“Don’t blame yourself.” Justine smiled wearily. “You are so very open and forthright, my dear. Just like your grandfather, Richard. He always said exactly what he thought, too. You always knew where you stood with him. I have missed him these past few years. I owe him more than I can ever repay.”
Katy thought wistfully of her loud, laughing, boisterous grandfather. Richard Quinnell had been a self-made man in every way.
Lacking a formal education, money, and family, he had come west to make his fortune. He and his wife had opened a fish-and-chips restaurant on the Seattle waterfront and had prospered quickly. The Quinnells had been in a position to help the young Justine Gilchrist when she had been left widowed and alone in the world with her two small sons and her husband’s failing waterfront café. The Quinnells had kept her afloat financially until Justine, working night and day, had managed to turn a profit.
The friendship between the Quinnells and Justine had endured over the years in spite of a friendly rivalry between the two growing restaurant chains. When Justine’s son, Thornton, had asked Katy’s mother, Deborah, to marry him, Justine had made no secret of her satisfaction. She had even broached the possibility of a merger between the two restaurant corporations. Richard Quinnell, who had recently lost his wife, agreed.
The marriage and the merger had been big news in Seattle’s business community. The combined events had filled the papers, and the guest list for the wedding had been impressive.
When Thornton Gilchrist failed to show up at the church, Justine was deeply ashamed. The Quinnells and the Gilchrists had gone their separate ways after the debacle. Both businesses continued to thrive, but there was no more talk of a merger.
When Richard Quinnell had collapsed from a heart attack sixteen years ago, his West Coast chain of innovative fast food restaurants had been on the verge of going into the international market.
Unfortunately, Richard’s successor, Katy’s father, had not had Quinnell’s magic touch when it came to running a business empire. Under Crawford Wade’s control the Quinnell chain had floundered, eventually going bankrupt.
“I probably should have been more diplomatic with your grandson.” Katy turned back to the scene outside the window. “But he really annoyed me, Justine.”
“I can imagine.”
Katy considered the approach she had taken with Luke, searching for flaws in her plans. It was true she had lost her temper with him, but he had deserved it.
“You wouldn’t believe how he’s living,” she said. “He just sits there all alone in that awful old house and makes money day after day. He doesn’t even seem to be enjoying it. The place needed painting, and the furniture was old and shabby. As far as I can tell, his only friend is a large, vicious-looking dog.”
“Good Lord.” Justine sounded genuinely alarmed for the first time. “I do hope he isn’t turning into another Howard Hughes. Did you notice if his hair and fingernails were getting overly long?”
Katy smiled wryly. “Don’t worry. He hasn’t flipped out completely, at least not as far as I could tell. He needed a haircut, but other than that he looked reasonably normal.”
For a Gilchrist.
Hah. Who was she kidding? Katy asked herself silently. She had been fascinated by him. Another of those unsettling little chills of sensual awareness went down her spine at the memory of Luke’s sorcerer’s eyes and coiled grace. She was still having problems dealing with the realization that he had affected her so strongly.
For one thing, she simply did not understand her own reaction to him. Never in her wildest dreams would she have envisioned herself attracted to such a man. And she could not believe he had been attracted to her.
Rumors about his beautiful wife had circulated among the Washington State members of the Gilchrist family at the time of Luke’s marriage. Katy had once seen a photograph of the pair in a trade magazine. Luke and Ariel had obviously been perfect for each other, a dark, brooding warlock and his exotic witch of a wife.
“So his inheritance means nothing to him after all.” Justine rested her head against the back of the chair. “I must admit I had rather hoped to lure him to us with the promise that I would reinstate him in my will and turn complete control of Gilchrist, Inc. over to him.”
Katy cleared her throat. “I did not exactly offer him Gilchrist, Inc., Justine. To be perfectly honest, I didn’t tell him that you were willing to put him back in your will, either.”
Justine’s brows rose slightly. “But I thought that was the whole point of trying the personal approach, my dear. He has steadfastly refused to have anything to do with me, but when he agreed to see you, I was certain we had a foot in the door. He seemed prepared to listen to my proposal delivered through you.”
“Well, he didn’t exactly agree to see me, either,” Katy admitted. “I know I gave you the impression that he had, but the truth was, I got so annoyed with him when he didn’t bother to respond to my calls and letters that I just decided to get in the car and drive down to Oregon to confront him.”
There was a pregnant pause. “I see,” Justine finally murmured. “How did you locate him? All we had was a phone number and a post office box address. Did you hire a private detective?”
“No. I stopped in the town where he keeps the post office box and started asking questions. It wasn’t that hard to find him.” Not with the distinctive description she had been able to provide thanks to her knowledge of the Gilchrist clan. The attendant at the town’s single gas station had been very helpful. “Tall? Black hair? Looks sorta like one of them Wild West gunslingers? Sure, I know him. He works out at the gym sometimes. Does some kind of weird martial arts stuff, you know? He drives a honey of a black Jag.”
Justine nodded. “You are ever resourceful, my dear. May I ask why, once you were actually face to face with him, you failed to make him my offer?”
“Damn it, Justine, I just couldn’t do it.” Katy closed one hand into a small fist. “He doesn’t deserve to have everything you’ve worked and fought for turned over to him just like that. He shouldn’t come back because you’re offering him Gilchrist, Inc. on a silver platter. He should come back because it’s his duty to the family.”
“You told him that?”
“Yes, I did.” Katy raised her chin. “In no uncertain terms.”
Justine sighed. “Well, I suppose I can understand why he didn’t precisely jump at the offer.”
Katy wrinkled her nose. “He’s no fool. He must have known that if he came back, he could probably do so on his own terms. I just didn’t feel like groveling. And I didn’t want him to think you were willing to beg, plead, and bribe him to come back. I guess I messed up, Justine. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be too hard on yourself. It is very likely that even if you had told him he was back in my will and that I was quite prepared to—er—grovel, he would still have turned you down.”
“I know.” Katy straightened her spine. “Justine, we have to talk about the future. We’ve tried everything we can to get Luke to assume his responsibilities. It’s obvious he’s not going to do so. Therefore, we must discuss alternatives. Fraser is getting anxious.”
“If this is your unsubtle way of telling me we must talk about selling off Gilchrist Gourmet, as Stanfield suggests, you may as well save your breath, Katy.” There was a familiar thread of steel in Justine’s voice, one that had not been there in a while.
Katy swung around. “The company is facing disaster. You know that as well as I do. Only a Gilchrist has the clout to run things the way you’ve always run them. You’ve admitted yourself that you don’t have the strength or the desire to continue at the helm.”
“I’m tired, Katy.”
“I know.” Katy looked into Justine’s once-fierce eyes and felt a rush of sympathy.
“I’ve left it too late, haven’t I? I should have made arrangements for my successor years ago, but
I kept putting it off. A part of me always hoped that Thornton would return.”
“I understand, Justine.”
“After he was killed I convinced myself that Luke would want to join his family. We’re all he has left now. You’d think he’d want to be here with us. I deluded myself into believing it would all come right in the end. But it hasn’t, has it?”
Katy stifled a small groan. The note of melodrama in Justine’s voice was a familiar one. Gilchrists were good at melodrama. But in this case, Katy had to admit it was warranted. She knew better than anyone that Justine had long harbored the secret hope that Thornton and his family would rejoin the Seattle Gilchrists.
“It looks bad, Justine, but there are moves we can make that will enable us to salvage at least the net worth of the assets before we lose everything the way my father did when Quinnell Restaurants went under.”
“I wish you were a Gilchrist,” Justine muttered. “I could turn the company over to you.”
Katy blinked in surprise. “Thank you, Justine. That’s very flattering. But even if I were a member of the family, I couldn’t take over Gilchrist, Inc. We both know I don’t have the kind of mind-set it takes to run a corporation that size. I don’t like that kind of management. I wouldn’t be any good at it even if I wanted to do it, which I don’t.”
“Yes, you would. I think you could do just about anything you decided to do, Katy. But I understand how you feel. You have your own dreams to pursue, and you have every right to do so.”
“I want a business of my own,” Katy said softly. “Something that’s all mine. Something I can run myself. I want to shape its destiny and watch it grow.” And I don’t want to have to answer to Gilchrists for the rest of my life, which I most certainly would if I took over Gilchrist, Inc., Katy added silently.
Justine’s expression was speculative for a moment before it faded back into one of grim resignation. Katy shook her head wryly. They both knew the topic of putting her in charge of Gilchrist, Inc. was moot. Justine would never turn the company over to anyone outside the family.
“I suppose if worse comes to worst, I’ll have to consider Darren as a successor. But he simply is not ready for that kind of responsibility.” Justine’s mouth hardened. “In the meantime, I will never consent to selling off what I created from scratch with my own bare hands.”
“All right. What about going public with a stock offering? We could raise capital that way. Hire outside management. Get in a good consulting firm. Just on a temporary basis.”
Justine’s eyes glittered. “No. This is my company. I am not about to turn it over to paid consultants with no sense of history and tradition. This is a family business, and it will stay a family business.”
Katy stared helplessly at her employer. “I understand, Justine, but times have changed. You can’t run it like a family business any longer. You haven’t got a member of the family who is capable of taking your place. At least not yet. Maybe, as you say, your other grandson, Darren, will be able to do it in time. But I agree he’s not quite ready.”
“Sometimes I think Darren will never be ready to step into my shoes no matter how old he gets,” Justine snapped.
“That’s not entirely fair, Justine. You must admit he’s doing very well managing the new restaurant on Lake Union.”
“I’m still not certain I should have let you talk me into giving him that position,” Justine grumbled.
“It will be a learning experience for him. Darren wants to be part of the business,” Katy said gently.
“Oh, he’s ambitious enough, I’ll grant you that, but he hasn’t got the flair to run an operation the size of Gilchrist.” Her mouth twisted bitterly. “Hardly surprising, since his father didn’t have it either. My own fault, I suppose. I was a fool to let Hayden dabble with those art lessons when he was a child.”
The fact that Justine’s second son, Hayden, had been drawn to the art world rather than the world of business had never set well with his mother. Justine had no respect for Hayden’s talents, and she made no secret of it.
Unfortunately, in the past few years Justine had come to the conclusion that neither of Hayden’s offspring, Darren nor Eden, had inherited her business genius either. Her lack of faith in her two youngest grandchildren had become an ongoing source of friction in the family.
“Justine, there isn’t anyone else to take your place,” Katy said, exasperated.
“Luke is fully capable of running Gilchrist.”
“Well, he doesn’t want the job,” Katy reminded her gently. “So where does that leave us? There is no one else in the family who can handle it.”
Justine gave her a grim smile. “We shall see. I want to think about this problem a bit longer before I make any drastic decisions. There must be a solution.”
Katy drew herself up. “There are solutions, but none of them involves that arrogant, mule-headed grandson of yours. I’ll be in my office. Let me know when you want to talk about the future.”
The fog was at the glass walls of the living room now, shrouding the mansion. Katy walked out of Justine’s private suite and into the main hall of the huge house.
She worked off some of her frustration by taking the stairs to the second floor two at a time. At the top of the staircase she turned and strode down the corridor of the mansion’s south wing.
The main corporate headquarters of Gilchrist, Inc. were an hour’s drive away in downtown Seattle. For the past ten years, however, Justine had ruled her empire from her castle overlooking Dragon Bay. She had until recently made frequent trips into the city, however, so that her management team was assured of close contact. Those visits, along with her fax machines, computers, and telephones, had made it possible for Justine to keep her thumb on the pulse of her kingdom.
But when Justine had begun to retreat from the day-to-day task of running the company, the geographical distance between Dragon Bay and downtown Seattle had seemed to grow. Katy had done her best to conceal Justine’s gradual withdrawal from daily operations, but things had gotten to the shaky stage. She could no longer keep giving management excuses for Justine’s failure to show her face at headquarters, nor could she continue to pen memos herself under Justine’s name. Fraser Stanfield had helped her disguise the dire situation as long as possible, but the company had reached a crisis point.
Katy walked into her office. Her secretary, Liz Bartlett, looked up at her over the round rims of a pair of reading glasses. She put down the book she had been reading so that Katy saw the title: Introduction to Short-term Cognitive Therapy.
Two years ago, the day after Liz turned forty, her husband had walked out on her. At Katy’s urging she had begun taking evening classes at the local community college as a way to meet new people and develop new interests.
To everyone’s surprise, including Katy’s, Liz had become an enthusiastic professional student. She had sampled everything from Floral Design to Heating and Air Conditioning Systems Repair, and she loved to apply her newfound knowledge.
Katy had not really minded the three months she had spent in an office filled with ever-changing flower arrangements. But disaster had struck when the mansion’s ancient furnace had broken down and Liz had insisted on repairing it free of charge. The inhabitants of the big house had been forced to rely on the mansion’s fireplaces until a licensed electrician arrived to correct the wiring problem Liz had created.
Fortunately, after that debacle, Liz had concluded she was intellectually more suited to the liberal arts and had moved on to Creative Writing.
Most recently, she had started a course in psychology and had acquired just enough knowledge to be dangerous.
“There you are, Katy,” Liz said. “How is Her Highness today?”
“Holding her own.”
Liz shook her head sadly. “You know that woman is very close to being in a state of full-blown clinical depression, don’
t you?”
“She’s just a little tired lately, that’s all. Any calls?”
“Let’s see.” Liz picked up a stack of message slips and flipped through them. “Miss Anorexia Nervosa phoned. She wants you to call her ASAP.”
Katy groaned. “Eden is not anorexic. She’s lost some weight lately because of the trauma of the divorce, that’s all.”
“She’s on the brink of a major eating disorder. Mark my words.” Liz picked up another slip. “Maureen called about fifteen minutes ago. She wants a return call as soon as possible, too. A lot of repressed hostility in her tone, as usual.”
“She’s got a reason to feel hostile,” Katy said patiently. “Justine isn’t turning Gilchrist over to either of her kids. Any normal mother would be upset.”
“There is no such thing as a normal Gilchrist.”
“You have a point,” Katy admitted. “Anything else?”
“Yep. We heard from the Great Sublimator.”
“Hayden is an artist, Liz. I wish you would stop referring to him as the Great Sublimator. He happens to be doing some of his best work these days.”
“That’s because he’s sublimating the guilt and anger he feels toward his mother,” Liz explained cheerfully. “If he wasn’t working it all out in those glass sculptures of his, he’d be one sick man.”
“As it is, he’s one successful artist.”
Liz pursed her lips. “You know, I’d like to see the whole family in counseling, including Darren. He’s cute as hell, but I sense some anxiety in him due to his inability to prove himself to his grandmother.”
Katy grinned in spite of her mood. “Nonsense. Gilchrists don’t get anxious, they get mean. And you can forget family counseling. They’d eat the poor counselor alive. What they probably need is a witch doctor.”
“I suppose so. Mr. Stanfield has arrived to give you the weekly report, by the way. He’s in your office. I think he’s getting restless.”
“He wants a full briefing on yesterday’s disaster. I guess I’d better let him know I blew it.”