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Cade looked at her blankly, and then he grinned. “Don’t tell me you want to marry us off!”
“Having a woman to look after you might be just what you need,” Kyra said mildly.
Cade thought of the birthday gift he hadn’t had time to unwrap, still awaiting his pleasure in Dumai, and he chuckled.
“Trust me, Squirt,” he said. “I’ve got all the women I need.”
“Yeah,” his sister said with a little smile as she turned to the sideboard, “I’ll just bet you do.” She looked at the heaping platters of food, gave a delicate shudder and poured herself a cup of coffee. “I guess somebody’d better tell Stella that she doesn’t have to turn out this kind of feed anymore.”
“That’s your job,” Cade said. “You’re in charge of Landon House from now on, remember?”
A funny look crept over Kyra’s face. “I know,” she said slowly. “I still can’t believe Dad left the place to me.
“Who else would he have left it to?” Zach said, as he came into the room. “You’re the only one of us who gives a damn for this pile of brick.” He nodded to Cade, dropped a kiss on the top of Kyra’s head, then shot back the cuff of his Harris tweed sports jacket and frowned at his Rolex. “I’ve got an eleven o’clock flight to Boston. Isn’t Grant back from that meeting yet?”
Cade put down his empty cup, rose from his chair and leaned back against the sideboard, his feet crossed at the ankles, hands tucked into the back pockets of his Levi’s.
“You’re out of uniform, aren’t you? I heard you banker types signed a pledge that said you had to go around in pinstripes.”
Zach’s frown became a grin that softened the ruggedly handsome lines of his face.
“Laugh all you like, pal. Just remember that in a couple of days you’ll be cozying up to an English version of me, trying your best to sweet-talk him into investing in your latest search for pie in the sky in—where’d you say you were going this time?”
“The North Sea,” Cade said, flashing an answering grin. “And it’s not pie in the sky, buddy. It’s at least as sure a bet as those investments you tout.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. And I suspect that if your fancy clients had any idea I could still pin you arm wrestling without breaking a sweat—”
“Still? What do you mean, still? You never beat me, not once.”
“Prove it.”
“With pleasure. Just let me take off this jacket and—”
“Dammit, what’s going on here? Are we kids or what?”
Cade, Zach and Kyra spun around as Grant entered the dining room. He glared at each of them, dropped a manila folder on the table and stalked to the sideboard.
“Grant?” Kyra said. “Are you OK?”
Grant nodded as he poured himself coffee. “Fine.”
Not true, thought Cade. Grant’s chiseled features, always stern, today seemed to have been carved in granite.
He waited until Grant had taken his first sip of coffee, and then he cleared his throat.
“So,” he said, “what did Bayliss want to talk about?”
“Trouble.”
“What do you mean? What kind of trouble?”
Grant took the folder from the table. “This kind,” he said. He drew out two stacks of papers and handed one to each of his brothers. Kyra waited a moment, and then she turned and walked to the window.
For a while, the only sound in the room was that of rustling paper.
Finally, Cade looked up, his brow furrowed.
“What is this crap?” he said.
“It’s just what it looks like. Father bought a small oil company in Dallas—”
“You mean, he bought a disaster.” Cade tapped his fingers against the papers he held in his hand. “And then he let it go from bad to worse. It’s almost bankrupt.”
Zach shook his head. “What are you talking about? This report’s got nothing to do with oil. It’s about a Hollywood production outfit named Triad, on the verge of going belly up.”
“You’ve each got different reports, drawn up by Bayliss, but the bottom line’s the same. It seems Father bought both these companies just before he took ill, and they got lost in the shuffle.”
Cade shook his head. “When Gordon Oil goes under, it’s going to take a lot of Landon dough with it.”
“The same for Triad,” Zach said with a scowl. “Landon Enterprises will be lucky if it takes out a dime on a dollar.”
Grant’s expression was grim. “It seems that Landon went into the two firms to bail them out. Instead, we seem to have helped them get into worse condition.”
“What’s this ‘we’ stuff?” Cade said.
“Maybe you’ve forgotten that, as of yesterday, we are Landon Enterprises. And we will be, until we find a buyer.”
Cade sighed. “Yeah—and if these babies go under, we’ll have a hole in the balance sheet that’ll drop the value of the company into the sewer.” He looked at Grant. “OK. Tell Bayliss to-”
“Bayliss retired, as of this morning.” Grant smiled slightly at the looks on his brothers’ faces. “He said he was too old to face another Colorado winter. Seems he bought himself a house in the Virgin Islands somewhere, and he’s going to spend the rest of his days on the beach, sipping piña coladas.”
“Well, I’ll phone Goodwin, then. Bayliss’s second in command. He can—”
“Goodwin’s got a dozen things on his plate already.”
Cade tossed the Gordon Oil report onto the table. “Terrific. Now what do we do?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” The men swung around. Kyra was glaring at them, her hands planted firmly on her hips as if she couldn’t believe what she’d been hearing. “What’s the matter with you guys? Are you stupid, or what?”
“Squirt,” Cade said gently, “I know you mean well, but hell, you don’t know anything about business, and-”
“A ten-year-old could figure this out!” She looked at Zach. “You’re the financial whiz in this family. Surely you could fly out to the coast, take a look at Triad Productions’ books and decide what can be done to help it.”
“Me? Don’t be silly. I’ve got people waiting for me in Boston. I can’t just—”
“And you,” she said to Cade. “Y
ou’re the genius who knows all about oil. And here’s this little company, having some kind of problem.” Kyra’s brows lifted toward her hairline. “Would it be too much to hope that maybe, just maybe, you might be the one to check things out in Dallas?”
“It’s out of the question! I’ve business in London. I can’t-”
“She’s right,” Grant said brusquely. “You guys could get a handle on things faster than anybody else.”
There was a moment’s silence. Cade and Zach looked at each other, and then Zach threw up his arms in defeat.
“Two days,” he snapped, “and not a second more.”
Cade blew out his breath. “The same here. Two days, and then… Wait just a minute.” He swung toward Grant. “What about you? Don’t tell me you’re the only one of us who gets to walk away from this mess?”
Grant’s expression grew even darker. “It seems some old pal of Father’s named him guardian of his kid a couple of years ago.”
A smile twitched at the corners of Cade’s lips. “Don’t tell me,” he said.
Grant shrugged. “You pick it, brother mine. Would you rather baby-sit an oil company in Dallas—or a twelve-year-old kid in New York?”
When they finished laughing, the brothers clasped right hands, the way they used to when they were children.
“Here’s to the Deadeye Defenders,” Cade said solemnly.
“To the Deadeyes,” his brothers echoed, and then they grinned and set off in separate directions.
Cade went to the library. He phoned London and postponed his meeting, then settled into a leather armchair and read slowly and carefully through the Gordon Oil report.
When he was done, he breathed a sigh of relief.
Without setting foot in the Gordon Oil office in Dallas, he already knew what the problem was.
Management.
The company’s director was running things straight into the ground.
Hank Gordon, the founder, had died a few months ago. Ever since, his daughter had been running the show.
Her name was A.H.
A woman, Cade thought with a shudder of disbelief, heading up an oil company. And if that weren’t bad enough, one who used initials instead of a name.
