Awakened by His Touch (15 page)

CHAPTER ELEVEN

‘S
O
WHAT
DO
you think?’

The whole Morgan clan watched him intently except for Laney, who faced off to one side, looking for all the world as if she was a million miles away. Though Elliott knew by her stillness that she’d been concentrating one hundred per cent during his long spiel.

Wilbur snored over by the crackling fireplace.

‘Surely customs issues would make it impossible?’

‘Collectively, they’re losing hundreds of millions of bees every year as northern winters worsen and lengthen. This is now a priority for their agricultural boards. Customs are prioritising supply from apiaries like yours.’

‘Won’t it be a problem that we haven’t used pesticides?’

‘Outweighed by the benefits of your geographic isolation and good disease rankings.’

The whole family fell to silence. He’d given them a lot to think about. A whole new market that could be more lucrative than all their other operations put together. Shipping ready-to-go hives to the northern hemisphere in time for spring to replace their disturbingly depleted local species. Populations that were suffering from ever-worsening northern winters.

He took a breath and focussed on the only silent person in the room.

‘Laney? Nothing to say?’ Quite the opposite, he suspected. Something about her posture said she was fighting to hold her tongue.

‘It’s certainly a big market—’ she said, still flat.

Even her mother looked around, frowning, at the death in Laney’s tone. Then Ellen’s perceptive regard came straight to him.

He couldn’t return it.

‘But I’m sure everyone’s getting on the bandwagon.’

‘Everyone doesn’t have Morgan’s spotless organic pedigree.’

‘We’d be sending our bees overseas to die.’

Was she serious? ‘After a full season of foraging. Just like they would here.’

‘They’re biologically adapted to do best here.’

‘They don’t have to do “best”—they just have to do okay. Even okay is better than nothing when you have no other choice.’

‘They
belong
here.’

The fervency of her assertion bothered him. It was as if she was talking about something much bigger than bees.
Okay...
‘You’re just looking for reasons to say no.’

She sat up straighter. ‘I don’t like the presumption that our bees are just a product to be packed up and shipped into a biological warzone.’

‘You’re an apiarist, Laney. Your bees
are
a product, no matter how well you treat them while they’re here.’

‘What you’re describing is a massive undertaking.’

‘It’s big in scale, sure, but you have the skills.’

‘
I
do?’

‘Morgan’s does. And, yes, you definitely do.’

Her hands twisted in her lap and he realised, too late, that he’d said the wrong thing.

‘So this comes down to me?’

He opened his mouth to respond and then discovered he didn’t know what to say. So he just looked at Ellen.

‘It’s a family decision, love,’ she ventured.

Laney’s lips pressed tighter. ‘But let’s be realistic, Mum. Are either of you going to want to run this? You guys are gearing up for retirement.’

There was a strange kind of agony in her voice. Controlled panic. Almost palpable. And her parents’ silence was another nail in the coffin of his promotion at Ashmore Coolidge. If they weren’t going to support this then he was dead in the water.

That vast nothing inside him seemed to swell and loom, almost in celebration. Had it just been waiting for everything to fall in a pile?

Laney turned back in his direction but her gaze overshot him. ‘So it does come down to me, then? A massive change in direction, constant overseas travel, mountains of paperwork. All taking me away from what I love doing. Why would I do that?’

‘I’ll do it,’ Owen said quietly.

‘Between waves?’ Laney snorted and didn’t even bother directing it at her brother. ‘No, this comes down to me. As it always was going to.’

‘Your mother could help with the administration—’ her father started.

‘Seriously, Dad? She can barely keep up with the admin as it is.’

‘You’d be making enough that you could hire someone,’ Elliott pointed out.

‘Laney, it could set us up—all of us—for life.’

‘Aren’t we already set up, Dad? What more do we need?’

‘You’ll need a place of your own,’ he said. ‘And Owen will. Then your children will, and his. What will you do? Continue to subdivide Morgan land until our descendants are living on quarter-acre blocks?’

‘Children? I think we’re getting ahead of ourselves a little.’ She kept her words firmly averted from Elliott. Even putting them in a thought together hurt her physically. ‘A couple of months ago we were thrilled with how the business was going. Now suddenly I’m being short-sighted?’

No one laughed at the poor joke.

‘It’s the same business, Laney,’ Elliott urged. ‘You just scale up and add an export arm.’

‘My existing arms are kind of full,’ she practically shouted back at him.

‘I’ll do it,’ Owen tried again.

Elliott glanced at him where he sat across the room. His gaze was steady in his father’s direction. The most serious he’d ever seen him.

‘It would be massive, Owen,’ Laney tossed back. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

He lifted one eyebrow, but then went back to watching his father. ‘I’m not Superwoman over there, I realise,’ he said, ‘but even Helena would have to learn that side of things—why not me?’

‘Because
you
would rather surf than work,’ Laney dismissed him.

‘Only because what we do here is boring and repetitive.’

‘It’s not boring!’ she defended, turning her anger to him. ‘It’s streamlined through years of perfection.’

‘It’s mind-numbing, Laney. Same tasks, over and over. I’d love a chance to do something new. And to travel.’

‘Helena, you can do anything you set your mind to,’ Robert said, firmly dragging the conversation back to her again.

‘I don’t want to do it, Dad.’

‘You’d be great at it.’

‘Why is no one listening to me?’ she urged. ‘I’m not interested.’

‘Take one trip,’ Elliott offered. ‘Come with me and meet some of the apiarists who are really struggling.’

‘Why? So I can add their guilt trip to yours?’

‘What guilt trip?’

‘“
Come on, Laney, my promotion hinges on this”.
’ Her excellent impression of him was none too flattering. ‘You’ve made it abundantly clear that you’ve hitched your star completely to Morgan’s. And to me.’

‘To you, how?’

‘Please... Do you seriously expect me to believe that you wouldn’t use my vision to get a point of difference in the market?’

Injustice bit low and hard. Was that what she thought of him? ‘I would not.’

‘I think you’d use anything at your disposal once you’d built up a bit of momentum.’

The silence grew thick. ‘This isn’t about me. It’s about Morgan’s.’

Laney snorted.

‘It’s hard for her, Elliott.’

Her mother’s words were excruciatingly kind, but all they did was rile Laney up. ‘Not you, too, Mum. I’m just
not interested
!’

‘
Why
aren’t you interested?’ Elliott pushed, without really understanding why. It just felt really critical. ‘When it’s such a great opportunity?’

‘I love it here. I don’t want to leave. I don’t want it to change.’

‘It’s all she knows,’ Ellen piped up, her voice a study in compassion but her eyes closely focussed on her daughter.

And suddenly Elliott wondered if Ellen Morgan was quite as sweet and passive as she seemed. Her words seemed very...calculated.

‘I’m not afraid!’ Laney insisted, reading very neatly between the lines.

‘No, no. Of course not,’ her mother gushed.

But the concept was hanging out there in public now, and—in a master stroke on her mother’s part—it was Laney who’d put it there.

Her father spoke up again. ‘I’m sure a country like the United States is very accommodating for people with vision impairment. And if they’re not—’

Laney shot to her feet. ‘It doesn’t matter, because I’m not going to America.’

‘I’ll go,’ Owen said, waving a lazy arm in the air as if he expected to be completely ignored. Which he pretty much was.

‘We’ll hire someone,’ Robert went on.

Elliott tried not to be buoyed by his use of the future tense.

‘Oh, please—you know me.’ Laney sighed ‘Do you think I’ll be happy with the way anyone else does it? I’ll end up doing it anyway.’

‘Yeah, you will,’ Elliott agreed. ‘Because you can’t help yourself, and because despite yourself you’ll want this to be done well. Because that’s the kind of person you are, Laney. A perfectionist.’

Owen snorted. ‘That’s one word for it.’

‘Come on, Laney, you’re intrigued. Admit it.’

‘Because you
want
me to be, Elliott?’

‘Because you
are
. I was watching you. You think the idea has merit. So do your parents.’

‘Of course you’d say that.’

‘Am I wrong?’

Her frown intensified and he knew he was right. She
was
interested.

‘Carving the Morgan’s logo into Mount Everest for PR has merit, too—doesn’t mean we should do it.’

In his periphery, Robert and Ellen’s glances ricocheted between him and their daughter like a tennis crowd.

‘This is an outstanding opportunity for Morgan’s. It will be a mistake not to take it.’

‘No, what will be a mistake is to let our financier bully us into doing something that isn’t on our radar.’

And by ‘financier’ she really meant him.

Elliott worked hard to keep his temper out of his voice. ‘This is imploring, Laney, not bullying. This will
make
Morgan’s. Just look at the figures.’

‘Why do you even care? What is it to you? Other than your promotion.’

Good. At least she was prepared to acknowledge there was more at stake here than just his job. Not that she would have any idea of what was really at stake.

A man’s soul.

‘I hate to see this potential lost.’

‘Life is full of disappointments, Elliott. You’ll survive.’

She frowned as he crossed to stand right in front of her and took her hands in his. ‘Laney. I know this is outside your comfort zone, but everyone in this room believes you can do it. You just have to believe in yourself. Be brave.’

The snatch as she pulled her hands back just about gave him whiplash.

‘You assume this is about courage, Elliott. You call yourself a realiser, but what you really are is a
judger
.’

‘I’ve been nothing but supportive of you.’

‘You’re judging me now. Finding me lacking because I don’t want to take the risks you think I should. Well, people are built differently, Elliott, and it doesn’t make them less. It just makes them different.’

‘This could be massive for Morgan’s
.
’

‘Not everyone wants
massive
.’

‘Why don’t you? Why have you grown Morgan’s this far only to stop. Why hold your family back?’

She reared up out of the chair. ‘Everything I’ve done I have done for my family. Don’t you dare suggest otherwise.’

‘They’re not going to do this if you don’t support it, Laney. You’re the centre of this family. Everyone takes their cues from you.’

Her eyes sparkled magnificently. Dangerously. ‘I guess that explains why you’ve put so much effort into winning
me
over, particularly.’

‘Don’t, Laney...’

‘Why not? You win me over with your attention and your interest and your...your aftershave, and all of it was strategic. I’m the
Queen
of the Morgan’s colony, after all.’

‘This isn’t about me, Laney—’

‘This
is
about you, Elliott. You and your inability to accept anyone who isn’t as driven as you.’

‘Being driven is how people get things in life.’

‘No, being driven is how
you
get things in
your
life. There’re plenty of us who take a different route.’

He blew air between clenched teeth.

‘Admit it, Elliott, you think I’m weak for not wanting this.’

‘I don’t think you’re weak—’

‘Despite all your flattering words, deep down you think I lack gumption. And you can’t understand that in me any more than you could understand it in your mother. Admit it.’

Tension doubled deep inside. ‘I do understand it in you, Laney. Your vision—’

‘My vision has nothing to do with this. You’re just using that as an excuse to justify it.’

‘Justify what?’

‘The fact I don’t want to chase down every opportunity in life and kill it with a club. Well, guess what? It has nothing to do with my vision, Elliott, it’s me—just me. My choice.’

‘Laney—’

‘And you know what? There are plenty of people just like me—just like your mother—who find their pleasures in simple ways. It doesn’t make us faulty.’

Two forked lines appeared beneath Ellen Morgan’s downturned eyebrows.

Elliott’s gut clenched harder than his fists. ‘This has nothing to do with my mother. This is about you letting your disability stop you from being everything you could be.’

The D-word hung out there, all ugly and un-retractable, in the sudden silence that followed.

‘Why do I have to be everything?’ she whispered harshly.

‘Because you can. Because you shouldn’t let anything get in your way.’

‘Name me one thing that I could possibly have done that I’ve not tried in my life.’

There was one obvious answer.

‘This,’ Elliott said, low and hard. ‘And I’d like to understand why.’

‘Why...?’ she squeaked. ‘Maybe because I’m tired of being the poster child for the vision-impaired. I’m tired of the Morgan name coming up on Council minutes all through my childhood as Dad pushed for tactile strips on the main street or audiobook cassettes in the school library or modifications on the school bus to accommodate an assistance dog.’

Robert half croaked in protest and Laney snapped her face towards him.