Tempting Fate. Carla Neggers

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СКАЧАТЬ to, but what hadn’t succumbed to rot—structurally, cosmetically or in furnishings, or to termites, mice or plain disuse—had remained untouched virtually since Ulysses Pembroke’s day. Her architects had been delighted not to have to undo “improvements”—layers of paint, linoleum, wall-to-wall carpeting. Unfortunately that still hadn’t made their job easy or cheap.

      “How was New York?” Ira asked.

      “Fine.”

      “None of my business, eh?” But his gray eyes had turned serious. “Look, Dani—”

      “Out with it, Ira. What’s on your mind?”

      He sighed. “People talk—and I hear things.”

      “Such as?”

      “Well, for starters, word’s out that you’re considering the purchase of a company in West Virginia that manufactures glass bottles.”

      Dani slipped her feet back into her shoes, purple flats that didn’t go as well as she’d hoped with her straight cotton-knit dress, above the knee, ordered from a catalog and an entirely different shade of purple.

      “Are you?” Ira asked.

      “I wouldn’t say I was considering. I was just inquiring.”

      “You don’t know anything about making glass bottles. Dani—look, I’m no expert on the beverage business, but seeing how the fate of Pembroke Springs and this place are tied together, I’ve been doing some research. From what I can gather, glassmaking companies are a dying breed. They’ve all been bought out by the big guns. This outfit in West Virginia is tiny by comparison. You could lose a bundle.”

      “Now you sound like my bean counters.”

      She’d listened to them rail about her tight cash flow for two days in New York. She figured that was what bean counters were supposed to do. Since she was a Pembroke, she worried that her tolerance for risk was perhaps dangerously high and expected straight talk.

      “Ira, Pembroke Springs uses a lot of glass bottles.”

      “I know, but that doesn’t mean you have to manufacture your own. I understand you could save a ton of money if you switched to a stock bottle—”

      She shook her head. “No.”

      “Why not?”

      “Brand awareness is the name of the beverage game, Ira. People look for the Pembroke bottles. They’re distinctive and they’re attractive. A restaurant here in town uses our mineral-water bottles for vases on its tables. That’s free promotion. They wouldn’t use a bottle that some mouthwash company also uses.”

      “A restaurant sticks daisies into maybe ten Pembroke Springs bottles. Big deal.”

      “Pink roses,” she corrected.

      “Proprietary bottles are expensive.”

      “Yes, they are, but in the long haul, a private design—unique to us—more than pays for itself.”

      Ira scratched his head, not on firm ground when talking about Dani’s mineral water and natural soda company. “Look,” he said, “you know, I know—pretty soon everyone else will know—you’re stretched thin. Getting the Pembroke ready has cost you. Now that it’s opened, your cash-flow situation should improve, but before it does—”

      “If I have to entertain cost-cutting measures, Ira, I will do so.”

      “Guess it’s a good thing you pay yourself less than your housekeeping staff.”

      “That’s an old rumor, Ira, and not true. I’m not personally extravagant, I’ll admit. I don’t mind making sacrifices in the long-term interests of my businesses. The Pembrokes have a long tradition of losing their shirts. Thank you, I’ll pass.”

      “I’m sure your father and all the rest of them said the same thing,” Ira pointed out.

      “I won’t compromise on quality. It’s what we sell. The resort and water and natural soda businesses are highly competitive—the big guys swallow up the little guys all the time. I’m not Perrier or Coke or Club Med, and I can’t pretend to be. But I’m not going to get stepped on.”

      Ira leaned forward. “Dani, it doesn’t have to be this difficult. You took on a lot at once. You’re practically a kid still. You’ve got a fortune tied up in equipment at the bottling plant—you’ve expanded into natural sodas and flavored mineral water at an incredible pace. The Pembroke is a valuable asset, but right now it burns cash.”

      “All to a good end.”

      “Ever the optimist. There is one more thing.”

      With Ira, there always was.

      “There’s a rumor floating around you’re thinking of selling this place.”

      Dani stiffened. “Not true.”

      “I know, and ordinarily I wouldn’t even bring it up, but, Dani, if people didn’t smell blood—”

      “Ira, I’m a Pembroke. There’ll always be talk I’m on the verge of self-destructing. I’ve been listening to it ever since I told my grandfather he could give my Chandler trust to charity.” Actually her words had been far more to the point, but this Ira Bernstein knew. “I’m not selling the Pembroke, I’m not switching to a stock bottle, I was only asking about the glass-making company. I am not going broke. Anything else?”

      Ira shrugged, irreverent as ever. “You could admit you’re lucky to have me. Am I not one of the few people you know in my line of work who’d put up with a boss who flies kites at lunch? Who just two weeks ago was caught by several guests rescuing one of her kites from the tippy-top of an oak tree and asked me—me—to lie to these guests and tell them that no, that wasn’t the owner of the Pembroke but some stray kid?”

      “You are, Ira,” she said with a straight face, “one of a kind.”

      “But I’ve gone too far?”

      She smiled. “You always do.”

      When he left, Dani found herself restless, unusually irritated by the false rumors, the constant battle to get people not to see her as a Pembroke or a Chandler, but simply to see her. Dani Pembroke.

      “Most people look at this place and see disaster and folly. I see someone’s dream.”

      Her mother’s words, spoken in the overgrown Pembroke rose garden just days before she’d disappeared.

      At nine, Dani had been confused. To her, dreams weren’t real.

      “Sometimes you can make them real,” her mother had said. “Not all dreams, of course. Only the best ones. The ones you cherish most, the ones that come back to you again and again.”

      She’d stopped at a crumbling fountain. Her vivid blue eyes had mesmerized her small daughter with their intense yearning.

      “It’s far better to have tried to make your dreams come true and failed than СКАЧАТЬ