A Baby in the Bargain (12 page)

So he hadn’t
actually hated her family and having Sunday dinner with them. And he was beating himself up for it.

Jani understood that he was struggling with it all, but she wasn’t quite sure what to say. She didn’t know whether to apologize or not.

They’d reached her house again by then and when Gideon pulled into her driveway she decided maybe it was time to tell him her side of things, that maybe in some way it would help.

Besides, they might have been together for the past few hours, but there had been so many other people around that she didn’t feel as if she’d spent any real time with him and she wasn’t ready to have the evening end yet. Especially not with the way things stood now with Gideon.

“Come in for a while,” she suggested.

“I probably shouldn’t—”

“Come in, anyway. I don’t know if it’ll make any difference—maybe it will make things worse... I hope not, but let’s finally talk about what happened in Lakeview.”

He made a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. “Ah, the elusive other side of the story...”

“Come on...” Jani cajoled. “I already gave you the tour of my house when you first got here, but I can make coffee or tea or pour wine or whatever, and we can talk a little.”

Gideon turned only his head to look at her, and Jani had the impression that if she were anyone else, there was no way he would agree to this.

But then he smiled a small, reluctant smile and said, “Okay.”

Jani was so happy that he wasn’t going to end the evening right then and there that she got out of the car before he’d even turned off the engine. She had her front door unlocked and open by the time he got there.

“What’s your pleasure?” she asked once they were inside and taking off their coats.

Gideon’s laugh this time was genuine and wicked before he said, “I had enough to eat and drink at your grandmother’s.”

“Okay, then let’s just sit,” Jani suggested, leading him into the living room to the left of the entry.

She flipped the switch that lit the lamps on the end tables bracketing the couch. Her house was decorated in a country-cottage style that made it warm and homey, and she was always glad to get back to it. Now she hoped Gideon had the same feeling.

He did seem more relaxed than he had at GiGi’s, more the way he’d come to be with Jani as he sat on her buttery-soft overstuffed leather sofa.

Jani started a fire in the gas fireplace and then joined him. Kicking off her shoes, she sat sideways on the couch and tucked her feet under her so she could look directly at him.

Gideon was sitting with one arm outstretched across the back of the sofa cushions and even though he was angled slightly in her direction, he still had one foot on the floor, the other ankle resting on his knee, keeping a little distance, Jani thought.

“Okay, let’s have it,” he said. “H. J. Camden’s side of the story.”

“H.J. and your great-grandfather really were friends, you know.” Jani felt the need to remind him even though she had said it to him before. “They met not long after H.J. moved to Denver. They both belonged to some businessmen’s association. H.J. considered Franklin his first friend in Colorado.”

Jani could tell that Gideon was biting back a retort and she appreciated his restraint, knowing that had this been the first night they’d met he would be saying something along the lines of
with friends like that who needs enemies
....

“H.J. honestly went into the whole Lakeview deal with the intention of helping out Franklin,” she said.

“He went into it with the intention of finding a cheap place to build factories and warehouses in close proximity to Denver,” Gideon amended with some challenge in his tone.

“I’m not saying it wasn’t to H.J.’s advantage, too. I’m saying that when it started, H.J. thought of it as one hand washing the other—Lakeview’s location made it the best place for the factories and warehouses, but he needed rezoning to build there. Lakeview needed a new direction for its economy because it was dying as a farm community. As mayor, Franklin wanted to attract new business, housing, everything it took to turn it from a dying farm community to a prosperous suburb.”

“Which was what H.J. promised in return for the rezoning. Those were the promises that my great-grandfather made to his constituents and to the city council in order to
get
the rezoning.”

“But the promises weren’t empty,” Jani insisted. “H.J. had a dozen stores by then but he decided that in order to expand to the extent he wanted to expand, to be able to offer the low prices that brought his customers into his stores, he needed to start manufacturing a lot of what he sold, and he needed to be able to warehouse what he could buy cheap if he bought in bulk.”

“Which is why he wanted the factories and warehouses,” Gideon supplied.

“Yes, but he also genuinely wanted Lakeview to benefit and for your great-grandfather to get the credit for being the forward-thinking mayor who was responsible for the progress that would save Lakeview. And it wasn’t just talk—H.J. had a developer, a planner, a builder, a contractor lined up. He had blueprints and maps of the new Lakeview—a suburban area with affordable middle-class homes, schools, parks, shops and office buildings to bring in new businesses.”

“None of which materialized.”

“Because everyone H.J. had lined up turned on him,” Jani said.

“The developer, the planner, the contractor, the builder all turned on H. J. Camden?” Gideon said in disbelief.

“They banded together and tried to extort a quarter of a million dollars from him. They said either he paid them that
bonus,
or they’d go somewhere else to build.”

Gideon looked steadily at Jani and she could see the wheels of his mind working. Not necessarily in her favor.

Then he said with skepticism still echoing in his voice, “They all stood to make money by developing and building there. That’s what they were in business to do. Why extort H. J. Camden on top of it?”

“Because even back then the Camden name brought out the greed in some people. I told you, there were a dozen stores by then, H.J. had made a name for himself.”

“And a fortune.”

“And a fortune—that’s the point. Demanding the
bonus
was just a way they thought they could squeeze him and line their own pockets. They knew H.J. and Franklin were friends, and that Franklin had gone out on a limb making H.J.’s promises. It was pay up or else, and they were sure H.J. would pay up.”

“And he wouldn’t.”

“Even doing well, in 1950s dollars, that would have bankrupted H.J. He had to hope that they were bluffing,” Jani told Gideon, knowing that was what H.J. had written in his journal. “He thought there was enough opportunity for them in Lakeview and that even though he refused to pay them the bonus,
they would still go through with everything.”

“But they didn’t.”

“They didn’t,” Jani said somberly. “They went into North Denver and did everything there instead.”

“And rather than paying the bonus that the people
he’d
lined up were holding out for, rather than going out and beating the bushes for a new set of people to fulfill his promises, since H. J. Camden had what he wanted, he just let my great-grandfather take the fall.”

“He did try to find new people,” Jani said. “But everything that was supposed to be done in Lakeview was being done in North Denver, and other builders, contractors and developers were convinced that people would go to North Denver rather than to Lakeview—”

“Because by then what Lakeview did have were factories and warehouses that people
didn’t
want to live near. Because H. J. Camden had gotten what
he
wanted,” Gideon repeated.

Jani couldn’t deny that because it was true and she wanted to be honest with him. “Yes,” she admitted. “But H.J. regretted that Franklin took the blame. He did go to Franklin and try to persuade him to come to work for Camden Incorporated himself. In an executive position. He offered to get your great-grandfather out of Lakeview, away from it all. But Franklin turned him down.”

“Because then it would have really looked like my great-grandfather had just been in league with H.J. to mislead the community that had elected and trusted him. Because he felt a loyalty to Lakeview, an obligation to stay and still try to redevelop, to do some of what H.J. had promised.”

“But if H.J. couldn’t do it...”

“Yeah, certainly my great-grandfather couldn’t. Especially when he was under attack by the same people he was trying to help. People who didn’t trust him anymore. Who believed that everything he said was a lie. Who wanted him to pay for what happened. It took the next mayor to even bring in cheap housing for the factory and warehouse workers, and what went along with building
that
community instead.”

“So why didn’t
Franklin cut and run?” Jani asked. “Why did he wait to have his house burned to the ground and basically get chased out of town? Why didn’t he go to work for H.J.? Or even go to H.J. after all that happened?”

“He wasn’t too sure that H. J. Camden
hadn’t
just used him. And even if he gave H.J. the benefit of the doubt, he thought that to go to work for Camden Incorporated—in an executive position—would prove the worst of the accusations against him. He didn’t want that. Even while he was sweeping floors in that damn bar he still held out hope that eventually he might find a way to clear his name—although I don’t know how he thought he was going to do that. Mostly, he just wasn’t the kind of person who could live with himself if he came out on top while the people who had trusted him lost out.”

“So he sacrificed and punished himself instead. And the rest of his family to come.”

“Don’t put any of this on my great-grandfather,” Gideon said sternly. “It crushed him that he’d disappointed people who had relied on him. That a whole community that he’d been responsible for had been hijacked and screwed over because of him. That he couldn’t come through for them in the end. It broke him.”

“I’m sorry,” Jani said sincerely. “But isn’t there some part of you that can see H.J.’s side, too? You’re a businessman—what if people you had on board for something tried to force you to pay them for more than the job they were going to do because they thought they had you over a barrel? Yes, H.J. could have built one less factory or one less warehouse and paid the bonus, but you know—I know and H.J. knew—that if he caved to extortion once, it was only a matter of time before they would do it again. And again...”

Gideon shook his head. “No, I wouldn’t have paid extortion money. But I would have—I
would—
do anything I had to do to make good on my word.”

Jani believed that. And that for a man like him it was difficult to forgive H.J. for having done so much less.

“The bottom line,” Gideon said, “is that when it came to a choice between H. J. Camden’s own interests and the interests of Lakeview and my great-grandfather—”

“H.J. went with his own interests,” Jani conceded because she knew H.J. couldn’t be completely vindicated. “I’m not condoning the choices he made. I’m not condoning the fact that he didn’t do anything at all for Lakeview when the deal he had in place fell through. I just want you to see that there
was
another side. That going in, H.J. had good intentions and wasn’t just using Franklin and his position as mayor. H.J. truly meant for it to work out, and for the whole thing to be a huge feather in Franklin’s political cap. He actually thought that it might put Franklin in a position to run for governor...”

“Yeah, I know that part,” Gideon admitted. “My great-grandfather thought that together he and H. J. Camden were going to do big things for the entire state. He just said the joke turned out to be on him.”

“I’m sorry.” Jani covered Gideon’s hand where it rested on the back of the couch and squeezed it to let him know how genuinely she meant that.

Gideon spent a moment in brooding silence, staring at his leg propped atop his other knee, before he turned his hand to take hers and looked into her eyes.

He inhaled deeply and then exhaled as if he actually might be letting go of some of the resentments that had been stirred tonight.

Then he said, “You didn’t have anything to do with it.”

“Or you...” she pointed out. “And now you
are
doing good for Lakeview—redeveloping it, making improvements...”

“And hopefully the article will clear the name of Franklin Thatcher so it really can be honored with the community center.”

“I just wanted you to know that it wasn’t all an evil plot from the beginning. That H.J. didn’t do anything maliciously. He meant well, even if he didn’t come through in the end. So maybe you don’t need to see us all now as descendants of the devil...”

“If only my great-grandfather had had less integrity, less conscience, our families might be old friends today?” he joked wryly.

Jani was happy that he was trying for a lighter tone. She shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know what to say to that... Yes, that would probably have been the case. But no matter what, I—we all—just want to make up for what happened in whatever way we can now.”

After another moment of merely staring at her, into her eyes, Gideon increased his grip on her hand and said, “It’s okay. I didn’t know about the extortion plot before this, and yes, I can see some of where H.J. was coming from. It doesn’t change what my family went through after the fact, but I guess it is good to know that H.J. didn’t just use my great-grandfather.”

“H.J. honestly liked and respected him,” Jani said. “He was sorry to lose his friendship.” Which was something else that H.J. had written in his journal.

“So he’d be glad to have me sitting here with his great-granddaughter, holding her hand?” Gideon asked with the elevation of just one eyebrow and a bad-boy glimmer to the smile he gave her.

“Well now,
that
I can’t say—Lindie, Livi and I were all fourteen when he died so we weren’t dating yet, but we
were
teenagers and boys had started to notice us all, and there wasn’t
anything
that H.J. liked about
that!
He actually caught me kissing one of my cousin’s friends in the backyard—my first kiss when I was thirteen—and H.J. went after him with a rake.”