Sweet Fortune (36 page)

“I have a hunch Elizabeth will be content to let Jessie guide her when it comes to making decisions for Benedict.”

“Jessie? That's a joke. Jessie doesn't know beans about running this show either.”

Hatch smiled faintly. “But Jessie will be married to me, remember? She'll let me make all the decisions for Benedict Fasteners. I'll be running the show, just like you planned all along.”

“Except that half of the ownership will be in other hands. No, I won't have this company torn into little pieces, dammit.”

“Not little pieces. Big pieces. Pieces which I will control either directly or indirectly.”

“You can't be certain of retaining control of things if you've got three other owners involved. They could outvote you if they got together and decided to go in a different direction.”

“There's a risk, I'll admit it. But I know your family, Vincent. The risk is a small one. I can deal with it.”

“You don't know that, goddammit.” Benedict pounded the table once more and shot to his feet. “There's no way to be certain you can stay in command if you've got the company divided up into quarters.”

“I'm willing to chance it.”

“Well, I'm not,” Vincent shouted. “I've seen plenty of family-owned companies torn to shreds this way. It won't happen here.”

Hatch looked down into his coffee. “You don't have a choice, Benedict.”

“What the frigging hell does that mean? Of course I've got a choice. I say we don't split things up and that's final.”

“Not if you want me to marry Jessie and run your company, it isn't.”

Suddenly the office was silent. For a minute Vincent stared at Hatch, mouth agape. Then he sat down, clearly stunned.

“Are you telling me you won't marry Jessie unless I agree to cut up Benedict Fasteners?” Vincent asked, as if trying to make certain he had understood.

“I didn't say that. I'll marry her, all right. But I won't buy into Benedict and I won't stick around here to run it for you. I'll take Jessie and leave the state. We'll start over somewhere else. Oregon, maybe.”

“Bullshit. I'll cut Jessie off without one red cent.”

Hatch nodded. “Just as well. Because if you did go ahead and leave the company to her, I'd make sure she divided it up when she took possession.”

“The hell you would,” Benedict said softly, too softly, his eyes shrewd and angry. “You're bluffing.”

“Have I ever lied to you, Benedict? Either agree to portion the company out among David, Elizabeth, Jessie, and me or forget the whole deal. I'll take Jessie and leave town.”

“She won't go with you, you sonofabitch.”

This was the tricky part, Hatch knew. Now he was bluffing for all he was worth. Everything was riding on his poker-playing skills. His fingers tightened on the coffee cup. “She will, you know. She loves me.”

“You make her nervous. She told me so herself.”

“She'll still come with me, Benedict.”

“Bullshit. Not if she knows you're walking away from Benedict Fasteners,” Vincent snarled. “That woman may be featherbrained about some things, but she knows her duty to her family. She won't walk away from her own people. Everyone depends on her, and she knows it.”

“Everyone had better stop depending on her, then, because things are going to be different around here.”

“They sure as hell are.” Vincent's eyes narrowed shrewdly. “I'm canceling your contract, Hatchard. Effective right now. You're
fired
, you sonofabitch. Get out of here. You've got one hour to clean out your desk.”

For an instant Hatch thought he had not heard correctly. This was not the result he had calculated. Dazed, he covered his shock by getting to his feet and slowly putting the empty coffee cup down on the desk. Without a word he headed toward the door.

“Goddammit, Hatchard, you ever change your mind and get your common sense back, you know where to find me,” Vincent yelled after him.

“I won't change my mind. By the way, that file I left on your desk is the final breakdown on the Spokane job. You can undercut Yorland and Young with that bid and Benedict can still make a small profit. But my professional advice is to forget it. It's not worth it.”

“Goddammit, Hatch…”

Hatch went out the door and closed it quietly. He stood still for a minute, adjusting to the one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn his life had just taken.

“Mr. Hatchard?” Grace's voice was laced with concern. “Are you all right?”

Hatch forced himself to focus on her. “Call my secretary, will you, Grace?”

“Certainly, sir. What should I tell her?”

“Tell her to pack up my desk. Have everything sent to my apartment. I won't be coming back to the office.”

Grace stared at him in astonishment. “You're leaving us, Mr. Hatchard?”

“It looks that way.” He gave her a rueful smile as he walked to the elevators. “I've just been fired.”

“Mr. Hatchard…”
The telephone in Grace's hand dropped onto the desk with a loud crash.

Hatch stood at the window of his high-rise apartment and stared out at Elliott Bay. It was a terrific view and he wondered why he had not spent more time in the front room admiring it.

The answer to that was simple. Jessie's place had always seemed so much cozier and more inviting, more like home.

He tore his gaze away from the view and glanced around the place he had rented shortly after moving to Seattle. It was in pristine order, of course. Everything was in its proper place. There was not a speck of dust anywhere. The cleaning service he'd hired saw to that. Damned place looked as though no one actually lived in it.

He had not even unpacked a lot of his things, he reflected. There had not been time. From the moment he'd arrived he had been immersed in work and in the roller-coaster business of courting Jessie. His apartment looked more like a hotel room than a private residence.

Fired
.

It was hard to believe it was all over. Hard to believe everything he had been working toward had just gone up in smoke. Hard to believe that Vincent Benedict had called his bluff.

Impossible to believe he was going to lose Jessie
.

Hatch had been so certain he could force the older man into splitting up the company, so confident of his own ability to deal with Vincent Benedict. He should have known right from the start that Benedict was too tough and too wily and too damn stubborn to get maneuvered into doing anything he did not want to do.

Hatch had played poker with an old pro and he had lost. He had risked everything on a bluff.

And threatening to take Jessie away had been nothing more than a bluff. Hatch told himself he should have known Benedict would be too savvy to fall for it. It was crazy to think Jessie would actually walk away from her family and her self-imposed responsibilities to go off with a man who made her nervous. Her first loyalty was to the clan. He had known that from the beginning. Hell, he'd used that knowledge to maneuver her into a relationship with him.

It was crazy to believe she would run off with a man she had agreed to marry in the first place only because everyone around her was urging her to do so. A man whose main attribute was that he was Vincent Benedict's handpicked candidate to take over the operation of Benedict Fasteners.

Hatch did not delude himself. He had been in this position once before and he knew how the chips would fall. Jessie was not Olivia. He was fairly certain she genuinely cared for him. But the fact that she had convinced herself she was in love with him would hardly be enough to make her run off with him when everything else in the relationship went sour.

Hatch told himself he had to be realistic about the situation. He had to see it from a woman's point of view.

Running off with him would mean leaving everything Jessie held dear. It would mean leaving Elizabeth. It would mean leaving Seattle. It would mean abdicating her loving responsibility to her family and her duty to Benedict Fasteners.

It would mean casting her fate with a man who would be essentially starting over. Women, Hatch knew from experience, rarely did dumb things like that in real life.

He glanced at the liquor cabinet and thought about pouring himself a drink. He needed one badly.

He decided to wait until he had seen Jessie. He would need one even more after that.

Outside the lobby door of Jessie's apartment house, Hatch leaned on the buzzer. He had the key Jessie had given him, but for some reason he did not want to use it. He was not coming home from work this time. He was paying a last visit.

“Yes?” Jessie's voice sounded odd through the speaker.

“It's me.”

She did not say anything more, but a second later a hissing noise told him the lock had been released. Hatch pushed open the door, walked inside, and started up the stairs.

He glanced around and realized how familiar it all seemed. He had gotten accustomed to coming here at the end of each day. He had gotten to like the idea of knowing Jessie would be waiting for him with a glass of wine and that there would be mouth-watering smells coming from the kitchen.

It was easy to see why there was a strong instinct in men to keep women in the home. They had a way of making things much more comfortable for a man.

Not that any man would ever be successful in keeping Jessie barefoot and pregnant, he thought wryly.

Pregnant
.

The possibility of getting Jessie pregnant hung tantalizingly in the air. If she were pregnant, she might feel compelled to marry him, after all.

But he did not want her to be forced into that kind of decision, he told himself, trying to be noble.

On the other hand, it just might work. Jessie felt so strongly about the importance of fatherhood. She had spent most of her life building bonds between Vincent and his family. The last thing she would want to do was deny her own child its father.

But the odds of getting her pregnant before she found out what had happened this afternoon were staggeringly against him. They had, after all, been making love without protection for only two days. If he kept his mouth shut tonight, he might get one more shot at it, but the odds were still bad. And his luck had not been running well lately.

Jessie opened the door for him on the second level. She had her hair slicked back behind her ears and she was dressed in a black jumpsuit. He saw the anxiety leap into her eyes the instant she got a good look at him.

“Hatch, is something wrong?”

She did not know anything yet. Now was the time to keep his mouth shut. Give himself one more chance in bed with her. Maybe stack the odds a little more in his favor. But, hell, she had always been honest with him. He owed her honesty in return.

“Your father fired me today.” He was surprised at how calm the simple words sounded. Hatch stood there in the doorway waiting for the devastating reaction and wondered what he would do without this woman in his life. He could not seem to think that far ahead. All he could do was wait for the blow.

“He fired you?” Jessie finally got her mouth closed. “Dad canceled your contract with Benedict?”

“Yes.”

“You're unemployed?”

Hatch nodded, propping one shoulder against the door-jamb. He shoved his hands into his pockets. “Looks that way.”

“You won't be running Benedict Fasteners?”

“No.” He drew a breath. “I'll be leaving Seattle soon. I'll be starting over somewhere else. Oregon, maybe. Or Arizona. I just stopped by to tell you.”

“Hatch, this is incredible. I can't believe it.” She blinked and then her green eyes filled with mirth. She started to giggle, and the giggle turned into full-blown laughter. “Oh, my God. We've finally got something in common.”

Hatch frowned, at a loss to understand what was happening. “Jessie?”

“I got fired today too.”

Hatch looked at her. “What?”

“You heard me,” Jessie got out between gasps for air. “Mrs. V fired me. Said she didn't like the direction I was taking Valentine Consultations. Said she would give me nice references. Oh, my God, this is so funny. You and me both fired on the same day. I can't believe it.”

“Somehow I hadn't seen it in a funny light.”

Jessie blinked away the moisture the laughter had brought to her eyes and gulped in air. “No, of course not. You poor thing. I'll bet you've never been through this before, have you?”

“There was one other time,” he reminded her deliberately.

She nodded, reaching out to yank him through the door. “That's right. I'd almost forgotten. Back when you were married to Olivia and your company got taken over.” She closed the door behind him and threw the dead bolt. “Still, that was years ago. You haven't had my vast experience with the situation. Come on in and I'll show you how it's done.”

Hatch felt as if he had just fallen down the rabbit hole. Nothing seemed to be going according to the script. “How what's done?”

“How you celebrate getting fired, of course. Since you've had such limited experience, I'll guide you through it. First, you sit down.” She pushed him onto a stool in front of the counter.

“What happens next?”

“Why, next you open a bottle of champagne, of course. As soon as I left the office this morning, I bought one. I stuck it in the refrigerator hours ago.” She opened the refrigerator door and grabbed the bottle sitting on the top shelf. “This is the real thing, you know. From France, not California. I splurged. I always do when I get fired.”

“I see.”

“Personally,” she said as she peeled back the wire that held the cork in place, “I vote for Oregon. I've been to Arizona, though, and it's very nice. We can go there if you think we should. But it would be easier for Elizabeth to visit if we went to Oregon. On the other hand, I guess we really can't be too picky, can we? I mean, both of us being unemployed and all.”

The cork came out of the bottle with a bang, striking the ceiling. Champagne started to billow forth, threatening to cascade all over the kitchen floor.

Hatch reached out, took the bottle from Jessie's hands, and quickly poured the sparkling liquid into the glasses.

Then he grabbed Jessie and pulled her into his arms. She went into them willingly, laughter and love gleaming in her eyes.