years of use. White hair curled over the collar of the sweater. Disgraceful. Dad used to be particular about his grooming.
“What happened to you, Dad? Something’s changed.” The words were out of his mouth before good manners could stop them, a sign of how bad Gray’s nerves were. Dad’s aging, the slow crumbling of a once-powerful man, affected Gray, left him sad and a little lost. Left him somehow smaller, at a time when he was already vulnerable with residual grief. Marnie was dead.
Stop. Concentrate on the here and now, on business.
“I turned eighty last year.” For all of Gray’s recent worries about Dad’s state of mind, especially given the shaky business dealings lately, Dad had understood his question perfectly.
Gray waited for more explanation. When it didn’t come, he prompted, “And...?”
“And you try turning eighty and looking back on your life and realizing how much time you spent indoors in a stuffy old office when you could have been out doing things.” He pulled out a plastic oar belonging to an old dinghy that had been relegated to the dump years ago. “Look!” His chuckle held a strange glee that Gray had never heard before, not sinister, just, again, childlike.
Gray couldn’t get past his surprise. Dad had regrets? “But...”
“But what?”
“But you loved the business.”
“Past tense. I’m tired. I want to enjoy what’s left of my life. I want peace.”
How had Gray missed Dad’s transformation from a savvy businessman to a reluctant one? Gray had tried to visit as often as possible, but given that he’d taken after his father with twelve-hour days and a demanding, if loved, girlfriend, it had been hard. Obviously, he hadn’t come home often enough.
“You’re here now,” Dad asserted. “You take care of the business.”
Speaking of which...
“Did you sell a piece of land to Audrey Stone in the winter?”
“Jeff Stone’s daughter?” Dad looked up from the box he was still rummaging through. A fine fuzz of white stubble dusted his unshaven chin. Dad shaved every day. Apparently not today.
The gray eyes that Gray had inherited still seemed sharp, but his glance shifted away from Gray’s. What was he hiding? Over and over, Gray had had to find out things about the company from Hilary or the accountant. While Dad seemed to welcome Gray into the business, he also stonewalled him at too many turns. Something strange was up with his father.
He said he was tired. He said you take care of the business. His actions spoke a different language. Dad couldn’t let go of the reins.
“Yes,” Dad replied. “I sold land to Audrey. Why?”
“It’s in the heart of the land I want to sell to Farm-Green Industries.”
“Hmm. Too bad.”
Dad had become a master of understatement. Gray gritted his teeth. “Why did you sell?”
“Jeff is sick.”
“What does that have to do with the land?”
“His daughter needs to take care of him.”
Gray bore the frustration of dealing with Dad like this, but only barely. Conversation was like pulling freaking teeth out of his head one by one. Without anesthetic. Where was the man who used to be open about everything?
“Dad, what does that have to do with our land?”
“She needed a place to grow plants and flowers for her floral shop. She needs to support herself and help her father. We stopped using those greenhouses years ago. Shame to see them go to waste.”
“But we’ve spent months hammering out this deal with Farm-Green. They aren’t going to take it with a huge hunk of land missing from the middle.”
“I never wanted to sell to them anyway. When they first started sniffing around two or three years ago, I told you that.”
God, give me strength. “We’ve gone over this a hundred times. You need to look at the big picture. Look outside of Accord. The economy isn’t what it used to be. The whole country is suffering. The lumberyard isn’t bringing in a fraction of the money it used to. We need that money to pay your employees.” Let alone take care of all of the other dubious decisions Dad had made lately.
“So, find a different solution. Something else that will work. If one thing doesn’t, find another.”
“There won’t be another company who’ll pay what Farm-Green was willing to so quickly. It could take a year to find someone else who’s interested, and then months more of negotiations. I’m turning myself inside out to come up with creative solutions to our problems.”
Dad shrugged. “When one door closes, another opens.”
One of Dad’s empty pronouncements. He thought they were nuggets of wisdom. Not even close. New-age gobbledygook.
“Did you at least get a good price?” Gray wouldn’t put it past his father to give the land away for sentiment’s sake.
Judging by Dad’s annoyed frown, he’d asked the wrong question. “Of course I did. I spent sixty years working as a successful businessman.”
Yes, Gray knew that, but Dad had lost his grip on reality. He was eighty years old and changing, reverting to childhood, or something. He should have retired twenty years ago, but what would he have done instead? Retirement would probably have killed him, but in the past months that Gray had been home, he’d finally had to accept that Dad needed to step away from the business altogether before he sent the whole thing down the drain. Dad was still too sharp for this to be Alzheimer’s. This wasn’t a failing, wasn’t even dementia, just a change. But why?
“Isn’t Jeff Stone the one you pay a salary to even though he’s off work?”
“I pay him a reduced salary. An early retirement.”
“Even though he was short of fulfilling his requirements?”
“He’s going blind.” Gray flinched at Dad’s harsh tone. “Jeff worked for me for twenty-nine years. His macular degeneration precluded him from working his final year.”
“He would qualify for disability. Why make the company bear the financial burden of his care?”
“He would make a pittance on disability. He has medical bills. He needs an operation that will cost a fortune. He’s middle class, not a millionaire.” Dad pulled the second oar out of the box but threw it onto a growing rubbish heap when he discovered it was broken. “Paying Jeff is no burden. He worked hard for me and, by extension, since you enjoyed the secure childhood and higher education the business bought, for you. The least we can do is show our appreciation.”
Dad was too softhearted to run a successful company in today’s environment. Disability was designed for this situation, for people like Jeff.
Gray opened his mouth to argue further, but Dad forestalled him. “Selling those greenhouses to Audrey was the right thing to do. Give it some thought and you’ll agree.”
Before he said something too harsh, Gray left the garage. For sixty years, his dad had done everything right, but in the past year, it seemed he’d been getting it all wrong. Or maybe longer. The further Gray dug into records and finances, the more he realized that Dad had been making risky investments and dubious decisions for a while.
Also, he’d caught him lying more than once. No, that wasn’t fair. They weren’t lies, just convenient half-truths so that Gray had to double-check everything Dad told him to find the truth for himself.
His stomach burned.
Did Mom have antacid tablets in the house? He could use a couple. Or the whole bottle.
Inside, he found her sitting in the living room. Where Dad’s grooming was suffering with age, Mom still looked perfect.
Dressed to the nines even this early in the morning, she wore a silk blouse with a soft pastel print and a tweed skirt, her still slim legs encased in stockings and her feet in stylish black heels.
She sat on the sofa reading a romance novel. She had just turned seventy-five, for Pete’s sake. He didn’t need to catch her holding a book with a photograph of a half-naked man clutching a busty woman on the cover.
Even so, when she peeked at him over the rims of her reading glasses, her once-vivid blue eyes faded now, his heart swelled. A cloud of white hair framed a tiny face. Her welcoming smile warmed him. This amazing woman had given him everything, the absolute best childhood.
“Can I get you anything?” he asked, and he meant anything. For his parents, especially Mom, he would do whatever was asked of him. “A cup of tea?” Mom loved her tea.
“I’m fine,” she answered. “I’ve already had four cups this morning.”
“Mom,” he said, hesitating because he didn’t want to offend, but needing to know. “What’s happening with Dad?”
She didn’t seem surprised by the question. “He’s tired. He’s had a lot of weight on his shoulders for a long time. He needs to let go and relax.”
“He said it started when he turned eighty.”
She set her glasses down on top of her book. “Oh, it started well before that. He’s been tired for years.”
Startled, Gray asked, “Why didn’t he tell me? I would have come home sooner.”
Those faded blue eyes studied him shrewdly. “Would you have?”
His mind flew to an image of Marnie with her hands on her hips, obstinate in battle with him. “Yes,” he said, but he’d taken too long to answer.
“Truly?”
Gray slumped into the armchair. “I don’t know. Marnie didn’t want to live here. She loved Boston.”
“You would have had to have made a choice. Your parents or your fiancée. I understood that, Gray, so I didn’t tell you about your dad’s state.”
Gray leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “Mom, I love you and Dad. I would have worked out something.”
“What could you have done? You loved Marnie, too, and Boston is not within commuting distance. Would you have lived six months here and the other half of the year there? Like a child in joint custody? What kind of life would that have been, especially once you had children?”
“I don’t know. I would have come up with a solution.”
Mom closed her book and put it on the side table, giving him her full attention. “Why did it take so long for you and Marnie to set a wedding date? You were engaged for five years.”
Mom had always been too perceptive. Getting away with anything in his adolescent years had taken real skill and subterfuge on Gray’s part. “There were things we couldn’t agree on.”
“Like where to live?”
A heavy sigh gusted out of him, and he admitted, “Like where to live. That was the biggest obstacle.”
“So, even though your father and I tried to protect you, you were caught up in our drama anyway.”
“You were aging. There’s nothing anyone can do to prevent that. You’re my responsibility, Mom.”
“Such a shame that we had only one child.”
“What else could you have done? I came along so late.” He was a surprise for his parents after they had long given up hope of conceiving.
Mom smiled, and her eyes got misty. “Yes. We were lucky to have you.”
The conversation had become too maudlin for Gray. He didn’t want to think about feeling alone as a child, about how much he missed Marnie, or about how old his parents were.
“What do you know about Audrey Stone?” he asked.
Mother perked up. “She’s the most interesting thing to happen to this town in years. I’m so glad she came back home to live. Have you seen her?”
He’d run out on breakfast, so he explained what the emergency had been.
“What was she wearing?” Mother asked, clearly excited.
“Wearing?” She’d thrown him. He’d just told her that Audrey had the means to scuttle a huge deal for the family and Mother wanted to know what the woman was wearing?
He rubbed his hands over his face. As dear as his aging parents were, he didn’t have time for their eccentricities.
“Well?” Mom persevered.
Gray pointed to a large illustrated hardcover on the coffee table. In a full-page photo on the cover, Jackie Kennedy wore the pink suit she’d had on the day her husband was assassinated.
“She wore a suit like that, but it was gray with white trim.”
His mother caught her breath. “A vintage Chanel? I always knew Audrey had class.”
He thought of the full curves shaping the suit. Class? Yes, but also a whole lot more.
“No hat?”
He mentioned the red hat that had matched her lipstick and her nail polish and the glimpse of her toenails he’d seen through her open-toed black suede pumps, which looked as though they’d come straight out of the forties.
“Describe the hat.”
When he finished, Mother nodded her approval. “A pillbox. You don’t see those anymore. Was she wearing gloves?”
Thinking of those bright red nails, he shook his head.
“Ah, well,” she said, “I guess times have changed. Too bad she hadn’t really completed the outfit, though, if you know what I mean.”
He didn’t have a clue.
“Have you thought anymore about what we discussed last night?” she asked.
What they’d discussed many nights since he’d moved back home had been his getting married and having children. His parents wanted to meet their grandchildren before they died. Gray still had to produce those grandchildren. First he needed a partner. It should be the least he could do, but he thought of Marnie and held his breath until the pain passed.
“I’m thinking about it.”
Mother smiled. Honestly, he lived to make her happy, but how did a man snap his fingers and, poof, there would be a wife, ready and willing to bear his children?
He headed upstairs to his bedroom. He needed to change his shirt. It wasn’t yet nine o’clock in the morning and the day not yet hot, but under his business jacket, he’d been sweating like a linebacker. Since the car accident, his body had been betraying him in strange ways. A giant rodent gnawed gaping holes in the cool, collected persona he’d cultivated in business, and he didn’t have a clue how to boot the offending creature from his body.
He picked up a letter that had arrived yesterday, addressed to his father, but Gray handled all of his parents’ correspondence these days. They’d relinquished that responsibility happily, and thank God for that. What if Mother had opened this instead of him?
The thought sent a shiver through him. Mom would have been devastated. He had to protect her at all costs.
He read it yet again with a creepy fascination, as though rubbernecking at a traffic accident.
I have three children to support. Their father is dead. My oldest son has Duchenne muscular dystrophy. I can’t pay for his therapy. He needs a wheelchair. I need money. I’m desperate. I’ll go to the newspapers.
Shelly Harper
Who was this woman? This Shelly? Was she for real? Were her accusations true? That Dad was her father? He checked the postmark. Denver. Too close to home for comfort’s sake, only an hour away.
At heart, Gray was a cynic and took nothing at face value.
And yet, he had an eerie suspicion that everything she’d said was true.
She’d enclosed a birth certificate, hers, with his dad’s name on it, along with a photograph of herself that showed a strong likeness to Dad. The final shot, though, of three children, one of whom was the spitting image of himself at around nine or ten, left him shaken.
It all seemed legit. These kids looked like family. The woman bore an eerie resemblance to him.
Nonetheless, after he’d received the letter yesterday, he’d posted one back to her. I need proof. Give me a DNA sample for testing.
Let’s see if she had the nerve to provide one.
His gut screamed she was telling the truth. In business, he trusted his instincts all the time—they rarely steered him wrong—but how could this be real? Dad couldn’t possibly have committed adultery. Could he have? Dad?
If the woman’s allegations were true, Gray would need quick money to buy her off. It took time to come up with the kind of cash she demanded—four hundred thousand dollars.
Four hundred thousand dollars. Mind-boggling. He started to sweat again.
Yes, his business was successful, but he wasn’t a millionaire. He didn’t have buckets of cash lying around.
He’d already started things rolling yesterday with instructions for his CFO to liquidate certain of his own assets, but it wouldn’t be nearly enough.
Farm-Green was willing to buy now—the ultimate answer to this mess.
The woman’s threat filled him with cold dread.
How could Gray ever let Mom find out? How could she survive the betrayal once she knew that her husband had been unfaithful, that she’d been wrong about his character throughout her marriage?
He dropped into his old desk chair. It squeaked under his weight. He wouldn’t let Mom be ruined by this. He threw the paper on to the desk—not while he had any say in the matter. But what could he do? If this woman was telling the truth—and it sure looked as though she was—she had a real need.
Then again, if what she claimed was true, she was his half sister and only a year older than he.
Man, that floored him. He’d been a happy child, but so alone. For a long time, there’d been an emptiness inside of him, a wish for more, a sense that he’d lost something he couldn’t name and couldn’t get back.
For years, he’d wanted a sibling.
Was he willing to accept this woman’s assertions too easily because of a long-buried wish for a brother or sister? For something to combat being alone in the future after his parents died, and to assuage his current loneliness?
How was her existence even possible? Dad had adored Mom all of his life. Dad, the epitome of ethics and morals, a man whose backbone and strength of character were admired by all, couldn’t have had an affair.
Gray, though, was stuck considering the unthinkable, that his dad had fathered an illegitimate child while married to his mom.
Talk to Dad.
Can’t. What if I find out it’s true?
Suck it up and ask.
It would shatter Gray, make a mockery of his history and his parents’ history.
You need to know.
In fresh clothes, he went back out to the garage where Dad still puttered.
This whole thing could be cleared up with one conversation.
When Gray stepped close, Dad looked up and smiled. Gray’s heart hammered. He was about to blow Dad’s world apart. And his own.
He handed Dad the letter.
“What’s this?”
“It came yesterday.” Try as he might, he couldn’t keep the foreboding from his voice. Was Dad the man he thought he’d known all of his life? Or a stranger like the one he was becoming now?
The man took a pair of wire-rimmed reading glasses out of his sweater pocket and read the letter.
“What is this?” He sounded genuinely confused.
“Have you ever known a woman named Edie Kent? She was this woman’s—” he gestured toward the letter “—mother.”
“This woman who says that I’m her father? No. I’ve never even heard of Edie Kent.” He thrust the paper back at Gray. “You don’t believe this crap, do you?”
Gray handed him the photo. “Look at her son.”
Dad’s skin paled. “My God, he looks like you. Like seeing a ghost. That’s impossible. Coincidence. Nothing more. They say everyone has a double somewhere on earth.”
Now for the crucial question he’d never thought he’d ask his father. “Did you ever have an affair?”
Dad scowled. “How can you even consider that? I adored your mother. Always have since the second I first laid eyes on her, and always will.” He slammed the photo against Gray’s chest, and Gray barely caught it before it fell to the ground. The man still had some power in him.
Gray’s dander rose. He wouldn’t have even considered the possibility that Dad would do this, but that photo was damning, and waiting for DNA results would take too long. Plus, his dad was becoming a stranger. He needed to know now so he could put his mind to rest on this problem at least. He had too much hanging over his head, too much that needed to be settled, and all of it taken care of instantly. Yesterday.
“Is it possible you could have gotten drunk one night and slept with this woman’s mother without remembering?”
“No. Once I married your mother, I became a homebody.” Dad strode out of the garage, and Gray followed. “Besides, when would I have had time? I had a business to grow, and I worked my butt off to do it.”
He stalked around to the front door. “Can’t believe you even considered that I might have—” He spun back to Gray. “Don’t you know me at all?” The anger had left his voice, replaced by hurt. He entered the house and closed the door behind him, as though Gray were no longer welcome in the home he’d grown up in.
Given the changes at work, given Dad’s crazy decisions, Gray was left to wonder whether he knew him at all.
He felt as low as low could be. He’d just hurt and alienated his father. But he’d had no choice. He’d had to know.
* * *
AT ELEVEN-THIRTY, Gray stood in John Spade’s law office tamping down rising nausea, not sure he’d heard the immaculately groomed lawyer clearly.
“Jeez, John, what are you doing these days? Having facials? Mani-pedis? You’ve primped the daylights out of yourself.”
“Stop avoiding the issue,” Spade said. “Can you do it?”
The sweating had started again the second the lawyer had made his crazy suggestion. His absurd, impossible suggestion. The fresh shirt Gray had changed into at home was already soaked. Again.
“You mean have my father deemed unsound of mind?” he asked, unable to mask his distaste. “Unfit to run the business he built from the ground up?”
John leaned back in his chair. “For God’s sake, Gray, stop pacing and sit down. You’re making me nervous just looking at you. This isn’t like you.”
No, it wasn’t. He had a cool head for business, but business problems had never hit so close to home. His father had never been blackmailed before, and Gray had never had problem after problem dumped on him, one on top of the other, until he was drowning in an ocean of anxiety, hanging on to a bit of flotsam by his fingernails.
Was the universe out to get him or something? What had he ever done to deserve all of this?
Oh, quit with the self-pity. Shit happens to everyone. Deal with it and find solutions.
This—what John wanted?—was one hell of an ugly solution.
“The sale of the property was legitimate,” John continued. “I’m just giving you an option. A way out. Has your father been incoherent at all lately? Has he had memory loss?”
Gray stalked to the window and stared out on to the town. In the distance, he could see the sign for Turner Lumber. “Of course he’s had memory loss. He’s eighty. He’s not senile, though. He doesn’t have Alzheimer’s. It would kill him if I went behind his back and did something like this.”
“Don’t get emotional. This is business.”
Gray knew all about how to run a business, how to separate emotion from whatever had to be done to protect the bottom line, but this was his family they were talking about. “He’s my father.”
“He’s also the head of Turner Enterprises, which you’re telling me needs a significant influx of cash. Selling that land is the smart thing to do. Audrey Stone is standing in your way. This is a solution to that problem.”
“It would devastate my parents.”
“It has to be done.” John’s eyes cooled to the color of wet slate. “I’m good at my job, Gray. This is possible. If I didn’t think this could be done, I wouldn’t suggest it.”
Gray considered himself a tough businessman, but John’s expression chilled even him.
“Go home and give the idea some thought.” John stood. “Rational thought.”
Gray left John’s office but stopped just inside the front door of the reception area before stepping outside, tasting bile in his throat. Declare Dad unfit? Declare his mind unsound? Insane. This couldn’t be happening.
No. There had to be a way around it.
He left the office and stood on Main Street, disoriented, his skin clammy and his breathing shallow. He recognized the symptoms for what they represented. Shock.
And why wouldn’t he be shocked? How could he declare a man he loved and admired unfit, a father who’d done his absolute best for his son?
It would be like stabbing him in the back.
Et tu, Brute?
Like the worst betrayal.
Benches lined the sidewalk, and he sat on one, needing a minute to wrap his head around a difficult decision.
Declare Dad unfit.
Impossible.
What then? Was it better to have Mom learn that her husband had fathered an illegitimate child and then didn’t have the honor to admit to the affair or support the child?
But Dad wouldn’t do that.
It looked as though he had.
Gray didn’t know how much he could trust his father. He’d been hiding things. Was he hiding the truth about this? He’d seemed sincere, though. But that photo...
Circuitous thoughts boggled Gray’s mind.
Pain radiated from his hands and up through his arms. He glanced down. He’d been clenching his fists. He stretched tight fingers. His nails had left arched red welts in his palms.
He couldn’t betray Dad.
Before he would even consider deep-sixing his dad’s good standing, he needed to try a couple of things—first, attempt to buy back the land. If that didn’t work, then second, he had to go to Denver and meet with the woman. Maybe she was lying, and, in person, he’d be able to detect her lies, and the problem would be solved. He could call her bluff. He’d buy himself time to take care of issues at work without this woman’s demand.
Four hundred thousand dollars.
Did she think they were made of money? Ridiculous.
Across the street, Audrey’s tarted-up floral shop, The Last Dance, stood out like a peacock strutting on white sand. What on earth dancing had to do with flowers was beyond him.
He crossed Main and checked out the window display—a microcosm of who the woman was, quirky, boldly colorful, and even classy as Mom had suggested.
He didn’t know why the success of her creativity made him angry, but it did.
She had to sell that land to him, had to save him from betraying the father whose business decisions he might question, but whom he adored.
The sign on the front door said Closed, but he could see Audrey inside. He tested the doorknob. Unlocked. He stepped into a shop that smelled floral and felt cool.
A dog came out from behind the counter and sidled close to Gray, butting his hand with his head. Instinctively, Gray petted him, and the dog closed his eyes, leaning into the caress.
The lovely trust of this uncomplicated creature moved him, reminded him of his Bernese mountain dog, Sean, who’d died a month after the accident, compounding Gray’s already raw grief.
His chest hurt and his throat ached, locked as he was suddenly and inexplicably in that grief again. It happened too often, brought on by nothing and everything.
A movement to his right caught his eye, breaking the spell of pleasure/pain the dog brought out in him. Audrey turned from the flowers she was arranging and watched him silently. Beneath wariness, he could almost detect compassion in her eyes, but why? What was she thinking? What did she see in him?
He looked away from that knowing gaze and down at the long-haired brown-and-white beauty. “What’s his name?”
“Jerry.”
Gray thought about the dog’s name and did a double take. “Isn’t he a springer spaniel?”
“Yep.” She waited, watched, wondering whether he would get the joke. He got it all right. Jerry Springer Spaniel.
If he weren’t so pissed off at the woman, he’d laugh. Her sense of humor was every bit as quirky as her style.
“Yeah?” he asked, feeling the rare hint of a grin tug at the corners of his mouth. “Who are his parents?”
“We don’t know the father. We’ve done DNA tests, though. The results promise to be shocking. We think his mother slept around. It could get ugly.”
Audrey leaned her elbow on the counter and rested her chin on her fist. Her other hand sat on her cocked hip. She had good hips—ample and shapely. A smile tipped the corners of her lush red lips, pride in her own joke.
That tiny smile did a number on his equanimity, threatened to turn him soft, to treat her with tenderness when he couldn’t afford to. If he had any hope in hell of pulling his family out of the mess they were in, he had to hang tough.
He straightened and removed his hand from the dog’s head, denying both himself and the dog pleasure. These days, Gray was more at home with pain.
“Sell me the land.”
He’d shocked her. She stepped behind the counter, putting distance between them. “No.”
“I can move your plants to other greenhouses. At my cost.”
“Moving them at this stage would kill them. Besides, the nearest greenhouses are miles away. I don’t even know if there are any available.”
Damn. “I can research it.”
“No, I won’t risk killing my plants by disturbing them. I don’t have to. I own that land legally.”
“How much do you want for it?”
“Nothing. I’m keeping it.”
“I can give you far more than the plants you’re growing are worth.”
“No.”
His jaw, where all his tension centered, cramped. “What’s your problem? They’re only flowers.”
“What’s your problem?” she countered. “Is money all you think about?”
“These days? Yes.”
“Money is not all that matters in life,” she asserted.
It is if it saves my mother, my family, our business and all its employees. He would never say this to her or to anyone else in town. He would never show vulnerability to an opponent or give her ammunition to use against him.
As far as the business went, only Gray and his accountant knew how close to the edge they were. As far as Gray knew, he was the only one who’d received the letter. That could change, though, if the woman didn’t get what she wanted. I’ll go to the newspapers.
The thought of the tawdry truth splashed across newspaper headlines, the thought of his mother finding out about Dad in that way, in any way, left Gray chilled. Desperate.
He thought of how Mom had looked this morning, fragile yet perky, about as classy a woman as he’d ever known.
How could he let this destroy her?
How could he get Audrey to sell? Now? Today?
“Name your price,” he demanded, an incredibly stupid move for a smart businessman, but he needed that land.
“I don’t have one.”
“Everyone does. What’s yours?”
“Gray, leave my shop.”
“No. Not until you promise to sell to me.”
A frown formed between her dark arched eyebrows, and she edged her hand toward the telephone. “Seriously, Gray, go now or I’ll call the police.”
“No.” He couldn’t, not until she agreed.
She reached under the counter for...what?...a gun? For mace?
He was frightening her. He might be mad to get the land, and she might be the strangest woman he’d ever met, but scaring her was unconscionable. Intimidation to get her to sell? Yes. Outright frightening her? Dead wrong.
He backed away.
“Think about it,” he said, the slightest thread of recklessness seeping into his voice. As a businessman, he was making mistakes left, right and center.
She shook her head, and there was such implacability, such conviction in the movement he knew she would never sell, no matter how high his price.
When he turned and left, desperation wrapped around his throat like a noose. He was going to have to do the unthinkable and have Dad declared unfit.
No. Before he did that, he would drive into Denver and see this woman for himself.
He couldn’t wait—for DNA results, for the woman’s next move, for another damn day. On the heels of that thought, he swore. He couldn’t leave today. He had an appointment with Dad’s accountant that couldn’t be put off.
Tomorrow then. He’d go to Denver first thing tomorrow.
Time for a showdown.
