Anne McAllister – The Antonides Marriage Deal (страница 2)

“You could come home and go to work for me,” Elias suggested not for the first time.

“No way,” Lukas said not for the first time, either. “I’ll give you a call when I get to Auckland to see if you have any ideas.”

Ted Corbett—on line one—the only legitimate caller as far as Elias was concerned, was fortunately still there.

“So, what do you think? Ready to take us over?” That was why he was still there. Corbett was eager to sell his marine outfitters business and just as eager for Elias to be the one to buy it.

“We’re thinking about it,” Elias said. “No decision yet. Paul has been doing some research, running the numbers.”

His projects manager loved ferreting out all the details that went into these decisions. Elias, who didn’t, left Paul to it. But ultimately Elias was going to have to make the final decision. All the decisions, in the end, were his.

“I want to come out and see the operation in person,” he said.

“Of course,” Corbett agreed. “Whenever you want.” He chattered on about the selling points, and Elias listened.

He deliberately took his time with Corbett, eyeing the red light on line six all the while. It stayed bright red. When he finally finished with Corbett it was still blinking. Probably the old man just walked off and left his phone on. That would be just like him. But Elias punched the button anyway.

“My, you’re a busy fellow,” Aeolus boomed in his ear.

Elias shut his eyes and mustered his patience. His father must have been doing the crossword to wait so long. “Actually, yes. I’ve been on the phone way too long, and now I’m late for a meeting. What’s up?”

“Me, actually. Came into the city to see a friend. Thought I’d stop by. Got something to discuss with you.”

The last thing Elias needed today was his father making a personal appearance. “I’m coming out on the weekend,” Elias said, hoping to forestall the visit. “We can talk then.”

But Aeolus was otherwise inclined. “This won’t take long. See you in a bit.” And the phone clicked in Elias’s ear.

Damn it! How typical of his father. It didn’t matter how busy you were, if he wanted your attention, Aeolus found a way to get it. Elias banged the phone down and pinched the bridge of his nose, feeling a headache gathering force back behind his eyes.

By the time his beaming father breezed straight past Rosie and into Elias’s office an hour later, Elias’s headache was raging full-bore.

“Guess what I did!” Aeolus kicked the door shut and did one of the little soft-shuffle steps that invariably followed his sinking a particularly tricky putt.

“Hit a hole in one?” Elias guessed. He stood up so he could meet his father head-on.

At the golf reference, Aeolus’s smile grew almost wistful. “I wish,” he murmured. He sighed, then brightened. “But, metaphorically speaking, I guess you could say that.”

Metaphorically speaking? Since when did Aeolus Antonides speak in metaphors? Elias raised his eyebrows and waited politely for his father’s news.

Aeolus rubbed his hands together and beamed. “I found us a business partner!”

“What!” Elias stared at his father, appalled. “What the hell do you mean, business partner? We don’t need a business partner!”

“You said we needed ready cash.”

Oh, hell. He had been listening. “I never said anything about a business partner! The business is doing fine!”

“Of course it is,” Aeolus nodded. “Couldn’t get a partner if it weren’t. No rats want to board sinking ships.”

Rats? Elias felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. “What rats?”

“Nothing. No rats,” Aeolus said quickly. “Just a figure of speech.”

“Well, forget it.”

“No. You work too hard, Elias. I know I haven’t done my part. It’s just…it’s not in me. I—” Aeolus looked bleak.

“I know that, Dad.” Elias gave his father a sincere, sympathetic smile. “I understand.” Which was the truth. “Don’t worry about it. It’s not a problem.”

Not now at least. Eight years ago it had cost him his marriage.

No, that wasn’t fair. His father’s lack of business acumen had been only one factor in the breakup with Millicent. It had begun when he’d toyed with quitting business school to start his own boat-building company, to do what his grandfather had done. Millicent had been appalled. She’d been passionate about him finishing school and stepping in at Antonides. But that was when she’d thought it was worth something. When she found out its books were redder than a sunset, she’d been appalled, and livid when Elias had insisted on staying and trying to salvage the firm.

No, his father’s business incompetence had only highlighted the problems between himself and Millicent. The truth was that he should have realized what Millicent’s priorities were and never married her in the first place. It was a case of extraordinary bad judgement and one Elias was not going to repeat.

“But I do worry,” his father went on. “We both do, your mother and I. You work so hard. Too hard.”

Elias had never spoken of the reasons for the divorce, but his parents weren’t fools. They knew Elias had worked almost 24/7 to salvage the business from the state it had slid to due to his father’s not-so-benign neglect. They knew that the financial reality of Antonides Marine did not meet the expectations of their son’s social-ladder climbing wife. They knew she had vanished not long after Elias dropped out of business school to work in the family firm. And within weeks of the divorce being final, Millicent had married the heir to a Napa Valley winery.

Of course no one mentioned any of this. For years no one had spoken her name, least of all Elias.

But shortly after Millicent’s marriage, the fretting began—and so had the parade of eligible women, as if getting Elias a new wife would make things better, make his father feel less guilty.

As far as Elias was concerned, his father had no need to feel guilty. Aeolus was who he was. Millicent was who she was. And Elias was who he was—a man who didn’t want a wife.

Or a business partner.

“No, Dad,” he said firmly now.

Aeolus shrugged. “Sorry. Too late. It’s done. I sold forty percent of Antonides Marine.”

Elias felt as if he’d been punched. “Sold it? You can’t do that!”

Aeolus’s whole demeanor changed in an instant. He was no longer the amiable, charming father Elias knew and loved. Drawing himself up sharply with almost military rigidity, he looked down his not inconsiderable nose at his furious son.

“Of course I can sell it,” Aeolus said stiffly, his tone infused with generations of Greek arrogance that even his customary amiable temperament couldn’t erase. “I own it.”

“Yes, I know that. But—” But it was true. Aeolus did own Antonides Marine. Or fifty percent of it anyway. Elias owned ten percent. Forty percent was in trust for his four siblings. It was a family company. Always had been. No one whose name was not Antonides had ever owned any of it.

Elias stared at his father, feeling poleaxed. Gutted. Betrayed. He swallowed. “Sold it?” he echoed hollowly. Which meant what? That his work of the past eight years was, like his marriage, gone in the stroke of a pen?

“Not all of it,” Aeolus assured him. “Just enough to give you a little capital. You said you needed money. All last Sunday at your mother’s dinner party you were on the phone talking to someone about raising capital to buy some outfitter.”

“And I was doing it.” Elias ground out.

“Well, now I’ve done it instead.” His father rubbed his hands together briskly. “So you don’t have to work so hard. You have breathing room.”

“Breathing room?” Elias would have laughed if he hadn’t already been gasping. His knees felt weak. He wanted to sit down. He wanted to put his head between his knees and take deep desperate breaths. But instead he stood rigid, his fingers balled into fists, and stared at his father in impotent fury, none of which he allowed to show on his face.

“You didn’t need to sell,” he said at last in measured tones that he congratulated himself did not betray the rage he felt. “It would have been all right.”

“Oh, yes? Then why did we move here?” Aeolus wrinkled his nose as he looked around the newly renovated offices in the riverside warehouse Elias had bought and which until today his father had never seen.

“To get back to our roots,” Elias said through his teeth. There was no reason at all to pay midtown Manhattan prices when his business could be better conducted from Brooklyn. “This is where Papu had his first offices.” His grandfather had never wanted to be far from water.

Aeolus didn’t seem convinced. “Well, it’s obvious that things aren’t what they used to be,” he said with a look around. “I wanted to help.”

Help? Dear God! Elias took a wild, shuddering breath, raked a hand through his hair. With help like this he might as well throw in the towel.

Of course, he wouldn’t.

Antonides Marine was his life. Since he’d shelved his dream of building his own boats, since Millicent had walked out, it was the only thing he’d focused on. She would have said, of course, that it was the only thing he’d focused on before she’d left him. But that wasn’t true. And he’d done it in the first place for her, to try to give her the life she’d wanted. How was he to know she’d just been looking for an excuse to walk out?