The Boss, the Baby and Me. Raye MorganЧитать онлайн книгу.
her eyes and looked expectantly from one person to another at the table, obviously trying to gauge how they liked what they were eating. When her gaze met her sister’s, she favored her with a warm smile. At least one good thing had come out of all this. Rita was happy to have most of the family together again.
Rita took care of the house and the family the way their mother would have if she hadn’t died twelve years before. She was a wonderful homemaker, and she deserved to have a loving man in her life and a family of her own. Unfortunately, you didn’t meet many great, un-attached men at the meat counter at the Chivaree supermarket these days. And Rita didn’t often veer much farther from home than that.
Matt had been her partner in reuniting the family. But Matt didn’t look happy, the way Rita did. Matt was the oldest male child in the family. He was the one who had shown up on Jodie’s doorstep, in Dallas, a month before and talked her into coming back home, giving her a long spiel about how they all needed to pull together now that their father was ill. These days, he seemed to care about that almost as much as Rita did.
In many ways, Matt had been Jodie’s original role model. After all, he’d been the first to defy their father and leave town, heading for medical school in Atlanta. He’d worked for years in a large urban hospital, and now he was back in his dumpy little hometown. She noted the brooding look on his handsome face and wondered what had put it there. Something was bothering him. She had no idea what it was.
But she didn’t have to worry about things like that with her sunny brother David, the one she looked the most like. They both had blond hair and brown eyes and a sprinkling of freckles over short noses.
Sitting next to Matt and eating everything he could get on his plate with youthful enthusiasm, David was the one who had never really left. Someone had asked her just the other day why such a handsome, happy-go-lucky young man who looked like he should be on a surfboard in Malibu would stay in Chivaree when there was a whole world out there for him. She’d laughed and said he was too lazy to leave. But that wasn’t true. She supposed she might be the only one who knew the real reason why he stayed. Love made people do strange things sometimes.
And then there was dark-eyed Rafe, the brother who was the same age as Kurt McLaughlin, the one now looking at her with a penetrating gaze that said, Hey, Jodie, don’t try to con me. I can see right through this polite little act you’re putting on. I can read your mind.
She stared right back at him with a half smile, hoping he got the message. Mind your own business!
“Hey, Pop,” David said, greeting their father as he entered the room. “You going to try to eat something?”
Leaning on his cane, the gray-haired man shook his head as Rita jumped up to pull out a chair for him. “No. I can’t eat anything. I just wanted to come out and sit with you all and look at your faces.” He sat down heavily, then made a scan of the table. “My pride and joy,” he muttered in a tone that could have been loving, but sounded a little sarcastic.
Glancing at him and then away, Jodie felt a stew of conflicting emotion—love, resentment, anger, pity. What could you do when you disliked your own parent almost as much as you loved him?
“So you all came back to save the farm for the old man, eh?” He laughed softly. “I guess I raised myself a bunch of good ones after all.”
“Hey, Pop,” Rafe said, leaning forward. “I was talking to our Dallas distributor today. Looks like we might have a shot at getting a contract with the whole Wintergreen Store chain. That could be huge for us.”
Jesse Allman nodded, but he wasn’t looking at Rafe. His gaze was trained on his oldest son. He’d been trying to get Matt to fulfill the role of heir apparent in the business for years, without a lot of success. Though Matt had often helped out in the old days when all they had was the tiny, struggling Allman Winery, he’d been away at college when Jesse had developed the plan to become the distributor for all the little wineries of this part of Texas hill country. That had launched all the success, and it was no secret Jesse thought Matt ought to be involved. “You got a dog in this fight, Matt?” he asked.
Matt looked surprised. “What about?”
“This Wintergreen thing.”
Matt shrugged. “It’s up to you, Pop. You know I’m not into the business side of things.”
Jesse’s eyes narrowed. “You oughta be,” he said shortly.
Matt and Rafe exchanged glances. “Talk to Rafe,” Matt said calmly. “He’s the one who knows what’s going on.”
Jodie sighed. It was the same old story. Did nothing ever change? The Allman family business had grown larger, morphing into Allman Industries, and the Allman family had gotten richer, changing from the old scruffy bunch who seemed to skim along just this side of lawbreaking into this vaguely respectable family that provided a good chunk of the local jobs. But the old emotions still simmered just below the surface. She was beginning to wonder if it hadn’t been a big mistake for her to come back.
“What’s eatin’ you, missy?” her father said, looking at her accusingly. “You still trying to get me to get rid of that McLaughlin boy?”
Jodie winced and put a napkin to her lips. “I never said I wanted you to get rid of him,” she protested. “I just want you to be aware of the danger he poses.”
“Danger?’” David looked up with a grin. “Ole Kurt McLaughlin? He’s a pussycat.”
“I don’t trust the McLaughlins any more than you do,” Matt chimed in. “But I’ve got to admit, Kurt is doing a fine job with marketing. We’re lucky to have him.”
She glanced quickly around the table, realizing with a sense of astonishment that she didn’t have anyone on her side at all. Not one of them understood how dangerous it was to let a man like Kurt into the power structure of their family business.
“I know your game, missy.” Jesse grinned at his daughter. “You’re like me. You can’t forget or forgive.” He slapped the flat of his hand down on the table. “But I’m not getting rid of him. Hell, no. He’s good at what he does. I don’t care if he is a McLaughlin. In fact, I love that he’s a McLaughlin. I love the looks on their pompous faces when I’m in town, or at the chamber of commerce meetings. I can smile at them and say, ‘Your fair-haired boy is workin’ for me now. Because I’m the one who’s making it in this town. You McLaughlins are done for.’”
She was reminded of all the reasons why she’d run away from this man in the first place, when she was a rebellious eighteen-year-old. She’d planned never to come back. And she might have stuck to that plan if Matt hadn’t found her and talked her into coming home again.
“He’s old, Jodie,” Matt had told her earnestly. “Old and sick. He needs us. All of us.”
She noticed with a start that her father’s hands were shaking, and her gaze flew to his face, searching for evidence. To her surprise, her heart began to race with something close to fear. Matt was right. He was old and sick. She might still be angry with him for things he’d done in the past, but he was still her father and, deep down, she cared for him. Okay, it was good that she’d come home. And despite everything, she had to stay, at least for a while.
And that meant she had to deal with Kurt McLaughlin.
A memory sailed into her head of how it had felt with his arms around her in the elevator car, and she almost gasped aloud. She definitely had to harden herself to his lethal charm. She was stuck working for him, and maybe that was for the best. After all, somebody had to look out for the good of the family.
An hour later, she escaped from the tensions in the house and took a brisk walk toward the newly renovated downtown. The sky was velvet-blue, with a full moon rising. The air was warm and dry. She could smell newly cut hay somewhere nearby.
She’d paced these same streets when she was eighteen and trying to figure out what she was going to do. And just around the corner was the little park where she and Jeremy used to meet secretly