Wild and Wonderful (8 page)

"What does he want to talk to me about?" Jett continued to watch her while he slipped his tennis racket into its protective carrying case.

"Dad could explain it better than I can." Glenna didn't try to convince him that she didn't know. "I told you before I'm not involved with any of his business affairs."

"Then it is about business?" He requested confirmation of the subject matter.

"Yes." It was a clipped response. She picked up the tennis racket she had used, holding it in an attitude of indecision. "What am I supposed to do with this?" Glenna made a subconscious attempt to divert the conversation.

Jett motioned to an attendant. "He'll return it." Glenna handed it to the young boy who jogged over. As soon as he'd left Jett asked, "Will you be at the meeting?"

"Probably. Why?" She tried to challenge him.

"I just wondered." With a hand resting on the small of her back, he guided her away from the tennis courts.

Glenna was wary of such a noncommittal answer. "What did you wonder?"

His sidelong glance held her gaze for a moment. "If you were a shill."

"A shill," she repeated in growing indignation.

"A shill is a gambling term. It refers to a partner, a decoy used to dupe the victims, into a game—usually a crooked game," he explained.

"I know what it means," Glenna retorted. "But I don't happen to be one."

"It's possible that your purpose could be to divert my attention. You are a very attractive diversion." His glance was swiftly assessing.

Glenna didn't trust herself to look at him, certain she would strike at him again. "But that isn't my purpose."

"So you said," he nodded.

"You really have a very suspicious mind," she stated in a low angry breath. "Does everybody have to have an angle, some ulterior motive?"

"They don't have to but they usually do." His delivery was smoothly offhand, but there was a wealth of cynicism in his words.

"Maybe it's because you do most of your business with underhanded people instead of honest ones like my father," Glenna suggested dryly.

"Get burned a few times, and you'll get leery of fire, too."

Her gaze slid to his face, noting the grimness of his mouth and the forbidding set of his jaw. Glenna realized that his toughness, his hardness came from harsh experience. It lessened her irritation.

"I don't have to be at the meeting," she pointed out. "If it would make you feel more secure, or less suspicious, I'll go for a swim or something. There isn't anything I can contribute to the discussion. And I certainly don't want you to regard me as a distraction. Neither would dad."

As they stopped in front of the elevators, Jett studied her for a long second before commenting on her suggestion. "I have no objection to your presence at the meeting with your father. If you want to attend, you can."

"If it's up to me, I'll be there." Because she knew her presence would provide moral support for her father, which was of greater importance than Jett's distrust.

The elevator doors slid soundlessly open as a bell chimed overhead. Glenna stepped to one side to let its passengers walk by her before entering the empty elevator ahead of Jett.

Chapter Five

THE MEETING was a nerve-racking experience for Glenna. She was curled in a chair off to one side, trying to be as unobtrusive as possible. Her father had begun the meeting by first establishing the profitability of the mine, producing studies and reports for Jett's examination. From there he had gone on to explain previous years' financial difficulties, then the inspection order for safety improvements and the long appeals in order to raise the money to comply with the required standards.

All the while Jett had listened, looked over the papers and reports, and studied the man doing the talking. And all the while his face had been devoid of expression. Never once had he glanced at Glenna since greeting her shortly after he had arrived. She shifted in her chair to ease a cramped leg, yet the movement didn't attract his attention.

"I think that gives you a fairly good idea of my present dilemma." Her father leaned back in his chair to study Jett and try to read his reaction. After an instant's pause he laid out his proposal. "And why I am anxious to form an association…a merger with your firm, to obtain the financial strength I need."

Jett glanced over a report in his hand before leaning forward to set it on the table atop others. "You have explained that your credit has been overextended because of recent economic reversals in the industry. While your operation can't be classified as lucrative, it appears to be stable. Lending institutions have made loans on less strength than what you've shown me. Their reason for refusing you can't be based on your indebtedness or lack of collateral. What was it?" There was something very casual and indifferent about the way Jett shook out a cigarette from its pack and lighted it.

"As you know, a single-mine owner is in a precarious position. He virtually has a one-man operation. If something happens to that one man, there is no operation. On the other hand—" her father shrugged "—your company is made up of a team of men. If something happens to one of them, you replace him, but the loss of one man does not jeopardize your company's existence."

"True," Jett agreed and waited for him to continue.

As Glenna studied her father she noticed the tightening of his mouth. She was well aware of the effort it took for her father to finish his explanation.

"In the last three years I've had two heart attacks. A year from now I may not be here. That's why I can't get a loan," he explained. "If I'm gone, who would run the mine? Glenna certainly couldn't. Not because she's a woman. Her skills happen to be in another field. Without me there's no one to run the operation and make sure the debts are paid."

His statement prompted a question that Glenna unwittingly offered aloud. "What about Bruce?"

Tired gray eyes sent her a rueful look. "Bruce is a competent individual when he has someone to give him directions. He's a stopgap, capable of holding things together alone only over a short period of time," he explained to both her and Jett.

Her gaze was magnetically drawn to Jett. He was eyeing her with quiet contemplation, but she was struck by the emotionless set of his features. When his gaze broke contact with hers, it was to slide downward and linger on the soft outline of her lips. This betrayal of interest was the first he'd shown toward her. It was quickly gone as his attention reverted to her father.

"Without this merger I stand to lose a great deal," Orin said, which was an understatement. "But I'm not the only one who would suffer. The economy of our small community has barely recovered from the last shutdown. I don't know how many could survive if the mine is closed again for an extended period of time."

"I can appreciate what you are saying." Jett exhaled a stream of smoke and tapped his cigarette in an ashtray.

"Naturally I don't have to point out to you the tax advantages your company would enjoy by absorbing my operation. I wouldn't even make this proposition if there wasn't a way you could benefit from it," her father insisted, then paused as if suddenly realizing he had no more arguments to make. "I don't expect you to give me an answer right away. You need time to consider it."

"If I may, I'd like to take a copy of the reports you've shown me so I can go over them." He gestured toward the papers on the table.

"You can take those," her father offered.

"Between tonight and tomorrow I'll have a chance to study them." When Jett uncoiled his length to stand, it signaled an end to the meeting. Whatever followed was merely a formality. "I'll let you know tomorrow afternoon whether I think your proposal is something my company would wish to pursue."

"That sounds fair enough to me." Orin rose with difficulty to shake hands.

Glenna stood, too, as Jett picked up the stack of reports. Her gaze searched his face, but whatever opinion he had, he was keeping it strictly to himself. With a nodded farewell in her direction, he let her father escort him to the door.

When the door was closed behind him, her father turned back to the center of the room, glanced at Glenna, and sighed heavily. "We only have twenty-four more hours to wait before we have a decision. At least we won't be kept dangling for days."

"Excuse me, dad." She hurried to the door that Jett had just exited. "I'll be right back."

"Where are you going?" He blinked in confusion.

"I just want to have a word with him for a minute," Glenna rushed and disappeared into the hallway. She walked swiftly, the poise of maturity giving her an air of confidence. In the corridor ahead of her she saw him opening the door to his suite. "Jett." The firm ring of her voice requested him to wait for her. He paused on the threshold of his suite, an eyebrow slightly quirked in silent inquiry and speculation.

As soon as she reached him Jett entered his suite, sending an invitation over his shoulder for her, "Come in." From the doorway Glenna noticed a second person in the sitting room of Jett's suite. A conservative suit and tie covered his portly figure. His balding head made the man appear considerably older than she suspected he was. When he saw Glenna following Jett into the suite he stood up quickly, self-consciously smoothing his tie down the front of his protruding stomach and trying not to show his surprise.

"This is Don Sullivan," Jett introduced the man in an offhand manner. "He works for me in an organizational capacity. Don, meet Glenna Reynolds."

"How do you do, Mr. Sullivan," Glenna murmured as the man bobbed his head in her direction with faint embarrassment. She bit at the inside of her lip, wondering how she was going to speak to Jett alone.

But he was already arranging it. "Would you mind stepping into the other room for a few minutes, Don?" It was an order, phrased as a question. Before the man could take a step, Jett was handing him the reports her father had let him take. "I want you to look these over, too, so we can discuss them later."

"I will." Again the man bobbed his head at Glenna as he moved his stocky frame toward an inner door.

When it was closed and they were alone Jett turned slowly to meet Glenna's steady look. "You wanted to speak to me?"

"My father told you the whole truth. He didn't leave anything out," she said evenly. "I wanted to be sure you knew that, considering how suspicious you have been."

"I ran a check on your father. The report came back before I met with him this afternoon," he stated. "So I was already familiar with his present situation."

"Then why didn't you let him know?" Glenna frowned.

"If your father is the businessman that I think he is, he has already guessed that I had him checked out. He would have done the same thing in my place." Jett picked up a sheaf of papers that Don Sullivan had been working on when they had come in, and glanced through them.

The implied compliment for her father eased some of her tension. "Then you do believe he is honest."

"Your father mentioned two negative facts that I had no information about…and would probably have had difficulty obtaining. So, yes, I believe he gave me a fair picture." He replaced the loose papers on the table where he'd found them and allowed a faint smile to touch his mouth when he looked at Glenna. "Does that reassure you?"

"Yes." There was an inward sigh as that possible prejudice had been eliminated. A noise in the adjoining room reminded her of the man waiting for him. She took a step toward the hall door. "I won't keep you any longer."

"What? Aren't you going to add your voice to your father's appeal?" A gentle mockery gleamed in his dark eyes, taunting but not cruelly so.

"Would it do any good?" Glenna countered in light challenge.

"It might prove entertaining," he replied with a raking look that was deliberately suggestive. Then his expression sobered. "I will consider it as seriously as I would any business proposition."

Glenna didn't feel she could expect more than that. "Thank you," she murmured and left the room to return to her father's suite.

Despite the reassurance from Jett, the waiting for his decision was difficult, both for Glenna and her father. Throughout the evening she wavered between a certainty that Jett would agree and a cold fear that he would not.

She slept restlessly, waking with the first glint of dawn. After lying in bed for nearly an hour trying to go back to sleep, Glenna climbed out of bed and dressed in a pair of dark blue slacks and a cream white velour sweater. It was half-past five when she ventured into the corridor to take the elevator downstairs.

In the hotel lobby Glenna skirted the restaurant with its aroma of fresh-perked coffee in favor of the invigorating crispness of the early morning air, seeking its quiet serenity to soothe her troubled mind. She wandered through the dew-wet grounds with no particular destination in mind, yet aware her steps were taking her in the general direction of the stables.

For a while it seemed she had it all to herself, sharing the yellow morning only with the twittering birds in the trees, until she noticed a man strolling alongside an inn road. She recognized Jett immediately, her pulses quickening. Her meandering path intersected the road, and she turned onto it to walk toward him, neither hurrying her pace nor slowing it.