Chapter Twenty-One
Landon
Lyla appeared in the arching door of her office as soon as I set foot in our satellite headquarters, an office about an hour north of Santa Cruz. We’d put the satellite headquarters together once the affordable housing venture had gotten established —it was part of the job I’d given to Owen.
Lyla stood ramrod straight in a gray pencil skirt and matching jacket, her shoes so pointed they looked like weapons. As soon as I looked at her, she stepped back and held her arm out.
"A word in my office, please," she said. It wasn't a question and it certainly did not feel like an invitation.
Of course, she wasn't away from her desk at lunch. What had I been thinking? I knew exactly what I’d been thinking about —Riley, where we could meet next, and how I would travel to the ends of the earth just for a weekend with her.
I stopped in Lyla's doorway. "Mind if we meet in my office instead? I could use a drink."
Sure enough, Lyla's nose wrinkled with disdain. This wasn't a business meeting; she was just looking for yet another opportunity to lecture me. "It's barely past noon."
"Oh, so you did notice it was lunchtime, just checking." I lingered in the doorway as if I might not stay. "Wow, this place is the mirror image of your office at the house, down to the white rugs and all the sharp metals. You've got something against being cozy?"
Lyla walked around her stark desk and settled into her chair. She folded her hands and pursed her lips.
"I'm going to go ahead and stop you right there." I marched into the middle of the room and held up a hand. "If this doesn't have anything to do with monthly projections or financial reviews, then I don't want to hear about it."
"Says the man sauntering into the office at noon to grab a drink," she said in a snippy voice. She smoothed her hair and took a deep breath. "This directly affects work."
"What's that?" I growled.
"The amount of time you’re spending with this Riley woman."
"Goddammit, Lyla, that's enough."
She gave a little jump at my sharp tone, then laid her hands flat on the desk and stood up. "Landon, I really have your best interests at heart."
My laugh was brittle. "You don't even know me. You've been trying so hard to stuff me into some imaginary mold that you have no idea who I am anymore."
Lyla's eyes flickered to an artfully arranged trio of white picture frames on the wall. The black and white photographs were not stylish antiques as I’d originally thought. I followed her gaze and looked closer. The middle photo showed us as children, loaded with camping gear. Our parents insisted that we carry everything up to middle camp ourselves, and the entire way we used to joke about how they talked about it “building character.”
She cleared her throat and sat back down. "I'm sorry you feel like I'm pushing too hard, but this is all business that should have been taken care of five years ago. You should be fully in control by now. If you had just focused a little harder, we wouldn't be in this position."
I slumped into one of the uncomfortable hard chairs across from her desk. "And what position is that? I know you think I've been slacking off and resisting all my responsibilities, but I'll have you know that I read every damn report you send along. It looks to me like most of our business portfolio can take care of itself."
She sneered. "Take care of itself?"
"Yes." I sat forward. "I have an idea for projection models that will generate reports and recalibrate when necessary. It'll be a revolutionary money management tool."
She shook her head as if to clear it. "That's very interesting and I —no, we —need to stay focused. I'm not sure that's what your family intended, letting you put the whole Michel legacy on autopilot."
"You've got the drive, Lyla, everyone knows that. You want to take the company further, make more money, and really prove something to the world. That's you, not me."
"Oh, I get it," she said. "You want to go straight from jet-setting playboy to heralded family historian and skip all the hard work in between."
"I believe the Michel family legacy has a lot to do with the history of California and should be shared. It might not impress the ghost of my workaholic father, but I think my grandfather and great-grandfather would be pleased." I folded my hands together to hide the nervous flexing of my fingers.
It was hard to hear myself say the words out loud, especially knowing that Lyla would tear into my dream as soon as she drew her next breath. Every time I thought about it, the idea of opening Golden Bluff as a museum delighted me. It would be my life’s work to focus on the rich history surrounding the coastal cities. It was exactly what I wanted to do with my family legacy, and it was about time that I got started.
"Their names should be remembered as the springboard for bigger and better things," Lyla argued.
I struggled to keep my voice even. "My father focused on new ventures while my mother concentrated on charity work. They supported each other and worked side by side. I don't understand why that couldn't work now."
Lyla's pale blue eyes widened. "You can't seriously be thinking of Riley Cullen. She's studying to be a farmer, for god's sake. You have absolutely no taste in women, Landon, and it's time someone pointed out that you and she are absolutely wrong for each other."
I was on my feet before I knew it. "This conversation is over. I won’t tolerate any more of your poisonous opinions about Riley. Not only does she know the value of hard work better than you, she throws herself into it body and soul. She wants to give back to the place she works for, support it with her own two hands. She's amazing."
I turned toward the door without seeing where I was going. My words echoed in my own ears and I prayed that Lyla hadn’t caught the underlying tone that had my knees turning to rubber. I made it as far as Lyla's small conference table and gripped the back of a chair.
I thought Riley was amazing. The word “amazing” was hardly big enough for her. The thought of Riley arched over my days, as all-encompassing as the blue sky. It was her face all soft with sleep that I wanted to see in the morning, her smile before me all day, and her sparkling eyes beside me in the dark.
Lyla joined me at the conference table and gestured with a slashing hand for me to sit down. I sat with a thud because thoughts of Riley were like an earthquake inside me.
"What's amazing to me is that in all your reading of my reports, there are a few key details you’ve overlooked." She spread out a mountain of paperwork in front of me.
"My trust fund and inheritance? What are you into now?"
She crossed her arms and looked down at me. "Take a look for yourself."
I picked up the first sheet and scanned the details. I knew my inheritance would be doled out to me when I hit a certain age. Because I knew it was there, I hadn’t thought much about it. I already had enough money for a lifetime with my salary from the Michel Fund. There shouldn’t have been anything to review.
Then my skin went cold and an icy realization crept over my flesh. "What does this say about the age of thirty-five?"
Lyla shrugged and tapped her foot, waiting for me to find the answer myself. I shuffled some papers around and found the piece I had skipped over.
"There are contingencies on my inheritance and my trust fund." I shrugged off the sinking ship feeling. "Some latent parental show of control. There's no reason the Board of Trustees can't vote to ignore it."
"Did you even read what it says, Landon?" She marched around the conference table to face me.
I tossed the paper back on the table. "It says that I have to be married before thirty-five years of age or I lose everything. Do you really think that's going to happen?"
Lyla raised her gaze to the ceiling and then back down to me. "The Board of Trustees have been discussing it in length, and you're right, they could waive the contingencies if that’s what they decide is best."
I sat up. "And what does the all-knowing board think is best?"
She stepped back from the table, a small furrow between her perfect eyebrows. "I've advised them to uphold the original contingencies."
"You what? You want me to lose everything." But why should I be surprised? She’d been undermining me and making my life hell for years. I sifted through the paperwork and studied the fine print. "If I fail to get married before thirty-five, before this year is out, then I forfeit my trust fund, only get ten percent of my inheritance, while the board gets forty percent and you get exactly half."
Lyla nodded. There was no smug smile, no twiddling of her thumbs. Nothing about her looked villainous…and yet she’d become just that —a villain.
I stood up and turned my back on her. I was part way to the door when I spun around and pointed to the photograph of us as children. "I carried half of your stuff for you because your father said you couldn't go if you couldn't carry what you needed. I looked out for you and made sure you had what you needed even as your father sunk every penny into get-rich schemes."
There were tears, pale, cold tears that I saw in Lyla's eyes, but she was the one who had betrayed me. She’d advised the board to cut me off, cut me out completely, and leave her in charge. I would have nothing and she would have everything she'd always wanted.
"Landon, I—"
I marched around the table and leaned into snarl in her face. "It was you, wasn't it? Now I know where all my bad luck came from. It wasn't me the women ran from, it was you. How many did you bribe just like you tried to bribe Riley? It was the easiest way to sabotage my relationships and make sure I didn't find a suitable match before turning thirty-five. Spend a little money to make millions, huh, cousin?"
"No, Landon, I swear, that was never my thought. I was trying to help you. Everything just got away from me." Lyla stumbled back into a conference table chair and shrank into it. "I had good intentions, but I knew you'd see it like this, and it wasn't what I intended."
"Good intentions? Didn't your father always go on and on about his good intentions while he ruined your family trying to outdo mine?" I shook my head as I looked down at her. "You've let your family's greed and jealousy drive you. What happened to us? We promised each other we wouldn’t be like that; we were never going to be like our parents."
Lyla burst into tears and I felt a wobbling weight in my chest, but it wasn't for her. How was I going to explain this to Riley? Our relationship had a looming deadline that could level everything we had built up.
"I'm sorry it turned out this way, Lyla, but you've gone too far. Way, way too far. You're fired." I turned for the door.
Lyla grabbed my wrist, her shoulders quaking with silent sobs. "I wish you could, Landon, but you can't. The board alone has the power to fire me and they've…they've chosen me."
"Is that what you want? Is that what you really want? Because I don't think it is."
I dropped her hand and walked away. It was impossible to say which was worse —the fact that Lyla was actively trying to steal my inheritance, or that she had done it accidentally and was now ensnared in something she didn't really want.
I burst through the doors louder than a thunderclap and almost ran over a startled employee in the hallway. A red haze was closing around my sight, but I blinked it away and apologized.
"I'm sorry to get in your way, Landon. Ms. Townsend asked me to drop in after lunch, but I'm early." Owen stood back to let me pass.
I looked at the open door, heard Lyla's soft sniffles, and wondered how much Owen had overheard.