Christmas Eve Wedding. PENNY JORDAN

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СКАЧАТЬ health check-up had revealed a potentially life threatening series of small blood clots were developing in her lower leg. The scare had brought home to him the fact that despite everything she was still his mother, Caid recognised grimly. The clots had been medically dispersed with drugs, but his mother had been given strict instructions that she was on no account to fly until her doctor was sure she was clear of any threat of the clots returning.

      When she saw that he was watching her she told him emotionally, ‘You say that you’ve forgiven me for…for your childhood, Caid, but sometimes, I wonder…I feel…’ When she stopped and bit her lip, looking away from him, Caid suppressed a small sigh.

      ‘What are you trying to say?’ he asked her cynically. ‘That you want me to prove I’ve forgiven you once more by going to Cheltenham?’

      ‘Oh, Caid, it would mean so much to me if you would,’ she breathed.

      ‘I don’t—’ Caid began, but immediately she interrupted.

      ‘Please, Caid,’ she begged urgently. ‘There isn’t anyone else I can trust. Not when I suspect that the root cause of the problem over there is the fact that your uncle Donny has appointed his own stepson as chief executive of the store,’ she told him darkly. ‘I mean, what right does Donny have to make that kind of decision? Just because he’s the eldest that doesn’t mean he can overrule everyone else. And as for that dreadful stepson of his…Jerry knows nothing whatsoever about the specialised nature of our business—’

      ‘I thought he was running a chain of supermarkets—’ Caid interrupted.

      The constant and relentless internecine war of attrition waged between his mother and her male siblings was a familiar ongoing saga, and one he normally paid scant attention to.

      ‘Yes, he was. But honestly, Caid—supermarkets! There just isn’t any comparison between them and stores like ours. Of course, Donny has done it to appease that appalling new wife of his…Why on earth he marries them, I don’t know. She’s his fifth. And as for Jerry…There’s no way he would have ever got his appointment past the board if I hadn’t been in hospital! There’s nothing Donny would like better than to get me completely off the board, but he’ll never be able to do that…’

      ‘Mother, aren’t you letting your imagination rather run away with you?’ Caid intervened. ‘After all, it is as much in Uncle Donny’s interest as it is in yours to have the business thrive. And if Jerry is as bad as you are implying—’

      ‘As bad! Caid, he’s worse, believe me. And as for Donny! Well, certainly you’d think with four ex-wives to support he’d be going down on his knees to thank me for everything that I’ve done for the stores. But all he wants is to score off me. He’s always been like that…right from when I was born…they all were. You can’t imagine how I used to long to have a sister instead of five brothers…You’d think after all I learned about the male sex from them I’d have had more sense than to get married myself. You were lucky to be an only child, Caid—’

      She stopped abruptly when she saw his expression. ‘Caid, please,’ she begged him, returning to her request. ‘We can’t afford to have this happen. We desperately need Jaz’s skill. Do you know that her window displays for the Christmas season are so innovative that people go to the store just to see them? She has a talent that is really unique, Caid. When I think about how lucky we are to have her…We mustn’t lose her. I’ve got such plans for her…’

      ‘Mother—’ Caid began resolutely.

      ‘Caid, don’t turn me down.’

      Grimly he watched as his mother’s eyes filled with tears. He had never seen her cry…never.

      ‘This means so much to me…’

      ‘You don’t have to tell me that!’ Caid responded dryly, and yet he knew that despite his own feelings he would give in. After all, as his mother had just pointed out, he couldn’t afford to see the value of his trust fund stock in the business go down—not now, when he had so much tied up in his ranch. And that, of course, was the only reason he was going, he reminded himself firmly.

      

      ‘Jaz, I’d like to have a word with you, please.’

      Jaz’s heart sank as she saw the store’s new chief executive bearing down on her. Since returning from New Orleans things had been far from easy for her. She knew that she had been fully justified in everything she’d said to Caid, and that there was no way there could have been a relationship between them, but that still didn’t stop her missing what they had shared, or dreaming about him, or waking up with her face wet with tears because she ached for him so much. The last thing she had needed to compound her misery had been the unwanted interference in her work of someone like Jerry Brockmann.

      After meeting Caid’s mother, and listening to her enthuse about the Cheltenham store and her objectives for it, she had never expected that they would be saddled with a chief executive who seemed to epitomise the exact opposite of what Jaz believed the store was all about. Already the changes he had insisted on making were beginning to affect not just the staff, but their customers as well.

      Jaz had lost count of the number of long-standing customers who had commented unfavourably about the fact that the store was no longer perfumed with the specially made room fragrance she herself had chosen as part of the store’s exclusive signature.

      ‘What the hell is this stuff made of?’ Jerry had complained, as he’d chaired the first departmental heads meeting after his arrival. He’d thrust the bill from the manufacturers beneath Jaz’s nose. ‘Gold dust? It sure costs enough. Why the hell do we have to scent the damn place anyway? Are the drains bad or something?’

      ‘It creates the right kind of ambience. It’s what our customers expect and it encourages them to buy designer fragrances for their own home,’ Jaz had replied quietly, trying to ignore his rudeness.

      It had been soon after that, and before Jerry had chaired his next meeting, that the chief buyer for their exclusive Designer Fashion Room had announced that she intended to leave.

      ‘He says that he plans to cut my budget by half!’ she fumed furiously to Jaz. ‘Can you believe that? After what you said about the New Orleans store and its management I’d been putting out feelers to a couple of new up-and-coming designers to see if I could tempt them to let us stock their stuff—and now this! If I stay here now I’m going to totally lose my credibility.’

      Jaz felt acutely guilty as she listened to her, and tried to smooth things over, but Lucinda refused to be appeased. She had already handed in her notice she informed Jaz angrily.

      Even worse was Jaz’s discovery that her closest friend on the staff was also planning to leave.

      ‘But, Kyra, you’ve always said how much you loved working here,’ Jaz protested.

      ‘I did,’ Krya emphasised. ‘But not any more, Jaz. Jerry called me in to his office the other day to inform me that he thinks we should go more downmarket with our bed and bath linens. He said that we were catering for too small a market.’

      ‘Didn’t you explain to him that the mass market is so well covered by the multiples that we couldn’t possibly compete with them, that it’s because we supply only the best that we’ve got our Royal Warrant?’

      ‘Of course I did,’ Kyra had responded indignantly. ‘But the man’s obsessed by СКАЧАТЬ