Facets (57 page)

The swell of triumph in the air was nearly tangible. It came from everyone present but John. Incredibly, he maintained his poise. He didn’t even blink. Ignoring Patricia, he said to Cutter, “If you have something to say, spit it out. I don’t have all day.”

If Cutter had been holding a gun to John’s head—a regular fantasy of his—and John had told him to shoot, he would have done just that. In the absence of a gun, he said in a clear voice, “We’re taking you over.”

John nodded. “Uh-huh.”

“It’s true,” Pam assured him, but Cutter held up a hand to still her before she said more. This was his baby. It had been years in the planning and years in the carrying out. He wanted the pleasure all to himself.

“A while back, I started an investment banking firm. My partners and I have done well. Our client list has quadrupled in the last few years, and in that time, many of those clients have picked up St. George Company common stock. We have enough now to take you over.”

“That’s impossible,” John said. He was still sitting back in his chair with his fingers laced over his middle and would have looked complacent had his knuckles not been white. “You’d need a majority for that, but I can personally account for better than fifty-five percent of the company stock. Forty-five percent is held by the family, another ten percent by close friends.”

“Forty-five percent may be held by family,” Cutter informed him, “but thirty of that forty-five percent agree with this takeover.”

John’s reaction was subtle. Cutter had to hand it to the man; his self-control was like iron. Other than the faint paling of his skin, there was nothing.

“Thirty percent? How do you figure that?”

“Pam will vote for a change in company leadership. So will Patricia.”

“Patricia doesn’t control her stock,” John replied. “I do.”

“Not for long,” Patricia put in. Her voice was shaky, but her words were clear. “I’ve already asked my lawyer to see about returning control to me.”

Unable to ignore her a second time, John gave a negligent shake of his head. “He won’t succeed. You’ve been in a mental hospital for more than twenty years. No judge is going to suddenly decide that you’re competent.”

Bob Grossman straightened and said more forcefully than Patricia, “She’s competent. I’ll testify to it. She’s been competent for years.”

“Then why has she been hospitalized?”

“Because she chose to live in a defined environment.”

“If that isn’t crazy,” John tossed off, “I don’t know what is.”

Pam had stiffened and was about to come to her mother’s defense when Bob beat her to it. “It’s not crazy. Most people have the need to build walls around themselves. Some do it in the form of a close group of friends, others in the form of a business, others in the form of where they live. No, there’s nothing crazy about Patricia, and believe me, I know what crazy is.”

“That’s right. You’re a psychiatrist. You’ve been treating her all these years, yet you claim she’s competent. Quite frankly, that sounds like fraud.”

Bob was unfazed. “The majority of people in therapy are competent. One has little to do with the other. And as for Patricia, she’ll be leaving the hospital soon. We’re getting married.”

Cutter hadn’t known that. He was happy for Patricia, and glancing at Pam, he read the same on her face. John, too, looked pleased, but in an ugly way.

“Ahhh,” he said. “Now it makes sense. You were taken with the woman, so you kept her at the hospital all this time. You accepted the hefty fees she paid for room and board, and the even heftier fees she paid for your services. Suddenly, when you sense fresh money in the pot, you say that she’s competent, that she should be discharged, that she can marry you. I’d think the medical board would like to hear this story.”

Pam flew to her feet. “Oh no you don’t,
no-oo
you don’t. You’ve pulled that trick one too many times. Threatening to blackmail Bob won’t work. He hasn’t done a thing wrong.”

“He took advantage of a helpless woman who depended on him.”

“I’m not helpless,” Patricia said in a huff. “I let myself be helpless when I was younger. That was when you took advantage of me. Bob has never done that.”

“I’m aware of the ethical considerations here, Mr. St. George,” Bob said. “At no time during Patricia’s stay at my hospital have I taken advantage of her. I haven’t touched her physically. She pays the same fees as every other patient. And she has been seeing another therapist, not me, for a year now. Besides, when we get married, we’ll be living in my house, a house that I bought twelve years ago and have been paying off ever since. I won’t take her money. I’ve already told her that, and I’ll be putting it in writing—at my insistence, not hers.” He took a quick breath. “Sorry, chum, but you’re barking up the wrong tree.”

“I’m not your chum,” John ground out.

“Thank God for it,” was Bob’s response, and for a minute there was utter silence.

Cutter ended it by clearing his throat. “I’d suggest we move on.” He waited only until Pam was seated before saying to John, “You’re outvoted. Pam favors a change, Patricia favors a change, I favor a change, and so do my clients.”

John’s voice came more sharply. “Your clients only know what you feed them. If they took the time to read the company reports—”

“They’ve taken the time—”

“—they’d see that the business is thriving under my leadership. There’s no cause for a change.”

“They feel there is.”

“Only because you tell them that.”

Cutter shrugged. He was feeling pretty good, pretty confident, pretty satisfied with the way things were going. John was starting to worry. He was starting to look a little pinched around the mouth. His hands weren’t linked anymore, and he was sitting straighter.

“I made
Facets
,” he said in a commanding voice. “Those stores are mine. Neither you nor anyone else in this room is going to take them away from me.”

Cutter turned first toward Pam and Brendan, then Patricia and Bob. When he caught sight of Hillary, who was pressed back against one of the library doors with her arms wrapped around her middle, staring at John, he felt a moment’s compassion. At the same time, he wanted to shake her into realizing that what was happening was for the best. He couldn’t believe that she still loved the man—couldn’t believe that she’d ever loved him.

Slowly he turned back to John. “It seems,” he said in a quiet and dignified tone that, given his modest beginnings, mocked John, “that you won’t have much choice. We have the votes.” He reached into his blazer and pulled a thick envelope from its inner pocket. “I have the proxies necessary should we decide to call an emergency meeting of the board.”

“You’re not calling a meeting of my board.”

“It’s my board, too,” Cutter took pleasure in reminding him. “I’m a stockholder.”

“An insignificant one.”

“Alone, perhaps. But I’m not alone. I have all these other people just dying to get you booted out.”

“You’ve brainwashed them.”

“I didn’t have to do anything as drastic as that.” As business associates of Cutter’s, they were more than ready to follow his lead.

“You have no legitimate reason to have me removed.”

“Do I need one?”

John came to his feet then and set his shoulders back. “You sure as hell do. I made this company. My record is impeccable. Our profits have grown every year. The stockholders have received healthy dividends.”

“That’s not the point,” Cutter replied calmly. “The point is that you serve at the will of the board of directors, which serves at the will of the general stockholding population.”

“The board is on my side.”

“Maybe the old board. The new board won’t be.” He waved the envelope that was still in his hand. “I have a proposed slate of officers here. It’s an interesting group. I think they’ll want their own man as head of the company.” No longer pale but slightly red-faced now, John looked as though steam were building inside him. “And that man is you?”

“Me? God, no. I have my own business. I don’t want to be head of the St. George Company. But I do have some people in mind for the job. All of them have experience with international corporations.”

“None of them are part of this family. My father conceived of the St. George Company as a family business.”

“Your father,” Cutter spat back, losing it for a minute, “would have kicked you out long ago if he’d known all you did to Pam and Patricia. And to me.” He took a steadying breath. “You don’t have to worry that the company will go to pot. It’ll thrive, even expand.”

“It’s my company.”

“You’ll certainly still own your stock—”

“I
am
the company.”

“Not for much longer. As I started to say before,” he held up the proxies one last time before slipping them back into his pocket, “we can either call an emergency meeting or wait for the annual meeting in November. If you resign now—”

“I’m not resigning!” John bellowed, sounding so much like Eugene that Cutter had a moment’s pause, but only a moment’s. That fiery temperament was about all the two men shared. Remembering Eugene, remembering how much heart and soul the man had, how much he would have wanted for Patricia and Pam that they hadn’t had, Cutter was hardened.

“You have a choice,” he told John coolly, curtly. He was finished with toying. It was time for the belt with the five rows of metal studs. “You can resign now, in which case an acting president will be chosen until the annual meeting. Or you can fight us. If you decide to do that, we’ll call an emergency meeting and push things through sooner. We have enough votes, John.
More
than enough votes. You don’t have a chance of winning. It’s just a question of how hard you fall.” He barely paused for a breath before hauling back and swinging the belt again. “If you fight us, we’ll get dirty. You’ll go down anyway, but we’ll bad-mouth you all the way. On the other hand, if you submit your resignation and get out of the picture, we’ll be quiet. You can pack up your things and take your expertise somewhere else. You’ll get a job in a minute. They’ll fight over you, and the only explanation you’ll have to give for leaving the St. George Company is that you wanted a change. Or you can sell your interest in St. George and start a new business. Or you can retire. You can move down south or out west. In any case, you’ll have your reputation intact. If you resign. Within the week.”

John stood frozen. “That’s blackmail.”

“You should know. You’ve used it often enough.”

“You can’t do this.”

“It’s done. I have Pam’s support and Patricia’s support and,” he patted his breast pocket, “the support of a majority of the remaining stockholders. Face it, John. You’re beaten.”

“No. I’ve worked too hard to get where I am. I’m the force behind the company—”

“I’m the force behind
Facets
,” Pam interrupted. “My designs are the backbone of our business. So it won’t really matter if you’re gone. The merchandise will be every bit as good, if not better.”

John’s eyes narrowed on her. “You’ve been dying for this. You’ve been working up to it since the day you came to work for me.”

“Since long before that,” she corrected, “and I work with you, not for you.”

“You’ve been just waiting to get your claws into me.”

She grinned. “Got them in good now, don’t I?”

To Brendan, John said, “She’s making a mistake. They all are. You don’t fix something that’s not broken. You’re a businessman. You know that.”

Brendan answered in a voice that was raspy but firm. “I know that change is good sometimes. It puts a fresh perspective on things. Like the airing of dirty laundry. It makes the room smell a whole lot better.”

Pam chuckled.

John glared at her. “Think that’s funny? You won’t be laughing when the figures start falling.”

“They won’t. I have faith in Cutter. He knows what he’s doing.” She grew puzzled. “Didn’t you have any inkling of it? Didn’t you see it at all? Didn’t you have any idea that he was becoming a force to be reckoned with? Where have you been all these years?”

“I’ve been working my tail off making
Facets
a success.”

“You’ve been hobnobbing with the rich and famous.”

“I am the rich and famous.”

“Maybe,” she conceded, “and there’s nothing we can do to change that. But you won’t be entertaining your friends on
Facets’
expense account anymore. You’ll be on your own.”

He considered that for a minute. He looked from her face to Cutter’s, to Patricia’s. In the process, some of the steam seemed to leave him. “It’s revenge, then?” Again he looked around. “Is that it? Revenge?”

“You could say,” Cutter replied, but with the loss of John’s steam he too was feeling less anger. “I prefer to call it poetic justice.”

“There’s no poetic justice in this, not after all the years I’ve worked to build the company.”

“While you were working to build the company, the rest of us were working to find firm footing after you’d knocked the ground out from under us. We’ve worked just as hard as you have, each in our own way.” He nodded. “This is poetic justice.”

John remained quiet. He stared at Cutter for a bit, then frowned down at the desk. When he looked back up, his chin was cocked at an arrogant angle. “I won’t do a thing until I see the paperwork backing up what you’ve said. As far as I’m concerned, you’re bluffing.”