Denali Dreams, page 8
James Sheppard. Her father’s best friend. The man who probably should’ve taken power at D. I., or even Baron. Anyone but her.
“Nobody’s worrying. We’re just doing our best to honor Daddy’s legacy.” Jolie pushed to her feet and made her way to the spiral staircase. As she descended, she saw the man who would be her right hand at Decoteau Industries. “Hello, Baron.”
Her mother sparkled in a tailored silk pantsuit and heels, thanks to the diamond necklace, earrings, and rings. Hair perfectly highlighted and coiffed, she could grace the cover of any magazine and be mistaken for a forty-something rather than a sixtyish woman. Au natural, at that. Jolie had inherited her mother’s fine bone structure and thin build, but she’d reflected her father’s quick mind, blond hair, and tall height.
A gong resounded through the house.
“Now, I wonder who that could be.”
“It’s probably James and Aidan Sheppard, Mother.” Jolie motioned Baron to the leather seating that separated her father’s desk from the wall of books. Stepping onto the carpeted area, she drew in her courage. “They’re picking me up for the trip, remember?”
Touching her fingertips to her forehead, her mother feigned light-headedness. “Oh, Jolie.” She placed a hand on her chest, her chin puckering. “I keep telling James I don’t want you on that trip. Please, darling, don’t go.”
“I’ve already told you—”
“Why on earth would you go there? After … What if you die like Gael?” Her eyes glossed, threatening her perfectly applied makeup. She cast a look to Baron then composed herself. “If you’ll excuse me.”
Her quick steps warned Jolie of the panic chasing her mother through the doors, which Baron, trailing her mother, closed.
Jolie eyed the doors as Baron returned to the hand-carved Persian rug and leather seating appointment. “Is everything okay?”
“Please,” he said as he motioned to the sofa while he took the wingback chair. “I wanted to talk with you privately.” Tugging up his slacks, he perched on the edge of the leather seat. His gray eyes bore the weight of whatever was coming. Quite honestly, it made Jolie want to squirm. Instead, this was one of the times her mother’s insistence on “saying less” could be worked to an advantage, though Jolie had always struggled with that rule of Marceline Decoteau Etiquette Rules.
Coiling her anticipation and anxiety in her hands, Jolie placed them in her lap.
“Look, there’s no easy way to say this, and you know I don’t say things lightly.”
Jolie laughed. “No, Daddy always lamented that you were as silent as a monk most of the time.” Her smile faded. “Unless it was important.”
“It is.” He swallowed. “Jolie, I don’t believe your father’s death was accidental.”
Heat splashed down her spine and numbed her mind. “But the reports …”
“I know.” He motioned his hands in a placating manner. “It’s quite an accusation, but there are a number of things bothering me.” He scooted forward. “I’m glad you’re going on this trip because it will get you out of harm’s way while I sort through this….” He paused, meeting her eyes. “I’ve hired a private investigator.”
Heart thumping a little faster, Jolie crossed her legs. “Do you think I’m in danger?”
He dropped his gaze. “You’re the CEO of Decoteau Industries, and I won’t lie to you—that decision flew in the face of a lot of influential and powerful people.”
“Including you.”
He shrugged. “No, not really.” In his late forties, Baron had always taken things in stride. But being overlooked in favor of a midtwenties girl?
How insane! “Baron, you were my father’s confidant. You and James knew everything. You both advised him in every single decision.”
“Including the one that named you as CEO.” His genuine smile warded off a plethora of concerns. “Trust me, Jolie, I agreed with your father. You’re young, yes, but you’re fresh. You have a new perspective, and you have years of sitting under your father’s tutelage to guide you.”
“Two.” She thrust her hands into her hair. “Two years, Baron! That’s all.”
“Two, officially, but all your life unofficially.” A lengthy sigh eased a smile from his face. “Do you know what I did for Amaury?”
“Advised him.”
He snorted. “Well, yes, but I also handled all his data encryption and secured his files.” Alert, keen eyes peered at her, burrowing deep. “A side … benefit, is that I knew when to invest…. So, while I do not hold the fortune your father—and now you—held, I am not lacking for money.” He stuffed his hands into his pockets. “In addition, I became well versed in monitoring traffic.”
“Hacking.” Jolie couldn’t help but smile. “You’re the one who taught Gael to hack.”
He laughed. “Guilty.” He nodded then shook his head. No doubt the same grief clutching him as it did Jolie. “Anyway.” He swiped a finger across his upper lip. “Your father had me watch the network surreptitiously. And since he died, I’ve kept the same regimen.” Sorrow lined his forty-something face. “It’s my own fault. I should’ve noticed it—might’ve saved Amaury …”
“Baron, don’t.” Jolie yanked hard against the anchor-like weight of guilt. “Don’t blame yourself. Please. He never would. And I never will.”
She heard a commotion of voices from the grand foyer. No doubt her mother arguing with Mr. Sheppard and his son, Aidan, about the trip, about the lunacy of taking her “only remaining blood relative back to that mountain.” Losing Gael had been hard on everyone, but it seemed to pluck the last thread of strength from her mother. For Jolie, not having her brother here to tease and pester left a huge hole, but there were far too many pieces to pick up to sit and mope the way her mother had.
Hands fisted, eyes darting back and forth over the carpet, Baron said nothing. Finally, his shoulders drooped. “Okay. You’re right. I can’t save him, but I can save you.”
“Me?”
“I believe someone is trying to take Decoteau Industries out from under you. And I have a suspicion of who.”
“But they can’t!” Her voice squawked. “Who? Who is doing this?”
“I’d rather not say till I have firm proof. It’s part of why I asked James Sheppard to take you on a trip.”
“You asked?” Jolie hesitated. Here she thought it’d been Aidan’s idea. They’d talked through high school of making the trip, but after Gael’s death … they hadn’t spoken of it again. She pushed to her feet and moved to the windows, where her father so often did his thinking. “It’s so crazy. Daddy should not have put me in charge.” Turning back to him, she felt a chill of dread pour over her thoughts.
“He talked many long hours, weighing the cons and pros about you taking over.” Baron joined her. “He believed in you, Jolie.” Passion filled his voice. “He saw how seriously you took your education. He knew you sat up there, pretending to read, but you captured everything. You listened to him, learned from him.” He motioned to the loft. “Why do you think he started taking you on trips, including you in board meetings?”
Jolie shook her head and looked out over the stunning landscape. “Mother always said those trips were to help me find a husband.”
“Bah!” Baron threw his hands up and growled. “Your father wanted you to see what the corporation was about. Do you honestly think he asked your opinions because he needed them?”
She drew up straight and considered the man before her, the man so like an uncle. “He was testing me.”
“You bet your leather boots.” His wide grin crinkled the corners of his eyes. “You passed, Jolie. You’re a natural.”
Heat infused her cheeks. “I’m not—”
Clicking, like a woodpecker, severed her response. Her mother’s shoes on the wood floors, hurrying from the foyer where the others waited.
“Jolie!” Her mother flung open the doors. “Please. Please tell me you won’t do this.”
Though Jolie hated the angst her decision caused her mom, this trip had significant meaning. It would cut down to size the mountain that killed her brother.
“Why are you here, son?”
David Whiteeagle looked into the wizened features of his father, who sat in the bustling café with him, grilling him. Again. He glanced down at the plate of eggs, sausage, and biscuits. Hearty helpings. It’d be his last homemade meal for a good while. “Eating?” He lifted one shoulder.
“You’re not fooling me.”
David breathed a laugh. “I’m not trying to fool you.”
“You sit up there”—his father stabbed a finger toward front door—“and waste away.”
Ah. This again. David set down his fork. “Dad, we’ve been through this.” He lifted the cup of strong, black coffee and took a gulp.
“No, I’ve been through it. You’ve been around it.” His father waved his big, thick hands, the same ones he’d passed to David. “You ignore.”
Irritation clawed its way up David’s spine. “I have a job. I’m not wasting away.” Why he even voiced those words he didn’t know. He’d said them a hundred times since returning to Talkeetna four years ago.
“She’s gone, David. Gone!”
A loud bang reverberated through the small, packed café. Only as pain spiked up his arm did David realize he’d slammed his fist on the table. Swallowing his anger, he drew his arm back. “I have to get to the station.” He plucked a ten from his wallet, laid it on the table, and pushed to his feet.
A vise clamped around his wrist. “She was my daughter. Don’t think I don’t miss her, too. But it’s time—I want you to move on.” Craggy lines marked brown eyes with wisdom, and David remembered all too well the feeling of utter exposure when those dark orbs set on him.
“Move on to what, Dad?” He slumped back down in the chair. “I’ve got a job. You and Mom are here.”
“But your heart isn’t.”
Each breath felt as if he were trapped beneath a glacier.
David clamped his jaw and ground his teeth, staring at his half-eaten breakfast. “Dad, please … don’t—”
“You’re a good man. Find a wife. Get on with your life. Don’t waste it trying to save what can’t be saved.”
“Lives are saved.” Breathing hurt. “Every time I’m up there.”
Lips taut, his father stared at him, hard. David felt he’d committed some great crime as those penetrating eyes unraveled his secrets. “When will it be enough?” His father rapped his knuckles on the table. “How many will it take to appease your guilt? To help you stop punishing yourself?”
“You’ve got it wrong. I’m—”
“Do I?” Challenge pulsed through the dark brown irises that were so like his own.
“How we doing over here, Mr. Whiteeagle?” Deline Tsosie, the café owner’s daughter and manager, cut through the thick tension with her buttery-sweet voice. Her smile had little welcome and plenty of warning. “David?”
“Just fine.”
Deline, the only true Aleutian beauty in the shadow of the High One, smiled at him. And … it was fake, which meant she agreed with his dad. No surprise there. It wasn’t the first time he was the odd man out.
Back-stepping over the chair, he grabbed his jacket. “I need to get to the station.”
Stoic, jaw set in resolve, his father stared at the table.
David shook his head and started for the door.
“David.”
Between two tables, he hesitated. Glanced back.
As if the clouds parted and the sun shone through, his father’s face changed, relaxed. “May God keep you in His hand …”
Three heaving breaths later, David finally completed the saying. “… but never close His fist too tight.” The words nearly choked him. He wasn’t in the mood for platitudes or feel-good mantras. But it’d been a tradition long held in his family to not part without it, and despite his objections to his father’s words, any venture up into Denali could be a climber’s last.
A slow nod was his father’s only reply. And it shoved David around. He punched open the door and stepped into the gloomy day. Why did his dad have to start that? And on the day when David would head up for his patrol. Why’d he have to remind David of Mariah, of Denali exerting her power over the weak humans who dared trespass her rugged beauty?
He started for his truck—
A horn blared. Deafening. Terrifying. A blur of black whizzed past.
David shielded himself with his arm.
Thump! Side-view mirror smacked his bicep. Pain reverberated through his arm. He jerked back, adrenaline spiking as the driver of the shiny Escalade tore off without so much as slowing to apologize.
“Slow down!” As he watched the vehicle barrel up Main, he took in the equipment plastered to the roof. Skis, packs, tents. Heading to the ranger station no doubt. He waited … watching as they banked left onto B Street. “Great. Rich kids,” he muttered. Going up into his mountain. Would they never learn?
No. They’d keep forking over dough—which helped Talkeetna, he had to admit—for their climbing registration. Though they’d often claim experience in climbing, David invariably had to dive in and save someone.
And if they’d just messed up his arm … He tugged the long sleeve of the thermal shirt up, grimacing at the throbbing pain emanating around his elbow.
“Hey, Grizzly. What’s eating your lunch today?”
David glanced up and found Deline on the top step of the café, smirking. “Not in the mood today.”
“Are you ever?”
He eyed the large red welt ballooning around his humerus. “Stupid … self-absorbed—”
“Really shouldn’t be so hard on yourself.”
He shot her a glare. “Not me—those stupid rich kids.” He jabbed a finger down the road. “That Escalade.”
“I saw.” Too much amusement lurked in her words.
Tugging his sleeve back down, David stepped aside as tourists poured in and out of Tsosie’s Café. “What d’you want? Speak your piece. I gotta get moving.”
Hands in her jeans pockets, Deline came down a step. “Your dad—”
“No.” David shook his head. “Don’t go there.”
Somber brown eyes held his. “He just wants you to come home, wants to see you happy. So do I.”
“Yeah, what do you know about happy, Deline? Have you told your pop you want to leave the café and fly full-time?”
Her eyes blazed. “I told you that in confidence,” she bit out through clenched teeth.
She’d been like a little sister to him since first grade. They’d dated in high school but their personalities slipped and collided like ice in glaciers. Resolved to be friends, they’d been close ever since.
“You don’t have to always be the hero.”
Drawing out his truck keys, he eyed Denali, the memories too fresh of carrying his sister’s body down the brutal landscape. He would never let himself forget. “Yes, I do.”
Chapter 2
Denali sacrificed her brother. Haunted by the thought, Jolie endured the two-hour orientation by the mountaineering ranger, complete with the dangers of climbing, things to watch for, things to avoid. Then more and more droning until the ranger with electric blue eyes came to the proper disposal of human excrement.
Resisting the groan climbing her throat, Jolie let her gaze travel the memorial plaques of rangers who’d died on the mountain. Of course Gael wasn’t up there—he wasn’t a ranger—but it still pricked at her that he was among those who’d lost their lives.
Depressed thinking about those who’d died, she pushed her gaze through the door, past the reception desk with its waist-high counter, to the door. Though from this angle, she couldn’t see the forbidding mountain, she felt its call. Having climbed it once before with Gael, and many other mountains beside, she had the experience and knowledge of the etiquette and safety measures the ranger spoke of. But what hung in the back of her mind was entering the landscape that had made a sacrifice of her brother.
Gael died doing what he loved, with the woman he loved. She missed him, missed his laugh, missed his big-brother advice, guidance, and proverbial kick in the backside when she wanted to give up or slack off.
“You’re a Decoteau—you can’t afford to slack because the world is watching, waiting for you to fail or screw up.”
And yet, she’d done both of those for many years. Until Gael was gone. Sobered by his death, she swung in the other direction to get her life back on track, to make him proud. Even though he could never again say that her halo was on crooked.
The old tease pried a smile from her lips.
“You’re watching him, too, huh?”
Jolie blinked and looked at her longtime friend Nikki deSanto. “What?”
A bubble of laughter erupted in the reception area and pulled Jolie’s attention in the very direction Nikki nodded. Leaning against a back wall in the open sitting area, a brawny guy stood talking with the laughing ranger station manager. She swatted at him, and he ducked his shoulder away, which turned him in Jolie’s direction.
Jolie’s breath backed into her throat as familiar dark, brooding eyes met hers. But what filled her with warmth was not his good looks or his powerful presence but the memory of his angry, hateful words the day of his sister’s funeral.
“You rich people think you can buy anything, including forgiveness. Forget it! My sister is gone because of your brother. He cost my family everything!”
How could he blame Gael for what happened? It was like David Whiteeagle didn’t realize her family had suffered in the tragedy, too. But his grief-borne anger hadn’t stopped the crush she’d had on him since she was fourteen. His native Athabascan heritage made girls like her swoon with his jet-black hair, high cheekbones, square jaw, and mysterious eyes. But then there were his ears she’d always thought too small. And his temper that was too big. Mercy, she would do anything to avoid being on the wrong side of his anger again.
A jab in her side jarred her out of her thoughts and into Nikki’s giggles. “He’s got it going on in all the right places, don’t you think?” She jabbed her again. “He’s staring at you.”
