“Shame indeed,” Nick said. “But have a good trip to Europe.”
“But Mom.” Crimson’s brain buzzed. “You’ve never been abroad.”
The two women exchanged another look. Esmeralda nodded. Myrna took a deep breath, so deep that the pearl necklace at her throat jumped. “Now that you’ve brought up the subject…we must take decisive action to save Constantine Motors. Don’t you agree, Nicholas?”
The pen Nick had been twirling in his fingers clattered to the table. “No,” he said in a blunt voice. “And I’m warning you, mother—”
“It’s the ideal solution,” Myrna argued. “Now that you two seem to have found each other.” She stole an odd look at Crimson, a cagey, apologetic look. There appeared to be more to her hesitation than just the usual parental worry about interfering in the romantic tangles of their offspring
“What do you mean?” Crimson asked.
Mother and son glared at each other across the table. When Myrna spoke, she kept her eyes on Nick, as if afraid that he might leap up and use violent means to silence her. “Do you remember,” she asked, clearly meaning the question for Crimson, “when I told you that Nick could inherit the business but he had turned it down?”
“Mother.” The single word from Nick cut the air like a rapier.
“Honey,” Esmeralda butted in. “It’s real simple. All Nick has to do is to marry you, and then the business will be his. None of this silly task of having to sell lots of cars and make enough profit. Stephan set it up like that. He thinks Nick should settle down, and he thought you might like to be his wife.”
Marry you. You might like to be his wife. The words buzzed about her brain, gradually falling into slots where she could relate to them, interpret their meaning. Beside her, Nick sat in silence, muscles taut, face rigid, tension rolling off him in waves.
Crimson’s mind whirled. She recalled the hours she’d spent talking to Uncle Stephan about his wonderful son. Recalled the laughter, the camaraderie, the affection of those lazy afternoons. Recalled the dreams her romantic heart had spun, dreams that must have been transparent to the old man. Finally, she understood Stephan Constantine’s joke.
It was on her. A gift wrapped husband.
She turned to Nick. “Is it true?”
He nodded. “It’s in the will. You never saw the full text.”
“And is it true that you…refused to…accept the terms?”
“Crimson.” He lifted a hand, reached toward her but halted the motion, as if he understood that she didn’t want him to touch her. “I didn’t know you then…had never met you…had no idea what you’d be like…” His voice was quiet, strained, and Crimson understood as well as he did what neither of them wanted to say out loud.
I’d never met you. But I knew you were a girl from the wrong side of the tracks. Daughter of a drunkard and a dinner lady. Crimson remembered how Nick had assumed that she was a stripper. Someone so far beneath him that he hadn’t even wanted to meet her, but had rejected the very idea of her without any hesitation.
And now…Nausea lurched inside her. Had he planned it? Now that there was little chance of holding on to the business by helping her to meet the profit target, had Nick decided to accept the idea of marriage to her as the last resort? Had her been priming her, for God’s sake? Had all his kisses, all his passion, all his tenderness, been nothing but an act to make sure that she would agree to go ahead with the marriage when he finally got around to proposing it?
“You should have told me.” Crimson spoke trough gritted teeth. She would hold on to her dignity. That’s what she had strived for all her life. To fit in, to be accepted, to be as good as anyone else, to show poise and good manners. “It was all pretense, wasn’t it?” she said, not a question but a statement. “Every word a lie, every touch a lie?”
“No, Crimson, I—” Nick threw an awkward glance at the audience of their respective mothers, who remained sitting around the table, listening as if spellbound, and then he fell silent, unable or unwilling to talk in front of them.
“Get out,” she told him.
“Crimson, you’re wrong about—”
She raised her voice. “Get out. I don’t want to see you again until this is over. Until we know if I’ve lost or won, failed or succeeded. For there is no way in hell I’m marrying you to save your inheritance, however many millions it might be.”
“Crimson, calm down, your breathing...”
Her chest was growing tight, but she kept her calm. The attacks were stress related, she told herself. She was not stressed now, because she didn’t give a damn. She loved him, but she hated him too. According to the laws of mathematics, the two opposing emotions cancelled each other out and left her with no feelings for him at all.
“If you don’t leave now,” she told him quietly, “I’m going to call security. You’ll put Charlie or Ray in the difficult position of having to make a choice between escorting you out of the building, or being disciplined for refusing to obey my orders.”
Esmeralda stirred to life. “Crimson, honey. It wasn’t Nick’s idea to keep that part of Stephan’s will a secret from you. It was Myrtie’s and mine. We thought it better you didn’t know—”
Finally, Crimson lost it. She jumped up from her chair and stormed to take refuge behind the huge maple desk. “Get out of here, all of you,” she yelled. Picking up the phone, she punched in the number to the security desk in the lobby.
Charlie, the young guard who worked the morning shift was still there. “I have three visitors who need to be escorted out,” she told him, with an angry glare at Nick and the two scheming mothers.
Rage and hurt and injured pride all mixed up inside her into a volatile brew that made her want to weep, but she refuse to give in to tears. “Make sure you have your gun,” she told the security guard before she hung up and watched the man she had thought she loved collect his things and quietly walk out of her office.
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Chapter Thirteen
Nick had feared that Crimson would never trust him again, and he’d been right. She was refusing to see him, or even to talk to him. He would have rammed through her resistance, if it hadn’t been for the small doubt that niggled in his conscience. Could she be right? Deep down, despite all his proud posturing, had he intended to marry Crimson at the end of the year, if that was the only way to hold on to Constantine Motors?
Clearly, she thought his romantic pursuit had been based on financial motives. Until she calmed down, it would be futile to try to persuade her otherwise. But there was one thing he could do for her. He could find out who was sabotaging the business, and put an end to it. And then, perhaps, if he firmly rejected the idea of marriage to her for the sake on inheriting the business, she it might accept that he truly cared about her.
He flew to Detroit, took a cab downtown. Normally, he disliked being a passenger in a motor vehicle, but today he preferred to concentrate on the anger that simmered inside him instead of wasting his energy on navigating around an unfamiliar city.
Ballard Automotive had a large, modern facility in the suburbs, but the headquarters were located in a prewar skyscraper near the riverfront. When the cab pulled over at the curb, Nick got out into the blustery, overcast autumn afternoon, paid the driver, and stormed through the revolving glass and metal doors into the lobby of the art deco building.
He marched up to the reception desk. “I’m here to see David Ballard.”
A slim brunette in her fifties greeted him. “Do you have an appointment?”
“No.”
The receptionist’s smile cooled. “Let me see if he’s busy.”
“I’ll see for myself.” Nick strode past the startled woman. At the back of the lobby, people were getting out of the elevator that had just come down. He hurried inside a second before the metal doors slid shut again.
Top floor. He took the chance. Bosses always sat on the top floor. God knew why, because in a fire they’d be the least likely to be rescued. Th
e elevator traveled up without a stop. He exited into the corridor with idle, casual steps. Three women were waiting outside, their clothing and grooming immaculate, executive secretary style.
“Which way is David Ballard’s office?” he asked.
The youngest, a busty blonde, fluffed her hair. “Do you have an appointment?”
“You bet I do,” Nick replied. One I’ve neglected to keep for eight years.
The blonde gave him directions. He thanked her and marched down the corridor. The offices were private, fully shielded from prying eyes. Not even a glazed panel on the door. Perfect, Nick thought. He found the right office and barged in without knocking.
“David.” His voice was full of sarcasm. “Good to see you again.”
“What the devil—”
Before David Ballard had finished the sentence, Nick had circled the desk, hauled him up by his shirt front, and slammed him against the wall. Taller by several inches but twenty pounds lighter, Nick jerked his opponent up on his toes to make their faces level.
“Keep your hands off Constantine Motors,” he growled.
His adversary made no effort to fight. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Did you pay someone to vandalize the place?”
“For God’s sake, Nick, I owe you, if anything.” David Ballard directed an earnest gaze at him. Blue eyes, butterscotch hair. His accent combined a British prep school and an Ivy League college.
“Did you, or did you not, make a deal with my father?” Nick asked. His arms were getting tired and he let his quarry slide back down to his feet. “Do you hope to take over Constantine Motors next year?”
David glared up at him—if you could call a puzzled expression on the face of the placid, steady, even tempered David Ballard a glare. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’ve never spoken to your father in my life. And I have absolutely no desire to take over Constantine Motors. I have enough problems of my own.”
Uncertainty added to the turmoil in Nick’s mind. David Ballard was not a liar. To start with, he lacked the imagination. Was the whole situation one of Stephan Constantine’s practical jokes? Even in death, his father must be up to some clever tricks. Layer upon layer of them, it was beginning to seem.
Nick let go off David’s shirtfront, but couldn’t resist shoving the man a little, making him shuffle on his feet. “I must have misunderstood.”
David straightened his tie. “I certainly hope so. I’d hate to think what you’d do if I was actually guilty of something.”
“Aren’t you?”
They were talking eight years ago now. They both knew it. David made his way back behind the desk and sank into his chair. He nodded at the seat facing him. “Sit down.”
Nick settled in the swivel chair.
“I’ve…” David made a steeple with his hands beneath his chin. “I’ve always wanted to talk to you. Clear the air. But I’ve never figured out how to go about it. Marcela and I had known for a couple of weeks that we wanted to be together, but she wanted to put off telling you until the season ended. That day...”
He lowered his attention to the blotter on the desk. “I hated winning that race. Hated winning the series. I couldn’t face you afterward, and neither could Marcela. We got on the plane and flew out to Vegas and got married there before traveling on to my mother’s place in England. At that point, we had no idea you were badly hurt. You walked out of the wreck.”
“So I did,” Nick said.
“We stayed in an old hunting lodge in Scotland, and then in a convent in Spain. We got no news. By the time we found out, you were back in the States. Your career was over. I had a seat in the IndyCar Series. I felt that whatever I said to you, it would seem like gloating. So, I avoided you. Marcela was distraught. She blamed herself for your accident. I persuaded her not to get in touch with you. I knew she’d only torture herself over it.”
Nick managed a lopsided grin. “Yeah. That woman weeps for dead frogs and chopped up worms. I guess I might have merited a tear or two.”
“I…” David squirmed in the seat, rolling his stocky shoulders inside the handmade shirt. “In case it means anything to you…Marcela and I didn’t…hell, I don’t know how to say this…she never…she was scrupulous about not doing anything while she was still engaged to you. The first time my lips touched hers was when the preacher said you may kiss the bride.”
Nick felt a muscle tug at his jaw. He said nothing.
David flicked him a glance. “It would never have worked out between you and Marcela and deep down you know it. You are fiery, full of temper. Marcela needs someone like me. Solid. Dependable. Boring, if you will. Someone who holds her tight and sooths her fears and coaxes her through her fits of melancholy. That’s not you.”
The words hit an uncomfortable truth. Nick had to admit that he’d never been any good at mumbling the kind of sweet nonsense women seemed to find so reassuring. Telling them that everything would be all right, even when they both knew it wouldn’t be. Perhaps it was a skill men developed when they were besotted by a woman, and he’d never been that much in love, not even with Marcela.
He shrugged, a little awkward. “Maybe you’ve got a point.”
“You know I have.” David leaned back in the seat. “If you and I went off fighting in some war, Marcela would wait at home and knit socks. You need the kind of woman who’d be out there with you, blowing up trains.”
The image made Nick smile. That’s what Crimson would do. Be out there, blowing up trains with him. Hell, she’d do more. She’d try to steal his dynamite, so she could go off and blow up trains on her own.
“I guess you’re right.” Nick got to his feet, stretched his legs to release the tension. “I’m sorry I…” He made a gesture at David’s shirtfront.
“No harm done.”
“And I’m sorry to hear that your marriage is in trouble.”
Behind the desk, David jolted to attention. “Who told you that?”
“It’s in the gossip rags. Marcela’s gone off to China.”
“India.” A shadow passed across the blond man’s square features. “It’s a secret, because she’s done something that doesn’t sit easy with her religion. She’s gone to one of those baby factories. They have these places, something like a cross between a rest home and a clinic, where women act as surrogates. We’ve hired one, and Marcela wants to be there for the pregnancy.”
“If it’s a secret, why are you telling me?”
“Trusting someone proves how much you value them.” David rose from his seat, ready to say goodbye. After a moment of hesitation, he looked around the room, gesturing. “I’d give up all this, everything, to give Marcela what she wants. A baby. We’ve tried IV. Had every test under the sun.” His voice was rough with emotion. “You know how it is with Marcela. It’s God’s will, she says, and yet she cries herself to sleep at night. How on earth can that woman write books about Christians being fed to lions and people being stretched out on the rack? It defeats me.”
Somewhere inside Nick, a tight tangle of pain from the past began to unravel itself. David was right. It would never have worked. He’d been too blind with lust for Marcela, too consumed with wanting and not having, to look beyond the surface and see the lack of compatibility between them.
He held out his hand. “Tell her I said hello.”
David took it, his grip steady. “Want to be a godfather?”
“Do you mean…why…sure.” Surprised, Nick contemplated his old friend. “I was baptized orthodox, though. Won’t that be a problem?”
“We’ll work it out, somehow. I’m a protestant. That’s the one thing I’m not prepared to change, not even for Marcela. I won’t pretend to believe in something that I don’t believe in.”
Nick hesitated. “I’m kind of involved with someone. If it works out, if our problems have blown over by the time the baby is born, I’d like to do it. But I think godparents come in pairs, so if it’s just me, I’ll pass. Is that okay with y
ou?”
“It’s fine. I’ll tell Marcela. She’ll be thrilled.”
“You tell her,” Nick said, and walked out, his heart lighter than it had been in years.
****
Crimson shivered with Raymond in the bicycle shed on the edge of the parking lot. Dressed in black, shoe polish darkening their faces, they crouched on the concrete floor on the opposite sides of the gap in the wall that served as the entrance. The burly security guard was leaning forward, using night vision goggles to monitor the grounds.
They were keeping an eye on the huge trailer they had set up as overflow storage for the finished Panthers waiting for customer pickup. Constantine Motors didn’t deliver. Buyers had to collect, either in person, or through an authorized representative, and sign off on the specification. Sometimes, the requirement caused delays that created a storage problem. And now, Crimson had contrived to create one, to set a trap for the vandal.
For the thousandth time, Crimson told herself she should just walk away from it all. Let the business go. But something inside her stopped her from giving up. Stubbornness, she tried to convince herself. Nothing but sheer, utter, bloody minded stubbornness. But in truth, she was doing it for Nick. Even now, she wanted to rescue his birthright. If she could secure the ownership of Constantine Motors for him, then perhaps it would be possible for them to explore what could be between them…
“Ssshhhh…” Raymond tensed on his feet. “I can see something.”
Crimson lifted her night vision binoculars and studied the eerie green landscape. It must be past midnight. The chilly air made goose pimples on her skin. Cramps shot through the legs. In the distance, across the empty parking lot, she could see a lean, dark figure advancing toward the trailer in a silent lope.
Among the staff, only the three directors knew about the potential sale to Ballard Automotive. One of them might have found a way to benefit from a change of ownership. Of course, the traitor could be anyone. David Ballard could have recruited someone with money. But instinct told Crimson the vandal was acting out of anger. She sensed too much malice in how the factory had been damaged in the fire, how the beautiful vehicles had been destroyed when the racing car tumbled down.
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