“Who the hell are you, anyway, Katy Wade, and why are you so concerned about my family’s future? You must have done something real bad in a previous life to get yourself appointed guardian angel to the Gilchrist clan.”
“I told you, I owe your grandmother. I always pay my debts.”
“Just why did she give you that job when you were nineteen? And don’t hand me that crap about doing it out of the kindness of her heart. I know too much about her to fall for it.”
Katy turned the key violently in the ignition. The engine started with a shriek of protest. “She gave me the job because she’s a woman with a strong sense of family pride and responsibility. She saw an opportunity to make up for what your father did to my mother, and she took it.”
Luke went still. “What the devil are you talking about?”
“Haven’t you figured it out? My mother was the woman your father stood up at the altar when he decided to elope with his secretary.”
CHAPTER TWO
Luke braced his hands on the porch railing and watched until Katy Wade’s car vanished from sight. Then he swore softly, turned, and stalked back into the house to change his wet clothes.
Zeke, who had been smart enough not to go rushing out into the rain, was waiting at the far end of the hall. He gave Luke an inquiring look over the rim of his dish.
“I guess that answers the question about the lady who was leaving all those damn messages on the answering machine,” Luke said to the dog. “I can now state with unequivocal certainty that Ms. Wade is a genuine holy terror. A true self-appointed Gilchrist guardian angel. Someone should have told her a long time ago that on good days Gilchrists eat angels for breakfast.”
The first messages on the answering machine had caught Luke’s attention because the warm, feminine voice had been infused with cheery charm. Luke had played them back a couple of times before erasing them. The nights could get long in his aerie by the sea. The sound of a woman’s voice was not unwelcome.
By the time the twelfth message had been recorded, however, the charm had vanished. In its place was a feisty determination that had been just as interesting in its own way. The lady was obviously the sort who made a point of seeing a task through to completion. She would not give up until she had either reached her goal or been knocked out of the fight. That kind of gutsy fortitude could spell trouble, Luke knew, but he had to acknowledge a certain grudging respect for it.
Katy’s letters and the telegrams had been equally fascinating. The first of them had been full of enthusiasm and vitality. They had projected a boundless optimism that had made Luke feel ancient and cynical.
She had tried almost everything to convince him to come to Dragon Bay. The one thing she had not done was whine. Luke liked that. He could not stand whiners.
Toward the end the letters had turned into fierce little lectures on the subject of family honor and responsibility. The last telegram had been no less than a ringing call to arms:
THINK OF FUTURE GENERATIONS STOP DON’T BE AFRAID TO TAKE UP THE CHALLENGE STOP YOU CAN DO IT STOP.
Luke had known when he received that one that the next step was probably going to be a personal visit from Katy Wade herself. He had found himself looking forward to it. He wanted to see if the lady matched her voice.
Now his curiosity was satisfied, he thought in disgust as he peeled off his soaked sweater. Katy Wade was everything he had suspected from her letters. She was a bright-eyed crusader who had, thanks to an unusual set of circumstances, assumed the thankless task of saving a bunch of Gilchrists.
She was young, probably only twenty-seven or twenty-eight at the most. Luke scowled. She was far too young and inexperienced to have the responsibility for saving Gilchrist, Inc. on her shoulders.
And she was a redhead.
Luke had not guessed that from her messages and letters, but somehow he was not surprised. He had never been fond of red hair. Still, he had to admit that the sunrise color of Katy’s hair suited her. He had liked the way it curved in at her chin, framing her delicate features and emphasizing the deep blue of her eyes.
Luke rather wistfully recalled a few other details he’d noted thanks to a wet silk blouse and a snug-fitting skirt. Katy had a neat, subtly curved body. A good body. Healthy. Strong. Vital. Female.
There was an oddly restrained, rather naive sensuality about her that he had found unexpectedly disturbing.
More than disturbing. He had a feeling he was going to have trouble getting to sleep tonight because of Katy Wade. And she was not even his type.
No doubt about it, he had spent too many nights alone here during the past three years. Odd he had not realized it until today.
Luke ran his fingers through his hair to get rid of the excess moisture. Then he pulled a black cotton shirt out of the closet and shrugged into it.
She was not really pretty, he thought. He frowned as he went down the hall to his study. Not compellingly beautiful the way Ariel had been.
But somehow, what with all the feminine vitality Katy exuded, he hadn’t particularly noticed the absence of classical perfection in her features.
Still, she was not like Ariel. And if he were ever to remarry, he would definitely want a woman like his first wife.
Exotic, witchy, mysterious Ariel with her long ebony hair and pale silken skin. Even now, three years after her death, she sometimes stole into his dreams, trying to seduce him once more.
Luke had been certain from the moment he first saw Ariel that she was his natural mate. The attraction had been mutual and instantaneous. They had had only eighteen months together before she was killed. During that time they had loved together and fought together in a torrid, simmering whirlwind of all-consuming passion.
It had come as a shock to Luke that in addition to love, lust, and possessiveness he had experienced an excruciating jealousy with Ariel. That emotion was unexpected because Luke had grown up with the example of his parents’ marriage. Thornton and Cleo had been bonded for life, and each of them knew it. Each had trusted the other completely, and Luke had taken such intimate bonding between man and wife for granted. He had expected it in his own marriage.
But Ariel had almost seemed to enjoy tormenting him at times. It was as if his passionate jealousy aroused her. He did not believe she had ever actually been unfaithful during their short marriage, but she had made no secret of the fact that she delighted in the admiration of other men.
Deep down inside Luke sometimes wondered what would have happened if the marriage had lasted five, ten, or twenty years. No other woman had ever had the power to arouse the violent emotions in him that Ariel had. On the other hand, no other woman had ever been able to suck him into a vortex of desire the way Ariel had, either.
The memories of the nights spent with Ariel in his arms still haunted him.
Yes, he might remarry one of these days, he decided, but never a woman like Katy. He knew what he wanted and needed in a wife. He needed someone like Ariel, a woman whose dark passions matched his own.
The problem was that it was highly unlikely he would ever encounter another woman like Ariel.
Luke walked into his study and sat down at his desk. He gazed at the blank computer screen for a long moment but did not immediately reach out to switch on the machine.
Now that he had started thinking about what he required in a wife, he could not seem to stop. Katy Wade had done this to him, he decided grimly. Her presence in his house had somehow brought the old, bone-deep hungers to the surface.
“Shit,” Luke muttered. It was going to be a long night.
Zeke padded into the study with his dish in his mouth. He dropped the metal bowl on the floor near Luke’s chair and flopped down next to it. Luke reached out and idly rubbed the big dog behind his ears. Zeke rumbled with satisfaction.
When Zeke had first appeared in Luke’s front yard the dog had been scrawny
and desperate. It was obvious he had been abused, starved, and abandoned. The last thing Zeke had wanted was to be touched by a human being. But he had also been hungry. Very, very hungry.
Luke had understood and respected the courage it had taken for Zeke to approach the house. Zeke had not begged, but he seemed to have realized that he had reached the end of the line. The dog had just stood there shivering in the rain, waiting with an air of stoic challenge for whatever fate held in store.
Luke had found the old metal dish, filled it up with canned chili, and put it out in the yard. The chili had vanished within seconds, and Luke had filled the bowl a second time.
One thing had led to another, and a pattern was established. Zeke disappeared during the day and returned in the evenings for a bowl of chili. Six weeks after the dog’s arrival a freezing rainstorm struck the high bluff. Luke had opened the front door and found Zeke huddled on the porch, the bowl in his mouth.
Luke stood back and held open the door. Zeke padded warily inside and found a place by the fire. He had been there ever since.
“You and I are definitely two of a kind, Zeke. We don’t need lectures on family responsibility from a self-righteous little redhead.”
Zeke looked up at him.
“Okay, I don’t need lectures from her,” Luke amended. “You can make your own decisions.”
Zeke rumbled agreement and sprawled on the floor.
Luke pushed the distracting image of Katy Wade out of his mind and punched up the spreadsheet he had been working on that morning. He forced himself to concentrate on his latest consulting project. It was a routine task resembling countless other such projects he had undertaken in recent years. He should be able to finish off this job tonight or tomorrow morning at the latest, he thought.
And when he was finished he would write his report for the client and collect another hefty fee to add to the treasure Katy Wade had accused him of hoarding.
Luke eyed the screen full of numbers. Normally he entered the clean, clear world of computerized data with a sense of profound relief. He could lose himself in the universe of disembodied information that was always at his fingertips.
There was no pain in this world, no past and no future. When he was working he moved in an eternal present, correlating facts, aligning data, making decisions. For the past three years Luke had spent almost all of his waking time in this computer universe. He had learned to manipulate the information he found there the way a sorcerer manipulated the words in an incantation.
But today he could not seem to get into his work. He kept feeling as if he were crouched over a pile of gold instead of his keyboard.
So he made money at what he did. So what? Making money was second nature to him. It was like swimming or riding a bike. Once he had learned the trick of it, he never forgot it.
His mother had always claimed the talent was in his genes. She called it the Gilchrist curse and claimed it had descended from his grandmother to his father and then to Luke.
There was no denying that, as a team, Luke and his father had been unbeatable. Together the banished Gilchrists had built a restaurant empire in California that had outstripped the Northwest-based Gilchrist, Inc.
And then, in one terrible instant three years ago, Luke’s whole world had been shattered. The jet that had crashed on the Los Angeles runway had carried everything that had been important in his life. Ariel and his parents were gone in the blink of an eye.
Afterward there had not seemed much point in owning an empire.
But the habit of making money was hard to break. Luke had gone north to Oregon and found a place where he could retreat from the world and all he had lost. He sat alone in his house on the cliffs overlooking the sea, went into his computer, and made money. It gave him something to do with his days, which would otherwise have been intolerably bleak.
Unfortunately, it did not fill up the nights.
Two hours later Luke got up from the computer and went into the kitchen. Zeke picked up his dish and ambled along to watch Luke scrub a couple of baking potatoes, stab them with a fork, and put them into the oven.
Luke liked baked potatoes, which was fortunate, because his cooking skills were extremely limited. He could heat a can of soup, microwave frozen vegetables, scrub potatoes, and that was about it. Not particularly impressive accomplishments for a man whose family had been in the restaurant business for three generations.
But then, as his father had once explained, no Gilchrist ever cooked any more than was absolutely necessary. It was a family tradition.
The word “family” caused Luke’s back teeth to clamp together. He closed the oven door, poured himself a glass of cabernet, and wondered if the official Gilchrist guardian angel could cook. He figured she probably could. She looked like the wholesome type who would be at home in the kitchen.
Luke smiled as he recalled the way Katy had clutched her briefcase in front of her as if it were a battle shield. No doubt about it, Ms. Wade was perfect personal assistant material: faithful, loyal, and devoted to the end.
Luke sipped his wine and contemplated Katy’s future with moody fascination. She did not stand a chance of holding Gilchrist, Inc. together by herself. Not even with the help of Fraser Stanfield, whoever the hell he was.
Gilchrist, Inc. was a true family business in the old-fashioned sense of the term. If no other Gilchrist was smart enough or strong enough to step into Justine Gilchrist’s shoes, the end was in sight. That was why the company’s upper management was getting nervous. They knew damn well the five Seattle restaurants and Gilchrist Gourmet would have to be sold if Justine had indeed lost her grip.
Selling off the assets was the only reasonable course of action the guardian angel and her friend Stanfield could take. Luke wondered if Katy understood that.
Of course, even if she did, Justine Gilchrist would undoubtedly forbid the sale. Luke remembered his father’s description of Justine: Boadicea in her knife-wheeled chariot ready to take on the Romans and anyone else who got in her way.
Justine Gilchrist had fought long and hard to build Gilchrist, Inc. And she was just as stubborn as Luke’s father had been. She would never consent to selling the business to outsiders.
Which meant there was no good alternative available to Katy Wade.
Which meant disaster for the redoubtable Ms. Wade, because she clearly was not one who would quit.
Not that it was any concern of his, Luke decided. If Katy could not see the writing on the wall, that was her problem. Too bad she felt indebted to Justine Gilchrist. A smart personal assistant in Katy’s position would abandon ship real fast at this point.
But something told Luke that Katy was the type to go down on the bridge.
She would go down fighting all the way, too.
He strolled back down the hall to the study. The computer was humming softly. The sound soothed Luke. He got rid of the calculations he had been doing for his client and punched up a familiar file.
He was not certain why he had started keeping tabs on Gilchrist, Inc. a few months ago. Curiosity or sheer boredom, probably. After he had started getting the messages from Katy Wade he had paid more attention to the information he had quietly been collecting.
Luke sat down and propped his heels on the desk. He leaned back, took a swallow of wine, and contemplated the facts displayed on the glowing screen.
He wondered how long it would take the angel and her friend Stanfield to figure out that the losses they were suffering at two of the restaurants were due to more than just a temporary downturn in the Northwest economy.
The pattern that was taking shape was an old and familiar one. Someone was systematically and cleverly bleeding cash out of Gilchrist’s Grill and Gilchrist’s of Bellevue.
Things looked and felt wrong at Gilchrist Gourmet, too, although the problems there did not fit a pattern yet. There were just problems. Far too
many of them. The kind that crippled a business. If Gilchrist Gourmet kept sliding downhill the way it had been doing for the past six months, Justine would be lucky to sell it at a fraction of its original value.
No doubt about it, Katy Wade was going to need more than a pair of wings and a halo to save Gilchrist, Inc. She was going to need the devil’s own luck.
CHAPTER THREE
Katy stood at the window of Justine Gilchrist’s glass-walled living room and watched the fog roll silently in off the ocean. The gray mist crept inevitably closer, slowly but surely consuming the world. In another few minutes the beach below the window would disappear. Then the magnificent old mansion that was Justine’s home would be lost in a gray void.
Normally Katy enjoyed the drama of incoming fog, but today it disturbed her. The relentless approach of the gray void made her think of the disaster that was threatening to overtake Gilchrist, Inc.
“You tried, Katy,” Justine Gilchrist said. “It was good of you to do so, but the outcome is not entirely unexpected. It’s obvious my grandson is just as proud and unforgiving as his father was.”
Katy turned her head to look at the regal, silver-haired woman seated in the wingback chair. At eighty-two, Justine Gilchrist was still a striking member of the clan.
In spite of her recent problems her shrewd green eyes were young in her patrician face, and her figure was trim. Today she was wearing a black silk blouse and a black skirt. A simple strand of pearls graced the neckline of her blouse.
Lately an assortment of ailments had begun to plague Justine. None of them appeared to be imminently life-threatening, but during the past two years they had robbed her of the driving energy that had enabled her to build and guide Gilchrist, Inc. for nearly six decades.
“I’m sorry, Justine. I don’t think I handled the interview with Luke very well. I’m afraid I lost my temper.”