“Because I love you,” Lucas blurted, defensively. “And it kills me that my dad is the reason you’re feeling this way – okay, not the only reason,” he amended when she glared at him. “But I want to do something to make it up to you and I will. I’m going to find him and make him pay for what he did.”
“Who? Your father?” she asked. There was more intensity and conviction in Lucas’s voice than she’d ever seen him display.
“Who else. I’m going to find him for you. I promise,” Lucas assured her.
I’ll believe that when I see it, Zoe thought. He’d been living with the guy for his entire life and he hadn’t seen what or who he truly was. Granted, neither had she or her father, but they hadn’t lived with him. “I’d like for you to leave now,” she said as politely as she could manage.
“Fine. Just remember that I’m still going to be here for you when you realize that everyone else is gone,” he said with an oddly ominous note that sent a shiver up Zoe’s spine. “I don’t know who else you think you can count on,” he said, side-eyeing Mason. “But you can count on me. I will find him and we will put all this past us.”
He reached out and took Zoe’s hand, holding it tightly so she couldn’t pull it away as he brought it to his lips for a moment. She couldn’t think of anything to say, instead closing her eyes and willing him to leave. It seemed to work. He let go of her hand and when she opened her eyes again only Mason was left in sight.
She clenched the released hand in a fist and brought it down hard against her thigh. She raised it and brought it down again, but couldn’t feel it. She was numb through.
“Forget what he said,” Mason encouraged. “He’s an idiot and you can’t let what he said get to – where are you going?”
Zoe had turned and hurried past out the doors and onto the abandoned patio. She knew he would follow her but she had to get out, get away, from everyone and everything. She needed air and to be alone; five minutes, that’s all she needed. Five minutes to let herself go.
There was a gazebo in the garden that provided shelter from anyone watching through the windows. She dropped to the bench with her back to the walkway, pulled her feet up so that she could rest her head on her knees, and sobbed. She didn’t try to keep quiet until she heard what were undoubtedly Mason’s footsteps on the graveled walkway. They slowed as they got closer and she was able to regain control of her breathing as she focused on the sound. By the time crunching reached the wooden platform and became a hollow noise, Zoe’s tears streamed silently.
Mason held out an old-fashioned handkerchief without saying anything. Zoe recognized it as one of Richard’s. Lizzie had tried to teach her to embroider once but all there was to show for the effort was a single poorly monogrammed handkerchief given as a Christmas present to Steve. She’d found it the morning after he died, still neatly folded in the top right drawer of his desk in the den.
Zoe took it and wiped her face. The fabric became smudged with some of her makeup. So much for its being waterproof.
“I’m just… tired,” she finally said, though Mason remained silent. He wasn’t there to push her to return or make her talk if she didn’t want to. His attention was fixed on the walkway ready to keep away anyone else she didn’t want to see. “I know the Board wants me to say that I want the position… And there will be so many meetings before any decisions are finalized. Then there’s everything going on with Aiden…” She looked up at Mason. “I don’t know if I can bear to see him again. Not while he’s like… that. I feel horrible. I should be there for him, whether he recognizes me or not. He should have someone there to help him fight to get better but I don’t think I can.” Failure. That was what she was feeling, in addition to the sorrow and bone-wracking grief. There was something in her that simply knew she couldn’t do it all; might not even be able to do any of it.
“Aiden has Jack and his grandmother,” Mason said quietly. “He’s not alone. If you can’t… if you need to take time for yourself, it doesn’t mean you’re… abandoning him.” Zoe looked up to meet Mason’s gaze briefly before the tears started running afresh. Mason left his post and sat beside her on the bench. Wrapping an arm around her, he pulled her back to lean against him. “Do you really think it would be better for him – that it would help him at all – if you were to stay when you weren’t comfortable being there? If you were only there because you thought you should be? Don’t you think – even if he doesn’t realize who you are right now – don’t you think when he does, it won’t… do something to him to see that you were only there out of a sense of… obligation?”
Zoe nodded. It was what she wanted – needed – to hear. But it didn’t make the guilt and sense of failure go away entirely. It lingered somewhere behind her chest, a prickling along her back where her ribs met at her spine. Not something she could reach easily but something she felt nonetheless. “I just want to leave,” she sighed. “Coming home… It was supposed to be a fresh start. The beginning of being an Adult, with a capital ‘A.’ But everything’s fallen apart. I don’t… I don’t even know where all the pieces are, let alone how to go about picking them up, and forget putting them back together.”
She could feel Mason nodding along as he listened. When she finished, she felt him tense. He’d had an idea. She looked up to him and found him gazing down at her. “So, build something else. Go back to the drawing board.”
“I can’t actually leave,” Zoe objected. “Tempting though the thought may be.”
“I’m serious,” Mason insisted. She pressed against him as she sat back up and swung her legs down so that she could look at him better. “It doesn’t necessarily have to be for good, but you can take some time for yourself. Clear your head. Put some distance between yourself and what’s gone on here. It could give you the perspective you need to figure out what it is you want; what you feel is worth fighting for and how to fight.” He shrugged with a half-smile. “Why do you think I’m out here and not back in New York or facing off with my dad?”
“Because I needed you and you’re that good a friend,” she teased, smiling for the first time all day.
“I’m not that good a friend,” he muttered, pulling the phone from his pocket and staring at the list of missed calls from his father.
“But what about the company,” Zoe pointed out. Mason’s proposal was tempting. “I can’t do that to Daddy. He put too much of himself into the company and wanted me to have it so badly… I can’t just leave it behind like that. Not when it meant so much to him… and me,” she said, a little surprised herself. “I do want it. I just… don’t know that I’m ready for it right now.”
“I’ll take care of it while you’re gone,” Mason offered. “We’ll settle things with the Board so that there’s an… interim president – a stand-in until you’re ready to take over for good. It’ll probably ease the minds of a few of the Board Members to be honest.”
“You mean the ones who are afraid I’ll run the company into the ground while I’m prostrate with grief,” she mocked but knew as well as he did that there was some truth behind the sentiment.
“It’s not like any major decisions can be made for a while, anyway. There’s the FBI’s investigation that’s still going on and the merger that your dad was working on. It’s unlikely the company will see any of that embezzled money while Peters is still at large – and even if they catch him, there’s no guarantee any of that money is left. The merger… that will be tricky. Your father was handling that one pretty much single-handed. I don’t know that it’ll be salvageable with him gone. I don’t even know if anyone knows which company he was negotiating with,” Mason realized.
“Didn’t find anything in his papers so far,” Zoe admitted. “But I haven’t exactly been looking for that. I’m sure it’s there though. When we find it, I’ll give them a call—”
“I will give them a call,” Mason insisted. “You will be resting up on a beach somewhere. Sand between your toes, your sunburnt nose buri
ed in a book—”
“You think I want to go to the beach?” She nearly snorted at the absurdity.
“What’s wrong with the beach?”
“Nothing, it’s just not where I’d want to go to get away from all… this. I want a distraction. There’s not enough to do at the beach. I’d spend the whole time staring at the color blue and worrying about how everyone was making out without me.” She sighed. “If I were to do as you suggest and run away from it all, I want to see things; go to all the places Dad and I always talked about going. The places he went with Mom before I was born. The ones he wanted to revisit. Europe, Asia, South America maybe.”
“The Eiffel Tower, Great Wall of China, and Big Ben?” Mason suggested.
“They’re better than the beach,” she muttered, flushing a little as it occurred to her just how much she wanted to take this proposed trip. She shouldn’t have let herself think about it at all. It was ridiculous. She belonged here.
Looking up and out at the garden with the pool and the house beyond, she faltered. Did she belong here anymore? Would this really still feel like home with both her parents gone from it? Would that sense of her mother’s spirit remain now that it had her father’s soul to keep it company?
“Go,” Mason said again, more seriously this time. “I promise, I will make sure it is all still here for you when you get back.”
“And what if I do go and decide I don’t want to come back?” she whispered, scared by the notion.
“I’ll take care of it for you then too.”
Chapter 22
“What do you mean you’re staying in California for the foreseeable future?” Mason’s father said angrily.
“I’m not sure what you’re confused about,” Mason said with a bit more attitude in his tone than he usually had the confidence to use when dealing with his father. “It seems pretty straightforward to me. My friend needs to take some time off work and I’m helping to cover for her while she’s away.”
“And you don’t know how long it’s going to take? Where is this friend of yours going? When will she be back?”
“Her father just died in a plane crash and her boyfriend almost died in a car accident,” Mason reproached the man on the other end of the line. Does he have any idea how heartless he sounds? Mason wondered. “Do you know how long it’s supposed to take to get over something like that?” He resentful it must sound but didn’t feel the need to take it back. How long had his father waited after his mother died to remarry? Not long enough, Mason thought.
“Plane crash? Wait, this friend of yours, it’s a girl?” his father asked with more than just morbid curiosity in his voice.
Mason felt the hairs on the back of his neck prick up. “She’s a woman, but yeah, Dad. Why?”
“Name wouldn’t happen to be Dunmore, by any chance, would it?”
“I’ve told you about Zoe before, Dad. I’ve known her for several years now, in fact. And I told you about her dad the day it happened. It’s been all over the news. Why do you sound so surprised?”
“I didn’t know your friend was that Zoe Dunmore,” came the disturbingly excited response. “Are you two seeing each other?”
“I just told you her boyfriend was in a car accident,” Mason said emphasizing his exasperation. He had a sinking feeling in his gut about where the conversation was going and hoped the collision wouldn’t be as awful as he anticipated.
“Well, but are you interested in her?”
“Dad, just tell me what this is about,” Mason said sternly.
“I told you about the merger—”
“Please don’t tell me that it’s with Dunmore Corp,” Mason interrupted. He hadn’t gotten around to looking through all of Steve’s old papers and the computer he’d used was expertly password protected. It was still with a specialist. The information he’d found on the proposed merger was limited and vague. Besides, he’d been busy dealing with the Board and helping Zoe plan for her vacation from reality. Having seen her safely on the plane that morning, he finally bit the bullet and returned his father’s calls.
“Steve Dunmore was hesitant about a merger,” Mason’s dad explained. “He wanted an outright buyout but I’m not letting this company go completely. We’ve been negotiating back and forth for almost a year now but hadn’t made much progress.”
“I know – knew – Steve Dunmore. There’s no way he would have had anything to do with your arranging a marriage between me and Zoe.” Mason was having difficulties keeping his voice down. He was set up in Zoe’s office and the door was closed but the walls weren’t exactly sound proof.
“It’s not like we could make it a condition of whatever deal we worked out. But I may have hinted at how much easier a match between the two of you would make things. If there was a merger of the families, it would make more sense to merge the companies as well.” His father was trying to play the whole thing off as a big joke but Mason wasn’t buying it. There were times when he thought his father’s greatest regret was that he didn’t have more direct control over how Mason lived his life. No wonder Steve had been so reluctant to go into details about the negotiations; he wouldn’t have wanted to expose anyone to whatever his father must have been saying in those conference calls and meetings, let alone Zoe.
“Regardless of where these negotiations go from here,” Mason cautioned him. “I can assure you that Zoe and I will not be getting married. Ever.” He shuddered at the memory of all the times he and Zoe had joked about taking that plunge for the sake of companionship and to shut other people up. But neither of them had been serious about it and hearing his father talk about it in such casual terms tainted the joking for him forever. He dreaded the thought of the day he would inevitably tell Zoe.
“Doesn’t much matter now,” his father answered nonchalantly. “If you’re working with Dunmore Corp, we can get this thing settled in no time.”
“I want you to send over any and all materials you have of your exchanges with Steve,” Mason instructed. “Forward me emails and any of their attachments, drafts of contracts, the relevant accounts for Hamilton Group. I want to look over everything and get a sense of it all before passing it along to the Board of Directors and making any recommendations of my own.”
“Will do, son.”
“I’ve got a meeting to get to, Dad. I’ll talk to you soon. Bye.” Mason hung up before his father could go into greater detail about the state of negotiations prior to Steve’s death. Knowing how badly his father wanted this deal, Mason would have a hard time believing any of his father’s claims.
Mason sighed and leaned back in the chair. The joints squeaked a bit under his weight. Well, that’s one mystery solved, Mason thought. Now if only I could get my hands back on Steve’s laptop. I’d love to have his side of things.
He was relieved to know that he wouldn’t have to tell Zoe anything work related for a while. As he’d encouraged her to board the plane that would take her across the country then across the ocean, he made her agree that the only things they would discuss until she was ready to return were the places she went and the sights she saw. It went without saying that any major news regarding the FBI’s pursuit of Peters was the exception to this rule. But in the last week and a half there had been no developments and the calls from Agent Boon had stopped.
They had said nothing about Aiden. Jack had called Zoe less and less frequently as it became clear that his recovery would take quite a while. She did what she could about putting the paperwork through to get him disability pay and ensure his position with Dunmore Corp would be there waiting for him when he was well. In the meantime, Mrs. Henry got her wish and hired another accountant for the department, satisfied in her promotion to David’ former position as well.
Mason decided it was time to stop worrying about Zoe for now. She’d get herself sorted out and come back when she was ready. Of course, his plan to use her time away to keep his father at bay had just taken a severe hit. But he’d been run
ning from his father long enough.
The computer on his desk pinged to alert him to new messages in his email inbox. Terrence Hamilton had wasted no time. Mason sighed and leaned forward to start reading through the documents and messages comprising a year’s worth of negotiations.
Chapter 23
A flash of fiery red hair as it darkens in the water and begins to sway like seaweed; the echo of a laugh before the crash of a body striking the surface of the lake; the slippery coolness of her lips beneath his, slowly warming and coming alive again. Zoe. The Zoe he remembers best. Aiden tries to recall the woman who had only entered the hospital room that once; he’d caught a few glimpses of her through the window to the hallway as she discussed business matters with his grandmother and brother but she hadn’t come in the room again. He’d caught her eye once or twice and was struck by the pain and sadness of her expression.
His grandmother had told him that her father had just died. Aiden had seen the story on the news and did recognize the face plastered everywhere, though the hair was grayer and the face bore more lines than the man he’d seen laughing with his own father on so many occasions. That must be the reason for the sorrow.
His doctors were thrilled with his physical recovery but he was still having trouble recalling the details of the last several months, including the accident. Bits at pieces were coming back but he couldn’t place them in time. He had a better grasp on emotions but with nothing to attach them to, it did little more than frustrate him.
Frustration. That was something that came readily when he cast his mind back. But not all of it was due to the challenge of trying to remember what wouldn’t come. There were moments his muscles remembered the ache of repetitious workouts as he punished his body for something he hadn’t been able to figure out mentally; a vague problem and a threat hanging over his head. He mentioned it to his grandmother and Jack and they told him what little they knew about the time he’d spent on leave from work and the investigation into Dunmore Corp’s finances.
Promised Box Set Page 26
