Ring of Truth (10 page)

Ren ‘s expression had relaxed, and a ghost of a smile appeared.  He lightly placed a hand on each of her shoulders.

“If I promise to be a very good boy—which won't be easy, I might add—would you consider having a cup of coffee with me where we can talk privately? Since you may be
considering
doing business with me,” he said with a wry expression, “I want to give you a brief history of the last ten years.”

By the time they were midway in the crosswalk that separated the Mark Hopkins Hotel from the Fairmont crowning Nob Hill, she took his arm.

“Look... I really need to apologize for judging you as I just did a few minutes ago. All situations are not necessarily the same,” she added, upset with herself that she had ever equated Ren's behavior to that of Charlie Miller's.

Ren steered her in the direction of the hotel's
porte-cochère
where a series of luxury vehicles were rolling up to the Fairmont's carpeted entrance.

“Well, thank you for that. I can certainly understand why you may be a little gun shy after what happened to you lately.”

“I'll tell you the gory details about that... sometime,” she offered as the two of them reached the top step. “But first, it's your turn.”

“Good. I want to know everything, so I can punch the guy in the nose for you. And that Beverly woman, too.”

“Another perk I get if I come to work at the ranch?”

Ren laughed and nodded at the doorman who ushered them inside. Kerry walked in first and then halted her forward progress in order to say something that had continued to weigh heavily.

 “If I join your staff, you're going to have an even
bigger
problem with Sara Lang, so before you tell me whatever you plan to tell me here, I need to let you know that the unresolved situation with her makes me very leery of getting involved at your ranch professionally... or personally.” She was amazed at her own frank admission that she felt the same zing between them that he obviously did. “But!” she continued, holding up one finger before Ren could protest. “I'll definitely hear you out if you promise to put me in a cab afterwards.”

Ren appeared to consider the bargain and said, finally, “Fair enough.”

Kerry waited discreetly in the Fairmont's magnificent cream-and-gold lobby while Ren checked himself into the hotel. A brochure on a side table revealed that the soaring gold-leaf pillars and impressive gilded plasterwork spoke volumes about California's first licensed woman architect, Julia Morgan, who, at a mere thirty-four-years-old, restored the burnt-out hulk in the wake of the 1906 earthquake and firestorm.

She looked up from reading just as Ren turned away from the front desk and inclined his head toward a bank of elevators several yards further on.

“This place is spectacular,” she exclaimed as they rode to the fourth floor.

She felt a faintly unnerving flutter of excitement when the two of them walked down the carpeted hall to his assigned room. Within moments of entering a small, elegant suite consisting of a sitting room, with a bedroom visible through a half-opened door, he had ordered room service to bring up a
cappuccino
, a pot of tea with milk on the side, “and a plate of
biscotti
,” he finished, and replaced the phone receiver in its cradle.

Ren indicated that she should sit on the brocaded love seat upholstered in a subtle gray to match the gray, silk bedspread Kerry had glimpsed through the door. He settled into an upholstered club chair nearby. He inhaled a deep breath before he began to speak.

“Twelve years ago, I met both Sara and Sandra Lang at Stanford when they were undergraduates, a year apart, and I was at the business school. I met Sara first, but was more drawn to her younger sister, Sandra, because of her athleticism and... well... a more outgoing personality.”

“You mean, in contrast to Sara's gloomy-gus approach?” she couldn't resist commenting.

Ren raised an eyebrow and nodded.

“Sandra was an amazing athlete... a top tennis player in college and a fanatic skier, ready for any adventure. Looking back, I think I simply got married in 2007, a few years after Sandra graduated, because the choice seemed to be either do that, or break up. During my twenties, our close circle of friends were getting married in rapid succession and everybody we knew just expected us to make our relationship official.”

“But the trouble is, you don't really know who you are, or what you truly want in life till at least after thirty, don't you think?” Kerry said fervently. “I know
I
didn't.”

“I totally agree. In my case, I had my shiny new business school degree and was about to move to Mountain View in the heart of Silicon Valley, ten miles up the road from the university, and join a VC firm—”

“Venture Capitalist, right?” she confirmed.

“Yeah... we had the heady job of investing in new companies we thought might be the next Google or Facebook. Sandra's future plans after graduating centered around playing tennis and skiing wherever there was snow, and—well—
me.
”

Just then, there was a discreet knock on the door and a voice called out, “Room service!”

The waiter swiftly brought their order in on a tray and departed. Kerry stirred milk from a small pitcher into her cup of tea while Ren settled back against the chair holding his coffee.

“In those first years after grad school and my marriage, I was basically going along with everybody else's program,” Ren continued his narrative. “I was working nights and weekends on the deals we were doing, while Sandra and her sister spent most weekends at the Lang's family house in Squaw Valley on Lake Tahoe.”

Ren fell silent and stared into the surface of his coffee. At length he said, “Sandra and I were drifting apart, mostly due to my allowing my work to be the central focus of my life, along with her obsession in the early days of our marriage to try out for the USA Olympic Ski Team.”

“Did Sara ski, too?”

“Yes, but never on the level of her younger sister. In fact, that's pretty much Sara's problem. Sandra got what Sandra wanted with ease and grace, and Sara always came in second.”

 “Was Sara training to try out for the Olympic Team as well?”

“They both gave it their all, but it was pretty clear that Sandra was the one that had the best shot. Sara finally gave up and got a job as a glorified administrative assistant at Lehman Brothers in San Francisco and drove up to Tahoe from the Bay Area on the weekends with me, while Sandra stayed at Squaw, training seven days a week.” Ren took a sip of his coffee, swallowed, and continued.

“One winter, about four years into our marriage, I got a call that Sandra had been hurt on the slopes. Turns out that Sara had goaded her sister to ski off the cornice at the top of the mountain just as bad weather was closing in. Everything had iced over and Sandra crashed into a tree, breaking her thighbone, and had to be brought out by the ski patrol. A lot of things happened after that, and my wife ended up in a coma.”

“She went into a coma as a result of a broken leg?” Kerry asked, bewildered.

“After the surgery to repair her leg, she caught one of those terrible infections in the hospital. It came on fast and galloped through her system. As her husband, I had to make the decision to pull the plug. It was pretty devastating... for Sara, especially.”

“Survivor's guilt?”

Ren nodded. “In spades. After all, she'd dared Sandra to go down that run and then chickened out.”

“Oh, my God...”

“Yeah, it was pretty gothic. For my grandmother and me, it felt like a rerun of my parents dying so unexpectedly in the plane crash. Sara, though, was basically a basket case and in those first weeks after Sandra's funeral, Concetta and I both worried she might... do something really terrible.”

“Where were the sisters'
parents
in all this?” Kerry demanded.

“Wendell and Doris?” Ren shook his head in disgust. “The Langs are the quintessential Baby Boomers, if you know what I mean. Very ‘do your own thing and don't bother us.' After Sandra died, essentially they just told Sara to suck it up and not be such a pain in the ass.”

Kerry heaved a sigh. “You must think I'm a total jerk... and maybe I am, but it just looked to me as if you and Sara might be—”

“I know how it looked,” Ren interrupted. “Jeremy hinted to me just the other day that he also thought Sara and I had become an item in recent months because that's the way Sara
wants
everybody to think.”

“That's pretty weird...” ventured Kerry, “and must have been tough to deal with.”

Ren nodded. “Sara's been problematic from day one. She apparently had set her sights on me at Stanford, and when I chose her sister, she began to invent a story in her own mind that she and I had
always
been destined to be together, which was pretty weird as time went on, given Sara was partially responsible for what happened to Sandra.”

“Then, why in the world did you ever bring Sara to the
ranch
—even if you felt sorry for her?” Kerry asked, exasperated.

“She'd lost her job in the crash of 2008 when Lehman Brothers collapsed and then got laid off again right after Sandra died in 2011. Her roommates kicked her out of their apartment for not paying her share of the rent and her parents were living in France. She called one day, literally begging me to please give her a job—
any
job.”

“But she's been on your ranch a couple of
years,
Ren.”

There had to be more to this than he was revealing, she thought. Maybe Ren had some survivor's guilt of his own?

“To my surprise, Sara made a big effort, when she first came to the ranch, to make herself useful when we hosted events, especially in the kitchen. Jeremy was kind enough to teach her the rudiments of being a sous chef.” Ren put his coffee cup down abruptly and caught Kerry's gaze. “I needed the help, frankly. The ranch's finances were a mess when I took things over, and until recently, I had no idea Sara had always had this
fantasy
in her mind about the two of us. She wants what she has always wanted: the life that Sandra had. Her psychiatrist recently called me to explain.”

“Really?” Kerr asked, startled. “That shrink must have felt he had a duty to warn you. Otherwise, wouldn't patient-confidentiality prevent him from saying anything?”

Ren nodded. “Right after I talked to him—the day before I met you, incidentally—I told her parents I'd done my duty and now it was their turn to deal with their daughter.”

“And?”

Ren cocked an eyebrow. “I'm waiting to hear their plan.”

Kerry gazed across the narrow space that separated them. “That sounds pretty open-ended, Ren.”

Frustration clouded his features. “Honestly, I've done my best to treat her as a sister, but she...” His sentence drifted off.

Kerry, recalling Sara's expression of instant dislike the minute Ren had escorted her into the ranch kitchen to meet Jeremy, asked quietly, “So... basically you're in limbo with Ms. Sara Lang?”

“I've let it ride because we're so short-handed, and now, with Jeremy down for the count...”

Kerry could sense the weight of the world pressing down on him and without warning, the ring on her right hand began vibrating.

Think, Kerry m'girl! What would make
you
happy?

Before she could weigh her next words, she heard herself saying, “Look, Ren, I'd love to work with you as a profit-sharing partner in your olive oil adventures.”

A look of both relief and joy spread across his face. “You
would
?”

“Yes!” she said firmly.

“That's wonderful!”

She raised her hand in warning.

“But for this to work for me, I couldn't move to the ranch or accept any money from you until I renegotiate my deal with LifestyleXer.”

“I have no problem with that.”

“Let's hope LifestyleXer doesn't have a problem, either.” She smiled, hoping to reassure Ren that she was willing to go out on a limb to try to find a way to come to the ranch. “I'm excited about the idea of devising whatever else we can to sell with the Montisi brand,
plus
,” she said with deliberate emphasis, “I'd absolutely
love
to be Chef Jeremy's Number 2 as soon as Sara leaves.”

“Great!” Ren said with an affirmative nod. “It's
all
great.”

She fixed Ren with a steady glance. “And when do you expect that will be?  Sara's leaving, I mean?

Ren sobered. “I can't tell you that yet, but as soon as possible. You'll have to trust that if she creates any problems in the meantime, tell me right away and I'll take care of it.”

Kerry was suddenly filled with doubt.
Could
she trust this man? What if he'd made these promises merely to solve his own problems at the ranch and wouldn't actually do what he said he would?

Studied risk, remember Kerry? This is one of them...

After a long pause, she said, “Well, thanks for explaining everything.” She gave him a measured look. “I have to be straight with the people at work that I want to change my deal, so I'll make an appointment with my CEO tomorrow and let you know how it goes.”

“I know this probably feels as if you're making a very big leap of faith like the one when you decided to come to San Francisco—” he began.

“Oh, no,” she assured him. “This feels very, very different.” She glanced at her watch. “But, it's getting late. I'd better go.” She rose and picked up her handbag off the sofa. “I'll try to get in to see the big boss at work and hope I can negotiate an exit strategy where I won't lose everything I've worked for the last two years.”

Ren rose to his feet, his eyes alight. “But you've just given me a definite ‘yes'—yes? You're committed to come work with me at the ranch?”