by Diana Palmer
CHAPTER NINE
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Lawrence Harden was seventy-two years old. He lived in a small clapboard house on ten thousand acres of prime pastureland on the way to the Big Horn Mountains in southern Montana.
He welcomed Meredith with grace and old-world courtesy, pausing to make coffee and offer store-bought sweet rolls.
"Now," he said when he was comfortably situated on his rocking chair and she was perched on his sofa. "What's this about my proxy?"
Meredith smiled. It was just past daylight and she was dressed in nice clothes today, a soft gray suit with a blue plaid blouse, her hair in a plait down her back. She looked the successful businesswoman, and she could see that her appearance gave her extra points with Cy's great-uncle. She'd counted on that.
"Can I trust you not to go to Cy if I tell you?" she asked point-blank.
He nodded. "I like your honesty," he replied, his blue eyes twinkling. "Yes, you can trust me. I'll give you my word."
"In that case, I'm after your great-nephew's company," she said simply. "I want it alllock, stock, and barreland I'm prepared to pay top dollar for any outstanding stock. What I can't buy, I want to control through signed proxies."
"Once you have the company, what do you plan to do with it?" he asked warily.
"Incorporate it into mine," she said.
"You have your own company?" he asked, impressed.
She smiled. "Yes."
"Times change."
"Indeed they do." She outlined what she wanted to do with Cy's mineral leases and why she needed them.
"So he wouldn't sell them," he murmured. "Not like him to forgo a deal like that. No company can afford to turn down that kind of money."
"His reasons are his own, of course. I understand that his board of directors wasn't too thrilled at his line of reasoning either. But I need those mineral rights, and I'll go to any lengths to get them."
He leaned forward, scowling. "Why? This isn't just business, is it?"
"You see too much." She crossed her arms. "No, it's personal. He and his mother did me a bad turn some years ago. They chased me out of town and left me alone in the world."
"You're Meredith," he said at once.
She caught her breath. "How did you know?"
"Whole family knew, despite Myrna's efforts to cover up." His old eyes narrowed angrily. "She set you up, didn't she? A cold, hard woman, Myrna. Forever pretending to be something she never was. Married to that bounder of a playboy, never anything she loved except her son. A woman shouldn't be that possessive of a child, it comes to no good."
"So they say," Meredith murmured, thinking about how protective she was of her own son, how involved with his welfare, even though she had to spend time away from him. She hated understanding Myrna Harden. It was somehow easier now that she had a son of her own.
"I always figured you'd come back someday. Myrna knows you're here, I reckon?"
She nodded. "But she can't buy me off. And yes, she tried."
"A hard woman," he repeated. "She'll pay for what she did one day. Not up to you to see to that, however," he added levelly. "God's business, revenge. Dangerous to take it into your own hands. It could backfire."
"Not if I get your proxy." She laughed, refusing to be frightened off. "What do you say?"
He thought about it for a minute, his wrinkled eyes narrowed. "Okay. You can have it."
"And you won't tell Cy, or Myrna?"
"Never had any use for her," he scoffed. "Cy might have turned out better if Myrna hadn't kept him away from me so much. Thought I wasn't good enough to associate with him," he said gruffly. "I live out here in the wilds, run cattle and such. My people could have bought and sold hers in the old days, back before the turn of the century. But now, I'm an embarrassment to her."
"My great-uncle was a full-blooded Crow," Meredith said with pride in her voice. "I have cousins on the reservation, and they're no embarrassment to me."
He grinned. "Good for you. No shame in honest kinfolk, rich or poor. Too bad Myrna's got her nose so far in the air. I know things about her she wouldn't want told. She wasn't always a rich society matron."
"They say your sins catch up with you," Meredith said quietly. "We'll see."
He got up to get his cashbox. "I'll sign the papers for you. Mind you don't try to play judge," he cautioned as he opened it. "What goes around comes around."
"How well I know," she said.
With the proxy in her hand, she drove back to Billings in the car she'd rented. It had been careless to do that, because Cy was probably keeping an eye on her. But she didn't really care anymore. Soon enough he was going to find out her secrets anyway.
She changed and went to work, to discover from one of Cy's executives that the boss had gone out of town the day before and wasn't expected back for a week. All her worrying had been for nothing. He didn't care enough to stay around and watch her, she decided. But she didn't know if she was relieved or disappointed by the news.
Meredith watched Myrna Harden walk into the restaurant for lunch and seat herself in Meredith's station. Apparently since Cy was gone, she felt safe enough bracing Meredith on her home ground.
Meredith placed a glass of water on the table and offered her a menu with her usual courtesy. She only had another hour to go on her shift, then she had to rush home, because Mr. Smith would be there soon with the contracts.
Myrna's hands trembled as she took the menu. She was wearing a terribly expensive designer dress in muted pastel colors. She gave Meredith's uniform a look that spoke volumes, and Meredith only thought, Enjoy it while you can.
"I only want coffee and apple pie," Myrna said, putting the menu aside. "And I want to know how much longer you're going to stay here. I know you went with Cy to the battlefield Thursday. He came home upset and he left yesterday morning without a word to me."
"He's thirty-four," Meredith pointed out. "I think that's old enough not to need your permission to leave home."
Myrna looked up at her with mingled contempt and pleading. "Don't," she said through her teeth. "I'll give you anything if you'll go away. Anything! My son is all I have left."
Meredith just stared at her.
"You must need money," the older woman persisted, almost frantic now. "You're still young, you can find someone to love. You can marry and have a family. I'll help you make a new start somewhere else."
Meredith looked down at her blankly. "It's too late for that. You know my conditions."
"I can't tell Cy," came the piteous reply. "I can't! He'll hate me"
"You're his mother. He can't hate you."
"Meredith, for the love of God, don't do this to me," Myrna begged, and the tears in her eyes were real. She clutched at Meredith's apron with talonlike hands. "He's my son. I only wanted what was best for him."
"And I wouldn't do," she said coldly.
"You were eighteen. You came from poverty. I wanted a woman to match him, someone who could bring him stability, security, a happy future. He wanted you, but his lust blinded him to what you were," Myrna explained feverishly. "It could never have lasted. He resented you. He never wanted to get engaged to you, but he said he'd had to do it to keep you sweet, so you wouldn't walk out on him, that he was only playing along with you"
Wincing, Meredith closed her eyes. She'd always assumed that Cy had loved her. Now she knew it all. It had only been desire. He'd never had permanence in mind, despite what he'd said to her when he proposed that they get married.
The pain in Meredith's face made Myrna even more uncomfortable than she already was. She was making a bad situation worse, but she'd been desperate. She dropped her hand with a heavy sigh. "I had no idea what I'd done until it was too late. Private detectives searched for over a year, but they couldn't find you. I would have made it up to you somehow."
"There are some things nothing can make up for," she said quietly.
"The baby." Myrna's haunted eyes lifted. "Did you have him? Did you put him up for ad
option?"
Meredith didn't reply. She stared down at Myrna with contempt. "You can spend the rest of your life wondering," she said instead. "And even then you won't know the hell I went through because of you."
"No. I don't suppose I will," the other woman said, and for an instant there was something like understanding in her eyes as she looked at Meredith. Myrna took a deep breath. "I shouldn't have come at all. But Cy is hurting. Really hurting. If you can't feel pity for me, can't you feel it for him?"
"The only reason he's hurting is because I've denied him my bed," Meredith said bluntly, watching the older woman flush. "He never loved me. It was only ever a raging desire, you just said so yourself. Once I'm gone, he'll find someone else again and again," she added on a cold laugh. "Just like he did when I left here."
Myrna twisted the napkin in her hands, staring at it. "He's been different since you left. So many women. He looks for you everywhere and he can't find you." She lifted her eyes. "If I'd let you stay, it might have burned itself out eventually. He might have tired of you."
"He'd already tired of me," Meredith said wearily. "He was looking for a reason to throw me out. You gave it to him, that's all." She pushed a stray wisp of blond hair back from her cheek with a slender hand. "Do you really want anything? I'm off in twenty minutes, and I've got a backlog of work to get through."
"Housework, I suppose," Myrna said with a faint smile. "I don't have to do that anymore, but I remember" Her face closed up. "If you should change your mind, about leaving, I mean," she added solemnly, "I could manage twenty thousand."
"I've told you. You can't buy me."
Myrna got up from her chair, so small and frail that she seemed almost childlike. "I never could. It was the one thing about you that I admired." She smiled hesitantly. "I was like youonce." She picked up her purse, clutching it like a talisman, her silver hair neat and clean. She met Meredith's eyes with a quiet, searching gaze and actually winced. "You still love him, don't you?" she blurted out, and then quickly looked away from the pain that washed over Meredith's composed features. "That makes it so much worse"
She was gone before Meredith had time to consider the enigmatic statement. She'd never considered Myrna to be perceptive, but she'd certainly missed the mark this time. Meredith didn't love Cy. She hated him. She kept telling herself that all the way home, right until Mr. Smith showed up on her doorstep with his arms full of documents.
"That's it, that's it, kill me with paperwork, bury me in statistics," she moaned as he deposited the stack of files in his attaché case onto her neat coffee table.
"You're the one who wanted to be Ms. Executive," he reminded her.
"So I did. How's my baby?"
"Missing you, of course." He handed her a sealed envelope. "Don said to give you that. It's the progress report on the proxies he's been obtaining. And he said to tell you that Harden had been tipped off royally about the takeover bid. He knows it's coming, and from where."
Meredith knew her face had gone white. "Does he know about me?"
"How could he?" Mr. Smith replied. "Kip Tennison is just a name to him, as it is to most other people. Nobody knows what you look like except family."
"I hope you're right," she murmured. She unsealed the envelope and read over the, list of names and proxies that Don had managed to obtain. "I'll write a note for you to take back to Don, I got the outstanding family stock vote from Cy's great-uncle. I think that's going to put us over the top. What I need now is for Don to approach one of Cy's board members directlythe one named Bill. He's working against Cy. Don knows the directors. I don't dare stick my nose in just yet."
Mr. Smith was fingering the attaché case, his green eyes pensive. "When's that annual meeting?"
"Two weeks away," Meredith replied. She pulled a pen and paper from her purse and jotted down a quick note to Don. "Mrs. Harden has been doing her best to buy me off," she mused, glancing up at him. "Her latest offer was twenty thousand."
"Chicken feed, but she doesn't know it, does she?"
She shook her head, signing the note absently. "I almost feel sorry for her. When Cy finds out what she's done, he'll never forgive her."
Mr. Smith took the note she handed him in its envelope. He stared at the handwriting on it without speaking.
"You don't approve, Mr. Smith," she said, her gray eyes narrowing as she almost read his mind.
"No." He lifted his eyes to hers. "Revenge is stupid and expensive. Wasted emotion. So you force his mother to tell all and destroy her relationship with her son. You take his company away from him and send him packing. Then what?"
She frowned. "What do you mean, then what?"
"After you bring him to his knees, what do you do?"
"I have the satisfaction of seeing him and his mother paid back for what they did to my life!" she raged.
"You didn't help?" he countered, watching the shock in her eyes. "You ran. You didn't try to defend yourself, you didn't try to fight the old lady. You didn't give Harden the chance to learn about Blake, or to regret what he'd done. I'm not saying Henry didn't help you put up the smokescreen, but he had ulterior motives for not wanting Harden to find you."
"I tried to tell Cy," she said, turning away. "He wouldn't listen."
"His mother wouldn't let him. I can understand why you want her brought down, but it seems to me that Harden is pretty much a victim himself."
"Cy?!" she asked coldly.
"He's got a five-year-old son that he doesn't know about," he told her flatly. "When he finds out, if he finds out, you and old lady Harden had both better look for a deep hole to hide in."
Meredith hadn't considered that part of it. She tried to imagine how Cy was going to feel and realized Mr. Smith was right. The company takeover was going to be the least of her worries if he learned about the pregnancy that had sent her into Henry Tennison's arms. The fact that Blake had been legally adopted by Henry was going to be another fly in the soup.
"You'd better do some hard and fast thinking before you get your pretty head in too deep to pull out," Mr. Smith told her gently. "If you want the company so much, take it. But the past is better left alone, unless you really want to sacrifice Blake on the altar of revenge. Or don't you think Harden would fight you with everything he's got once he discovers he has a son?"
Of course he would. She paled. Cy would be a force to reckon with, and he had influence and contacts. In court, if he could prove his paternity, there was the faintest chance that he might take Blake away from her. Myrna would do her best to help. She'd thought she had the edge, but Mr. Smith was convincing her that she might have opened up a very deadly can of worms with her little scheme.
"What am I going to do?" she asked, foundering for the first time in memory.
He moved closer, his green eyes oddly sympathetic as he looked down at her. "Get out, while you can."
She shook her head. "I've set the wheels in motion. I can't stop now. It's too late."
"Then pull back to a safe distance, at least. Let the past die."
The thought made her sick. The past was Cy, and she was going to have to leave Billings and go back to a life that was nothing more than the acquisition of more wealth and power. It had been enough when revenge had driven her. Now, it seemed to loom ahead like a vast emptiness, with only Blake to keep her sane.
She put a hand to her forehead.
"I've upset you. I'm sorry." He touched her blond hair gently, something he rarely did. He wasn't demonstrative. "Kip, I don't want to see you destroyed. You've underestimated Harden all down the line. He's nobody's fool. Hedge your bets. Get out."
She smiled sadly. "Okay. I can use the proxies to force him into giving me those mineral rightsthreaten him with the takeover and ram it through if I have to. But I'll leave Myrna alone."
"Good girl." He packed the attaché case. "People pay for their mistakes," he said gently. "It's built into the system. Hurt somebody and you get hurt."
"Does the hurting ever stop?" she wonder
ed, remembering her hopeless love for Cy. Even now, all he wanted from her was sex, not love. He'd never loved her.
"I don't know," Mr. Smith replied. He looked at her in a way she didn't see before he turned to the door. "I don't guess so. Eat more. You're losing weight."
"I'm tired," she said, crossing her arms over her chest. "Two jobs at once would reduce most people to spare bones."
"You could quit the restaurant job."
"And give up minimum wage? Bite your tongue!"
He chuckled at her impish look. Sometimes she looked much younger than her twenty-four years. "Okay. No more advice. I'll be in touch."
"Thanks, Mr. Smith."
He shrugged. "You're the only family I've got. I have to look out for you."
He left, and she had to fight tears. He cared about her. That was the only reason she hadn't cut him dead when he started pointing out the folly in what she was attempting.
She closed the door and turned back inside, her stomach clenching as she began to contemplate all the consequences she could face because of what she was doing. She couldn't lose Blake, surely not! The thought ate at her insides. She knew how ruthless Cy could be. He didn't mind hitting below the belt. Myrna had taught him how to do that.
Ironically, her threat to ruin Myrna could ricochet and destroy her own life. If Myrna realized it, there would be no stopping her. The older woman might feel guilt and regret, but it wouldn't even slow her down if Meredith threatened her relationship with her son. Of course, she reminded herself, Myrna didn't know about Blake. She wasn't sure there was a child.
She began to calm down. And there was always another country. She could take Blake anywhere in the world to live, someplace where Cy couldn't find them. Yes. She didn't have to worry about custody suits as long as she had the financial means to fight back, and she did. Henry had made sure of it.
Meredith smiled in relief. She'd just panicked. She could pull it off. Everything would be all right.
She worked through the night, grateful for the paperwork that kept her mind off her worries. She phoned home the next day to speak to Blake and went to bed late, only to toss and turn and hardly sleep.
