by Leanne Banks
Chapter Two
“For most of us, there always seem to be enough bills to cover whatever money we make.”
– SUNNY COLLINS
The following morning, Jackson James arrived just as Lori was eating the last bite of her breakfast of fresh fruit and granola. She made a face when Mabel told her he was waiting for her. After looking over the paperwork he’d left her last night, she’d barely been able to sleep. She truly hadn’t realized how much money she’d spent since Harlan had died. It was embarrassing. Most of the money had gone to good causes, but seeing the numbers in black and white was disconcerting, to say the least.
Now she had to pay the piper, face the music, suffer the consequences. Lori suspected that working with Jackson James would give new meaning to the word suffering.
There was another way, another choice. Unspoken and unspeakable, but available nonetheless. Lori considered the option for a half second and wrinkled her nose. She wasn’t that desperate.
Taking a sip of coffee, she braced herself for another meeting with this Scrooge with linebacker shoulders. She slipped her feet into her shoes and walked down the gleaming wood floor of the hallway to the parlor. “Good morning, Mr. James,” she said and waved him to a seating area. Choosing the ivory leather chair, she sat down. She noticed the navy suit jacket he wore today didn’t fit any better than the one he wore yesterday.
“Did you have a chance to look over the folders I gave you?” he asked, sitting across from her with a bulging briefcase.
“Yes, I did,” she said. “Things have been such a blur since my father died, I didn’t realize how many donations I had made.”
He gave a neutral nod, but disapproval emanated from his dark eyes. “That’s why we need to set up a budget for you, so you don’t get caught short in another year. It’s my job to identify possible areas where you can-” He paused as if searching for the right word. “Economize,” he said, his voice full of irony. “For example, I notice you spend a significant amount of money on clothing, particularly evening wear. Here’s an area that could be trimmed.”
“I wear the dresses once, then donate them to the women’s shelter,” Lori said and shrugged. “A Granger doesn’t repeat wearing a dress to a social event during the same season, and by the next season, they’re out of style.”
“I don’t think the women staying at the women’s shelter are going to have too many places to wear couture evening dresses,” Jackson James said.
“The evening dresses are sold, and the proceeds go to the women’s shelter,” Lori told him.
“Admirable, but not economical,” he said without missing a beat. “If you want to keep donating all your dresses, then you need to hit some sales.”
The housekeeper entered the room carrying a brown package and several envelopes. “Morning mail, Miss Granger.”
“Thank you, Mabel.”
Jackson gave Mabel a nod of welcome, then continued. “Now we need to pare down this list of charities you contribute to on a regular basis. Cat and dog groomers for rescued animals? I wasn’t aware cats allowed anyone to groom them.”
The way he said it made it sound silly. “For some rescued animals, mostly dogs, grooming can be a health issue,” Lori said, determined to keep a defensive tone from her voice.
“At a hundred dollars a pop?” he asked with a raised eyebrow. “I don’t spend that much on a haircut for myself.”
Lori glanced at his hair and resisted the urge to point out that her stylist wouldn’t cut the top quite so short. “I can direct my resources toward one of my other charities for the time being.”
“And about this grooming for your dog? I think we can find something more reasonable than what you’re doing now.”
“Kenny gets nervous around water. He requires a special touch.”
“You can buy a bottle of dog shampoo and save five hundred dollars a month. Hell, I’ll give him a bath for five bucks a pop.”
She wouldn’t let him anywhere near her dog. He would probably drown Kenny.
“I’ll make other arrangements,” she said, picking up the stack of mail.
“Here’s a charity for cultural arts appreciation for preschoolers? Why would anyone want to take a two-year-old to the opera?”
“One of my sorority friends founded that charity. It sounded like a nice idea at the time,” she said, feeling more idiotic with each passing moment. The trouble was that everything sounded worthy and good at the time. She flipped through the mail.
“And what is this purchase of collectible teddy bears?” he asked.
Lori Jean winced. She’d gotten a little carried away with that one. “It’s a worthy cause. The fire department and rescue squads like to give children teddy bears when they have to be treated or taken to an unfamiliar place.”
Jackson James met her gaze. “Do the bears need to cost two hundred dollars each?”
Resisting the urge to squirm, she lifted her chin. “Of course not, but I sponsored an advertisement for that charity, and they needed some bears for the photo shoot.”
“For this price, you could have gotten real bears,” he muttered.
He was going to pick her to death, she thought as he continued. Mentally muting him, she caught sight of a return address on an envelope that snagged her attention. Virginia Dawson. Miracles in Motion Ranch. Lori tore open the envelope and read the letter. She felt a stab of grief at the news that Virginia ’s husband, Skip, had suffered a long illness and died. As she read on, a knot of distress formed in her chest. Virginia was going to have to shut down the ranch. She didn’t have the financial backing to continue. Miracles in Motion was a combination working/therapeutic ranch. Children with disabilities came to the facility to ride the horses.
Guilt twisted through her. She bit her lip. She hadn’t been in touch with Virginia or the ranch since her accident. Before her accident, she had spent two summers at the ranch to gain the practicum credit her degree required. She had loved working at the ranch, loved the people, the horses, the children. It had been one of the few places where she’d been valued and accepted for herself, not for her father’s wealth.
Another sharp pain stabbed at her. Another loss, she thought. She hated the idea of the ranch closing down. She’d witnessed the improvements children had made during their visits there. What a rotten time to get the news. Any other time and she could write a check without blinking.
Miserable and hating the overwhelming feeling of helplessness, she sighed.
“Miss Granger, this is important. Are you listening to me?” Jackson James demanded.
Blinking, she met his hard gaze and moved her head in a circle. “Yes,” she said with a shrug. “And no.” She fought a flurry of nerves in her belly at the dark expression on his face. “I just received some bad news. An old friend has passed away.”
His eyes gentled a fraction. “I’m sorry.”
“Me, too. And now Virginia is going to have to sell the ranch. I have to do something.”
“What do you mean you have to do something?”
“I mean I can’t let this happen.” She waved the piece of paper. “I can’t let Virginia lose the ranch because Skip died. I have to do something.”
Jackson James set down his pen and looked at her as if she were a couple cookies short of a dozen. It wasn’t the first time he’d looked at her that way. “Who are Virginia and Skip? And why do you have to do anything with this ranch?”
Restless, Lori stood. “ Virginia and Skip run-well, they ran,” she corrected herself and frowned. “They ran a combination working/therapeutic ranch where handicapped children came and rode horses. It was a wonderful place, the employees, the horses, the children. It would be a crime to let it fail. I can’t do it.”
“What do you have to do with this ranch?”
“I worked there for two summers during college break. I need you to help me find a way to help them.”
Jackson shook his head before she finished her request. “No can do. Between the ted
dy bears, the preschool visits to the opera, and everything else, you have to help yourself now.” His mouth settled into a firm, unyielding line. “I have to help you help yourself.”
Lori began to pace. “You really don’t understand. You can take away my shopping trips. I’ll wash Kenny myself, although someone else will have to trim his nails, because I refuse to hurt him. I can’t let this fail. It would be wrong.”
Jackson looked at her for a long moment and sighed. “This must be like an addiction or something to you. You find some needy cause and you have to shell out the bucks to-”
“This is not an addiction!” she shouted, rounding on him. Her heart raced with anger, fury pounded in her head. She felt her left eye begin to twitch. She glanced at the Waterford crystal vase of flowers and itched to throw it at him. She couldn’t remember when she had felt so strongly about something. Not since her father died. Maybe not even since her accident.
She could look at Jackson James and see that he didn’t respect her. She couldn’t really blame him. She wasn’t sure she even respected herself. But this was different. She really didn’t want to let Miracles in Motion go under.
She took a deep breath. “This is different. This was a very special place. They liked me and valued me, not just because of who my father was.”
“If they’re asking you for money now, how can you be sure of that?” he asked, reeking cynicism and disbelief.
At that moment, Lori really hated the man, and she couldn’t remember ever hating anyone. “It must be sad to be you, to never be able to see the good in people, or just the possibility of good in people.”
A sliver of surprise came and went in his eyes, and his jaw hardened. “This isn’t about my personal abilities. This is about your financial situation.”
“You’re right. You’re exactly right. Thank you for reminding me. And your job is to help me accomplish what I believe is important. And this is important.”
“Are you willing to fire your assistant and other members of your staff to accomplish it?”
Lori blinked. She hadn’t even considered that. “I-don’t see how. Merilee has a son in college, and Dena’s husband hurt his back, so he can’t work. She’s the sole support of their family.”
“Then where do you propose to get the money?” he asked.
Lori drew a blank. The truth hurt, but the truth was she knew much more about spending money than making it. “That’s part of your job, isn’t it?”
He raked his hand through his hair. “I’m gonna have to think on this. The general rule is you don’t expand expenditures when you’re short of cash.”
“There’s got to be a way. Maybe a loan.”
He shook his head. “Yeah, you need that like you need a root canal. There’s always the alternative condition your father left…”
Lori felt bitter disgust back up in her throat. “You mean that archaic, chauvinistic, insulting clause that if I get married and remain married until I’m thirty, then my husband and I can have more access to my inheritance, but my husband will have to approve major purchases.” She gritted her teeth. “I still think Daddy must have been mentally half-gone when he put in that provision.”
Not only was it insulting, it was also embarrassing. The ultimate no-confidence vote. Her father had loved her with all his heart, but he obviously hadn’t believed she was capable of looking after herself. The terrible question whispered in her brain like a hissing poisonous snake.
What if she wasn’t?
Before Lori Jean Granger drove him completely out of his mind, Jackson decided to drive his Chevy Blazer to a barren area past the outskirts of Dallas. This was where he came when he felt the corporate demands sliding around his neck to choke the life out of him. With his jacket already ditched, he tugged his tie loose and undid the top button of his shirt. It was still hot as hell outside, and even though he’d been wearing suits since he graduated from college, he’d never grown accustomed to it. No matter what brand he wore, he always felt as if he was wearing a straitjacket and a silk noose.
He got out of his truck and watched the sun ease down the horizon. Two hundred acres of scrubby land. The only good thing about the acreage was the accessibility to the highway. Anyone else looking at the expanse of barren land would see an ugly, useless plot of real estate.
But not Jackson. Jackson saw well-manicured lawns with houses that oozed comfort. He saw paved driveways and neighborhood streets with lights. He saw a playground for children and a community clubhouse and swimming pool. He saw everything he had wanted as a child and didn’t have.
An image of the shack he’d grown up in flashed through his mind. He heard his father’s anger and his mother’s tears. He smelled the alcohol on his father’s breath and felt his rough slap across his cheek as if it were yesterday. He saw the bruises on his mother’s face and felt the horrible helplessness.
Something inside him hardened like granite.
He would never be helpless again. He would make his own way.
The rest of the firm would fall out of their chairs if they knew that Jackson James had every intention of becoming the next real-estate tycoon of Texas. The partners and everyone else thought he was a heartless sonovabitch determined to make his living through accounting, but Jackson had always known accounting was just a means to an end. The kind of success he wanted required a vision and heart his peers thought he didn’t possess. It also, however, required financial backing, and that would take some time. He sucked in a draft of hot summer air and narrowed his eyes. It may look like a piece of crap now, but this was going to be one building block of his fortune. Jackson owned a couple of houses in town that he rented and added the monthly payments to the special account for Jackson Place.
“ Jackson Place,” he echoed, and his lips twitched with self-derision. It was egotistical as hell to name a real-estate development after himself, but he didn’t want anyone mistaking who founded this successful venture.
Jackson Place would be the first of many successful ventures. He knew it in his bones. Nothing would stop him, especially not the whiny, nerve-racking Princess Granger, who had somehow managed to pussy whip even the toughest accountant. The Granger account was just one more little battle to conquer, and both heaven and hell knew he’d fought tougher opponents than Lori Granger.
Chapter Three
“You will always be my little sunbeam.”
– SUNNY COLLINS
Lori sat on her bed with Kenny by her side as she looked at the contents of the package she’d received earlier that afternoon. She couldn’t remember being this angry in her life.
She snatched another Oreo from the plateful on her bedside table, then lifted the nearly empty bottle of Cristal champagne and guzzled it straight from the bottle. She’d smashed her crystal champagne flute against her closet a couple of minutes ago.
Her personal line rang, and she was so disgusted she almost didn’t answer. Glowering, she snatched up the receiver. “Hello,” she said in a voice that sounded both slurred and cross to her own ears.
“Lori Jean? Is that you?”
Lori immediately recognized her sister Delilah’s voice, and something inside her eased. “It’s me. I am so angry at my father I could scream.”
“What’s wrong? You don’t sound like yourself at all.”
“Probably because myself is so furious I can’t stand it.”
“I know Harlan had almost as much money as the devil himself, but what could he do from the grave that would piss you off this much?”
“It’s not what he did from the grave. It’s what he did before,” she said, scooping up a pile of letters from her long-deceased mother. “Did you know Momma sent me at least three letters a week until she died? He kept them from me. Even after she died, he didn’t let me see them.”
“I’m sorry, sweetie. If it helps any, my father wouldn’t let me read them, either. He was actually worse, though. He burned them right in front of me.”
Lori knew Delilah’s fa
ther had been downright harsh. He’d even been known to beat Delilah. It was a miracle Delilah had turned out as loving and successful as she had. No one would have predicted she would marry one of the Houston Huntingtons and start having babies right away, but Delilah had always been one for the unexpected.
“Your father was a toad. He was worse than a toad,” Lori said.
“Lori, sweetie, you sound very strange. What are you drinking?”
“Cristal, but I’m balancing it with Oreos since you’re not supposed to drink on an empty stomach.” She glanced around her room. The decor hadn’t changed much since she’d first moved here as a frightened young girl so many years ago. Once Harlan had learned that his quick affair with her mother, Sunny Collins, had yielded a daughter, he’d smeared Sunny’s reputation in court and won custody so fast it made heads spin. He had been a doting but controlling father, determined that Lori not go the way of her slutty mother.
Delilah snickered. “I approve the champagne, but you’re gonna feel horrible in the morning.”
“I’ve felt horrible for the last few days, so it won’t be anything new. I knew my father was controlling, but this, this just takes the cake. Between the will and the letters, he was-”
“What about the will?” Delilah asked.
Lori winced. She hadn’t wanted Delilah to know about the will and the trust. “It’s nothing, really. He was just being his regular controlling self, wanting to control my entire life. I swear if he could have put strings on me to make me dance like a puppet, he would have done that.” She picked up another letter addressed to her in her mother’s flowery script and felt a dull pain behind her ribs. “I don’t know if I’m going to be able to forgive him for this.” She felt so betrayed, so horribly betrayed. She had longed to contact her mother, but Harlan had prevented every effort. All because he was terrified that she would end up a floozy like her mother.
