Nancy Holland - Owed - One Wedding Night

She didn’t dare take photos, but she could make a few quick sketches of the possibilities taking shape in her mind when she got back to the car.

She started circling the first floor to get a customer’s-eye view, but she couldn’t see the merchandise first of all, the way a shopper would. She saw people. A seasoned professional behind the cosmetics counter giving advice to her college-age coworker. The woman ending her shift in handbags to be home to meet her kindergartner's school bus. The older woman in candy who’d worked for years at the flagship store before she moved out here to be near her grandkids. And, when she recognized Madison and called upstairs, the manager who’d built her career working for Dartmoor.

The manager greeted Madison with a smile, panic in her eyes, and an outstretched hand.

“What a pleasant surprise. We’re honored to have you here, Ms. Ellsworth.”

The words twisted in Madison’s heart. How much was honor that came from wealth and name alone worth? Especially when the next time Madison saw the woman it would most likely be to tell her this store, like all the others, was closing.

Madison forced the thought from her mind, afraid the other woman would see it on her face, and let the manager woman give her an official, and useless, tour of the store.

Madison nodded and smiled, and silently ground her teeth, until she could make the excuse of needing to get back to the office and escape.

Once in her car, she didn't even stop to do the sketches before she drove away.

Why bother? Without Jake’s help, Dartmoor was doomed. If only she’d paid more attention to what was going on these last few years. Her grandfather had left her ten percent of the company, but made her father trustee until she was twenty-two. Since her father had stopped speaking to her after she’d left Jake at the altar, to insist on voting her shares once she technically could would have been more of an emotional minefield than she’d been willing to risk.

She’d been sure that once she had her MBA, her father would do more than let her vote her own shares – he’d train her to take over Dartmoor someday.

She blinked away tears. That would never happen now. His death had robbed her of the future she’d wanted and left her nothing but anger with him over the past.

As traffic slowed to cross the bridge, a dark new suspicion appeared to rearrange that past to form a picture she’d never considered before.

Maybe the money he’d wasted on her wedding wasn’t the real reason her father had shut her out of his life. If she’d been on speaking terms with him and asked too many questions about Dartmoor, she might have discovered the truth about the new CFO he’d hired. In fact, if she hadn’t been such a coward and had insisted on voting her shares, she might have been able to stop this whole disaster before it started.

She pulled off the freeway, wound through the traffic to the garage under the apartment building, and pushed in the code. The metal doors ground open.

She’d pay for her cowardice now by having to tell her mother they had only one choice left – close down the business their family had owned for over a hundred and fifty years.

Madison parked the car and rested her forehead on the steering wheel. The garage door ground shut behind her like a prison gate. What she needed was a miracle.

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