Love Inspired September 2014 - Bundle 1 of 2: Her Montana Twins\Small-Town Billionaire\Stranded with the Rancher (35 page)

“Sounds like a plan.” He left the waitress a generous tip, then placed his hand at the small of Maribeth's back as they left the Grind and started the short walk toward the fountain.

She noticed Ryan taking in the scene and wondered what it looked like to a city boy. She was accustomed to Claremont at night, the tiny yellow lights that showcased the architecture on the store eaves, the spotlights illuminating the fountain and the filigree shadows that the towering oaks cast across the grass. If Ryan had traveled as much as she suspected, this probably wasn't as incredible to him as it was to Maribeth.

“This is breathtaking,” he said. “I had no idea on all of those visits when I rushed in and out of town that I was missing all of this.”

Maribeth could hear the sincerity in his tone, and it warmed her heart. “I know. The first time I came to Claremont, met the people, saw the town, I knew I wouldn't leave.”

A brief silence sat between them, the truth of her statement hitting her hard. She didn't want to leave. She'd had big city, bright lights and everything that went with it. Including all of the pain. She didn't want that again. And he'd said he couldn't live away from Chicago.

He put his arm around her and started walking away from the fountain and toward her store. “You've done an amazing job, making your home here and building a successful business on your own. It's very similar, if you think about it, to what my father did. He was born in Jackson, Mississippi. Grew up on a cotton farm. I don't know if you knew that or not.”

“Lawrence Brooks?” she questioned. She'd seen photographs and had heard plenty about the real estate magnate who'd single-handedly built his fortune.

He nodded. “Moved to Chicago and never went anywhere but up, or that's what he told Dana and me.” He pointed to the Consigning Women sign backlit above her door. “A lot like you, leaving your life, your family and all behind to move to a town where you didn't know anyone, and starting a business that has undeniably impressed a certain CEO of a
Fortune
500 company.”

“You still want to make it bigger—add more stores, more notoriety, don't you?” she asked.

“I hate to see something so unique be contained to one place,” he said, and when she looked up, she found that he was no longer looking at the store, but at her. “There's more to your saying no to my investing in your business than the fact that you are content where you are. You're afraid of something, Maribeth, and I honestly don't think it's failure. Success is written all over you, in everything you do, from the way you set up this store to the ensembles you create to the clothing you personally wear. You radiate success. So that isn't it, but something else scares you. And one day, I want you to trust me enough to tell me what it is.”

Maribeth was shocked that after so little time together he already knew her so well, could see through her so well. She was afraid, so very afraid, of being exposed. Of her past coming back to haunt her, ruining her. “I do want to tell you,” she said, “I want to...”

“But you're not ready yet,” he completed.

“I'm not sure,” she whispered, and her tears dripped free.

“It's okay,” he said, tenderly brushing her tears away with his thumbs, then cradling her face in his palms. “I mean it, Maribeth. It is okay. I care about you, and I want to give you whatever time it takes to trust me. But I want you to stop holding yourself back.” He brushed a soft kiss across her lips.

“Holding myself back?”

“I still think you should let me help you make this, your dream, reach its full potential. We could do it without losing ourselves to it the way my father did, Maribeth, because you aren't like him. You won't be relying on yourself alone. You'll have me, but, like I learned tonight, more importantly, you'll have God on your side. And you said you want to make a difference, that you're doing that by helping Nadia. But have you thought that if you increase your profits, you could actually donate more to her ministry?”

His words were exactly what she needed to hear. She didn't want to wait any longer. She needed to tell him the truth of her past, right now. “Ryan, I do want you to know,” she started, but stopped when his phone started ringing in his pocket.

* * *

Ryan was enjoying every minute of his time with Maribeth, and it was too important to be interrupted. He silenced the phone and started to turn it off completely, but before he could, it rang again.

He growled, and she giggled. “I'll get rid of them quickly,” he promised. Then he withdrew the annoying thing, glanced at the display showing his sister's name and answered. “Dana, what is it?”

“Ryan, I'm glad I got you. I kept trying, and I was afraid that you didn't have a signal, but something happened....” Her voice hitched, and she didn't finish the sentence.

He knew her well enough to know the tone. The last time she'd called him and sounded like this had been the day their father died. “Dana? What is it? What's wrong? Are you okay? Is the baby okay?”

“It isn't me. It's Oliver James.”

“What about Oliver?” Ryan asked.

“When I got home, there were several messages on the machine. All of them were from Oliver, and he sounded urgent. He said he was trying to reach you and that it was vital that he get in touch with you tonight. He said he couldn't reach you on your cell.”

Ryan thought of all the calls and texts that had come in while he'd been at the church, the ones he'd ignored. “Did he say why he needed me?”

“Only that there was a potential company crisis, and he thought you should probably get to Chicago as soon as possible to prepare a strategy.”

“A company crisis,” Ryan repeated, unable to comprehend what could've happened between the time he last spoke to Oliver, at about four this afternoon, and tonight. “I'll call him right now and handle it,” he said.

“You...can't.”

“Why not?”

“I called the number he left, his cell, to let him know I would try to get in touch with you and to see if there was anything I could do to help. His wife answered, and she was crying.” She paused. “Oliver had a heart attack, Ryan.”

“Is he...” He let the words hang. Oliver James was not only a respected board member for Brooks International, he was a friend. They worked together, golfed together. The thought of Oliver having a heart attack didn't compute. “Is he dead, Dana?”

“No, but she said it doesn't look good. They don't expect him to make it, Ryan. He's in the surgical intensive care unit at Northwestern Memorial.” She paused. “He sounded stressed in his message. Do you think whatever was wrong caused this?”

“I don't know,” he said, wishing he'd at least looked at the messages that he'd received during church. “But something is going on, and I should be there.”

“I agree. I'll start getting your things together.”

Ryan disconnected and looked at Maribeth, who'd taken hold of his free hand during the call and squeezed it gently now.

“You have to go?” she asked.

“One of my board members,” he said, still not believing Oliver was in a hospital fighting for his life. “I just talked to him a few hours ago, and he's had a heart attack. They don't know if he's going to make it.” He looked back at his phone, then glanced at the list of texts and missed calls. All from Oliver. “Something was wrong, and he was trying to reach me.” He scanned each message, but all Oliver had mentioned was a crisis that had to be handled quickly. “A crisis,” he said.

“Does that happen often?”

“It's business. Things happen all the time that might be considered difficult, but Oliver has never been fazed, and I've never heard him call anything a crisis. I can't imagine what went wrong.” He couldn't waste any more time. “I've got to get back to Chicago.”

Chapter Eleven

R
yan was impressed with how quickly his pilot got the plane to Stockville and had Ryan back in Chicago and ready to deal with whatever crisis awaited. It didn't take him long to find out. Oliver had contacted every board member yesterday afternoon asking them to convene this morning and saying he was doing his best to make sure Ryan would be in attendance. According to Oliver, the matter could not be mentioned or handled via phone or email. Information would be waiting for them in the boardroom.

By the time Ryan arrived at Brooks International's corporate headquarters at 9:18 Thursday morning, the boardroom was filled, and each member sat delving through a stack of papers that began with a single white page stamped CONFIDENTIAL in red across the top.

The room was abuzz when Ryan entered, and each person uncharacteristically began trying to talk to Ryan first.

“We've got to handle this promptly, before this hits the news,” one said.

“The loss to the company will be substantial but won't ruin us. The public impression of Brooks International is what's at stake here—that's what we need to concern ourselves with.”

Several others chimed in, and Ryan still had no indication what had initiated the semipanic, but he knew what should be their first priority. “Do we have any word on Oliver's condition?”

Jeffrey Frye, one of the oldest board members and one of Lawrence Brooks's most trusted advisers, looked at Ryan as though he had gone senile. “He's had a heart attack, Ryan. And I can guarantee you, this is what caused it.” He lifted the stack of papers in front of him. “Now we need to deal with this before the press releases this story so the rest of us don't end up over there with our own rooms in the ICU.”

Ryan took his seat at the head of the table and used that new concept of prayer, sending up a quick request for the right words. Because Jeffrey had watched Ryan grow up and was undeniably skeptical of Ryan's ability to effectively run the company after his father's death, he occasionally overstepped his bounds with his frankness. But he'd never insulted Ryan at the board table. “Jeffrey, I understand that you are concerned about this crisis. And I haven't had the opportunity to review the information, but I will momentarily, and I can promise you it will be handled promptly and efficiently. But first, I want to know if there has been any change in Oliver's condition.”

“No change, sir,” Angela Redding, the company's chief financial officer, said, her face drawn and eyes bloodshot, probably the same way Ryan's were, since he hadn't slept, either. Angela and Oliver were close; their families were friends and often vacationed together.

“We all need to pray that changes soon,” Ryan said, and Angela's obvious surprise at his words was mirrored on the faces of every other person at the table. Prayer had never been mentioned at a Brooks board meeting before, but it had now, and it felt good bringing God on board, too.

“Yes, sir, we do need to pray,” Angela said.

Ryan looked squarely at Jeffrey. “Now we'll handle this.” He flipped over the top page and scanned the interoffice memo Oliver had created. It summarized yesterday afternoon's chain of events, which did, in fact, constitute a crisis.

Okay, God. I'm counting on You to see me through.

For the next two hours, the board discussed what Oliver had learned from one of his friends at the
Tribune.
The paper had been featuring a series of stories on the horrors of human trafficking over the past few weeks, and according to Oliver's friend, tomorrow's paper would announce that an exclusive resort in Thailand, owned by Brooks International, was in fact a front for the largest human trafficking organization in that country.

The next two pages outlined Ryan's donations to Nadia's ministry and stated that Oliver feared the donations would now be seen as a sign of guilt and awareness by Brooks International. However, from all indications, the Thai government had arrested the individuals responsible for the crimes yesterday afternoon and were now working hard to ensure the safety and well-being of all known victims.

Ryan was sickened at the thought of one of their properties being used to conduct what was basically sex slavery. He'd been so appalled at the numbers Nadia had provided him regarding the situation in her birth country that he'd wanted to help, but he hadn't considered the possibility that one of his own investments was a part of the horrific problem.

Now he had to fix it.

Ryan had been with his father when he toured the potential property, a beach resort on the island of Ko Yao. Remote but still accessible, the place was surrounded by secluded beaches, rain forests and uninhabited islands. The hotel had twenty-eight luxury villas, designed in traditional Thai architectural style, each villa facing the beach with its own private garden.

It was one of the more valuable Brooks International properties. But Ryan, like everyone else seated at the table, now knew that its reputation would be marred. People would see the resort and think about what happened in it. Perhaps the seclusion that had appealed to Ryan's father wasn't such a great thing after all, because the children and young women who had been taken there had a harder time getting away.

Ryan's jaw clenched. How could this have happened? He thumbed through the report again. Not all of the hotel staff were implicated, but enough that the government was involved with the “substantial arrests.” Oliver's memo said the story would hit the
Tribune
tomorrow, and naturally every news outlet would pick it up at breakneck speed. This was a Brooks property, after all. And Brooks properties were the best.

“We saw where you gave a personal donation to this Women's Lighthouse ministry,” Jeffrey said, “merely last week. And then Oliver had that ministry on the list of projects to fund this week, and we approved it. What made you donate that money? And what on earth had Oliver recommending it to us when something like this was going on there?”

Patience. Ryan would need patience to deal with Jeffrey Frye today. He thought of Maribeth. When he'd left her last night, she'd hugged him and told him she would be praying that everything went okay. He was almost certain he could feel the results of her prayers now. Because instead of losing his temper toward his father's old friend, he said, “I learned about the human trafficking problem in Thailand last week from the young lady who started the Women's Lighthouse ministry after visiting a church her grandfather supports in Thailand. Her cause was so compelling and the problem so horrific that I felt led to help, and I did.” He noticed Angela was nodding, as were several others. But the majority still looked shell-shocked that they had ended up in this predicament at all.

Milton Morris, head of marketing, cleared his throat. “Mr. Brooks, I believe the best way to handle this is with the truth, and then with something positive in the public eye.”

Finally. Someone bringing a helpful idea to the table. “Go ahead, Milton,” Ryan said.

“We beat the media to the punch. You issue a statement that you had no knowledge of illegal activities taking place in any of the Brooks properties until today, that those who were responsible have been arrested and that you find human trafficking detestable.”

“And what about the donation and the pledged contributions toward the Women's Lighthouse?” Jeffrey asked.

“Again, the truth. That you learned about the organization last week, saw it as a worthy cause and wanted to help the victims and prevent future victims.”

“That's fine for putting a bandage on the problem,” Jeffrey continued. “But it does nothing for the fact that the company's image will be scarred permanently after this gets out.”

Milton leaned forward in his seat and placed his hands on the papers in front of him. “That's why I said we need to also add something positive, and I personally think if you could make it tie in to the problem in Thailand, in the same way that Ryan's donation to the Women's Lighthouse ties in, then that will show—”

“Guilt,” Jeffrey completed.

“I don't think so,” Milton continued. “I believe it will show we agree that it's a terrible tragedy and that we want to be involved with helping those suffering from it in any way.”

Jeffrey shook his head, but Angela said, “I agree.”

The conference intercom buzzed. Ryan knew they wouldn't be bothered except for an emergency, so he pressed the button and said, “What is it?”

Marie, his assistant, spoke quickly. “Mr. Brooks, the
Chicago Tribune
is calling for a statement. They are on line one. And CNN is on line two.”

Ryan could hear more buzzing as she spoke that probably indicated additional phone lines held various other news media from around the country. “Tell them all that I will give them a statement in a half hour,” he said, needing to confer with his board on exactly what to say.

“Yes, sir,” she said, then the intercom disconnected.

“Okay, I want to hear our best options.” He looked to Milton. “And since I'd typically rely on our public responsibilities board member for help, I'm going to need to switch gears this time. Milton, I believe a marketing perspective is the best approach. What do you think?”

Milton nodded at Angela, then looked to Ryan. “From a marketing standpoint, it'd be good to not only show that you are helping with the problem in Thailand, but introduce something new. Take the focus off of that resort, if possible.”

“Any ideas on how to do that?” Ryan asked.

“We don't have any acquisitions that haven't already been announced,” Robert Taylor, head of acquisitions, stated.

“We could increase our donations to the Women's Lighthouse,” Angela offered.

“That doesn't involve more than writing a check, and we'll be accused of simply trying to buy our way out of the negative association with human trafficking,” Milton said. “Perhaps a way to incorporate support and recognition of the Women's Lighthouse in a way that draws attention to the ongoing problem...and our continuing stance on correcting it.”

“I've got it,” Ryan said. He proceeded to tell the board what he had in mind...and then said another prayer that Maribeth would agree.