The Independent Bride

by Sophie Weston

  ‘No,’ said Pepper quietly.

  Mary Ellen extracted the stylus and tapped in a deliberate note. ‘Seven forty-five on Wednesday,’ she said, as if Pepper hadn’t spoken. ‘Go to the plant and ask for Connie. She’s the Human Resources Manager now. She’ll find—’

  Pepper raised her voice. ‘I said no.’

  The inside of the cabin was very dusty, but Mary Ellen had cleaned up a corner for herself. Typically it was the best chair in the room. And it was set at the desk. She sat down now and steepled her fingertips.

  ‘You don’t have a choice,’ she said calmly. ‘Your little business is a busted flush. Who else but me would employ you?’

  Pepper stared. Her thoughts whirled like a rising storm.

  I thought she loved me. She doesn’t. She just loves making everyone dance to her tune. How on earth did I miss that?

  It hurt. It really hurt.

  ‘Let me spell it out for you,’ said Mary Ellen. She sounded almost motherly.

  That truly sickened Pepper. For a moment she could not speak.

  Mary Ellen misunderstood her silence. Mary Ellen thought she had won. But then Mary Ellen always did win.

  ‘Look at it this way. You’re the last Calhoun. Anyone in the retail business is going to think you’re a spy. A business in any other sector will just think you have to be a liability or you’d be in the family firm where you belong. It’s a nobrainer.’

  Pepper was shaking. ‘A no-brainer,’ she agreed with heavy irony.

  Mary Ellen gave her famously charming, naughty child smile. ‘Sure,’ she agreed. ‘Glad you see it so clearly. Your little idea is dead. You won’t get funding from anyone in North America.’ She tapped the organiser. ‘See you Wednesday.’

  Pepper drew a deep breath. Get a grip, she told herself feverishly, get a grip. Lose your temper and she’s won. She already thinks she’s won. This is your last chance…

  And she said quietly, ‘No.’

  She was right. Mary Ellen had been quite sure that she had won. She did not believe that Pepper would hold out. Startled, furious, disbelieving, she went on the attack. Mary Ellen Calhoun on the attack did not take prisoners.

  Pepper just stood there, under an assault of words like hailstones. In the end they all came back to the same point. Pepper was Calhoun Carter Industries’ property, bought and paid for over years. The very best education money could buy had seen to that. Along with the house in the South of France, the condo in New York, the South Sea Island mountain retreat, her suite in the Calhoun mansion…

  Pepper hung on to cool reason but it was an effort. ‘But they aren’t mine.’

  Mary Ellen showed her teeth in a shark’s smile. ‘Got it at last!’

  Oh, Pepper got it. Slowly. Reluctantly. With disbelief. But she got it.

  ‘You mean that all the stuff you’ve given me over the years—’

  ‘Invested,’ corrected Mary Ellen coldly. ‘You are an investment. Nothing more.’

  If Pepper had been pale before, she was ashen now. This was the woman who had introduced her at parties as ‘my little princess’?

  Mary Ellen smiled. ‘Think about it. The European schools. The year in Paris. Seed corn. I even arranged for you to go to business school five years younger than everyone else, so you wouldn’t want time out when the company needed you.’

  Pepper was outraged. ‘The business school took me on my own merits. I won a prize, for God’s sake.’

  Mary Ellen mocked that, too. ‘Problem solving! When did you ever solve a problem? All your problems have been bought off by Calhoun money.’

  That was when Mary Ellen listed them. Not just the right schools, the right clothes, the right apartments, the right friends. The senior businessmen who had taken her calls and talked to her like an equal. The junior businessmen who had dated her…

  Dated…?

  Pepper gulped. Her blouse was not just damp and cold any more. It was icy. A cascade of icicles was thundering down her spine. She was shivering so much she could hardly speak.

  ‘What do you mean? What have my dates got to do with this?’

  Mary Ellen saw that she had scored a hit. Her eyes gleamed.

  ‘You have no idea what it cost me to get you a social life,’ she went on with that trill of laughter that was her trademark. It was very musical, very ladylike. But the eyes that met Pepper’s across the dusty old cabin were not ladylike in the least.

  Even so—dated?

  ‘You’re nothing but a potato,’ said Mary Ellen, light and cruel and suddenly horribly believable. ‘Who would bother with you if you weren’t my grandchild?’

  Pepper was the first to admit that she was not fashionably slender, but she had always thought she was good company. That her friends liked her for that. She said so.

  Mary Ellen’s hard little eyes snapped. ‘And I suppose you think that one day you’ll meet Prince Charming and get married, too? Grow up!’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘You have only one chance to be a bride,’ said Mary Ellen, showing her teeth like a shark. ‘And that’s if I buy you a husband. After all those mercy dates I paid for, I’ve got a good long list of candidates.’

  That was when Pepper knew that she could not take any more. There was no point in even trying. With a superhuman effort, she told her icy muscles to stop shaking and move. And she walked out.

  Mary Ellen was not expecting it. ‘Where are you going?’ she yelled, suddenly not even pretending to be ladylike any more.

  Pepper did not stop. She went running, scrambling up the soggy path, to where Ed was sitting.

  Her grandmother ran after her, but halted at the point where the path began to climb.

  ‘You get back here this minute,’ she yelled.

  Pepper did not stop. Not even when she fell to one knee. Not even when she felt her pantyhose tear and blood trickle down her shin. She didn’t care. She didn’t care about anything but getting away from the grandmother whose affection had been a lie right from the start.

  By the time she reached Ed, she was panting. ‘Take me back to New York,’ she said. ‘Take me back now.’

  He hesitated, but only for a moment. It would have taken a braver man than Ed Ivanov to face Mary Ellen in this mood. He took Pepper’s arm and hurried her towards the clearing where the helicopter was waiting.

  Ladylike, five foot two, Mary Ellen had a voice like a bass drum when roused. It reached them easily. So did the fury.

  ‘You’ll never make it on your own, Penelope Anne Calhoun, do you hear me? I own you.’

  A week later, Pepper knew exactly how true that was. So she leaned against the wall, skulking down as a party of VIPs swept onto the London plane in advance of everyone else. She did not care about VIPs, but there was an outside chance that they might recognise her. After all, Mary Ellen was a VIP. As the Calhoun heir, Pepper had been one too for most of her life.

  Well, that was all over now. A good thing, too, she told herself.

  She would get to London. She would put together a new life. And she would survive.

  All she had to do was keep clear of VIPs.

  ‘Professor Konig?’ The flight attendant had obviously been waiting for them. She was instantly alert, full of professional smiles. ‘Welcome on board, sir. This way.’

  The VIP and the airline director followed her.

  ‘So that’s what you get in first class,’ Steven Konig muttered to David Guber. ‘Instant name-check and personal escort to your seat.’

  The attendant took his jacket and the ticket stub to label it, and left her boss to do the formal farewells. Steven looked after her.

  ‘Is it enough to justify the cost, I ask myself?’

  The other man smiled. ‘You old Puritan! Still working on the principle I’m uncomfortable therefore I am?’

  Steven laughed. ‘You may be right.’

  Dave punched his arm lightly. ‘You’re important enough to fly the Atlantic without having your knees under your nose any more, Steven.
Live with it.’

  ‘Can I quote you?’ Steven was dry.

  Dave Guber was not only a long-standing friend, he was a main board member of this airline. He grinned, ‘If you do, I’ll sue.’ He shook hands and added soberly, ‘I mean it. I’m really grateful, Steven. You saved our butts.’

  Steven shook his head, disclaiming.

  ‘Yes, you did. If you hadn’t come through for me we’d have had a conference and no keynote speaker. Great speech, too.’

  Steven shrugged. ‘I was glad to do it. I’ve wanted to do a think piece on the subject for a long time.’

  ‘Yeah, sure. Like you haven’t got enough to fill your time already.’

  ‘No, I mean it,’ Steven insisted. ‘It makes a change.’ He gave a rueful smile. ‘It seems like all I do these days is meetings, meetings, meetings. It was really nice just to sit down and think for once.’

  Dave Guber looked quizzical. ‘Wish you were only doing one job again?’

  ‘Chairman of Kplant is my job,’ Steven told him drily. ‘Being Master of Queen Margaret’s isn’t a job; it’s a vocation. Ask the Dean.’

  They both grinned. They understood each other perfectly. They had first met at Queen Margaret’s College, Oxford, as students years ago. And they had both been fined by the Dean regularly for standard student bad behaviour.

  Dave cocked an eyebrow. ‘He isn’t glad to see you back?’

  ‘Spitting tintacks,’ agreed Steven, amused.

  ‘That must make life peaceful.’

  ‘Hey, if I wanted peace I’d have stayed in the lab. You say goodbye to peace the moment you open your own company.’

  Dave’s career had been with big international corporates. He looked at his friend curiously. ‘Is it worth it?’

  ‘It’s great,’ said Steven. There was no mistaking his enthusiasm.

  ‘You never want to slow down?’ Dave asked tentatively.

  Slowing down was heresy in business, of course. But he remembered the gorgeous blonde whom Steven had dated all those years ago. No one mentioned her any more. Nobody linked his name with anyone else, either. Dave thought he had never met anyone as lonely as Steven Konig.

  ‘Do you never think about—er—a family, maybe?’

  Steven’s face changed. He didn’t frown exactly. He just withdrew—very slightly, very politely. Suddenly Dave wasn’t talking to his old buddy any more. He was taking formal leave of an international figure.

  Dave sighed and gave up.

  ‘Well, don’t forget you’re going to come and stay with us the very next vacation you get. Marise and I are counting on it.’

  Vacation? Steven managed to repress a hollow laugh.

  ‘Sure thing,’ he said. It was vague enough not to count as a promise. Steven always kept his promises, so he didn’t hand them out lightly.

  ‘I’ll hold you to that.’

  Steven gave his sudden smile, the one that made him look just like the student who had once worked out how to set off fireworks by remote control from Queen Margaret’s venerable tower. His eyes were vivid with amusement.

  ‘I’ll put it in the five-year plan.’

  Dave flung up his hands in mock despair. ‘You’re crazy.’

  ‘You said it yourself. I’m a Big Name,’ Steven said crisply. ‘For that, there’s a price.’

  David Guber was an important man, with stock options and the power to hire and fire. But he wasn’t Steven Konig, who had single-handedly taken his food research business from the small companies sector to the big time. The press fell over themselves to interview Steven Konig in five continents. Of course there was going to be a price.

  Dave sighed. ‘Well, if you ever get off the carousel come see us,’ he said. And to the glamorous flight attendant, who still hovered, ‘Make sure Professor Konig has the journey of his life. We owe this man, big time.’ He pumped his hand again. ‘You’re a great guy, Steven. Have a good flight.’

  Steven was already opening his briefcase before Guber had left the plane.

  ‘Can I get you anything, Professor?’ the attendant asked.

  Steven bit back a wry smile. So Dave Guber thought he ought to date, did he? How was a man to do that when every woman he met called him Professor? Or Chairman? Or even, God help him, Master?

  ‘A drink?’ The flight attendant knew her duty to the friend of a boss so big she had only ever seen him on video before. ‘Coffee?’

  Steven gave her his ordinary smile, the one he used when more than half his mind was elsewhere. ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘A warm towel?’ pressed the flight attendant, trying hard.

  ‘Nothing.’ He corrected that. ‘You’ll give me everything I need if you just keep other people away.’

  He had caught sight of several British delegates from the conference in the airport. He could just see them grabbing the chance of a transatlantic flight to buttonhole him. Experience had taught him that someone always wanted advice they didn’t listen to or the name of contacts whom they misused.

  He said with feeling, ‘I’d really appreciate some peace.’

  ‘You’ve got it,’ said the flight attendant, relieved.

  Steven worked until long after the attendants had put out the cabin lights and his fellow passengers had composed themselves for sleep. He finished making notes on the monthly statements of Kplant, dictated two memos and a letter, and then skimmed the agenda for the next college meeting. Finishing that, he looked at his watch. Space for two hours’ sleep if he was sensible.

  And I’m always sensible, thought Steven wryly. With two jobs, three titles and more responsibilities than he could shake a stick at, he had to be.

  He stretched out on the wonder of a first-class transcontinental airline bed and clicked off his overhead light. He was asleep in seconds.

  Pepper had never flown coach before. It was an experience, she thought grimly.

  The seat was uncomfortably tight. The woman in the next seat kept jabbing her in the ribs and maintained an agitated monologue until she finally fell asleep. And in the row behind a party of young entrepreneurs were drinking and laughing loudly about some conference they had been to in New York. By the time the cabin crew had finally settled them down Pepper knew that sleep was hopeless.

  Suppose that’s the price of running away, she told herself, with an attempt at humour. No more business class for you.

  Only it didn’t make her laugh. Not even smile. In fact she felt her stomach clench as if she had just swallowed a glassful of ice. And not because of the loss of luxury.

  I am not running away. I am not running away.

  Pepper winced. Even in her head she sounded defensive.

  Who are you kidding, Pepper? Of course you’re running away!

  She shivered—then pulled the thin flight blanket up to her chin. It made her feel a bit warmer but it did not stop the inner turmoil.

  She had always known that crossing her grandmother was a risk. But she had never suspected the lengths that Mary Ellen would go to.

  Because I still thought I was her little princess! I thought she loved me. What an idiot I was. What a blind, naïve idiot. And I thought I was so street-smart!

  Mary Ellen’s revenge had not been subtle. It had been fast.

  Within two days of their secret meeting Pepper had notice to quit her apartment. Well, she had expected that; her grandmother had rented it to her in the first place. She had not expected to find her appointment diary suddenly emptying. Or the company that rented her office space suddenly demanding that she pay a year’s rent up-front or leave in a week. Or to have her platinum credit card suddenly withdrawn.

  She had tried to speak to Mary Ellen. But her grandmother had refused to take her calls. So Pepper had gone to the Calhoun Carter building.

  Mary Ellen refused to see her. More, she’d kept her waiting for half an hour, then had the security force escort her from the building under guard.

  Pepper had not believed it. ‘Why?’ she had said to Mary Ellen’s PA. She had
known Carmen all her life.

  Carmen had tears in her eyes but she did not stop the uniformed guards.

  ‘Everyone will think I’ve been stealing from her,’ Pepper said, still too bewildered to be indignant.

  Carmen looked as if she were going to cry in earnest. ‘That’s why.’

  ‘You mean—’ Pepper struggled with it. ‘This is a publicity stunt?’

  ‘Mrs Calhoun says you want independence, you’ve got it.’ Carmen sounded as if she had learned it off by heart. And as if she were eating glass.

  ‘You mean she wants to destroy my credibility,’ said Pepper slowly. ‘Oh, Carmen!’

  The PA blew her nose. ‘Better go quietly, Pepper. You don’t want to make the evening news.’

  So Pepper went.

  She went back to her apartment, sat down and made a list of what she had got going for her. It was frighteningly little—a good business brain, a wardrobe of executive suits, enough money to live for six months if she was careful, and the ability to speak three languages. Oh, and a really good project in Out of the Attic. Only her grandmother was going to make sure that Out of the Attic never came to market.

  She was packing when the doorbell rang. She checked through the spy hole. Ed?

  She opened the door. ‘What do you want, Ed?’ she said wearily.

  He divested himself of his overcoat and sat down on the sofa, taking her with him. He took her hand and held onto it.

  Pepper snatched it back. ‘You don’t have to look like that. Nobody died.’

  But Ed went on looking honest and remorseful.

  ‘Not yet. But your career is damn nearly gone,’ he said frankly. ‘Why don’t you make it up with Mary Ellen? It’s crazy to throw away Calhoun Carter for a whim. You were born for business.’

  Pepper flinched. ‘And not for Prince Charming,’ she said savagely.

  Ed was disconcerted. ‘What?’

  She took a deep breath. ‘Will you tell me something, Ed?’

  ‘If I can.’

  ‘When we went out together—was I a mercy date?’

  He hesitated just a fraction too long.

  So her grandmother had not lied. Pepper had hoped against hope that it was one of Mary Ellen’s snaky tricks. But clearly it was the simple truth.