Spring Fever (33 page)

“Fine,” Davis said tersely. “You seem to have it all figured out. I’ll leave it to you.”

“Davis, enough!” Mason snapped. “Annajane didn’t hire Donnell Boggs because she wanted to party with a bogus celebrity. You did. Now stop with the pissy attitude and let’s get this fixed.”

Davis stood abruptly and dumped his nearly full Quixie can into a metal trash can, where the sound of metal meeting metal made a hollow clang.

“You can’t fire me,” he told his brother. “And you can’t stop the inevitable. You can slow it down, but only until next week, when old man Norris gets off his ass and tells us how the trust works. But we both know how it’s gonna go down. Mama’s tired of watching this company slide into the dumper. She’ll vote to sell. And when that happens, you’ll be out. I guarantee.”

*   *   *

Mason watched his brother’s exit with a pained expression on his face. He turned to Annajane. “Fun times, huh?”

She winced. “That was pretty brutal.”

“At least we cleared the air,” Mason said. “No more of this bullshit passive-aggressive radio silence. He knows how I feel, and I definitely know where he stands on things. Also, it’s gonna be expensive, but at least we’re shed of that slime-dog Donnell Boggs. I knew that guy was trouble the minute I laid eyes on him.”

“I guess we’re just lucky he got arrested before the new campaign rolled completely out,” Annajane said.

“Luck had nothing to do with it,” Mason said. “I’ve had a private investigator following him for weeks. As soon as he saw Boggs pull into the motel parking lot with that girl yesterday, he called me, and then he tipped the cops.”

30

An unfamiliar woman’s voice on the other end of the line asked, “Is this Annajane Hudgens?”

She glanced at the caller ID screen on her phone, but it said
UNKNOWN.

“Yes,” Annajane said cautiously. “Who’s calling?”

“My name is Katie Derscheid. I’m a friend of a friend of your friend, Pokey Riggs. I understand you’re interested in knowing something about Celia Wakefield and Gingerpeachy?”

Annajane’s pulse quickened. She got up from her desk and closed and locked her office door. Just in case. She’d been working furiously all day, trying to rebuild and rebook the summer Quixie promotion, had even worked straight through lunch, so she’d fortunately managed to avoid Celia. But she wouldn’t put it past Celia to be lurking somewhere nearby.

She sat back down at her desk and straightened her shoulders. “Hi Katie. I was actually going to call you today, until I got involved in putting out assorted forest fires around here.” She lowered her voice til it was just above a whisper, and still deliberately avoided saying Celia’s name out loud. Just in case. “So … you do know her?”

“Ohhhh yes,” Katie Derscheid said. “She’s, uh, not a friend of yours, is she?”

“No,” Annajane said, a slight shiver going down her spine. “Definitely not.”

“Oh goodie,” Katie said. “Now we can really talk girl to girl.”

Annajane laughed ruefully. “She’s a bit of an enigma, isn’t she?”

“She’s a scorpion,” Katie said. “Absolutely deadly. And not in a good way. She screwed my former company, Baby Brands, big-time.”

“Interesting,” Annajane said. “The company I work for, Quixie, hired, um, that person, as a consultant, based on her reputation as a sort of girl genius with branding and business development.”

“Yeah, what’s genius about Celia is her ability to totally bullshit her way through life,” Katie said.

“Did she really sell her company for ten million? That’s what we all heard. In fact, I think she kind of alluded to that herself.”

“The purchase price was actually just under half that—five million,” Katie said. “The deal was structured so that Celia would be paid in staggered amounts. She did take Baby Brands for more than a million in cash, but she’ll never see another dime of their money—not if their lawyers have their say.”

“Oh my,” Annajane breathed. “So … what happened?”

“Smoke and mirrors,” Katie said cryptically. “That was the essence of her company. When Baby Brands bought Gingerpeachy, they were told she had millions in orders from several chain retailers—Gymboree, Pottery Barn Kids, Macy’s. We bought everything—the name, the outstanding orders, the inventory. And all of it was bogus. The order numbers were wildly inflated, and as for inventory—there was none. A couple bolts of fabric and a ton of factory seconds that were unsalable as far as we were concerned.”

Annajane’s eyes widened. “How did she manage to pull that off?”

Katie’s laugh was the deep, throaty chortle of a woman who’d seen a lot. “Celia Wakefield has ESP—extrasensual perception. She meets a guy, and within a couple hours, he’s begging her to ‘beat me, hurt me, make me write bad checks.’”

“And that’s what happened at your company?”

“She met the president of Baby Brands, Reeve Sonnenfeld, in the lobby bar at the Mansion at Turtle Creek, in Dallas, during the Winter Mart week. Celia was repping her own line in a little showroom at the time.”

“I think I know where this is going,” Annajane said. “She met my boss in the exact same way.”

“Gotta love a gal who trolls hotel bars, right?” Katie said with a chuckle. “She’s one step up from a whore, that Celia. Anyway, she strikes up a conversation with Reeve, tells him she’s got this great line of dresses, reversible, all cotton—she even whips a sample dress out of her purse to show him. And then she acts all surprised when he tells her he IS Baby Brands. They have a couple more drinks; then Celia gives him her business card and takes off, leaving Reeve begging for another look, if you know what I mean. Of course, they meet later that night, after Reeve’s wife Sandee has gone back to the suite.”

“Right there in the same hotel with his wife?” Annajane asked.

“Oh, it was all business,” Katie said. “At first. Reeve came back from Dallas raving about this brilliant young entrepreneur he was going to ‘mentor.’ It was revolting. I mean, she’s two years younger than his daughter, for God’s sake. Pretty soon, he’s flying off to meet Celia in Atlanta and LA for Marts there, only those times, he made sure Sandee stayed home. Everybody in the company knew what was going on with those two. Everybody but Sandee.”

Annajane leaned back in her desk chair and looked out her office window. It was getting late in the day. The parking lot was emptying out. She got up and walked over to the window. If she stood at just the right angle, she could see Celia’s parking space. It was empty. She exhaled noisily.

“Hey, are you still there?” Katie asked.

“I’m here,” Annajane said. “What happened next?”

“The inevitable,” Katie said. “Reeve got the brilliant idea to buy Gingerpeachy. As soon as the deal was inked, Celia and Reeve were history. And we were left holding a big bag of Gingerpeachy crap. It couldn’t have happened at a worse time. You know what the economy’s like.”

“Is Baby Brands in trouble?” Annajane asked.

“They’ll survive,” Katie said drily. “Of course, it meant some belt tightening. Which meant I lost my job.”

“Oh, wow, I’m sorry,” Annajane said. “So, how does she get away with something like that? I mean, isn’t what she did fraud or something?”

“Or something,” Katie said. “It’s all been kept pretty hush-hush. But yeah, I think Baby Brands has started legal action against Celia.”

“You mentioned Celia met your vice president at a hotel bar,” Katie said. “Are they having a fling?”

“No. Davis was infatuated with her, but strictly on a professional basis, as far as I know,” Annajane said. She was somehow reluctant to reveal to this stranger that Celia had targeted a much bigger fish at Quixie, in the form of Mason. “He brought her into the company as a consultant, based on what he thought was her marketing expertise and, of course, because of her track record starting and selling a successful retail business like Gingerpeachy.”

Katie’s laugh sounded sour. “Let me just fill you in on Celia Wakefield. First of all, is she still peddling that line of crap about how she designed the original PopTot dress?”

“Yeah,” Annajane said. “I’ve seen the dresses. They really are adorable.”

“They’re very adorable,” Katie said. “But there’s some question of who actually came up with the idea for them.”

“Really?”

“After Baby Brands bought out Gingerpeachy,
Parenting
magazine did a nice spread on the dresses,” Katie said. “Not long afterwards, the reporter who did the piece called to let us know that
she’d
had a call from a woman claiming that Celia stole the idea from her.”

“Why do I have a mental image of the theme music from
Jaws
in my head?” Annajane asked.

“A shark would be insulted to be compared to Celia,” Katie said. “Celia happened to be working at a boutique and she got hold of one of this girl’s sample dresses, which she was sewing at home with her mother. So Celia, sniffing an opportunity, drew up a business plan, hired a sewing room, and turned out a line of dresses exactly like the ones from the boutique. The next thing you know, she’s the girl genius of retailing.”

“Did you do anything to check out the other woman’s claim?” Annajane asked.

“Nope,” Katie said. “It’s not like she trademarked the dresses. Anyway, there wasn’t anything we could do about it. We listened to her story, but what could we do? We’d been victimized, too. By then, Celia was long gone.”

“I know,” Annajane said, putting down her pencil. “By then, she was here.”

There was a knock at Annajane’s office door. Her pulse quickened. “Katie, I have to go now. There’s somebody at my door. Thanks so much for the information.”

*   *   *

Mason stood in the hallway outside her office, his laptop case slung over his shoulder.

“Hey, you,” he said, looking puzzled. “You’re locking yourself in now?”

“Sorry,” Annajane said. “I had so much going on; I just couldn’t deal with distractions today.”

“Wish I could lock myself in. Or other people out,” Mason said. “Look, it’s nearly six. Wanna go get some dinner?”

Annajane looked up and down the hallway. “I don’t know,” she murmured. “I’ve still got a ton of work to catch up on.”

“Let it go until tomorrow,” Mason said firmly.

“It’s not just that,” she said. “You know how people are. If they see us out together, it’ll just fire up the rumor mill again.”

“So?” He brushed his hand through his hair, impatient. “I’ve got news for you, Annajane. People in this town already think we’re having some big flaming affair.”

“I hate being the topic of gossip,” Annajane said.

Mason rolled his eyes. “Me, too. Especially when I’m not even getting to do the things people suspect we’re already doing.” He caught her hand. “Come on. Please? We’ve wasted five years pretending we don’t care about each other. I don’t want to waste any more time. Do you?”

She felt so torn. She wanted to see him, be with him. Why was it so hard to say yes to making herself happy?

“Annajane?”

“All right,” she said finally. “But I’ve got to finish up a couple things. I’ll meet you. Where?”

“There’s a new place, Blueplate, in Creekdale. Where the old Emile’s used to be? But it’s silly to drive all the way over there in two separate cars. I’ll go home, check on Sophie, shower and change, and meet you back here—in an hour?”

“It’s a deal,” Annajane said. On impulse, she leaned in and kissed him on the cheek.

He raised an eyebrow in surprise. “Now you’re talking.”

31

Blueplate was located in a small wood-shingled cottage set back from the road in Creekdale. Annajane had eaten there once when it had been Emile’s, but hadn’t cared for the ersatz French menu—or the haughty waiters.

Now, though, the place had been transformed. Rough whitewashed plaster walls replaced the overblown red damask wallpaper, and the furnishings were a friendly mélange of wooden tables and mismatched chairs. A small bar took up most of the entryway, and, beyond, they could hear the clatter of dishes and the hum of conversations in the dining room.

The hostess, a slender brunette with pale skin and tattoos wreathing both wrists, identified herself as Tabitha, the owner and wife of the chef, as she gathered up a menu and silverware for them.

“It’s such an awesome night; I think we have a table out on the patio, if you want,” Tabitha offered.

Annajane looked to Mason for approval. “That’d be great,” he said. “We’ve both been cooped up in an office all day. It’ll be nice to have some fresh air.”

As they were led through the dining room, Annajane kept her face lowered and stayed a couple steps ahead of Mason. Realizing that she still felt awkward and self-conscious about being seen in public with him, she gave herself a mental scolding.

Stop hiding! You’ve done nothing wrong. Anyway, it’s only dinner.

The patio was just as charming as the interior of the restaurant, with a rough-beamed peaked ceiling lined with twinkling white lights and a flagstone floor. Despite her earlier internal scolding, Annajane was grateful when the hostess seated them at a table shielded from the rest of the room by an enormous potted hydrangea whose platter-sized blue blossoms formed an effective screen.

They ordered drinks. Mason looked surprised at her order.

“Since when do you drink martinis?” he asked, sitting back in his chair and regarding her with interest. “You always used to like those girly drinks—what, cosmos?”

“Tastes change,” she said lightly. “People change. But I know you still like bourbon.”

“I’ve changed in other ways,” Mason said. “Older and wiser, I hope. More cynical, definitely.”

A single candle in a low jar in the center of the table illuminated his face. She studied it now. His thick blond hair had a few streaks of gray, and crow’s feet etched the corners of his eyes, which somehow seemed a deeper blue, not the clear blue she remembered from their youth. His jawline was still firm, and she realized, with surprise, that he seemed to have lost weight, his cheeks somewhat hollow, his worn blue blazer hanging awkwardly from his shoulders. And now that she thought about it, his khaki slacks bunched at the waist where his belt cinched them too tightly.