“Oh, thank God it’s you, ísa.” Ginny stopped pretending to be an industrious crafter and slumped back in her wheelchair. “I swear to God, if I have to glue one more set of tiny windows onto one more set of tiny doors, I’m going to start gluing the stupid doors to people’s heads.”
ísa nodded in heartfelt sympathy. She’d worked several summers in the business and never again wanted to craft anything. Ever. But Crafty Corners thrived partially because people wanted to buy into the Craft Is Family motto. Any employee at their desk who might come into contact with the public was to always be involved in a craft project or to have a half-completed project within easy view. As if they were so in love with the company’s creations that they couldn’t stop themselves.
Poor Ginny had drawn the short straw here—the senior assistant, Annalisa, got to sit behind another door and had a much more sane working environment. Though, to be fair, Annalisa had done her time in the crafting salt mines for three years before she was promoted out of the front line.
The whole concept sounded idiotic, but ísa had seen it work over and over again. Investors, reporters, all types of normally sensible people laughed and fell for the illusion, many even stopping long enough to help glue or paint a piece. Which was why the company Jacqueline Rain had created as a broke student was now a multimillion-dollar operation that exported worldwide and had seventeen thriving stores in New Zealand.
New Zealand wasn’t that big a country. Still less than five million people at last count. And yet… seventeen Crafty Corners stores. All flourishing. All with waiting lists for their highly reviewed “Crafting and Cookies” nights at which the newest and hottest crafting secrets were revealed.
Then there were the twenty-eight stores in neighboring Australia.
ísa didn’t know how her mother did it.
“Is Jacqueline in her office?” she asked Ginny.
The other woman pointed toward the boardroom down the hall. “Already in there.”
Taking a deep, calming breath, ísa squared her shoulders and prepared to face the Dragon, but she still wasn’t prepared for the impact her mother had on her when she opened the door. With dark auburn hair that she wore in a chignon and pale skin that she’d passed on to ísa—though where ísa was ghost pale, Jacqueline had a rich cream tone to her skin that made you want to stroke it—Jacqueline Rain was one of the most beautiful people ísa had ever met.
Add in willowy height and flawless bone structure, and Jacqueline would be stunning even at eighty.
“ísa.” Jacqueline raised her cheek.
Dutifully giving her mother a peck, ísa took the seat next to her around the glossy wood of the conference table. “What’s with the vice president tag on the parking spot?”
“I thought you’d like to taste the future you could have.” Jacqueline took off her Tiffany-blue cat’s-eye reading glasses. “I fail to see why you prefer dealing with snotty teenagers all day when you could be working in one of the top businesses in the country.”
“I don’t want to do crafts all day, Mother.”
“ísa, you know that’s just window dressing with the frontline staff. Stop being deliberately obtuse.”
Unfortunately, her mother was right; the family-friendly, crafty atmosphere was just for public consumption. Behind the scenes, Crafty Corners was a cutthroat business. And Jacqueline was the head cutter of throats.
“Why am I here?” she said. “You know I always vote with you.” It wasn’t that ísa didn’t have her own views, but Jacqueline was brilliant. She knew exactly what she was doing, and voting against her out of spite wasn’t an act of which ísa was capable. “Also, you have the controlling share. So why do we have to go through the song and dance?”
“Because the other shareholders like to know what’s happening with their money,” Jacqueline said. “Since those shares make you a millionaire, I’d think you’d pay a little more attention.”
ísa wanted to bang her head against the table; at this rate, she should just get a helmet and be done with it. The only reason she hadn’t tried to sell back her shares—because of course, contractually, she couldn’t sell them to anyone else without first giving Jacqueline the option—was that the instant ísa defected from the company, Jacqueline would cut her off.
ísa had zero fucks to give on that score. But if she couldn’t get to Jacqueline, or if Jacqueline stopped taking her arguments into account, then she couldn’t speak for Catie and Harlow. And neither her half sister nor her stepbrother would stand a chance without ísa working on their behalf. Oh, Jacqueline wouldn’t cut off the money Catie, in particular, needed, but… the two would get forgotten.
ísa knew how much that hurt.
She would not permit Jacqueline to do that to another child.
That didn’t mean she was ready to sit back and be rolled over by the Jacqueline Rain train. “You know I’m not suitable to be your heir,” she said. “I have no business experience except for the summers I worked for you.”
“You’re downplaying your abilities.” Leaning back in her chair, Jacqueline pinned ísa to the spot with the striking green of her gaze. “You absorb everything and you understand all of it.”
Bad luck for ísa, but Jacqueline was, once again, right.
It was like ísa had absorbed the information in the womb while her mother was wheeling and dealing and cut-throating.
Leaning back in her chair while trying futilely not to grit her teeth, she picked up the agenda for this meeting. She was halfway through it when her mother said, “What have you done to yourself?” Her well-manicured fingernails brushed the side of ísa’s neck. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think that was stubble burn.”
ísa’s fingers jerked up to her throat without her conscious volition.
How could she have missed that?
Because you don’t make a habit of jumping hot, half-naked gardeners, that’s why, Devil ísa answered. Pity.
Thank God eagle-eyed Jacqueline had already returned to her work, dismissing the possibility that ísa would turn up to a board meeting with stubble burn on her neck. Not that ísa could blame her mother on that point.
Hard as it was to admit, Cody had done a number on her self-confidence. He’d been the first boy she’d ever trusted not just with her heart but with her body, and he’d made her feel horrible about it. She’d risen from the humiliation on a wave of fury and fierce determination, but it had still taken her two years to step back into the dating pool.
She’d met a couple of nice men, but no one who’d shaken her world.
Still, as Manuel, Beau, Carl, et al. could testify, ísa was no longer a dating shrinking violet. The online-dating maneuver might succeed in driving her mad, but no one would ever be able to accuse her of not trying hard enough. And it’d all be worth it if she found him, found the one man for whom she’d be more important than meetings or negotiations or “time-critical” emails.
The one man for whom she’d be a priority.
ísa had never been that for anyone.