Corner-Office Courtship
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Victoria Pade
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15,9K
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12
Prologue
“Midnight malteds—there must be trouble,” Cade Camden said when he joined his grandmother, his three siblings and his six cousins in the sprawling kitchen of the Denver home where he’d grown up. Georgianna Camden had raised all ten of her grandchildren here after the tragic deaths of their parents.
“Chocolate or vanilla?” she asked without directly responding to his comment.
“Chocolate,” Cade answered.
“It’s been a long time since one of us got arrested for teenage hijinks,” Cade’s older brother Seth contributed.
“Nobody died, did they, GiGi?” Lang, one Cade’s triplet cousins, asked.
Growing up, whenever there was trouble and the sleepless nights that went with it, they’d all congregated in their grandmother’s kitchen. Even if she were angry or disappointed or disgusted with the kids—GiGi had made malteds, done damage control and assured them that they would weather whatever storm came their way.
But tonight, when they’d each been summoned for midnight malteds during GiGi’s seventy-fifth birthday party, it set off alarm bells. It was something Cade had been anticipating anyway, ever since GiGi had requested that her grandchildren all spend the night. For old-time’s sake...
With everyone gathered around the large island in the center of the kitchen, sipping their malteds, GiGi finally explained why she’d asked them here.
“I’ve read the journals,” she said ominously.
As the descendants of H. J. Camden, founder of Camden Incorporated and the worldwide chain of Camden Super Stores, GiGi’s grandkids immediately knew what she was talking about.
Just weeks before Georgianna’s birthday, her oldest grandson, Seth, had come across a small trunk hidden beneath the floorboards of the original barn in Northbridge, Montana, where H.J. was born. The trunk contained several journals written in H.J.’s own hand. Seth had immediately sent them to his grandmother.
“This can’t be good,” Livi, another of the triplets, said softly. Rumors had always flown that Henry James Camden, his son Hank Jr. and even his grandsons Howard and Mitchum had amassed the family fortune by lying, cheating, bribes and much worse.
“It isn’t,” GiGi confirmed. “I haven’t read everything but I’ve read enough to know that the worst that was ever thought or said about H.J.—and even more—is true.”
That sobered everyone in the room.
They all knew that GiGi had never been privy to any of the business dealings, that her response to the rumors and accusations of backroom deals, of misdeeds and wrongdoing had been to instill in her own sons and grandchildren a strong sense of right and wrong. And because H.J. and her late husband Hank had kept business strictly separate from their family life, and been such good and loving heads of the household, she’d chosen to believe better of them.
“During those last couple of months after H.J.’s stroke he said some things to me that made me wonder, that made me think he might have reason to feel some shame. But you know he wasn’t in his right mind most of that time and so I’d still hoped that the worst wasn’t true—”
“But it was,” Cade’s cousin, Dane, finished for her.
“It was,” GiGi said in a dire tone. “H.J. and my Hank especially....” The elderly woman’s voice cracked. She shook her head. She clearly didn’t want to admit it but she raised her chin and continued, “They trampled over other people to build what we have.”
No one said anything to that.
After a moment of collecting herself, GiGi went on. “I’ll grant you that much of what was done was done decades ago—your dads put more effort into giving back and sharing our good fortune. But even they...” GiGi shook her head in disappointment. “Well, they still did H.J. and your grandfather’s bidding.”
“I raised you to be better people and I’m proud of you.” GiGi paused a moment, glancing around the island at each of her ten grandchildren and smiling. “But the more I read in these journals, the more I begin to understand the price other people paid for our success and prosperity. We all benefited from what was done. What if the sons and daughters, the grandsons and granddaughters of people taken advantage of by H.J. still suffer? What if these families never bounced back?”
“It’s a thought that none of us wants to have GiGi, but—”
“But nothing, Dylan,” the older woman said to another of Cade’s cousins, using the I-won’t-take-any-excuses tone they all knew well. “We need to know just how much damage, how much of a ripple-effect might have been caused. And we need to do something about it.”
“You want to make amends?” Cade asked.
“I’ll need to do more research, but yes. For my birthday gift, I want each of you to promise me that you’ll help find out what the repercussions were for whatever was done so we can atone for the wrongs. Seth, you’ve already done your part by finding the journals.”
“GiGi, we could be opening up a can of worms with this,” Cade’s cousin, Derek, warned. “If we go around admitting wrongdoing people will come out of the woodwork to make claims—even when there wasn’t any wrongdoing. We’ll have more lawsuits than any amount of lawyers can handle.”
“I’ve thought about that,” GiGi said. “It has to be done subtly. With a helping hand here, a good word there. Maybe we’ll throw some business in the direction of someone who needs it. Or hire them to come to work for us, or buy whatever they’re selling. We’ll work behind the scenes—”
“You want us to be manipulative?” Lindie, the third of the triplets, asked.
“Only for the greater good,” GiGi answered. “So we can make up for what wrongs were done without opening that can of worms Derek mentioned. And we keep it strictly between us. No one else can know what we’re up to.”
“I don’t know, GiGi,” Lang said. “This could be risky. There are people out there who hate us and, now that we know they have real reason to, you want us to stroll in and try to make nice?”
“And without admitting anything wrong was ever done?” Cade added. “As if it’s just a coincidence that we’re offering something to the family of someone H.J., Gramps, Dad or Uncle Mitchum screwed over?”
“And what if they think we’re there to screw them over again?” Dylan contributed.
“It won’t be easy,” GiGi acknowledged. “And yes, there may be hard feelings and resentments and grudges to deal with. But we’re all living the way we do at the expense of other people. Are any of you all right with that?”
In unison, GiGi’s ten grandchildren said, “No.”
“Of course not.”
“You know us better than that...”
“Then we have to make up for it. Carefully. Quietly.”
“And you’re going to dispatch us each separately, on these...missions?” Lindie asked.
“That’s the current plan. And the first mission—as you put it—is a matter of the heart. Cade, I’m giving this one to you.”
“Great. I get to be the test case.”
“Only because you fit the bill, and I’ll be paying close attention to putting each of you in just the right situation. Cade, you have that ratty wall in your house with the wallpaper falling off and you need it fixed.”
“Oka-ay...” Cade said with reservation.
“There’s a small shop in Arden, in Old Town there—”
“It isn’t going to look suspicious for me to go out to the suburbs to find someone to paint a wall for me?” Cade asked.
“It’s only twenty minutes from here on the highway, and I have it on good authority that the girl who owns the shop does a beautiful job. Her reputation is cause enough to go to her,” GiGi said. “Her name is Natalie Morrison. She sells furniture and objects she’s painted. It’s like folk art. But she also does murals and custom wall treatments. I thought you could hire her to tear off that paper and paint something—”
“I don’t want folk art on that wall,” Cade said.
“You can have her do something that makes it look like leather or marble or something. And in the process, you can find out what happened after H.J. pulled the rug out from under her grandfather, Jonah Morrison.”
“Morrison... As in the Northbridge Morrisons?” Seth asked, connecting the name with the small Montana town where H.J. had begun, and where Seth currently ran Camdem Inc.’s extensive ranching operations.
“Jonah Morrison!” Livi said as if the light had just dawned for her, too. “Wasn’t he your first love, GiGi?”
“He was my high school sweetheart,” GiGi amended. “Apparently H.J. bought the loan on the Morrison farm and foreclosed on them to make sure that the Morrisons left Northbridge.”
“You didn’t know that until you read it in the journals?” Cade’s younger sister, Jani, asked.
“I was informed that the Morrisons had sold to H.J. I had no idea he’d foreclosed on them. And I thought that the Morrisons left Northbridge by their own choice, that they might be headed to Denver. Jonah and I had already broken up, and I’d met your grandfather by then.”
“Then you ended up in Denver, too, and you never looked up your old love?” Lindie asked.
“Of course not,” GiGi said. “I loved your grandfather and Jonah was old news. Why would I look him up? But then I read about the Morrisons in the journals and remembered how Maude Sharks recently was bragging at the club about this girl she’d hired to paint the nursery in her daughter’s house—”
“This Morrison girl?” Cade asked.
“It was like fate shining a light on what we needed to do first,” GiGi marveled. “I did some digging and sure enough, Natalie Morrison has family roots in Montana and a grandfather named Jonah. So that’s where we start. Where you start, Cade.”
“With me hiring your old flame’s granddaughter to fix my wall,” Cade concluded without enthusiasm.
“And in the process, find out what ever happened to Jonah and if having his family’s farm foreclosed on by H.J. was a blessing or a curse. For him and for the family that’s come after him—including this girl.”
“If it was a curse, what then?” Cade’s brother, Beau, asked.
“We’ll be giving Natalie work and we’ll figure out what else we can do to make things up to her and the rest of the Morrisons,” GiGi said confidently. “It’ll be up to Cade to figure all that out through the girl.”
For a moment no one said anything as the full impact of what they’d learned settled over them.
Then Cade took a deep breath, sighed and said, “So I guess I’m up to bat.... Happy birthday, GiGi.”
