Eleanor slammed the door to her cottage and kicked off her shoes. Jake Mason, hah. The man was a joke. A big joke. She just hoped the last laugh wasn’t on her and her father. She slipped off her jacket, blouse, and skirt and threw them on the floor with the clothes she had pulled off earlier in the day, then trekked to her kitchen for a drink. Something strong. She pulled out a two-liter bottle of RC Cola and lifted it to her lips, welcoming the burning sensation in her throat. She took only a few swallows before dropping the bottle from her lips. “Oooh, that was so good,” she said aloud, then placed the bottle back in the refrigerator and trooped to her bedroom.
She pulled off her bra and panties, hung them on the treadmill, then plopped down on the side of her bed and picked up the phone. Her eyes caught the time on the clock. Eleven-thirty. My how time flies when you’re having fun, she thought dryly. She pushed aside any consideration for the time and punched in the seven numbers.
“Hello,” Carl answered. She was glad he didn’t sound as though he’d been asleep.
“Hi, Carl,” she said, “this is Eleanor.”
“I know who it is, Eleanor. The question is do you know what time it is?”
Eleanor turned away from the clock, propped her feet up on the bed and leaned back against the headboard. “It’s time you gave me some information on Jake Mason and Mason Publishing; that’s what time it is.”
Eleanor held her breath. She didn’t think she could stand it if Carl told her to call back in the morning. When he released a resigned sigh, she knew she’d hit pay dirt.
“The report will be on your desk in the morning. Can’t you wait until then?”
Eleanor didn’t answer and Carl didn’t repeat his question. Eleanor knew the loser would speak first.
“Okay, Eleanor, what do you want to know?”
She smiled. “Everything. Start at the beginning and tell me all.”
Carl told her about the beginnings of Mason Publishing, the company started by Randolph Mason and his wife, Tammy. He told her about their happy marriage, the birth of their son, and the struggle they had to start their business. When he told her how Tammy Mason had died of cancer the year Jake Mason was eight years old, tears formed in her eyes.
Tears for the little boy Jake who’d lost his mother and tears for herself and the mother she’d lost. The tears streamed down her cheeks and fell on her naked breasts as Carl told the story of a driven Randolph Mason, a man determined to make something of his life for himself and his son. The tears began to dry as Carl told her about the ruthless takeovers Randolph Mason had executed during his tenure as CEO of Mason Publishing. The man didn’t seem to have a heart, at least not when it came to business.
“What about the son? What about Jake? What’s he been doing?” She wished for the hundredth time this week she’d paid more attention to her father’s news of Jake over the years. But no, she’d been too focused on his good looks and her silly dreams and fantasies of a knight in shining armor to remember a word her father had said.
“Your typical rich man’s son. Travels. Dibbles and dabbles in various business concerns. He must have the golden touch, because he’s made a good amount of money without very much effort.”
Eleanor pondered that information. Not that it surprised her. Jake had the typical Playboy profile—good looks, lots of money, and plenty of time. “Why did his father send him here?” she asked aloud, though the question was really to herself.
“That, I don’t know,” Carl answered. “This is the first project Jake has done for Mason Publishing. Maybe his father thought it was time he assumed some responsibility in the family business.”
Eleanor wiggled her toes and stood up to stretch, the phone cradled between her ear and her naked shoulder. “Has he had any experience at all in the publishing industry?”
Eleanor imagined Carl tapping his pencil to his forehead in impatience. “Nothing formal. Though I doubt he could be Randolph Mason’s son and not know something about the business.”
“I’m not too sure about that. What did he study in college?” Carl was quiet.
“He did go to college, didn’t he?”
“He went,” Carl answered.
Eleanor knew he was holding back some information and she wondered why. “What is it, Carl? I know there’s more.”
“He graduated from Yale.”
Yale. She was impressed. “What was his major?”
“Drama.”
Eleanor howled. Drama. So, Jake Mason had entertained thoughts of becoming an actor. Must have been his good looks. And he must have found out looks weren’t enough.
“Did he ever do any acting?”
“Not professionally. It seems his real interest was his track career.”
“He ran track?”
“Almost made the Olympic team. He was good.”
“I bet,” Eleanor said. He probably had lots of practice running from one woman to another.
Eleanor asked Carl a few more questions before ending the conversation. She could hardly wait to read his report in the morning. After she hung up, she pirouetted around the room. So, Jake Mason was a would-be actor and athlete. She laughed out loud at the thought. She knew now he’d never take her newspaper. He wasn’t even in her league.
***
Mathias opened the door to his den, looking over his shoulder as he did so. He didn’t see anyone, so he rushed into the room, quickly closed the door, and practically ran to his desk. After he sat down, he pulled off his glasses and wiped his eyes with his forefinger and thumb, grateful he’d made it through tonight’s dinner. Once again he wondered if he and Randolph were doing the right thing. He picked up the phone and punched in Randolph’s New York number.
“I’ve been waiting for your call,” Randolph said when he answered after the first ring. “How’d it go?”
“I’m not too sure, Randy,” Mathias began. “Eleanor didn’t seem to like Jake much. She was downright mean to him during dinner. Not like herself at all.”
Randolph leaned back in his chair. He was pleased. Of course Eleanor resented Jake’s presence and what he was trying to do. He wondered why Mathias didn’t understand that. But then he knew why. Mathias still saw Eleanor as his little girl, not as a woman. He suspected that was the reason for Eleanor’s conservative nature. But Randolph had a gut feeling that below that conservative exterior was a woman who could warm his son’s heart and his bed. She couldn’t be Barbara and Mathias’s daughter without inheriting some of their passion. Randolph and Mathias had shared enough over the years for Randolph to know that Mathias and Barbara had shared a loving and passionate union that rivaled his marriage with Tammy. In his opinion, a man couldn’t ask for more. “How did Jake respond to her?”
Mathias liked Jake. Had liked him before he met him, and meeting him had only confirmed his feelings. Jake was a good man. Good enough for his Eleanor. But not if Eleanor didn’t want him. “You’ve got a great boy there, Randy. I guess I would say he tolerated Eleanor.”
“Tolerated her? What exactly did the boy do?”
Mathias gave a half-smile at Randy’s reference to his son as a boy. He knew that was exactly how Randolph saw Jake. As a little boy. A little boy who needed his father’s direction and guidance. But the Jake that Mathias had met wasn’t a little boy. He was a man.
Mathias wondered again how different the boy would have been had someone other than Randolph been his father. Not that Randolph hadn’t done the best he could. Mathias knew he had. But Randolph was such a strong man. Maybe too strong for a son who loved him as much as Mathias was sure Jake loved him.
“I mean Jake handled himself well. He didn’t let Eleanor put him on the defensive.” Mathias sighed. “And she was trying to put him on the defensive. No doubt about it.”
She’s exactly what Jake needs, Randolph thought. Someone to push him and make him stand up for what he believes in. That and someone to love him as his mother had loved Randolph. Randolph firmly believed that the
love of a good woman made a difference in a man. Made a man a man. He knew that’s what loving Tammy had done for him and he wanted that for his son.
“Well, keep me posted. Are your plans all set for tomorrow?”
Mathias and Randolph went over their plans one by one, making sure they hadn’t missed anything. When they were finished, Mathias hung up and sat in his den for a long while wondering over the rightness of what they were doing. When he started getting sleepy, he picked up his glasses and left the den to get ready for bed.
Three
Eleanor arrived at the newspaper office early the next morning. She wanted to make sure she was there before Mr. Jake Mason arrived. It made her angry even to think about it.
She picked up the Welles Daily, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal from the mat in front of the building, unlocked the door, and headed for her office. Her mind screamed when she saw the additional desk in her already cramped space. A desk for Jake.
She dropped down in her desk chair, threw the papers and her briefcase on her desk, and propped her feet up. She could almost strangle her father. How could he even consider merging their paper with Mason Publishing?
She remembered her mother bringing her to the paper for lunch with her father when she’d been a child of about seven. She’d loved coming here where her daddy worked. He always made her feel like a princess. He was the king, her mom was the queen, and she was the princess. Sadness settled around her heart. “I miss you so much, Mom,” she said softly.
Eleanor still remembered the first day she’d come to the newspaper office without her mother. Mrs. Lewis, the woman her father hired to care for her, had brought her. But it wasn’t the same. Her father must have understood because he’d allowed her to stay with him until he was ready to go home. And that became the pattern for their lives.
Every day after school Mrs. Lewis would pick Eleanor up and drive her to the newspaper office. She’d do her homework while her father and his staff worked on the next week’s edition of the paper. When she was finished, her father would give her some small task to do around the paper. “This is our business,” he’d say. “You need to learn it.”
And that was the beginning of her love affair with the Lamar Daily. Throughout high school, she continued coming to the newspaper after school. And her assignments progressed from the trivial to substantive reporting.
When her father changed from a weekly paper to a daily paper during her junior year in high school, she’d even had her own column, “Lamar High Live.” Because her high school didn’t have a newspaper, her father gave classes to interested students about running a paper. Not just the journalism end, but the business end as well. Her father always said you needed to know your business. His encouragement led her to study journalism in college and then to go for her MBA.
She’d been back in Lamar at the paper about six years now and she enjoyed every minute of it. She’d missed her father and the paper while she was away. And she’d come back full of ideas. When her father had settled on just being the publisher and made her managing editor two years ago, she felt she’d gotten her head. There was so much she could do, so much she wanted to do. At the top of her list was starting a monthly magazine targeted at African-American families. She’d already added a weekly insert to the Lamar Daily to test the concept, but that was only the beginning.
Eleanor wanted a magazine with national distribution, but they didn’t have the capital to start it now. Neither she nor her father had considered outside funding. He’d taught her early on that, when people put in their money, they wanted some control. She and her father both prided themselves on being able to make decisions for the paper without having to deal with bureaucratic red tape. There were only the two of them to consider.
Until now. That’s what she didn’t understand. Why would her father bring in Randolph Mason and all the red tape of Mason Publishing? The planned merger seemed to go against everything he’d taught her. She shook her head. She could only conclude that Randolph Mason had somehow tricked her father into believing a deal with him would be different. She didn’t buy it for a moment.
She smiled as she got up and put fresh water in the cof- feemaker. Too bad Randolph hadn’t sent in the big guns. He probably thought it wasn’t necessary when dealing with a couple of hicks like her and her father. Well, she’d show Mr. Mason precisely what he was up against. She’d make the older Mason regret he’d ever sent his drama-trained, track-running son to manage this deal.
She went back to her desk and picked up the Welles Daily, flipping quickly through its pages. Finding no news of interest to her or the residents of Lamar, she closed that paper and picked up the Times. She did the same with the Wall Street Journal before turning around in her chair and clicking on her computer to check the wire for any late-breaking stories.
“Morning, Maxie,” she heard her father say to the newsroom secretary, who must have arrived in the last fifteen minutes.
“Morning, Mathias,” Maxine Walters said. Maxine was an attractive, almond-skinned, slightly graying woman about her father’s age and she’d had a crush on him for as long as Eleanor could remember. She didn’t understand why her father didn’t know it. Everybody else did. No one called Maxine Walters anything other than Maxine or Ms. Walters. No one except Mathias Sanders.
“This here is Jake Mason. He’s going to be with us for the summer. He and Eleanor will be sharing an office.”
“Nice to meet you, Ms. Walters,” came Jake’s smooth voice. The man was a born charmer.
“Eleanor in her office?” her father asked, cutting off any conversation that may have started between Jake and Maxine.
By the time she heard Maxine say “Yes,” her father and Jake were walking through Eleanor’s office door. She stood and greeted them.
“How come you left so early this morning?” her father asked. “I’d planned on the three of us having breakfast then driving in together.”
Eleanor had guessed that was his plan and she’d deliberately set out to circumvent it. The smirk on Jake’s face told her he knew that. “There were some things I needed to do this morning,” she lied. She knew and her father knew she was rarely in the office this early. Maxine was usually the first one in, and Maxine usually made the coffee.
“Anything I can help you with?” Jake asked solicitously.
She turned and glared at him. “Thanks, Jake,” she said sweetly. “But I don’t think you can help.” The unspoken words, with anything, hung in the air.
“Well,” her father interrupted, “I’ll leave Jake to you, Eleanor. Show him around the newsroom, the press room, you know the drill.” He looked at his watch. “I’ll meet you two for lunch at, say, one o’clock.”
“But Dad—”
“That’s fine, Mathias,” Jake interrupted. “Eleanor will probably need a break from me by that time. I have a million and one questions.”
“I’ll bet,” Eleanor muttered under her breath.
“Good,” her father said, backing out of the office. “I’ll see you two later.”
Eleanor stared after him. She and her father had to talk. She was not going to baby-sit Jake Mason, drama graduate and track star. She had real work to do and none of it included teaching Jake about the newspaper business.
“This my desk over here?” Jake asked, forcing Eleanor’s attention to him.
“No, it belongs to Bill Clinton,” she answered, rolling her eyes.
Jake dropped his briefcase on the desk. “You’d better stop rolling your eyes like that before they get stuck in that position.”
Eleanor rested her hands on her hips. “Why are you really here, Jake?”
He sat down in his chair and leaned back with his hands behind his head. “You already know. The Lamar Daily is merging with Mason Publishing. I’ll decide how to position it with the rest of our holdings.”
Eleanor rested against the corner of her desk and crossed her arms. “We don’t need
you to position us, Mr. Mason. We already have a position and plans for our growth. We don’t need you or your father’s money.”
Jake dropped his hands from behind his head and leaned forward. “That’s not what your father said.”
“That’s not what your father conned my father into agreeing to, you mean.”
“That’s not what I meant at all. Your father doesn’t seem to be the kind of man who can be easily conned.” He shrugged his shoulders. “But then I’ve only known him a day.”
He’d backed her into a corner. To maintain her position, she’d have to agree that her father was a pushover where Randolph Mason was concerned. She wasn’t ready to do that yet. She stared at Jake for a couple of long seconds before getting up and heading for the door. “Come on, if you want the tour.” She left the office without looking back.
***
“Megan’s on the line for you, Eleanor,” came Maxine’s voice over the intercom just as Jake and Eleanor returned to the newsroom after Eleanor’s halfhearted tour. Jake wondered why Eleanor cringed at the words.
“What’s the matter?” he asked. “I thought Megan was a friend of yours.” Plus, Jake wanted an introduction to her in the worst way.
Eleanor’s gaze met his. “Tour’s over.” She turned and marched back to her office, closing the door behind her.
Jake watched through the window in the wall separating Eleanor’s office from the rest of the newsroom as she picked up the phone. She saw him and turned her back to him. He smiled, then proceeded to enter the office and plop down in his chair. She turned and gave him a look he was sure cast aspersions on his parentage. He grinned. Obviously, she’d forgotten he was sharing her office.
“Maxine has to stop announcing my calls over the intercom like that,” Jake overheard her whisper.
He shook his head. So that’s why she’d cringed. She didn’t like her business broadcast over the intercom system. He didn’t see what harm it did, but obviously it irritated her.
Jake didn’t bother to pretend he wasn’t listening to her call. It seemed her friend Megan was leaving town for a while. Damn! He hoped she wasn’t going to be gone for long. He wanted to meet her.
Between the Lines Page 3
