Chapter 11
Katie was in the office studying the production report.
Output was down, orders were up, and they needed more machines and labor to meet the demands.
She had a few ideas to solve the issues, but they all involved an influx of cash and the investor wasn’t willing to do that without an efficiency review—conducted by one of their engineers.
If she could only speak with the investor instead of his representative, she might be able to get a read on what he expected and how much time he’d give her to get there.
But using a go-between made it difficult to anticipate anything.
Katie could read people, whether it be an expression, a frown, a mannerism…
or the tone in a person’s voice. However, by the time this investor’s directives reached her, they’d been deciphered and meshed with the characteristics of his right-hand man, Lawrence Pickett.
He was a lawyer who loved pin-striped suits, bow ties, and his five nieces.
Katie might not know anything about the silent investor, but she knew Lawrence enjoyed the symphony, peanut brittle, and biographies.
His gentle demeanor held a sincerity that made him easy to talk to, and she looked forward to hearing from him.
Until this last contact, when he brought up the engineer and the efficiency review. That, she was not looking forward to…
Lawrence, do I need to be worried about this engineer?
His voice had been encouraging when he answered. Just focus on what you can do to improve efficiency without sacrificing the product.
I would never want to sacrifice the product, and I am trying. I would love to explain that to the investor—in person. Lawrence, could you please talk to him and see if he’d be willing to meet with me? It took the man so long to respond, she almost repeated the question.
I will have that conversation with him.
Thank you. She should have asked for a timeframe because it had been three weeks since their chat, and he hadn’t mentioned it again. As soon as she was done with the efficiency engineer dilemma, she’d bring it up again.
“Katie?”
She glanced up from the spreadsheet she was supposed to be reviewing, spotted Glynnis, her assistant, in the doorway. “Yes?”
The young woman’s red hair matched her outfit. “You have a visitor. He’s not on your calendar, so I can tell him you’re unavailable if you like.”
A visitor? Please, do not let it be the engineer. He would never drop in without an appointment, would he? That would be unorthodox and–
“Katie? What would you like me to do?”
“Send him in.” If it were the engineer, the sooner they had a conversation about how to proceed with his efficiency studies, the better. She flipped over the spreadsheet and took a deep breath. She could do this…
But when the door opened, the man standing in front of her was not the engineer. “Ian, what are you doing here?”
He ignored the question, moved toward her. “You look good sitting behind that desk.”
“You can’t be here. It’s proprietary.” Why was he here? “My investor would not like it.”
He sank into a chair, crossed a booted foot over his thigh. “Have you ever met the investor?”
What to say to that? “I’ve met his representative, and I assure you, he would not like this.”
A raised brow. “You think he would have an issue with you taking an old friend through the factory?”
Katie clutched the pen in her hand, forced out even breaths. “We were never friends.”
“Right.” The left side of his jaw twitched. “We were a lot more.”
“Why are you really here?”
He rubbed his bearded jaw, studied her. “I’ve been following your company, and from what I can tell, you’ve got more orders than you can fill.
It’s great that you’ve got the orders, but not so great that you can’t fill them or meet delivery deadlines.
That’s a red flag to an investor. He’ll want to know about efficiency issues, staffing, bottlenecks in the process, and he’ll send someone to take a look.
” He leaned back in his chair, crossed his hands over his flat belly.
“That’s where I can help. I’m good at problem-solving in these situations. ”
“You’re a problem solver?” That was a joke.
Ian Finnegan created problems; he did not solve them.
“You might have read a few articles about my company, but you don’t know anything about it.
” The man and his arrogance were ridiculous.
“You want to help? How about you do that by answering a few questions?” When he nodded, she kept her voice even, her expression bland.
“Why did you disappear? Why couldn’t you have been man enough to tell me it was over?
” Despite her attempts to remain calm, her voice shook.
“Not returning my phone calls and then blocking my number? That was just cruel.” And painful. So very painful.
His expression turned guarded, his body rigid. “Did you ever think I was trying to protect you?”
“Protect me? You refused to return my phone calls and blocked my number! You weren’t protecting me; you were trying to get rid of me.”
“That is just not true,” he bit out.
“No? Then what is the truth, Ian?” For years, she’d wondered when he’d decided to erase her. Had it been before he left Magdalena or as soon as he–
“My father gave me an ultimatum.”
“Let me guess. Somehow, your father found out we were seeing each other and demanded you break it off, or risk losing your inheritance.” She hadn’t considered his father’s potential involvement, but…
“If only it had been that.”
“Oh? So, you weren’t in jeopardy of losing all that money? What was it then? You realized you preferred the upscale designer life and wanted to forget what happened here?” Forget us?
He stared at her, his gaze burrowing straight to her soul. “Not quite.”
There was something he wasn’t telling her, and if it wasn’t about money or women, then what was it? “Can you just tell me the truth? Please?”
He didn’t speak for a few seconds, and when he did, the words blasted all of the ideas she’d had about why he stayed away.
“My father found out about us and told me if I contacted you again, he’d sue you for living in his house without his knowledge or approval.”
“But Jack said–”
“I know, but he vowed to go after Jack as well. He said he didn’t care who he had to take down, he would.”
“So, you agreed?”
“I couldn’t watch him destroy the people I cared about. I had to protect you and Jack.” He dragged a hand over his face. “Do you think I wanted to stop seeing you? If you don’t believe anything else about me, then believe the last thing I wanted to do was let you go.”
Katie sank back in her chair, tried to make sense of what he’d just told her. All this time… Ian had done this to protect her because he cared. She cleared her throat, let a few truths slip out. “I wish I’d known, at least at some point over the years.”
“I thought about it, and I even came close a few times. Dolly and I stayed in touch, and she’s keep me posted on what you were doing, the business…the boyfriends…”
Boyfriends? Most of them were buffers constructed to protect her from matchmaking attempts. If people thought she had a boyfriend, they’d stop trying to find her one. Looked like the “act” had been a bit too convincing. The nanosecond fiancé had been real—unfortunately.
There wouldn’t have been fake boyfriends or a fiancé if she’d known the truth about why Ian ghosted her. Anger and frustration seeped into her voice. “Why did you think you had the right to choose what happened to me?”
The jaw twitch and the frown said he didn’t like that question. “I was not going to let my father hurt the people I cared about.”
“So, you just disappeared? Walked away and pretended I never existed?” Pretended we never existed?
“All of my life, I did whatever I wanted, no matter who got hurt or disappointed. I couldn’t do that to you or Jack.
” A long sigh. “I gave my father what he wanted in exchange for your safety and Jack’s, but I never forgot about you.
” His voice shifted, his expression turned fierce. “Forgetting you would be impossible.”
What to say to that? Tell me more? I want details…elaborate, please? No, she couldn’t let him see how much she wanted to know. “Did you not think I should have been part of that conversation? That maybe I would want a say in things?” I would have chosen you over a lawsuit.
“I couldn’t risk it.”
“Maybe you should have.”
The look he gave her said she had no idea what she was talking about.
“My father has a habit of finding people’s vulnerabilities and capitalizing on them, no matter who gets hurt.
Like I said, I wasn’t willing to risk that, even if it meant walking away from you.
” Those blue eyes she could never forget burned her.
“Did you think I wanted to leave you and delete your calls? Never see you again? How could you for even half a second believe that?”
Katie fell back all those years to the weeks they’d spent together…the sharing and plans, the intimacy. Her stomach fluttered, her pulse tripled. Too many memories, too much heartache. “Why did you really come back?”
“To see you…to apologize…”
A rush of emotion pushed out her next words before she could stop them. “To pick up where we left off?”
“I came here to gain some perspective.”
“And why are you staying at Max Ruhland’s house? He and his wife only rent to people they know.” Pause and a curious “Do you know Max and Grace Ruhland?”
The slightest nod and then a quiet, “I do. Great people.”
Ian Finnegan was a mystery she couldn’t figure out. “Care to elaborate?”
“I do contract work for Max. We’re friends.”
“Friends?” That seemed a stretch, even for a guy who obviously spent too much time expanding the truth.
Max Ruhland was a legend in this town, a hard worker from a pathetic past who built an empire around his passion for cars.
People didn’t get close to Max unless he wanted them to…
hadn’t he kept his success a secret for years, letting most of the town think he was still a down-on-his-luck mechanic?
Katie would bet a pallet of her soups that Ian Finnegan wasn’t his friend, not even close. But his next words indicated otherwise.
“A few years back, I was doing some work on car engines, supercharging them, similar to what Max’s company does, but different.
He liked what I produced and called me. The guy’s a legend in the performance racing business, so it was a big deal.
He offered me a job at G-Racing Technologies, but I didn’t want to be tied down to one job.
We settled on contract work, and I’ve been doing it for almost three years. ”
Ian really was friends with Max Ruhland. The man was a multimillionaire…a family man… a husband and a father… “I thought Max lived in Pennsylvania.”
“He does. A few hours’ drive from here, which makes Magdalena the perfect place to hang out while I decide what I want to do.
Maybe I’ll drive and meet up with him. The main operation is still in California, and he flies out there, sometimes with his wife and kids.
He has people to handle the day-to-day stuff. ”
Oh, she’d heard about Max Ruhland and how he reconnected with the woman he’d never forgotten. He married Grace and was helping her raise her two daughters, and they had a child of their own. She couldn’t remember if the baby was a girl or boy…
She studied Ian, tried to put the pieces together.
“So, you’re an engineer and you work on projects for Max’s company.
” That did not give him credentials to look at her company or talk about efficiency and production.
“What else do you do that qualifies you to look at my company?” She didn’t miss the brief hesitation or the way his gaze darted from her face to the corner of her desk before he spoke.
“I also invest in small companies. I track them, find areas for improvement. I have a knack for it.” He let out a quiet laugh, his blue eyes twinkling.
“It drives my old man crazy. He still can’t understand how somebody who looks like me can sit on the board of a business and help them make a profit.
It doesn’t compute.” Another laugh, and then, “I’m fine with that because I don’t fit the image for his company.
And I say his company because it’s not mine.
I don’t like the way he conducts business with the threats he makes to people he’s supposed to care about…
like me and my sisters, so I stay away and only visit when I have to. ..”
“Did you know I bought your father’s house?”
“I heard about it.”
“Uncle Jack bought it from your father several years ago.”
“I heard that, too.” He shifted in his chair, cleared his throat.
“I bought it last year, Ian. And yet you never tried to contact me. If you cared about me as much as you just professed, I think you’d have been eager to call once you knew your father posed no threat to me or Jack.” She raised a brow, forced a smile. “That’s what doesn’t compute.”
He opened his mouth to speak, closed it, waited a full ten seconds to respond. “I didn’t think it was a good idea at the time…not when you were about to be engaged.”
Ugh. He was referring to the mistake that almost happened. Katie fought the heat creeping to her cheeks, sucked in a deep breath.
“Like I said, I kept tabs on what was happening in your life and when I heard about the fiancé, well, I didn’t think it was such a good idea to reach out.”
She might almost believe him, but the engagement had been over for five months. “You’re not telling me everything, and I don’t like that.”