A Matter of Principal

by Leigh Michaels

  His office was not large, but it was well furnished. Three walls were paneled in warm, rich oak; the fourth looked out over the lobby area and was glass, covered with an open-weave, nubby drapery in a soft blue. On the wall behind his desk was a very attractive seascape where waves beat themselves into rich foam against a rocky shoreline. Standing on a credenza against the side wall was a delicate bronze sculpture of a small child skipping.

  The room was quiet, too—so quiet that the sound of the door closing behind the secretary seemed like the clanging of a prison cell’s bars. Camryn jumped and then turned, trying to steady her nerves, to face the man standing behind the desk.

  Conservative—that was the only word for him, she thought. He was wearing the banker’s standard navy pin-striped three-piece suit, a sober dark red tie, a shirt so white it almost had a blue sheen. She couldn’t see his feet, but she’d have placed a bet that he was wearing wingtips and black socks. And probably, she thought wildly, plain white boxer shorts as well—there could be no risqué polka dots for a man in his position!

  And yet—his almost-black hair was neatly trimmed, but there was a rebellious sort of wave to it. And surely no bank dress-code written since the turn of the century would have approved the heavy gold watch-chain that gleamed against his waistcoat?

  And his eyes—they were dark blue, and fringed with the most outlandishly long black lashes she’d ever seen. Bedroom eyes, if she’d ever seen a pair. At the moment, however, they were gleaming with something that could only be irritation.

  I’ve wasted his precious time, she thought. Well, isn’t that just too bad?

  She put her chin up and said, without a hint of conciliation, “I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting.”

  Patrick McKenna extended his hand. His handshake was firm and warm and solid. “Please sit down, Mrs. Hastings.”

  I was right, she thought illogically. He’s just barely into his thirties. A bit young to be a tyrant, but obviously he’s gotten an early start. And no sense of humor, to boot.

  She sat down. “Let’s make this fast, shall we, Mr. McKenna? I have to pick my daughter up at nursery school in an hour.”

  “I’m as anxious as you are to get this straightened out.”

  Camryn fought down a twinge of aggravation. He didn’t need to be so obvious about it.

  “I found the teller you talked to yesterday, by the way.”

  “Thank you,” Camryn said stiffly. “I’m glad to know that my honesty isn’t under suspicion anymore.”

  He looked at her for a long moment, almost without expression, and flipped open the folder that lay on the polished desk. “We’ll take up the matter of the late payment in a minute. But first I think I should explain to you why we’ve got this problem now. You don’t seem to understand the terms of your existing mortgage.”

  “I didn’t know there was anything to understand. We decided on the house, we filled out the paperwork, we got the loan, we started paying the money back. Very simple. I don’t recall the name of the man who helped us—”

  “The gentleman in charge of mortgage lending retired about two years ago, when Lakemont National was purchased by the Logan Banks.”

  “I do remember hearing about the buyout, thank you,” Camryn said crisply.

  “What you don’t seem to remember was that there was apparently considerable doubt about your financial solidarity at the time you and your husband applied for a mortgage.”

  She frowned.

  “The fact that you couldn’t qualify for a regular mortgage indicates that you didn’t have a lot going for you,” he pointed out.

  “I suppose that’s true,” Camryn said reluctantly. “Mitch was just finishing his residency at the time, and getting ready to go into practice.”

  “As a heart specialist.” When she looked up at him in surprise, he added, “It’s in your application.”

  Camryn nodded. “But...”

  “And you weren’t working?”

  “I had a job, but I was on maternity leave just then.”

  He nodded. “I think I see what happened. A young doctor, without much cash but with a promising future—”

  “We had a down payment,” Camryn pointed out. “Mitch’s father had left him some stock, and we sold it.”

  “I see. The bank didn’t want to offend what would probably, in the future, be a very sound customer. At the same time, they didn’t feel justified in tying themselves up for thirty years, in case the doctor’s promise didn’t pay out. So the balloon looked like a good option—four years that way, then if everything still looked good and the practice was holding up, they’d switch to a normal mortgage. If in the meantime Dr. Hastings decided to practice meditation instead of medicine, the bank could just decline to write a new mortgage.”

  It made a lot of sense, from the bank’s point of view. It also left a sick feeling in the pit of Camryn’s stomach. “Self-protection,” she said dryly. “Somehow the bank seems to have taken care of its own interests at the expense of ours.”

  Patrick McKenna leaned back in his chair and looked at her steadily. “It must have been explained to you, Mrs. Hastings.”

  “I suppose it was, but...” She shook her head uncertainly.

  “You signed the papers. It’s all perfectly legal.”

  Camryn knew he was right; it was all laid out there in front of her, with her signature neatly at the bottom. “Mitch took care of all of that, you see,” she said. “I just—signed.”

  And I already know it wasn’t very smart, she thought, so if you have the gall to tell me I was an idiot, Mr. McKenna, I’m going to strangle you with your own watch chain!

  He didn’t. “That’s all beside the point, now. I’m very sorry that this mess happened, Mrs. Hastings; it was careless of my predecessor, and that’s one of the reasons Lakemont National isn’t an independent bank any more. As it stands, however, the final payment on your balloon is due in sixty days.”

  “And that really means that I have to come up with the rest of the money by then?” Her voice was calm. She must have sounded as if it didn’t matter to her in the least when the balance came due.

  And it doesn’t make any difference, Camryn thought. Tomorrow, sixty days, next year—it wouldn’t change a thing.

  He nodded. “That’s why the timing on your late payment could hardly have been worse. It makes you look irresponsible, and it certainly complicates writing a new mortgage to take the balloon’s place.”

  “But it doesn’t make it impossible?”

  For the first time, he smiled. It was a boyish, charming smile, with white teeth gleaming. The skin at the corner of his eyes wrinkled pleasantly, and the eyes themselves held a sort of inward sparkle. “I think we can manage to work it out. But no more late payments, all right? The problem at the moment is that when you filled out the papers yesterday we didn’t get a lot of the necessary information.” He picked up a form from the folder in front of him and frowned at it.

  Camryn recognized the neat, precise handwriting as her own. She could almost recite what was on that piece of paper.

  “You’ve included only information about your own assets, and your own business. You’re operating a bed-and-breakfast in the house? You didn’t mention that in the original application.”

  “I didn’t know I was going to be running one.”

  Patrick McKenna reached into a desk drawer and pulled out a sheaf of forms. “I think it will be easier if we start from scratch,” he said, and picked up a gold pen. “A lot of this I can fill in later, from the original application, but I’ll need to know about Dr. Hastings’s practice first. Things like what his annual income is and what—”

  She swallowed hard. “I don’t think you quite understand, Mr. McKenna. My husband is dead.”

  If she had ripped the plaque off his office door and hit him with it, he would probably not have looked quite so stunned.

  “Mitch was killed in the crash of a small plane just a few months after we bought the house,”
she added softly.

  He put down his pen. “And you’ve taken over this responsibility ever since? No one has questioned it?”

  “Do you think I tried to pull something over on the bank?” Her voice was sharp. “I didn’t. There was certainly no secret about Mitch’s death, Mr. McKenna. It was on the front page of the local newspaper.”

  “No, no. That’s not what I meant. But surely you considered your options.”

  “What options? If I’d stopped making payments, I’d have lost my home, to say nothing of the money we’d already put into it.”

  “You could have sold it.”

  “And then where would I have lived? What would I have used for money?”

  “There are apartments, Mrs. Hastings. And jobs. A house that size is a fantastic drain on your resources.”

  “Exactly. So I looked around for what I could do — how I could make it pay for itself —and I started the bed-and-breakfast. And it’s doing very well, thank you.”

  “Except for the water heater,” he said dryly. “Surely the sheer expense is driving you out of business? You’d be better off to rid yourself of this albatross.”

  “I’m not trained for anything, Mr. McKenna. I have a daughter to support. Have you ever tried to pay for child care out of the kind of salary a secretary makes? No, of course you haven’t.” She waved a dismissing hand at the quiet elegance of the office. “Believe me, this was the best option I had. I’m at home with my daughter, and I make a living. It’s nothing grand, but we have what we need. And I don’t plan to let some sanctimonious banker talk me out of doing what I know is right for me. You’ve got all the information you need to make a decision, right there.”

  He looked down at the forms, and then back at her. There was astonishment in his eyes. “Do you seriously want me to consider your loan application for this size mortgage based on this information?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  He said, not unkindly, “It’s going to be turned down, you know. We have rules and guidelines, and we can’t just throw them out the window. You’re spending more than half of your income on this house, Mrs. Hastings.”

  “Yes, I am.” She swallowed hard. “But remember, please, before you turn me down, that it hasn’t been Mitch who’s made the payments on that mortgage for almost four years. It’s me. Out of my income, inadequate as you seem to think it is. And I’ve only missed one payment.”

  He flipped a page over and looked up at her. “You missed two within the first year of the loan.”

  She thought it over. “All right, two. But I was just getting started. You know how tough it is with a new business.”

  “The business isn’t new anymore,” he reminded. “And you’ve missed a third payment, now.”

  “This one is different. It isn’t missing, it’s late. And it’s just bad luck that I’ve got this cash-flow problem right now.”

  “But how often is it going to happen in the future?” He sounded a little sad, but determined, and laid the papers aside. “Mrs. Hastings, my conscience will simply not let me recommend approval of this loan.”

  His conscience? she thought. And what about my conscience? My debt to my daughter—to raise her as her father would have wanted? Mitch’s daughter will not be raised by babysitters. She will not be a latch-key child.

  “And the risk to the bank, Mr. McKenna?” she said crisply. “Are you certain that isn’t the reason your conscience is paining you?”

  “That, too,” he admitted. “I don’t understand how you’ve been doing it, and I can’t be a part of letting it go on.”

  Her gaze came to rest on the bronze sculpture. Whoever had chosen the bank’s art collection, Camryn thought, had done so to good effect. How could anyone with the statue of a child in his office be accused of putting mere mercenary concerns in front of humanitarian ones?

  She stood up, because if she stayed in his office five more minutes she knew she would do something she would regret forever. “I’m only asking for a fair appraisal, Mr. McKenna,” she said crisply. “Look over my application. Come and see the Stone House. And then do whatever your conscience dictates—if you really have one.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Patrick McKenna was on his feet. “Mrs. Hastings, I—”

  “I’m sure I can trust you to call me if you need any further information.” The flared skirt of Camryn’s camel suit swirled as she turned towards the door, displaying slender legs. “And you’ll let me know when you’ve made a decision, of course.” It was not a question.

  “The matter is not entirely in my hands, you understand.”

  She stopped and turned to look at him, her hand on the knob of the half-open door. “Mr. McKenna,” she chided. “I’m shocked. You didn’t seem the sort who would pass the blame for your unpopular decisions on to someone else.” She tossed her head and her glossy brown hair shimmered under the strong office lights as the strands settled back into place against her shoulders.

  In the reception area, the secretary raised her head from her ledger book with astonishment. Next to her desk, in an upholstered chair, a young blonde woman looked up from a magazine and inspected Camryn from head to toe. “Goodness,” she murmured. “I’m glad I waited for you, Patrick. You must be perishing for lunch and some civilized company.” She stood up slowly. She was six inches taller than Camryn, and there was elegance in every line of her tall, slim body, in every graceful movement she made.

  His wife? Fiancee? Not co-worker, Camryn would bet; she doubted any mere bank employee could afford that label. If that dress hadn’t come from a name designer, she thought, she’d slice everything in her own wardrobe into ribbons.

  The blonde slipped a slender hand into the crook of Patrick McKenna’s elbow. “We’ll go to Brannigan’s, I think,” she said. Her smooth, sultry voice was only a murmur, and yet Camryn knew she was intended to hear it. “And we’ll have a nice drink, and we won’t talk about nasty things like business.” Her eyes flicked over Camryn, and then turned admiringly to her companion. She was precisely the same height as he was.

  Camryn told herself briskly that she didn’t have time to be upset because of a glitzy blonde’s catty remarks; she was already late to pick up Susan. It didn’t help much. The shock of what Patrick McKenna had told her was still sinking in as she crossed the lobby and went out to her car, and that was much more stunning than anything the blonde girl could have said. There was a hopeless, helpless feeling deep inside her, like a boulder in the pit of her stomach. Was she really going to lose her home? Her precious, beloved Stone House…?

  She wanted to cry. No, she wanted to go back and shake Patrick McKenna by the hair until he guaranteed that she would get the loan she had to have.

  Susan was waiting for her. The child was scarcely belted into her seat before she began bubbling over with stories about her visit to the fire station. She rattled cheerfully for several minutes, and then stopped abruptly. “Mommy, you’re not listening,” she accused.

  Camryn forced herself to smile. “Sorry, darling. I was thinking about something else, that’s all.” She stopped the car under the porte-cochere behind the house and looked up at the stone carvings beside the back door.

  Lunch at Brannigan’s, she thought. He’d probably sip his vodka and tonic—scratch that, she decided; with a name like Patrick McKenna, Irish whiskey was no doubt his drink—and tell his charming companion all about the tough morning he’d had, and the unreasonable Mrs. Hastings. And then he’d go back to the bank and shuffle papers for an hour or two, to make her believe he had really considered it, and then he would call to tell her how sorry he was that he couldn’t recommend her loan.

  “Susan, let’s pack a picnic and go to the park, shall we? I don’t have to work this afternoon.”

  And I don’t want to be home, she thought. Perhaps in the fresh air I won’t even have to think about it for a little while.

  He couldn’t force her to give up her house, could he? Even if Lakemont National wouldn’t give her a mort
gage, there were other banks. Surely there was a banker somewhere in the city who had a little vision, who wanted to encourage free enterprise, small business, and the American dream of a mother staying at home to raise her child?

  You’re beginning to sound as if you’re running for office, she told herself dryly.

  She changed into shorts and running shoes and a T-shirt, and tossed their lunch into a bag. There was one good thing about picnics, she thought. To a four-year-old, anything that came out of a brown paper bag in the park tasted a great deal better than it did on a plate at home.

  She played with Susan for most of the afternoon, pushing her swing, joining her on the merry-go-round, running and laughing and romping as if she were a child herself. And this, she thought as she pulled up at the edge of the sandbox in a dead heat with her giggling daughter, is what Mr. McKenna thinks I should give up.

  Get rid of the house, go back to a regular job, put Susan in day care... that was the sensible thing to do. Of course, he wouldn’t think it was so sensible if it was him, or his child.

  Not that he was likely to ever face such a situation. The glitzy blonde would probably hire a full-time nanny so she wouldn’t ever have to miss out on lunch at Brannigan’s.

  It wasn’t that Camryn thought day-care was such a dreadful fate for a child, actually. But there were so many children, and so few really good day-care centers. And even if she found a good one she would have trouble paying for the service. It had been one thing to work at low-paying secretarial jobs when she was first married; Mitch had been working, too, when he could fit a job around the demands of medical school, and they’d lived in student housing. With her minuscule wages, they’d been able to keep things going. But they hadn’t had Susan then. . .and they hadn’t intended for Camryn to work forever.

  So much for my good resolutions not to dwell on the problem, she thought ruefully as they walked home at mid-afternoon. Susan’s feet were dragging, and now and then she yawned. Camryn was beginning to think of the mess she’d left in the front bedroom. Damn Patrick McKenna, anyway!