Cathy Thacker - His Marriage Bonus

Jack sighed and took a seat behind a desk littered with contracts. He leaned back in the leather chair, rested his elbows on the chair arms and steepled his hands in front of him. “There’s been a delay with the five hundred luxury cars we were supposed to ship to Miami tonight. Only half of them arrived,” he confided, concerned. “LC Motors insists we wait for the rest of them before taking off. Meanwhile, we’ve got containers of perishable foods on the ship that need to go out as scheduled tonight.”

What a mess, Mitch thought. He was glad Jack had called him in to help handle it. “Have you tried putting the rest of the cars on a different ship?” Mitch asked.

Jack nodded. “Nothing’s available for five days. Everything else is booked solid.”

Mitch slanted a sidelong look at Lauren. To his chagrin—he would have much preferred she had been bored or distracted—she looked as tense and concerned and attentive as he and Jack. “Those shipments can’t be moved around?” Mitch asked.

“No.” Jack frowned again. “It’s all cargo from regular clientele.”

Realizing it was going to be a long evening, Mitch stood. Preparing to head for his office, he took off his suit jacket, unbuttoned his collar, and loosened the knot of his tie. “Let me see what I can do.”

Jack gave Lauren a considering look, which seemed to warn her from doing anything that would hurt the Deveraux or the company they owned, as she rose to accompany Mitch down the hall. “I’ll keep trying to get in touch with your dad,” Jack said before they left.

Lauren and Mitch walked down the hall the short distance to his office. “Tough break,” she murmured sympathetically as Mitch opened the door to his own suite of offices and turned on the lights.

“Yes, it is,” Mitch agreed. The question was, how to fix the situation without giving either Lauren—or by extension, her father—a chance to take advantage or betray him, and prove his father and Jack Granger right about her, and her motivation, after all.

Lauren sat down and waited patiently while Mitch worked the phones. To Mitch’s chagrin, he noted uneasily that though he gave her some old Business Week and Fortune magazines to flip through, Lauren secretly appeared to be hanging on to every word he said, even as she turned the pages and pretended to read the material in front of her. Were Jack and his dad right? Mitch wondered as he made yet another call. Was Lauren with him simply to uncover anything that would give her dad the edge in the ongoing competition between the two firms? Or was he right? Mitch wondered. And this was all simple coincidence, albeit an unfortunate one. Problems were a dime a dozen in any business. And missed shipments happened all the time. Generally not, however, when he was “contracted by gentleman’s agreement” to have the daughter of his fiercest competitor, and a savvy businesswoman in her own right, with him.

Half an hour later, Jack came back in. “Any luck?” he asked Mitch hopefully as soon as Mitch hung up the telephone.

Mitch shook his head, displeased to report, “LC Motors and Specialty Foods are both threatening to take their business to one of the Web-based exchanges on the Internet to find alternate transportation if we don’t do as they want.”

If possible, Jack looked even grimmer. “So what are you going to do?” he asked.

Mitch shrugged. “The only thing I can. Order the ship to get under way immediately, with whatever cargo is on it. And then talk to Payton Heyward. See if he’s got a ship we can use for the rest of the cars as soon as they arrive. We ship a lot for both LC Motors and Specialty Foods. We can’t afford to lose either’s business. And that means keeping to the contracted schedule as close as possible.”

Jack shot another long considering look at Lauren before turning back to Mitch.

Mitch knew what Jack was thinking. Jack was thinking he shouldn’t be giving any business to a competitor. Had Mitch not wanted to merge firms with Payton Heyward, he would have agreed. He would have found some other company to handle the cargo rather than do anything to strengthen their chief rival. But he did want to merge firms with Payton, and this was the surest, quickest way to prove that the two powerhouse shipping companies could work together in ways that would benefit—and empower—both.

“You can’t do this on your own,” Jack warned humorlessly at last. “Your father is going to have to sign off on it.”

“If you can find him, I’ll be glad to turn this problem over to him,” Mitch promised. “Until then, I’m going to use my executive powers, as second in command, to do what I have to do to solve the problem.” And the first order of business was to get the loaded ship under way. The second was to find Payton Heyward and get him to cooperate with Mitch in a way Payton had never joined forces with Mitch’s father.

Mitch studied Jack. “Are you with me or not?” he asked.

Jack nodded reluctantly. “I’m with you,” he said. “I just hope you know what you’re doing. ’Cause if you don’t, and this backfires on us in any way, there’s going to be hell to pay.”

“DO YOU HAVE PROBLEMS like this all the time?” Lauren asked as they drove the short distance to the penthouse apartment where Payton stayed during the week, in lieu of commuting back and forth between Charleston and his Summerville estate.

“Unfortunately, nowadays, we do,” Mitch explained, trying not to get too used to having Lauren’s soothing, perfumed presence in the car beside him. He turned to look at her as they waited at a red light, and explained, “It used to be that a shipping company established a regular clientele—these were all usually handshake deals—and then the two stuck together, through good times and bad. If there was unusual weather or some other calamity, it wasn’t a problem. Chiefly because there was nowhere else to turn. Now if something goes wrong, a customer can just switch on his computer, go to one of the auction sites on the Web, post his needs. The customer will start getting bids immediately and will usually find an alternate shipper within twenty-four hours.”

Lauren frowned, looking, Mitch thought, more troubled than someone should who had no interest at all in the family business. “But your family’s company doesn’t do that,” Lauren supposed slowly, her soft tone as sympathetic as her pretty, dark brown eyes.

“No, and neither does your father’s,” Mitch said as the traffic light changed, and he pressed his foot down on the accelerator again. “And that’s beginning to cost us both. And it’s a shame. We should both be doing business on the Web as well as the old-fashioned way.”

Lauren raked her teeth across her lower lip. “Why don’t you do that if it’s something you need to be doing to stay competitive?”

Mitch sighed as he turned into the parking lot and guided his Lexus into a visitor space. “I can’t speak for your father,” he said as he cut the engine and turned to Lauren. “But we haven’t done so yet chiefly because all our container ships are filled to capacity, as is.”

“Then why worry about it?” Lauren asked, getting out of the car before Mitch could get around to help her.

Mitch took her elbow as they headed toward the building entrance. “Because the way the shipping business is conducted is changing, Lauren, and both our companies need to change, too—at least stay ahead of the curve. Otherwise, five years from now both could find themselves out of business.”

Lauren said hello to the uniformed doorman and headed for the elevators at the other end of the elegant marble-floored lobby. “If you merge, will you force some of the auction sites to fold?” she asked.

“No.” Mitch stepped into the elevator behind her, taking in the appealing perfection of her skin. “Although statistically about half will fail on their own, anyway, due to poor plans, etcetera. But we will make ourselves stronger, bigger, more competitive. And that’s what both Deveraux and Heyward shipping companies need to do if we’re to keep growing,” he said, looking deep into her eyes and trying to determine once again if he could trust her as much as his gut told him he could.