Marriage or Ruin for the Heiress
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Lauri Robinson
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18,6K
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Chapter One
Disbelief rendered Jolie Cramer speechless. How could it not? She’d never expected her life would come to this. Being sold. Like she was a dress hanging in a store window. There was more to a dress than thread and material. There were hours of designing, sewing, pressing. And there was more to her. She had feelings, goals, dreams.
Staring out her bedroom window that overlooked the massive backyard of their prestigious downtown home, made with brick and mortar generations ago, she shook her head, trying to dispel the disbelief still holding her mind hostage like a mob victim. The bright sunshine of the warm summer day was out of place compared to the iciness filling her. “You can’t be serious.”
“He’s a very wealthy and prominent young man. Not to mention handsome. You should be happy he agreed.”
A peculiar burning sensation spread over Jolie as she spun around to face her mother. Disbelief was replaced with anger boiling hot enough to cook a three-minute egg in less than a minute. Everyone knew Randal Osterlund was wealthy and prominent, and every woman under the age of forty in all of Chicago knew he was handsome. His silver-blue eyes were so unique, in such contrast with his dark hair, that they caught and held attention. Like many others, she’d found him attractive, until the last time she’d seen Randal. She’d been mortified with embarrassment that day and hoped to never set eyes on him again. “Happy?”
“Yes. I myself was flattered.” Mother stood and patted the short brown curls at the nape of her neck, and then ran a hand over the finger waves that flattened the hair on the crown of her head. She’d worn her hair that way for a decade, despite the fact the short hairstyles of the twenties were now in the past. With an exaggerated sigh, her mother said, “I would consider remarrying myself, but as you know, your father is the only man I will ever love. There’s not another one out there like him. I will never get over his death. Never. I still cry myself to sleep each and every night.”
Jolie rubbed her forehead at the woe-is-me tale she’d heard a thousand times over. It wasn’t that she didn’t sympathize with her mother. They’d all loved her father dearly—he had been a wonderful man—but her mother just didn’t seem to realize there were other people in this family who were still alive. Who might need her to do her job as their mother.
“There’s no reason to act so shocked. We discussed this, Jolie.”
“Discussed is not the same as agreeing, Mother,” Jolie insisted. She had in no way agreed to anything. In fact, when her mother had brought up the subject of marrying to save the family last week, Jolie had voiced that marriage was not the answer and that there were other ways to save the family.
Her mother smoothed the floral bedspread on the corner of the bed where she had been sitting. “The taxes are due by the end of the month. If they aren’t paid, this house will be sold by the city. If that happens, we will have no choice but to move to Kansas and live with Uncle LeRoy. Is that what you want for your brother and sister? For me? For you?”
No, it wasn’t what she wanted. Jolie closed her eyes at the overwhelming despair that overshadowed all of the other emotions running rampant inside her. Uncle LeRoy, her mother’s brother and their only living relative, lived in Kansas, where they were not only experiencing the great depression blanketing the nation, they also had dust storms that were burying entire towns. She’d heard stories on the radio, read about them in the newspaper as well as the firsthand accounts Uncle LeRoy penned in his letters.
The dust storms that were plaguing the central plains is why people were calling it the Dirty Thirties.
Damn the stock market crash of 1929. That’s what had started it all. It had wreaked havoc on the country and her family. Three months after that crash her father died of a heart attack, and for the four years since then, her family had barely survived on the small amounts of holdings and cash her father hadn’t had invested in the markets. Hers wasn’t the only family affected, but unlike others, who’d openly admitted their dire straits and did something, or at least attempted to do something constructive, her mother had kept their poverty hidden. And continued to. Very few people knew the Cramers were surviving on bread crumbs bought with the pennies they’d managed to scrape out of the bottom of the washing machine and beneath the sofa cushions.
“We’ve sold everything worth selling,” Mother said. “This house is all we have left. All we have left of your father. This is our only choice.”
“No, it’s not,” Jolie argued. “We could get jobs. You and me and Silas. Even Chloe could—”
“I won’t hear of such a thing! Your father must be rolling over in his grave to hear you say that! He did not believe in women working!” Mother spun around and marched to the door. “Silas has two more years of college. Once he graduates, he’ll take over providing for this family. Until then, it’s up to me. And you.” She pulled open the bedroom door. “I suggest you change. Randal will be here in half an hour.”
“Change into what?” Jolie threw her hands in the air as her mother shut the door as if she hadn’t heard the question. “Everything I own has been made over so many times the material is worn out,” she muttered and walked over to the bed, plopped onto the mattress.
She wasn’t one to pitch a fit, but she was contemplating doing so on this occasion.
Randal Osterlund.
Huffing out a breath, she flipped onto her back and stared at the ceiling. Of all the men in Chicago, why him?
Jolie sat up as her heart began to beat like it had the wings of a hummingbird. Or is that exactly why? He knew how destitute her family had become. She’d hoped he’d forgotten about their encounter at the grocer, but obviously, he hadn’t.
It had been so embarrassing. There had been money in the bank to cover the check. She’d just made a deposit the day before, after getting paid for altering a dress for Mrs. Rivard—unknown to Mother, of course, because heaven forbid a female Cramer would work for a living. Jolie had done that often enough, altered clothing and sewn underclothes for Mrs. Rivard and her elderly friends, and put the money in the bank so when they needed groceries, anyone in her family could pick them up and pay with a check. No one in her family had ever written a bad check, and she was certain that Amy Casswell had put her name on the list on purpose—for no reason other than spite. Amy had hated her for years.
Why had she stopped at the Casswell store? Why? She knew better!
Randal had just so happened to be the next customer, and the cashier had just so happened to sweetly explain to him that the Cramer family’s name was on the list—the list of people who couldn’t pay with checks. The depression was felt by many, and no-credit lists, along with lists of people who were known to write bad checks, were commonplace. The Cramer name was not on any other list, just the one at Casswell’s.
It had only been a few items, and Randal had offered to pay. Fully humiliated, she had refused his offer, told the clerk she’d never shop there again and left the store.
That had been two months ago, and Jolie had informed her entire family they were not allowed to shop at Casswell’s. Amy had started a feud between the two of them in elementary school. One that had never ended. Last she’d heard, Amy had gone to Europe or Asia, or some such place, but that hadn’t stopped her childhood enemy from embarrassing Jolie from afar. With her father owning the largest grocery store chain in the state, the stock market crash hadn’t crushed the Casswells’ business like it had others, and therefore had never affected Amy. Her clothes had always been the most stylish, and her attitude the haughtiest.
With all that circling in her mind, Jolie couldn’t even begin to grasp at hairs as to why Randal Osterlund would consider marrying her instead of Amy, let alone agree to it.
It didn’t make sense.
Amy Casswell was the type of woman a man like him would marry.
Jolie leaped to her feet. That was it! Amy had accused her of eyeing Randal last year at Marie Beyer’s—now Marie Gains’s—wedding. She hadn’t been eyeing him, even though he had looked extremely handsome in his tuxedo. That had to be it. He and Amy must still be dating, corresponding while Amy was abroad—or had been abroad—and now Amy was attempting to humiliate her. Again.
That had to be it. He must be trying to embarrass her—for Amy. Get her family’s hopes up and then expose their dire financial straits without marrying her.
That wasn’t about to happen on Jolie’s watch. Amy wouldn’t win this time.
With all the determination of a bee finding the perfect flower, Jolie flew across the room, opened her closet door and homed in on the one and only dress she could wear for her meeting with Randal.
It was actually a skirt and blouse, but she’d used two old dresses to make the ensemble. The blouse, white with tiny blue polka dots, had gathered, flouncy sleeves that fell just short of her elbows, and the skirt, blue with tiny white polka dots, had a tight-fitting waist, with two tiny strips of the white material around the knee-length hem. It was one of her favorites, mainly because it was in the current popular style.
That would give her confidence in facing down Randal. Her family might be broke, but she wasn’t broken.
Randal Osterlund stared at the door of the brick home in one of the older, downtown neighborhoods, where many shipping and railroad magnates had built homes during the previous century. Old money—and lots of it—had once filled these neighborhoods.
His family’s home, just as big and just as expensive, was on the other side of town, where new money had created their own neighborhoods within the last couple of decades, as a way of distinguishing between the two.
Old and new money. He knew all about that, and the stories, trials and tribulations that went along with it. He also knew that there were empty houses in both old and new money neighborhoods due to the market crash.
It was his job to make sure his family home remained as is, and that his family maintained their status of being one of the wealthiest in Chicago. That had been driven into him since the day he’d been born.
His grandfather had arrived in America with little more than two coins to rub together in his pockets and had used them to create a family fortune. He’d struck oil in Pennsylvania and eventually sold his oil fields to Rockefeller and his Standard Oil company, before moving west, to Chicago. There, Randal’s father had increased the family fortune in the stock market, and that’s what Randal had inherited when his father had died seven years ago.
Stock market investments.
The crash had affected the family’s finances, just as it had nearly every other family in the nation, but he’d taken steps before the crash had happened and diversified his holdings far more than other investors had. The trouble was, that diversification wasn’t enough to continue to bring in the money needed to hold their status, and his grandfather was breathing fire down his neck to do something about that, to make his own footprint in the financial world.
One that would keep the Osterlunds on the top.
Money, that’s what makes a man. That had been the motto he’d grown up on.
Randal had discovered the way to make that happen—airplanes—but he had one hurdle in his way.
Marriage.
He didn’t like the idea. Marriage did little more than make it harder for a man to focus on his plans and goals, to be his own man. And love...that was dangerous.
He’d seen men go down that rabbit hole. Good men. Men who’d thought they’d found love, the perfect wife, only to have said perfect wife leave them for another and take the contents of their bank account with her.
That wouldn’t happen to him.
He might need a marriage, but he would never need love. Never be broken by it.
At the click of the knob turning, Randal straightened his stance and planted his best false smile on his face. Never one to give in to nerves, he was surprised at his own reaction to the idea of facing Jolie Cramer. He’d seen her at a wedding last year and had been struck by her beauty. That image had been the first one that had come to him when he’d considered his need to marry.
“Mr. Randal, I’m sorry, I didn’t hear your knock.”
Amelia Cramer was middle-aged, with short brown hair, and appeared soft and small, but there was an undeniable shrewdness about her. He wondered if Jolie had that same shrewdness hidden beneath her quiet and meek exterior. Her family was about to lose their home and their only hope was for her to marry someone who could pay the taxes owed on it.
That was him.
The fact that Jolie was also very attractive was simply an added benefit.
“I do hope you haven’t been waiting long,” Amelia said.
“I just arrived and had yet to knock, Mrs. Cramer,” Randal replied.
“Oh, please, call me Amelia.” With a sly smile, she tugged on her earlobe. “After all, we will soon be family.”
Randal lifted a brow. “Jolie agreed?”
“Yes, of course she agreed,” Amelia responded with another coy smile. “Do come in. She will be down in a moment. Chloe, her sister, just went upstairs to tell her you’ve arrived.”
Which told him that Amelia had been watching out the window for him. The woman was desperate. He had questioned Amy’s tales that the Cramer family had lost all they’d had in the stock market crash and that the shock of it had caused the death of Joseph Cramer, because Amy talked like that about everyone. It wasn’t until a couple of months ago, when he’d made a quick stop at the store and encountered Jolie, that he’d begun to wonder if Amy might have been telling the truth.
That unexpected encounter had planted Jolie on the top of his list for possible partners. Quite unexpectedly, the opportunity to investigate if Jolie, and her family, might be open to his plan, had appeared today, when he’d bumped into Amelia Cramer at the courthouse this morning.
“Would you care for a drink?” Amelia asked as she led him into the front room of the home.
He instantly noticed the empty spots on the walls where paintings had obviously once hung, bare spots on the floors where rugs had once lain, and the minimalist furniture and accessories in the room.
Amelia Cramer made no excuses for the missing pieces as she stopped near a small wooden credenza. “I have wine or brandy.”
“No, thank you, I’m fine,” Randal replied as his attention was drawn toward the stairway that swept upward along the elegant curve of the dark wooden banister until it disappeared beyond the ceiling of the front room. A pair of white heels, gracefully stepping from stair to stair, came into view, followed by a very stylish amount of stockinged legs. A white-and-blue dress that highlighted her slender figure appeared next, and then he got his first full look of Jolie.
Both at that wedding and the store that wouldn’t take her check, he’d acknowledged her beauty, but this evening, he was viewing it in a different light.
If he deemed that she was right for the position, and if she agreed, they would marry. That was a sobering thought. He’d sworn off marriage and love for years, and had done so again, vehemently, a few months ago, when Amy had laid down an ultimatum. Either he married her, or she would find someone else to marry.
He’d wished her well.
No woman would ever rule him.
Less than a week later, he’d questioned if he should have married her when he’d discovered that Carl Jansen was considering selling his airplane business—but only to a married man. Amy had been gone for months now, and though he’d fleetingly considered contacting her, he’d chosen alternatives instead. If he had to get married, he wanted it to be with someone he could live with. That wasn’t Amy.
The only thing Amy was faithful to was money. He’d had people breathing down his neck to make more money his entire life, and didn’t need a wife doing that to him.
What he wanted was someone quiet and kind, who would be happy simply running his household.
Watching Jolie stop shy of stepping off the final step of the stairs, he stepped forward. “Hello, Miss Cramer.”
She gave a slight nod. “Mr. Osterlund.”
He held out a hand, and when she took it, he lifted it to kiss the back of it while watching her closely. “You look very lovely this evening.” Her light brown hair was parted in the middle, with both sides rolled and pinned back, exposing delicate ears with tiny pearl earrings dangling from each lobe, but it was her eyes that had snagged his full attention. They were dark brown, and full of hostility. In that moment, he questioned if she should be on his list. Let alone topping it.
She took the final step off the stairs and with the clear intent of letting him know he’d held her hand long enough, pulled it from his grasp.
“I’ve made reservations for us at the Congress Hotel Restaurant,” he informed her, attempting to take the upper hand. As much as her mother may have suggested Jolie was agreeable with his proposition, Jolie clearly wasn’t impressed with the idea.
“Oh, my, that is the finest dining site in the city,” Amelia said. “The chef worked at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York before moving here.”
Jolie provided no response to her mother, but the hostility in her eyes gleamed a shade darker.
Taking full note of that, Randal said, “We can leave whenever you’re ready.”
With her elegant chin lifted high, Jolie stepped toward the door. “I’m ready.”
He wasn’t thrilled with the idea of marriage any more than she appeared to be, but he liked challenges, and the idea of winning Jolie over was one he couldn’t deny thrilled him. He stepped around her, opened the door and bid farewell to her mother as he followed Jolie outside.
His new, dark blue Cadillac was parked in the driveway, and he kept his hands to himself as she walked directly to the passenger door. Though the sides of her hair were rolled and pinned up, the back was left hanging loose, well past her shoulders, and shimmered in the evening sunlight. The fit of her dress said it had been tailor-made, which made him wonder if they were as impoverished as he’d been led to believe. If not, his plan may not work. Unless there was something else that Jolie wanted out of the deal...
He opened the door, waited as she sat and swung in her feet, then he closed the door and walked around the hood of the car. As well-known as Jolie was amongst the younger crowd, she’d never had a steady boyfriend, and that intrigued him. Amy had declared that it was because Jolie was as homely as a wet dog, which was another flat-out lie.
He’d barely started the car after climbing in when she said, “When did Amy return?”
It took a moment of thoughtful concentration for Randal to release the clutch and back out of the driveway, because he’d had to search his mind for the latest news that might have included Amy. He’d never paid any attention to rumors and had to wonder if he’d missed news of Amy’s return. Although, it wouldn’t have interested him anyway. “I wasn’t aware that she had returned.”
Jolie twisted and leveled those dark brown eyes, full of scorn, on him. “Don’t the two of you correspond?”
“No.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “Why would I correspond with her? She left the country to find a rich husband, and I hope she does.”
Her frown knit her brows together. “Weren’t you rich enough for her?”
“Perhaps, but I had no interest in becoming her husband.”
Her frown turned into a look of disbelief. “That’s not what I heard.”
“Perhaps you were listening to the wrong people.”
She huffed out a tiny breath. “Perhaps, but I doubt it.”
“I don’t.” He shrugged. “I have no idea where Amy is, nor do I care.”
“But the two of you dated for some time.”
“We attended events together, but that doesn’t mean I was interested in marrying her.” Sensing more than fully knowing, he asked, “Why didn’t the two of you ever get along?”
“Who says we didn’t?”
He glanced at her and grinned, letting her know that she wasn’t hiding her dislike of Amy any more than Amy had hidden hers of Jolie.
She pinched her lips together as if hiding her own grin. “I’m assuming she told you about the ink episode.”
“No, I don’t know about any ink episode.” But he was certainly curious now, given the tone in her voice.
She grew thoughtful for a moment, then asked, “She didn’t tell you?”
“No.”
After another moment of silence, she asked, “Is this about the episode at her father’s store? Because I had money in the bank that day.”
In his opinion, the store clerk should have been ashamed of her behavior. He’d wanted to catch up with Jolie after she’d left the store, and tell her so, but had figured she’d be too embarrassed to appreciate his thoughts.
“And,” she continued, “I know, this...arrangement...between us has something to do with Amy.”
He focused on steering the car along the curving road that led out of the neighborhood and into downtown. “This isn’t about that day, and it doesn’t have anything to do with Amy.”
She waited until he pulled the car to a stop at an intersection, then leveled a steady, brown-eyed glare on him that he couldn’t ignore. Turning, he waited, because she was clearly about to say something.
“Then, what is it about? And be aware, I can pick out a lie as easily as I can pick out a con man.”
He withheld the want to grin and turned his gaze back on the traffic. There was more to Jolie Cramer than he’d imagined, and that didn’t disappoint him. In fact, he appreciated her bluntness. “I thought you knew.” He pulled the car onto the main road. “I need a wife, and it’s my understanding that you need a husband.”
