Always in Her Heart (13 page)

She didn't want to think or analyze. She just wanted to be here, in this moment, with him.

The music ended. She didn't feel as if she could take the step that would put them apart.

“I don't want to go back to the table just now,” he murmured. “Let's take a walk.”

She nodded.

Holding her hand, Link led the way through the
crowd with such single-minded determination that it seemed to part in front of him. In a moment they were in the hallway, the sounds of the party muting behind them.

“This way.” He walked quickly around the corner, away from the lobby. They passed a row of faded portraits on the wall, and he led her through another doorway.

The quiet room had low bookshelves running all the way around under the windows, a corner fireplace and a set of high-backed chairs facing the fire. It looked like the library in an English country house.

The only trouble was that it was already occupied. An elderly gentleman rose from one of the leather chairs at their entrance.

“Link.” He held out his hand. “It's good to see you taking an evening off work.”

Link's face softened, and he drew her forward. “Annie, I don't think you've met Doc Adams yet. Doc is one of our board members.”

She extended her hand. “It's very nice to meet you, sir.”

She found herself scrutinized by a pair of the shrewdest blue eyes she'd ever seen. Doc Adams had a dropping white mustache and bushy white hair, irresistibly reminding her of Samuel Clemens.

He let out a bark of laughter. “If a pretty girl calls me ‘sir,' I must be even older than I think. Call me Doc, like everyone else.”

“Doc,” she corrected. She'd like to resent the man
for interrupting her quiet moment with Link, but his good humor was contagious. Even Link seemed relaxed in his presence.

“I was hoping I'd see you tonight, son.” He put his hand on Link's shoulder. “Tell me, what's this board meeting going to be about?”

Link stared at him blankly. “Board meeting?”

Doc's bushy white brows lifted. “So you don't know about it. I wondered if that was the case—why I wanted to be sure and talk with you.”

“I don't understand.” Link's frown would frighten a lesser man. “We don't have a board meeting scheduled.”

“We do now. Frank called one—we all got the notification today. For Tuesday afternoon.”

“Tuesday?” Annie couldn't stop the question. “But we have the custody hearing on Wednesday morning.” She looked at Link, knowing her apprehension must be written on her face.

Link's face had tightened to a mask. “What's on the agenda for the meeting?”

Doc shrugged. “Didn't say. I hoped you'd know. When I asked Frank, he'd only say it was a matter ‘crucial to the future of the company.”'

“No.” Link said tersely. “I have no idea what Frank's up to.”

But it can't be good.
She finished the thought for him, tension crawling along her nerves. Frank
was
up to something. The timing couldn't be a coincidence.

“Well, forewarned is forearmed, I always say.”
Doc clapped him on the shoulder again. “Don't worry about it, son. It'd take something pretty big to convince me you're not doing a good job.”

“Thanks, Doc.” Link managed a smile.

The old man glanced from Link's face to hers. “Guess I'll leave you two alone, so you can talk without a fifth wheel getting in the way.”

“You don't need to—” Annie began, but he was already out the door.

Link looked as if he'd been hit by a falling beam.

“It'll be all right.” She said the first thing that came to mind, then realized they were words she'd use if Marcy bumped her knee. They hardly applied here.

He stared at her as if she'd lost her mind. “There's nothing all right about it. Frank wouldn't call a board meeting for the day before the hearing unless he had some scheme in mind. It can't be good for us.”

“But can't you insist he tell the board what it's about? Or say it has to be scheduled some other time?”

His lips drew tight. “According to our rules, any board member can call a meeting at any time he deems it necessary. That was just intended to bypass the necessity of formal meetings, but Frank knows he can do it.”

She shivered in spite of the warmth of the fire. “There must be something you can do.”

“I'll talk to the other board members.” Link turned
toward the door and then looked back at her impatiently. “Well, aren't you coming?”

Her heart seemed to freeze. Link's grim face didn't look anything like that of the man who'd held her close and whispered in her ear. Their moment of intimacy might never have been.

She should have known… Everything else paled in comparison to a threat to the company. In Link's world, nothing else was that important, especially not her.

“C
an't we just sit down and try to figure this out rationally?”

Annie frowned at Link, whose pacing threatened to wear a rut in the family room carpet. He'd been this way since they'd learned of Frank's latest machinations the previous night. It was a wonder he'd been able to sit still through worship that morning.

He stopped pacing long enough to return her frown. “Sitting and thinking isn't going to stop Frank. We have to do something.”

Link's words reminded her of their quarrel when he'd first proposed marriage as a solution to their problems. The only way Link knew to deal with a difficult situation was to charge right at it.

“Wearing a hole in the rug won't stop him, either. We can't take action unless we know what to do.”

He stalked to the sofa and sat down, folding his arms. “Okay. Talk.”

If she'd dreamed, even for a moment, that they could return to what they'd felt when they were dancing the night before, it was time to give up that dream. Link had apparently turned his feelings off as easily as flipping a switch.

“All right.” Focus on the problem at hand—that was all she could do now. “We agree that the timing of this meeting Frank wants can't be coincidental. So what could he possibly hope to achieve at the board meeting that might impact the custody hearing?”

Link still frowned, but at least now the frown was directed not at her but at the situation.

“I wish I knew. I've talked to all three of the other board members. They claim Frank didn't tell them why he wanted a meeting.”

“Do you believe them?”

He seemed to be assessing that. “I believe they're telling the truth as far as it goes. I suppose it's possible one of them—Frank's great-uncle, probably—might have some hint about what's on Frank's mind, but if so, nobody's talking.”

They couldn't force the three elderly men to cooperate with them. The board members were even less likely to talk with her, a stranger, than with Link.

“Let's look at it from a different angle. What sort of thing would make any board member call an unexpected meeting? Has this ever happened before?”

“No.” He answered the second question first, then
leaned forward. “They've been very much silent partners up until now.” He held out one hand, palm up, as if the board sat there. “For the most part, they invested not so much because they were interested in the project as because they wanted to help Davis. They've never really shown much interest in the day-to-day running of the business.”

“Except Frank. You said he'd been poking around the office and showing up at the site. What could he hope to find?”

His response was prompt. “Something to use against me.”

“Like what? What could he possibly bring to the board that would turn them against you?”

“How do I know?” He flung his hand out in an angry gesture. “You'd have to see inside Frank's twisted reasoning to understand that.”

She caught his hand and gripped it firmly, trying to ignore the pleasure it gave her to touch him. “That's not what I mean. If you could imagine something totally off base that would affect the board that way, what would it be?”

“Imagine?” He lifted one eyebrow, the faintest glimmer of amusement in his face for the first time since the previous night. “Is that really how accountants work? Imagining? You're not telling me Annie Gideon ever works on gut instinct, are you?”

Link's use of her maiden name took her aback for an instant. Odd, that she could have become used to
being Annie Morgan so quickly. She forced herself to concentrate on his question.

“I know it shocks you, but sometimes that happens. For instance, I might get a sense that a client isn't telling me everything. Then I do have to use my imagination to come up with the right questions to ask. Otherwise, the auditor could look like a fool in an investigation.”

He nodded, and she realized he was taking her seriously, at least for the moment.

“I get it.” His frown deepened. “I suppose, if Frank could find evidence that I'd been diverting company funds or failing to pay in social security, they'd lose confidence in me pretty fast. But he can't, because I haven't.”

“Davis did most of the bookkeeping—”

“If you can imagine Davis doing anything under-handed to endanger the company, you ought to be writing for the movies. He'd never do such a thing.”

“I know that. I just meant that there might be something in the records that Frank hopes to distort.” She was feeling her way, trying without much success to imagine herself in Frank's shoes.

“If there is, you'll have to find it. I wouldn't know what to look for.”

Link surged to his feet, his supply of patience obviously at an end. But he didn't start pacing again. He went to the closet and grabbed his windbreaker.

“Where are you going?”

He jammed his arms into the jacket sleeves.
“Look, I can't sit around talking any longer. Speculating isn't helping. I'm going out to the site.”

Before she could formulate an argument, he'd stalked out of the house.

Lord, what am I going to do?
The prayer that had been so often on her lips came again.
Link's so impatient. He can't see beyond this threat to the company. He's not even thinking about how it might affect our case.

That was what frightened her even more than Frank's efforts, she realized. She was afraid that Link might, in his need to take action, do something that could be used against them.

We took vows to be one in Your sight, Father. Instead we're both running in opposite directions, trying to protect ourselves.

They weren't a team any longer. There had been moments in the past weeks when she'd thought they were—moments the night before when she'd dared to hope they'd become more than just two people whose goals coincided.

She'd intended to ask God to guide Link, but they both needed guidance right now, desperately. She bowed her head, holding both herself and Link up for God's direction. She listened, trying to discern an answer.

The words that floated up to the surface of her mind came in the pastor's voice. In their brief wedding ceremony in his office, Garth had talked about the process of two people becoming one. She'd been numb
with grief and shock at the time, but somehow she'd stored away his words. He'd told them that the concept of two becoming one in marriage didn't mean that they should think or act alike. Instead they should complement each other, each filling in what the other lacked.

Link had said he wouldn't know what to look for in the company files. But she might.

She glanced at the clock. Marcy would probably sleep another hour. That was time enough to make a start. She went to the cabinet and pulled out her laptop. All the files from the office were on her computer.

Link didn't believe she could do anything to help. Maybe she couldn't, but she had to try.

She'd just have to trust that God would give her the wisdom to see what she needed to see.

 

Link checked the bracing on one rafter, then moved on to the next. Monday morning was half over, and he still didn't have any better idea of what Frank was planning.

He'd made a point of talking casually to each of the men this morning. His comments had been met with blank stares. No one seemed to have any ideas or even to have heard any rumors. Whatever Frank was doing, he was keeping it quiet, which was harder than one might think in a town like Lakeview.

When he'd come back to the house Sunday evening, a little embarrassed over rushing off half
cocked, he'd found Annie dividing her attention between Marcy and the computer. She'd spent the afternoon working painstakingly through the company records, and she continued to do so long after they'd put Marcy to bed for the night.

He didn't think she was going to find anything. Frank was too clever to leave any obvious clues.

He pounded an additional nail into place with more force than was warranted. A little physical labor might help him think. Or at least take out his frustrations.

He had to admire Annie's persistence. Admire? He forced himself to look at his feelings. He cared for her, more deeply than he'd have thought possible a month ago. She amused him, annoyed him, made him question what he believed about himself. She drove him to distraction with her attention to details and to tenderness with her fears.

The truth stood out, plain enough to see. He knew what he wanted.

He wanted to make this marriage real. He wanted to go home every night to his wife and child, wanted to sleep every night with Annie beside him, wanted to wake up every morning with her face the first thing he saw.

For a while, on Saturday night, he'd been on the verge of telling her. Then the news of Frank's plotting had driven everything else from his mind. How could he possibly talk to Annie about his feelings when both
of them were strained to the limit? But then, how could he keep quiet about it?

Maybe they'd both be better off bringing it out in the open before the custody hearing. If Annie returned his feelings—

The sound of a car on the gravel below distracted him. He looked over the edge of the roof to see Frank's black Porsche pull to a stop.

His muscles knotted. Somehow he didn't think Frank was here on a casual visit. Maybe he was finally going to get some answers.

He walked to the ladder, then climbed down, not hurrying. Frank had come to him. He wouldn't make the strategic mistake of seeming too desperate.

At the bottom, he propped an elbow on the ladder and waited.

Frank got out of the car, stood for a moment, then sauntered toward him with a slightly annoyed look on his face. He stopped at the edge of the gravel and nodded toward his polished shoes.

“I'm not exactly dressed for the site. How about coming over here?”

He considered offering Frank a hard hat, then decided not to push it. Instead, he took a long step over the drainage ditch and joined him.

“What brings you out here today?”

Frank smiled. “Just thought I'd like to take a look at what my money is doing.”

“Your ten percent, you mean?”

The smile took on an edge. “You and Davis were happy enough to get my ten percent, as I recall.”

“What do you want, Frank?” Well, so much for strategy, or anything else that involved patience. He didn't have it in him. “We both know you didn't come out here to look around.”

Frank looked at him for a moment, as if deciding how much he intended to say. Then he shrugged. “Well, since you want to be blunt, I'll come to the point.”

“Good idea. Why don't you tell me what the purpose is for the board meeting you called for tomorrow?”

Frank lifted an eyebrow. “According to the bylaws, I don't have to reveal that until the meeting.” His smile was annoyingly self-satisfied. “So we'll let that be a surprise. If there is a board meeting.”

“If?” The word alerted him. Frank was here to offer a deal.

“No sense dragging dirty linen out into the open. We can settle all this easily—keep it in the family, so to speak.”

“You and I aren't family.”

“No, but Marcy and I are.”

The reminder struck him in the heart. He wasn't related to Marcy, and any standing he had was because of his marriage to Annie.

“So?” He wasn't about to let Frank see that his words bothered him.

“So it might be best for all concerned if we didn't
have to go through with things like board meetings and custody hearings.”

“Cut to the chase, Frank. What do you want?”

“Shall we make a deal? You and Annie want custody of Marcy. I want control of the company.” He seemed to balance the two options in his manicured hands. “You give me what I want, and I'll give you what you want.”

A chill gripped the back of Link's neck. Frank must be very sure of himself to make an offer like that.

He couldn't let that rattle him. “You're taking a risk here, aren't you? What if Mrs. Bradshaw or the judge heard you offering to trade Marcy for control of the company?”

“Nobody will hear me. This is just between us. And, as advertisers like to say, it's a one-time offer. Save yourself and Annie a great deal of trouble and say yes now.”

Annie.
His heart twisted. What would Annie think if she heard this?

Lord, this can't be right, can it? I can't give up everything I've worked for all these years.

That was the bottom line for him. He wouldn't give up, and he wouldn't give in, not without a fight.

“Sorry, Frank.” He'd enjoy the look on the other man's face if this situation weren't so serious. So Frank had really thought he'd surrender that easily, had he? “I don't feel like making a deal. I'll take my chances with the board and with the judge.”

Frank's mouth tightened. “Have it your way.” He
stalked back toward his car, flinging out his hand in a gesture toward the project. “When you lose everything, remember I made the offer.”

Link stood watching as the small car flew out of the parking area, spraying gravel. What he wanted to do was jump in his truck and head straight for Annie to talk this over with her.

But he wouldn't. Annie was stressed enough. She didn't need anything else to upset her just before the custody hearing.

And that meant he wouldn't be telling her his feelings, either. He couldn't take the risk of tipping the precarious balance both of them were trying to maintain.

He'd wait until after the hearing. They'd win. He had to believe that.

And then he'd ask her to stay.

 

“More coffee?” Annie held the pot poised over Link's mug at breakfast on Tuesday morning. He shook his head, not glancing up from the day's newspaper.

Annie looked automatically at the calendar on the kitchen corkboard.
Tuesday morning.
Roughly six hours until the board meeting, and they had no weapon with which to fight Frank.