For the Love of Family (10 page)

It would be bad enough for any employee to drink himself into a weeping fit in the middle of a party full of power brokers and members of the press. For Todd to do it would be lethal. He held a position of authority and trust. He controlled a large sum of…

She came to a dead stop, halfway between the dance
floor and the buffet table, and forced herself to finish the thought.

Todd Kirkland controlled a large sum of money.

T
WO HOURS LATER, LONG
after Todd and Matt had left, with the rest of the Malones following almost immediately after, Belle was dancing. Her partner was Brian Drayson, an old friend from the
Chronicle
, a business reporter who was clearly hoping she’d spill some dirt on Diamante.

She knew what he wanted, of course. In his shoes, she would have done the same thing. Diamante had a squeaky-clean reputation, something that always made business reporters suspicious.

Belle had researched the company thoroughly herself, equally suspicious, before she reported for her first day, and she knew the folklore surrounding it. Colm and Angelina Malone, the son of an Irish immigrant and the daughter of an Italian physician, had married young and lived poor while Colm attended business school. Angelina baked cookies for extra income, but her specialty was pizza.

When Colm graduated, he worked for another restaurant chain for years before he decided he wanted his kitchen. So he’d opened Diamante Pizza. They worked side by side for twenty years, Angelina in the kitchen and Colm managing the money, refusing to expand, refusing to let greed separate them.

Finally, when their son grew up, married and started having boys of his own, Colm agreed to branch out, opening the franchises that delivered the now-famous Diamante pizza. Then tragedy struck. The son and his
wife had died in an accident nearly fifteen years ago, leaving all three boys in the care of Colm and Angelina.

And now one of those grandsons, the middle one, Matt, had picked up the torch. He would carry on the family tradition, and even expand it.

It sounded too ideal to be true. That’s what set Brian’s investigative reporter antennae quivering.

But Belle didn’t mind being used a little. She loved to dance, and Brian was much better at that than he was at extracting information. Besides, she was using him, too. She was letting him brag about his investigatory acumen, all the while filing away ideas that would help as she looked into the secrets of Todd Kirkland and the Diamante Drivers Fund.

He’d just mentioned an interesting Web site that tracked certain public documents, and she was repeating the URL in her head, committing it to memory, when she looked up and saw…

It couldn’t be! He had left hours ago
….

But it was. Matt Malone stood in the doorway of the ballroom, talking affably to a young man with a huge nose and a cartoon cowlick. Belle’s mind raced, but went nowhere. She stared at her boss with the helpless fatalism of a deer about to be felled by a semi, which meant she saw exactly what happened to his expression when he noticed her.

The chill of it reached all the way across the ballroom and made her shiver. Her feet slowed, then stopped.

Brian leaned back to get a look at her. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m sorry,” she said, giving him an apologetic touch on the forearm. “I need to talk to my boss for a minute.”

Brian glanced over and saw Matt. “Oh, excellent. I thought he was gone. Introduce me?”

“Later.” She had no idea what she was going to say, but she had to say something.

He watched her coming toward him, but made no effort to meet her halfway. He merely kept talking to the cowlick man, winding that up with a handshake and a smile just as she arrived.

“I’m sorry,” she said after the man walked away, though she didn’t specify sorry for what. “I didn’t realize you were still here. Is Todd okay?”

“He’s fine, thanks.”

She couldn’t tell if he was annoyed or just tired…or whether she might even be imagining that there was anything odd in his manner at all. Maybe it was just her conscience playing tricks on her. She felt guilty, embarrassed at being caught in a lie, but perhaps he didn’t even remember that she’d said she was a terrible dancer.

His expression was harder to read, up close.

She bit her lower lip. “Is there anything I can do?”

“Not tonight.” He gave her a long, assessing look. “But you’ll need to come in early on Monday. I’m afraid the speech you wrote for my grandmother won’t work. I’ve sent comments to George, and he’ll go over them with you in the morning. I need a revised version by noon.”

Belle was used to being edited, and she wasn’t sensitive about her work. But his tone was so dismissive, as if he’d expected her work to be subpar, and she hadn’t let him down. It stung. Her writing talent was practically the only skill she’d brought to the job, and apparently he didn’t think that was worth much, either.

“I’m sorry it wasn’t on target,” she said. “I’ll be there early, and I’ll make it right. I think you’ll find I’m a quick study.”

“Of course you are.” He smiled coolly. “Just look how quickly you picked up dancing.”

Her face flamed. “I’m sorry about that—it’s just that I—”

“No need to explain,” he said. “You should dance whenever you want. And you should decline to dance whenever it suits you. I have no problem with that.”

“But—”

“What I do have a problem with,” he went on, as if she hadn’t spoken, “is disloyalty.”

Her throat felt frozen. Was it possible he’d already learned that she was looking into the Drivers Fund for David? How could he have heard? No one knew…

“Disloyalty?”

“That’s right. Make up your mind about what you want, Belle. Because Diamante is my family business, my grandmother’s life’s work. It won’t be a temporary lily pad for an out-of-work journalist. I won’t tolerate an employee using my time, and my contacts, to try to dance her way back into the newspaper business.”

T
HE
S
UNDAY AFTERNOON
sky was sponged white with clouds, and the ocean was more choppy than curled, so for surfing the day had been more or less a bust.

But for rest and relaxation, which Matt needed desperately, it had been perfect.

A couple of hours ago, Matt and Colby had given up on finding a decent wave. They propped their boards up, nose deep in the sand, then just sat on their low-slung beach chairs and surrendered to the pleasures of drinking cool beer and admiring hot bikinis.

“Oh, yeah,” Colby said with a sigh, as a pair of perfect tens went jogging by, bare feet splashing in the water’s edge. “I definitely needed a day off.”

Matt agreed wholeheartedly, but he was too lethargic to form words. His skin had that warm, tight feeling that came from drying salt, and he was starting to get a nice buzz from the beer.

That was the advantage of practically never drinking. Didn’t take much to get you into the zone.

Colby looked up at the sun, then down at his watch.

“Last call,” he said merrily, and pulled the final two bottles from the cooler, which, as always, had held only six to start with.

It was a tradition none of them ever questioned, though they’d begun it so long ago they’d nearly forgotten where it came from. When their parents died in a train wreck on a European trip, Colby had been eighteen, Matt sixteen and Red only fifteen. They’d been staying with Nana Lina and Grandpa Colm, and after the tragedy, they just never went home.

It had been indescribably hard, but they’d survived, mostly because their grandparents were such amazing people.

Angelina and Colm Malone were strict, with almost impossibly high standards for their grandsons, but unconditional love flowed from them like water from a gushing spring. The boys learned right away that they could never forfeit the love, but respect would be a prize they had to earn.

That first summer, Grandpa Colm had sat them down and talked about the liquor rules. Never mind that none of them was legally old enough to drink. Years before they ever tasted beer, they solemnly promised, right there in Nana Lina’s living room, that their official limit would always be one six-pack a day, divided two ways or three, depending on how many brothers had come along. They would never touch toe to water once they’d begun to drink. And they would stop two hours before they left the beach.

It was a promise they’d rarely been tempted to break.

So far today, Matt had drunk two. Colby bumped the third against Matt’s knee, offering it up, but he shook his head.

“Hey, you never told me what happened last night,” Colby said as he unscrewed the top of his own beer. He
took a long swig. “With Todd, I mean. He looked wrecked.”

“He was.” Matt closed his eyes against the sun, which had come out from behind the clouds, setting the tips of the waves on fire. “I got him home. He’s probably still sleeping it off.”

Colby was quiet a minute, and Matt knew his big brother was trying to decide whether to pursue this. Matt sent out
don’t go there
vibes, but apparently he was too sleepy to be effective, because in a few seconds Colby cleared his throat.

“Guess that settles the question, then,” his brother said, his voice artificially neutral. “The question about whether he’s drinking too much.”

Damn it. Matt didn’t want to think about this right now. He’d just barely managed to forget last night and all its exasperating moments.

But it was inevitable that Colby was going to want to hash this out. Matt had hired Todd Kirkland five years ago, against the objections of everyone except Nana Lina. Colby and Red had always thought Todd was exploiting Matt, playing on his sympathies.

And maybe he was. Todd’s son, Doug, had been a college friend of Matt’s. He’d died his senior year, of a sudden pneumonia that took hold before anyone realized how sick he was. Todd had fallen apart, started drinking, lost his job and nearly lost his marriage.

When Todd finally pulled himself up and made a new start five years ago, he’d come to Matt for a job, and Matt hadn’t had the heart to turn him down.

He hadn’t regretted that moment of sympathy. Until
last night, Todd had been the perfect employee, gradually taking on more responsibility as time passed, the tragedy receded and he grew stronger.

“I wouldn’t judge him too harshly based on last night,” Matt said, adjusting his sunglasses to block the glittering waves. “Yesterday was a tough day for Todd. I’d forgotten, but apparently it would have been Doug’s thirtieth birthday. It just got to him, that’s all.”

“Okay. We can cut him some slack for last night.” Colby planted his beer in the sand beside him. “But if he starts drinking like that on a regular basis, you’re going to have problems, Matt. I’m talking as your lawyer here. I know you feel sorry for the guy. But you need to protect yourself. You need to protect the company.”

Matt nodded slowly. “I will. But I’m not going to fire the man because he had a few too many on his dead son’s birthday. I talked to Nana Lina about it, and she agrees. We’re going to let it go this time.”

“God. What a couple of softies. Under that shark’s exterior, Nana Lina is as big a marshmallow as you are.”

“You’d better not let her hear you say it.”

“Hell, no, and if you tell her, I’ll…” Colby laughed. “I’ll call Tiffani and explain how much you miss her.”

Matt groaned. “Don’t even joke about that. The woman already calls twice a week, just to see if I’ve changed my mind. I’m thinking about introducing her to Stony.”

“Oh. That bad, huh?”

Colby knew that bringing out Stony Jones was like rolling out the big cannons. Stony Jones was a professional surfer, a Yale business school grad who, like Matt, had discovered a serious aversion to office work. He had
ditched all that and built his surfing talent and handsome face into a lucrative franchise. He pitched everything from surfboards to sunscreen.

Occasionally, when Matt needed a graceful way out of a souring relationship, he’d arrange for Stony to saunter in and save the day. Women couldn’t resist Stony’s mesmerizing mixture of bad boy beach bum and gilded sun god.

Stony didn’t mind, as long as the castoffs were gorgeous. He went through women like bags of hard candy anyhow, so everyone came out a winner. Especially Matt. When the Stony-struck women broke up with him, they were always touched by how mature and forgiving he could be.

Matt nodded. “She’s definitely that bad. I blame her parents. They should have told her no once or twice along the way. It might not be such a shock now.”

“Okay, so you let Stony fix the problem. What then? Want me to introduce you to Stephanie’s friend Cindi Sullivan?”

“Maybe. No. I don’t know.” He raised his sunglasses briefly and glanced at his brother. “Is that Cindi with an
i?
”

Colby laughed. “Of course.”

Matt lowered his glasses again. “Then no.”

“What? A woman’s got to have some intellectual name now, like Hildegarde or Mildred, before you’ll give her the time of day?”

Matt shut his eyes. “I don’t have the time of day to give to anyone. To tell you the truth, I’d just about decided to take a break for a while, but—”

“Take a break from
women
?”

Colby’s shock was almost comical. Particularly because Matt knew that, of all the Malone brothers, Colby actually cared the least about his romances. His heart had been broken years ago, and while it had apparently healed, it hadn’t ever worked quite right again.

“Yes, from women.” Matt shook his head. “It’s possible.”

“Yeah, but is it
healthy
?”

Two days ago, Matt could have answered that without thinking. But after last night…

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I’m not sure anymore. Something’s wrong with me. At the party last night, I made a damn fool of myself with a woman from work.”

“A woman from work? Hell, Matt, how stupid can you—” He broke off, openmouthed. “Oh, my God. You don’t mean you and Francie—”

Matt laughed out loud. “God, no. Not Francie. I said I’d been dumb, not insane. It was George’s new hire. In the PR department. I don’t think you’ve met her yet. Her name is Belle Carson. A blonde?”

“Right. I saw her with George last night.” Colby frowned. “Cute curls, innocent eyes, serious, heart-shaped face? All she needs is the little red hood to finish the picture.”

It wasn’t a bad description, actually, at least on the surface. Matt fought the urge to explain that it took a while to spot the flash of intelligence in Belle’s wide blue eyes, or the stubborn spunk that could set that delicate jaw in a formidable thrust.

“That’s the one.” He smiled. “She’s not as helpless as she looks.”

“Maybe not. But she’s not your type. She’s understated. Refined. She’s somebody’s trophy-wife-to-be.”

Matt scooped a cool spot into the sand with his heels and tried to get comfortable. He was getting seriously annoyed, and he didn’t want to let it get out of control.

“Maybe you don’t know as much about my type as you think you do.”

“Well, I’ve observed that you like them with a little more…shall we say, air in the tires?” Colby chuckled. “This lady is two kids and yoga classes. She’s healthy dinners, an hour of TV and five minutes in the missionary position. Unless she has a headache.”

At that, Matt’s temper flared to life.

“Hell, Colby, that’s about the most superficial crap you’ve ever spouted. Let’s just overlook the real truth, which is that if Haley Watson had been willing to give you a
lifetime
of the missionary position, you’d have jumped at the chance. But beyond that, what the hell do you really know about Belle Carson?”

His brother didn’t answer immediately. The air was heavy between them, as if the sunny day suddenly threatened rain. Matt had gone too far. None of them ever, ever mentioned Haley Watson—not to Colby, and not even to each other. He thought about apologizing, but that would just make it worse.

Finally, Colby set his empty beer can into the cooler and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees.

“I don’t know anything about her,” he said, and his tone carried enough humility to double as an apology.
“Except she must be pretty amazing, to get you this worked up.”

Matt shrugged, which was his version of accepting the apology. “She’s not amazing. She’s just…interesting.” He smiled at his brother ruefully. “And for some reason I can’t understand, every time I look at her, I want to tear her clothes off.”

Colby took off his sunglasses and let them dangle from one finger. “How far did it go? Did you sleep with her?”

“Hell, no. She works for me, remember? I can’t touch her. I can’t even look at her longer than three-point-two seconds.”

“Correct,” Colby said, obviously relieved. “And don’t you ever forget it.”

“I won’t. But it’s making me nuts. And last night, it made me worse than nuts. It made me mean. I saw her dancing with some moron from the
Chronicle
, and I chewed her out about a bunch of stupid stuff at work, stuff that doesn’t really matter at all.”

“Nice,” Colby observed. “Bet she really likes you now, Einstein.”

“I’m sure she hates me. Which ought to simplify things, but unfortunately doesn’t.” He ran his hand over his face, wiping away any lingering grains of sand. “Man. What a mess.”

Colby shook his head. “Yep. Okay, want your lawyer’s opinion or your brother’s opinion?”

“Let’s start with the lawyer.”

“Fire her while she’s still in her ninety-day probation period. Wait a year or two, then arrange to bump into her somewhere and see if she wants to have dinner. The
odds of scoring aren’t great, but the odds of escaping a lawsuit are excellent.”

Matt hated that idea. “And the brother’s opinion?”

“You’re just horny. Let me call Cindi Sullivan, whose bust-to-waist ratio is amazing. I’d be willing to bet little Belle won’t look so interesting after a long, hot summer with Cindi.”

Matt laughed. “That’s all you’ve got?”

Colby stood and began folding up his chair. “Well, you could try to control yourself. No offense, but that one is the longest shot of all.”

B
Y LATE
S
UNDAY AFTERNOON
, Belle’s eyes were bloodshot and bleary from staring at the computer screen all day.

She’d done searches on everything in Todd Kirkland’s life that could conceivably be a matter of public record. She had learned that his wife worked for the school department as an administrative assistant. She had a list of every car he’d ever owned. She knew which neighbor had complained to the city about the height of his fence, and when the fence came down. She’d found out which year his mother’s will had been probated. She saw the obituary notice that said his son had died in college. And she’d read the full sad story about the two businesses he’d incorporated, then declared bankruptcy on, during the years right after the tragedy.

No red flags, but a few that might be caution yellow.

For instance, ten years ago, presumably when things were the bleakest after the death of his son, he’d lost his house in foreclosure. He didn’t buy another until five
years ago, when he went to work for Diamante and purchased a modest place in Encino.

The odd development was that he’d sold the Encino house last year, without making much profit, and bought a new one worth three times as much. Belle could find nothing that indicated a legitimate influx of cash. No promotions at Diamante, no inheritances that she could track down, no lottery wins.

Obviously it meant nothing by itself, but it was curious. Something to check on.

Funny what a great motivator anger could be, she thought as she stretched her back, took off her glasses and rubbed her aching eyes. If Matt Malone hadn’t been such an SOB at the party last night…

Her doorbell rang.

She closed out of the tax appraiser’s Web site, slid her feet back into the sneakers she’d kicked off under the computer desk, popped her glasses back onto her nose, then opened the door.