Owed: One Wedding Night

So she turned and walked away.

A gust of wind stirred the fog. Jake saw Madison shiver and automatically took the two steps to catch up with her to put his arm around her shoulder. She froze for a moment, but let him walk beside her as she crossed the parking lot to her car.

When they reach the bright-red Ferrari she shook herself free and pulled the key from her purse without the usual female rummaging around. She unlocked the door and threw her over-sized purse across to the passenger seat before she straightened and faced him.

“Good-bye, Jake. Thank you for dinner.”

He couldn’t find words. She climbed into the car and he swung the door shut, then watched while she started the engine and drove off.

He still hadn’t moved when she pulled out of the parking lot and into the busy late-night traffic on Marina Boulevard.

Why hadn’t he told her the truth about what he’d said to Mark?

He sighed and headed for his car.

Because he refused to open old wounds, refused to be that guy again. The guy who’d loved Madison so completely she’d almost destroyed him.

A trophy wife! He shook his head and got into his car.

Sure, he hadn’t wanted her to get her MBA. He knew how much time and energy business school took. He’d wanted, needed, her at his side instead while he took over more and more of the day-to-day leadership at Carlyle & Sons to conceal his father’s deepening depression.

He’d had to keep his business problems secret from Madison back then, for fear she’d let something slip to her jerk of a father, who would gleefully spread the news in the business community. But Jake had planned to explain the situation on their honeymoon.

The honeymoon that never happened.

As he turned his car onto Marina Boulevard, the cell he’d left in its hands-free station buzzed. He flicked it on, not caring who was calling. Even a telemarketer would be better company than a mind full of memories and regrets.

“Ah, hello, Mother,” he said.

As soon as rush hour was over the next day Madison drove the Ferrari out to the newest Dartmoor store in Antioch. She needed the driving time to think about some changes in her plan, and fewer people would recognize her at this store than at those closer in, so she’d have a chance to pretend to be a shopper for a while.

Her first impression when she stepped into the store was sameness. Not sameness with the older Dartmoor stores, which varied in layout according to the age of the buildings, but sameness with every other store built the same decade in every other mall she’d ever been in. This was their most profitable store, but it lacked the distinctively Dartmoor flavor that would make shoppers look for their ads or lead them to their website.

She didn’t dare take photos, but she could make a few quick sketches of the possibilities taking shape in her mind when she got back to the car.

She started circling the first floor to get a customer’s-eye view, but she couldn’t see the merchandise first of all, the way a shopper would. She saw people. A seasoned professional behind the cosmetics counter giving advice to her college-age coworker. The woman ending her shift in handbags to be home to meet her kindergartner's school bus. The older woman in candy who’d worked for years at the flagship store before she moved out here to be near her grandkids. And, when she recognized Madison and called upstairs, the manager who’d built her career working for Dartmoor.

The manager greeted Madison with a smile, panic in her eyes, and an outstretched hand.

“What a pleasant surprise. We’re honored to have you here, Ms. Ellsworth.”

The words twisted in Madison’s heart. How much was honor that came from wealth and name alone worth? Especially when the next time Madison saw the woman it would most likely be to tell her this store, like all the others, was closing.

Madison forced the thought from her mind, afraid the other woman would see it on her face, and let the manager woman give her an official, and useless, tour of the store.

Madison nodded and smiled, and silently ground her teeth, until she could make the excuse of needing to get back to the office and escape.

Once in her car, she didn't even stop to do the sketches before she drove away.

Why bother? Without Jake’s help, Dartmoor was doomed. If only she’d paid more attention to what was going on these last few years. Her grandfather had left her ten percent of the company, but made her father trustee until she was twenty-two. Since her father had stopped speaking to her after she’d left Jake at the altar, to insist on voting her shares once she technically could would have been more of an emotional minefield than she’d been willing to risk.

She’d been sure that once she had her MBA, her father would do more than let her vote her own shares – he’d train her to take over Dartmoor someday.

She blinked away tears. That would never happen now. His death had robbed her of the future she’d wanted and left her nothing but anger with him over the past.

As traffic slowed to cross the bridge, a dark new suspicion appeared to rearrange that past to form a picture she’d never considered before.

Maybe the money he’d wasted on her wedding wasn’t the real reason her father had shut her out of his life. If she’d been on speaking terms with him and asked too many questions about Dartmoor, she might have discovered the truth about the new CFO he’d hired. In fact, if she hadn’t been such a coward and had insisted on voting her shares, she might have been able to stop this whole disaster before it started.

She pulled off the freeway, wound through the traffic to the garage under the apartment building, and pushed in the code. The metal doors ground open.

She’d pay for her cowardice now by having to tell her mother they had only one choice left – close down the business their family had owned for over a hundred and fifty years.

Madison parked the car and rested her forehead on the steering wheel. The garage door ground shut behind her like a prison gate. What she needed was a miracle.

Chapter Three (#ud9e85975-1b2a-50d9-82ff-4fbd9fc8c6a9)

Madison worked to conceal her nervousness, and her grief, as the salesman inspected her beloved Ferrari in the mildly noxious air of the “previously owned” imported car lot.

Two days after her dinner with Jake, she’d accepted that she was out of other options. At least for now.

Once the salesman had checked under the hood and gone over the pristine red paint job, he slid into the driver’s seat and turned the key. The engine roared to life, then purred contentedly, forcing Madison to step away from smell of the exhaust. He pushed in the clutch and ran the shifter through the gears before he left it in neutral, climbed out and stood a moment watching the fine gray smoke that came out its tailpipe. Then he walked back around and reached inside to turn off the key, which he handed to her with a little shake of his head.

She could see the little “no” sign in his right eye and “sale” in his left, like an old cartoon.

“It's in great shape for a vintage car.” He ran a beefy hand through his hair. “Wish I could take it off your hands, but who knows how long it would sit on the lot before someone showed up who could afford to buy it. I can’t tie up that kind of money in slow-moving inventory.”

“What if I offered five percent above the usual commission?”

The man leaned back against the fender of the dark-blue Bentley parked next to her car and stared at his shoes, obviously doing a few quick calculations in his head.

“Nope. I could take it on consignment for you.”

“I'm afraid that won’t work.”

Madison needed the money now. Her trust fund was running low. An infusion of cash from selling the Ferrari, as much as it would break her heart, would stretch her inheritance out a few months longer. Maybe long enough for her to find new financing for Dartmoor.

“Can you refer me to other imported car dealers in the area who might be interested in buying it?”

The man shook his head. “Don’t think there’s anyone who can do more than I can, but I’ll email you a list.” He took her business card. “I'm sorry. It’s a great little vehicle.”

She nodded, climbed into the car, and backed carefully out of the lot while her mind sorted through what few options she had left. She quickly discarded the idea of putting the car up for sale on the internet. She’d never get the kind of money it was really worth.

She refused to admit to a flicker of relief that she could keep the car she loved after all.

Jake stretched, then linked his fingers behind his head. Across the conference table his personal assistant typed data into a spreadsheet, her shiny black hair bouncing slightly as she nodded over the numbers.

For maybe the hundredth time in the two years she’d worked for him, he wondered why he liked Astrid so much, enjoyed her company so much, found her attractive and yet felt zero, less than zero, sexual attraction for her.