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Keep it light, she told herself. Keep it light. ‘Since when do I fish?’
He did not look mad. He gave her a slightly harassed smile. ‘We’re just up here for a meeting. I told you.’
That was when Pepper started to get a really bad feeling about the trip.
She hid it. ‘Do I need my visual aids?’ she said dryly. She had brought all the stuff with her for a really great presentation of Out of the Attic.
He shook his head.
‘Somehow, you don’t surprise me,’ she said with irony. ‘Okay. Lead on.’
It was really quite a simple cabin—single storey, in need of repair. The way down to it was full of puddles, too. Her shiny black city pumps, discreetly plain and shockingly expensive, were never going to be the same again. Still, at least she didn’t take a tumble—unlike Ed.
Rain dripped through the trees. It soaked Pepper’s hair until the elegant auburn pleat turned black and flattened on the top of her head. It darkened the shoulders of her designer label navy jacket. She felt an uncomfortable trickle down the neck of her pearl silk blouse. But it wasn’t the spring rain that sent chills up and down her spine.
‘If the CIA are trying to recruit me, you can tell them now—no dice.’
But it was not the CIA, any more than it was the nonexistent investors. Or Ed in romantic excess.
It was someone who was coming out onto the rough stoop at the sound of their approach.
It was her grandmother.
All desire to find humour in the situation left Pepper abruptly. She stopped dead. The look she turned on Ed was hot enough to melt asbestos.
Bad conscience made Ed peevish. ‘No need to be so dramatic. It’s just business.’
Pepper was very pale. ‘No, Ed. It’s my life.’
He looked down his nose. ‘Now you’re talking like a teen queen.’
She looked back at the cabin. Mary Ellen Calhoun was watching them attentively. Even in the wet spring woods she was wearing Paris design and diamonds. Pepper saw the gleam of Venetian earnings under her grandmother’s cap of skilfully tinted dark hair. Mary Ellen Calhoun was seventy-three but she would go to her grave a brunette.
Pepper said, ‘What did my grandmother promise you to get me here?’
He looked genuinely shocked. ‘Nothing. She just wanted me to stop you making a big mistake.’
‘It’s a mistake to back my own idea? I thought that was why we went to business school.’
‘Look, Pepper,’ he said patiently, ‘Out of the Attic is a retail start-up. That’s five years of your life, minimum. Mary Ellen doesn’t want to wait five years to get you back on board at Calhoun Carter.’
‘Since when do you call her Mary Ellen? You been talking to her a lot recently, Ed?’
He winced. ‘Not really. We—er—bumped into each other at a charity reception a couple of weeks ago…’
‘My grandmother doesn’t go to charity receptions for fun,’ said Pepper dispassionately. ‘And she never bumps into anyone.’
He looked at her, half-defiant, half-ashamed. Pepper squared her shoulders.
‘Oh, well, it had to happen some time, I guess. Wait here,’ she told Ed quietly. ‘This is not going to be pretty.’
The moment she came face to face with her grandmother Pepper knew what was going to happen. One look and she just knew.
It was there, in Mary Ellen’s black currant eyes. Mary Ellen wanted the last of the Calhouns back on the board. Like now.
Not that you could tell that from her behaviour. Mary Ellen came forward, hands out, smiling, just as she always did. Glutinously innocent. Pepper had learned to distrust that innocence the way she would distrust a basking snake.
Of course, Mary Ellen was not your average grandmother. She had been President of Calhoun Carter since her husband had died thirty-three years ago. That sort of thing gave you an edge. Pepper might distrust her, but she respected her, too. And she was realising that she was fighting for her life.
She did not take the hands held out to her. She said quietly, ‘Hello, Grandmother.’
Mary Ellen looked startled. It was a voice she did not recognise.
Not surprising, thought Pepper. She didn’t recognise it herself.
‘It’s good to see you, honey,’ Mary Ellen said in her soft, deceptive, ladylike tones.
‘No, it isn’t. It’s business,’ said Pepper grimly. ‘Spare me the fancy stuff. Get on with it.’
The two women’s eyes locked.
Then Mary Ellen gave the tinkling laugh she had perfected in the days when she was a popular debutante; before she’d married her way out of impoverished gentility; before she’d hijacked her husband’s company and became a ruthless tycoon.
‘Then you’d better come in out of the rain,’ she said with a charming pout.
‘And Ed?’ Pepper was mocking. ‘Do you want him in out of the rain as well?’
Mary Ellen frowned. ‘He’s a man. A little rain won’t kill him.’
‘Thought you wouldn’t want any witnesses.’ Pepper nodded.
Mary Ellen did not deign to answer that. She stalked inside like an empress. And the moment the door closed behind her granddaughter she abandoned innocence, ladylike charm and the pout all in one go. Suddenly she looked what she was, thought Pepper. Seventy-three years old and mean as a snake.
Pepper drew a deep breath. ‘Okay. Fire away. I can see that you’ve heard about Out of the Attic. What do you think can do to stop me?’
Mary Ellen smiled. ‘I’ve already done it.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Really, you are such a child. I told the finance department to put it around that anyone who lent money to you could kiss goodbye to Carter Calhoun business. For ever.’
Pepper went very still. ‘I see. I suppose they were doing that this morning? That’s why you had Ed get me out of town? So I wouldn’t be there if anyone wanted to call me to check?’
Mary Ellen shrugged. ‘What’s to check?’
But Pepper knew she was right. Mary Ellen had made sure Pepper was out of the way when the news broke in case she found a way to fight back.
‘You always did fight dirty,’ Pepper said. ‘Why didn’t I remember that?’
Mary Ellen was impatient. ‘I want you back in the firm. You know that. This little idea of yours is just a waste of time.’ She opened her electronic organiser. ‘Shall we say—middle of next week? That will give you time to move out of that nasty apartment and get yourself home, where you belong. I’ll tell Jim to organise you an office.’
‘No,’ said Pepper quietly.
Mary Ellen extracted the stylus and tapped in a deliberate note. ‘Seven forty-five on Wednesday,’ she said, as if Pepper hadn’t spoken. ‘Go to the plant and ask for Connie. She’s the Human Resources Manager now. She’ll find—’
Pepper raised her voice. ‘I said no.’
The inside of the cabin was very dusty, but Mary Ellen had cleaned up a corner for herself. Typically it was the best chair in the room. And it was set at the desk. She sat down now and steepled her fingertips.
‘You don’t have a choice,’ she said calmly. ‘Your little business is a busted flush. Who else but me would employ you?’
Pepper stared. Her thoughts whirled like a rising storm.
I thought she loved me. She doesn’t. She just loves making everyone dance to her tune. How on earth did I miss that?
It hurt. It really hurt.
‘Let me spell it out for you,’ said Mary Ellen. She sounded almost motherly.
That truly sickened Pepper. For a moment she could not speak.
Mary Ellen misunderstood her silence. Mary Ellen thought she had won. But then Mary Ellen always did win.
‘Look at it this way. You’re the last Calhoun. Anyone in the retail business is going to think you’re a spy. A business in any other sector will just think you have to be a liability or you’d be in the family firm where you belong. It’s a nobrainer.’
Pepper was shaking. ‘A no-brainer,’ she agreed with heavy irony.
Mary Ellen gave her famously charming, naughty child smile. ‘Sure,’ she agreed. ‘Glad you see it so clearly. Your little idea is dead. You won’t get funding from anyone in North America.’ She tapped the organiser. ‘See you Wednesday.’
Pepper drew a deep breath. Get a grip, she told herself feverishly, get a grip. Lose your temper and she’s won. She already thinks she’s won. This is your last chance…
And she said quietly, ‘No.’
She was right. Mary Ellen had been quite sure that she had won. She did not believe that Pepper would hold out. Startled, furious, disbelieving, she went on the attack. Mary Ellen Calhoun on the attack did not take prisoners.
Pepper just stood there, under an assault of words like hailstones. In the end they all came back to the same point. Pepper was Calhoun Carter Industries’ property, bought and paid for over years. The very best education money could buy had seen to that. Along with the house in the South of France, the condo in New York, the South Sea Island mountain retreat, her suite in the Calhoun mansion…
Pepper hung on to cool reason but it was an effort. ‘But they aren’t mine.’
Mary Ellen showed her teeth in a shark’s smile. ‘Got it at last!’
Oh, Pepper got it. Slowly. Reluctantly. With disbelief. But she got it.
‘You mean that all the stuff you’ve given me over the years—’
‘Invested,’ corrected Mary Ellen coldly. ‘You are an investment. Nothing more.’
If Pepper had been pale before, she was ashen now. This was the woman who had introduced her at parties as ‘my little princess’?
Mary Ellen smiled. ‘Think about it. The European schools. The year in Paris. Seed corn. I even arranged for you to go to business school five years younger than everyone else, so you wouldn’t want time out when the company needed you.’
Pepper was outraged. ‘The business school took me on my own merits. I won a prize, for God’s sake.’
Mary Ellen mocked that, too. ‘Problem solving! When did you ever solve a problem? All your problems have been bought off by Calhoun money.’
That was when Mary Ellen listed them. Not just the right schools, the right clothes, the right apartments, the right friends. The senior businessmen who had taken her calls and talked to her like an equal. The junior businessmen who had dated her…
Dated…?
Pepper gulped. Her blouse was not just damp and cold any more. It was icy. A cascade of icicles was thundering down her spine. She was shivering so much she could hardly speak.
‘What do you mean? What have my dates got to do with this?’
Mary Ellen saw that she had scored a hit. Her eyes gleamed.
‘You have no idea what it cost me to get you a social life,’ she went on with that trill of laughter that was her trademark. It was very musical, very ladylike. But the eyes that met Pepper’s across the dusty old cabin were not ladylike in the least.
Even so—dated?
‘You’re nothing but a potato,’ said Mary Ellen, light and cruel and suddenly horribly believable. ‘Who would bother with you if you weren’t my grandchild?’
Pepper was the first to admit that she was not fashionably slender, but she had always thought she was good company. That her friends liked her for that. She said so.
Mary Ellen’s hard little eyes snapped. ‘And I suppose you think that one day you’ll meet Prince Charming and get married, too? Grow up!’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘You have only one chance to be a bride,’ said Mary Ellen, showing her teeth like a shark. ‘And that’s if I buy you a husband. After all those mercy dates I paid for, I’ve got a good long list of candidates.’
That was when Pepper knew that she could not take any more. There was no point in even trying. With a superhuman effort, she told her icy muscles to stop shaking and move. And she walked out.
Mary Ellen was not expecting it. ‘Where are you going?’ she yelled, suddenly not even pretending to be ladylike any more.
Pepper did not stop. She went running, scrambling up the soggy path, to where Ed was sitting.
Her grandmother ran after her, but halted at the point where the path began to climb.
‘You get back here this minute,’ she yelled.
Pepper did not stop. Not even when she fell to one knee. Not even when she felt her pantyhose tear and blood trickle down her shin. She didn’t care. She didn’t care about anything but getting away from the grandmother whose affection had been a lie right from the start.
By the time she reached Ed, she was panting. ‘Take me back to New York,’ she said. ‘Take me back now.’
He hesitated, but only for a moment. It would have taken a braver man than Ed Ivanov to face Mary Ellen in this mood. He took Pepper’s arm and hurried her towards the clearing where the helicopter was waiting.
Ladylike, five foot two, Mary Ellen had a voice like a bass drum when roused. It reached them easily. So did the fury.
‘You’ll never make it on your own, Penelope Anne Calhoun, do you hear me? I own you.’
