Doris Fell - Long-Awaited Wedding

She frowned. “I thought your brother Allen was CEO.”

“Our father left the company to the three Kladis boys.”

But he left Allen in charge, she thought. She was certain of that. He had been grooming his eldest son for the job. It had been the reason that the elder Kladis didn’t want Maureen standing in the way.

“Oh, Allen got his hog’s share of the company all right Fifty percent. But Christophorous and I are still in the running.”

She heard the bitterness in his voice.

“Christophorous?” she asked.

“Chris, the kid brother. The one who likes flying better than building planes. Couldn’t care less who runs the company.”

For some reason she remembered Allen calling him the “waif” of the family—the non-Greek, the question mark, the independent thinker. “Dad will never mold him. He came along ten years after the rest of us. Blond and fair-skinned and Mother’s favorite.”

But it was Allen who mattered to Maureen.

She stood silently, the receiver dangling between her fingers. Staring straight into Nick Kladis’s dark gaze she asked, “Did you give that order to launch the missile, Mr. Kladis? To help the merger go through quickly?”

He didn’t answer, but Maureen was certain that she had struck a bull’s-eye. If Nick gave the order, was Allen even aware of it?

“Were you trying to humiliate Fabian Industries? Trying to force the bidding figure down?”

Or were you trying to undermine Allen’s leadership? she wondered. She had to talk to Allen. Or had Allen changed? Had he become shrewd and cunning like his brother Nick? As cagey and cruel as his father had been?

“I need answers, Mr. Kladis.”

“Wait until I tell my brother that a woman is handling the missile project.” He laughed sardonically, his dark eyes smiling nonetheless.

He was outwitting her for now. “Will you be around in the morning?” she asked.

He made a point of pushing back his cuff, glancing at his expensive watch. “It’s already morning. I’ll be flying out in a few hours. But we can talk by phone when you know what happened.”

You’re behind it, she thought. But why? You had no reason to destroy me, to tamper with my authority. But you’re in a power play with your brother.

“Then we’ll talk later,” she said.

“I’ll let Allen know.” Again his eyes were mocking, amused.

Long after the men had gone, Maureen lingered at her desk, thinking about Allen. She had long ago come to terms with him dying on Cyprus, but to learn now that he was alive—that she had been deceived by both father and son—was unthinkable. Now the only picture she could conjure up in her mind was the youthful Allen, the young man she had fallen in love with, untainted by the Kladis’s greed and conniving. But the businessman? The head of an aircraft company? Had he changed?

Meeting him again would be painful. Not meeting him would be unbearable.

Slowly she brought her attention back to the crisis at hand and jotted down notes for the morning schedule. At 2:00 a.m. she left a message on Dwayne Crocker’s answering machine, asking him to meet her at eight in the morning. She had a vague recollection of him talking about new statistics that would iron out the flaws on the Fabian missile project. She wished she had listened more closely. It was the most important thing he had said all evening.

When she came face-to-face with Allen Kladis, she wanted answers that would guarantee her own job, and secure her reputation. Dwayne Crocker, with his mathematical genius, could give her those answers.

She tidied up her desk, closed up her office and locked it, then went through the security checks with a forced smile and a pleasant good-night to the security guards as she walked out to the parking lot. The night was mostly gone, but automatically, as she reached the car, she glanced up and saw the evening star still glowing brightly in the pre-dawn sky.

In the Pacific Northwest, on what proved a surprisingly warm and dry spring morning, Allen Kladis moved barefoot across the thick carpet of his condominium. He paused at the mantelpiece, staring down at Adrian in the framed picture of their wedding day. Setting his water tumbler down, he braced his hands against the shelf, his gaze fixed on the bride and groom in the photo. His chest constricted, the emotional pain tormenting him with its harshness, its swift onset. It was a pain that never completely went away.

Had they really been that young, that jubilant? He saw it now, their absolute trust as they looked at each other, so confident that they had a lifetime ahead of them, not just twelve years. He felt cheated, robbed too soon of his dearest friend.

Adrian at twenty-three had been beautiful in satin and lace, his grandmother’s clutch pearls around her slender neck. In the photo, she had just tilted her chin up, her blue eyes meeting his. Brilliant peacock-blue eyes. She looked so trusting, sheltered there in the crook of his arm. He looked rather striking himself in his black tuxedo.

“A handsome pair,” the photographer had said.

Allen slid his tumbler across the fireplace shelf and moved three steps to the other picture of Adrian by herself. He had taken it two days after meeting her out by Snoqualmie Falls, where the 268-foot waterfalls had drenched them. In the photo she was laughing, pushing her wet, windblown hair back from her lovely face.

Without these two photos and without the shoe boxes of snapshots that she had hidden under the bed—photos she was always going to put in albums when she found the time—Allen would not remember how beautiful she had once been.

Adrian at thirty-five had been barely recognizable. Holding up his tumbler of iced water, he saluted her. “I still miss you,” he said.

A year and a half ago she had been the healthiest woman he knew. Then, within weeks, she was suddenly tired, not feeling well, nauseated. Oh, Adrian, he thought, forgive me. I was so elated, so certain you were finally embarking on a rolling sea of morning sickness. A baby. The baby we always wanted. But you knew, didn’t you?

He tilted his head back and ran one hand through his thick hair, still wet and unruly from the shower. He tried to block out the memory of picking her up in his arms that day and saying, “If you’re pregnant, you’ll make me the happiest man on earth.”

Her smile had matched the glow in the photograph. But ten seconds after twirling her around and setting her down, she ran to the washbasin, deathly pale, deathly sick. When they saw the family doctor the next morning, Allen grinned and said, “Just tell us, Doc. When is the baby due?”

Allen had never considered any other diagnosis until the doctor came back into the examining room. “Adrian is not pregnant,” he said kindly. “But let’s run some blood tests and see what’s making her so tired. I’ll call you when the reports come back.”

Four days later he referred them to a hematologist “What’s wrong?” Allen asked.

“Mr. Kladis, let’s not get alarmed. Let’s just see what the specialist says.”

What he had said was “acute myeloblastic leukemia.”

“What are you telling us?” Allen demanded, sitting with Adrian across from the large mahogany desk.

Calmly, the physician repeated the words and added his medical mumbo jumbo. “We’ll do a bone-marrow aspiration and chemotherapy to induce remission. Chemo may give her an extra few months.”

Allen had doubled his fist and lunged forward. If it had not been for the grace of God and Adrian’s swift grip on his wrist, he would have knuckled the hematologist’s jaw and silenced his bluntness.

“My wife is not dying!” Allen had shouted, his angry words bombarding the four walls. “She’s as healthy as I am. We swim every day at the club. Sail on Lake Washington. Ski all winter. Don’t come in here with your crazy diagnosis, doctor. My wife is pregnant. Take another look at those tests.”