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“Daniels swore he’d break Lazarus, you know. He always blamed Lazarus for his father’s disappearance. If you ask me, Trevor Daniels’s father . . . what was his name? Robert—that’s right. I’ll bet that Robert Daniels just took off with another woman. . . .”
Ashley lifted her chin fractionally and leveled cool green eyes on the members of her father’s family. She was accustomed to the pain of gossip and she managed to let her poise lift her above the insulting speculation being whispered just loud enough for her to hear. Pushing her chair away from the desk, Ashley stood and started toward the door.
Claud was leaning over McMichaels’s desk, his ruddy complexion redder than usual. Though he was whispering, Ashley was well aware of what he was threatening. Claud considered himself next in line for control of the Stephens timber empire. No doubt cousin Claud was already devising ways of contesting the will.
Alan McMichaels noticed that Ashley was leaving, and he broke off his conversation with Claud in order to talk to her. He held up his palm to get her attention. “Ms Jennings—please. If you could stay for a few more minutes. There are a few matters I’d like to discuss with you.”
Managing a frail smile, Ashley nodded before smoothing her skirt and walking across the room to stand near the windows. She felt, rather than saw, the hateful glances cast at her back.
Though Ashley’s gaze studied the view from the eighth floor of the building, she didn’t notice the tall spire of a Gothic church steeple in the foreground or the fact that the fog had begun to lift, promising a cold, but clear, November day. Her thoughts rested on her father and the horrible fight that had torn them apart.
It had taken place in the spacious library of Lazarus’s Tudor home on Palatine Hill. “How could you?” Lazarus had shouted, his shock and rage white-hot when he had discovered that the man Ashley had been seeing all summer was the son of Robert Daniels, the man who had been Lazarus’s rival before his mysterious disappearance not two years earlier. Lazarus’s faded blue eyes had sparked vengeful fire, and his shoulders had slumped in defeat. Nothing Ashley could have done would have wounded him more.
When she had tried to explain that she loved Trevor and planned to marry him, her father had laughed. “Marry a Daniels? Damn it, Ashley, I thought you had more brains than that!” Lazarus had shaken his graying head. “What do you think he wants from you? Love?” When Lazarus read the expectant light in her eyes, he had spit angrily into the fire. “He’s using you, don’t you see? He’s after the timber company, for Christ’s sake! He’s on some personal vendetta against me. Wake up girl. Trevor Daniels doesn’t care a damn about you.”
When Ashley had staunchly refused to stop seeing Trevor, Lazarus had slapped his open palm on the table and threatened to disinherit her. Angrily, she had told him to do just that and had stomped out of the room, out of his house and out of her father’s life. Determined that she was right, Ashley had been hell-bent to prove him wrong.
It had been an impossible task. Lazarus had been correct about Trevor and his motives all along. At the vividly painful memory, Ashley sighed and ran her fingers along the cool window ledge. Once again tears, bitter and deceitful, threatened to spill.
“Ashley, could I have a word with you? It will only take a few minutes.”
She turned to face her father’s attorney and noticed that the room was empty. “First, let me tell you I’m sorry about your father.” She nodded, accepting his condolences and somehow holding on to her frail composure. “And that I hope you’ll continue to retain the services of McMichaels and Lee for yourself as well as the business.” Once again she nodded, encouraging him to get to the point.
“You must realize that, with your father’s bequest, you own a large majority of the stock of Stephens Timber. It’s within your power to run the company or hire someone else—”
“Mr. McMichaels,” Ashley interrupted, finally able to collect her scattered thoughts. “Right now, I don’t think I’m qualified to run the company myself.”
“But your father thought you could. Don’t you have a degree in business administration?”
“A master’s—”
“And didn’t you work for the corporation?”
“Years ago—during the summers between school terms. But the industry has changed a lot in the last eight years,” she protested.
“Your father seemed to think that you had a real knack for handling the executive end of Stephens Timber.”
“Did he?” Ashley shook her head in confusion. Why hadn’t her father been able to tell her what McMichaels was repeating? “I think we should leave things just as they are for the time being. It was my understanding that Claud had been managing the day-to-day transactions for all practical purposes. My father was in semiretirement.”
“That’s right.”
Ashley forced herself to think clearly. The strain of the past few days had been exhausting, but she couldn’t ignore her responsibilities. “So, until I know a little more about the business, and until my teaching contract is fulfilled, I’ll have to rely on Claud. The only thing I’ll require for the present is an audit of the company books and monthly financial statements. I’ll talk to Claud and ask him to continue to stay on as general manager of the corporation, at least temporarily.”
McMichaels stuffed his hands into his pockets and appeared uneasy.
“Is there a problem with that?”
The attorney frowned, seemed about to say something and thought better of it. “No, I suppose not. You can do whatever you like.”
“I know about the company’s reputation,” she assured the surprised lawyer. “I haven’t lived my life with my head in the sand. I expect that Claud will see to it that anything Stephens Timber does is strictly legal. Advising him will be your job.”
McMichaels smiled. Relief was evident on his tanned features. “Good.”
Ashley managed a thin smile. It was the first since the news of her father’s heart attack. “Whether I like it or not, I’ve got a teaching contract that doesn’t expire until June fifteenth. I’ll talk to the administration and explain the situation, and if the community college can find a substitute for next term, I’ll consider moving back to Portland and working with Claud.”
“I think that would be wise,” McMichaels agreed. He touched her shoulder in a consoling gesture. “You’re a very wealthy woman, now, Ashley. You’ll have to be careful. People will be out to take advantage of you.”
“Only if I give them the chance,” she replied. Ashley spoke a few more minutes with her father’s attorney and left his office with the disturbing feeling that something was on Alan McMichaels’s mind. She shook off the uncomfortable sensation and reasoned that the lawyer wanted to give her a little more time to deal with her grief before hoisting any corporate problems onto her shoulders.
