and callous, cold-blooded and unprincipled practices.
Nothing had ever been proven. And because GiGi and her ten grandchildren had never met with anything but loving care and kindness from the men, it hadn’t been difficult to deny what had seemed like only false accusations.
Then H.J.’s journals were discovered, proving that all the accusations were true.
As a result, the current Camdens were trying to quietly seek out those who were wronged in the past—or their descendants—and atone in some way that wasn’t disloyal to the men they’d all loved, and also didn’t open the gates to unfounded lawsuits.
Gus Glassman had been sent to the Colorado State Penitentiary for manslaughter when he—working as an enforcer for the Camdens—had gone too far while giving a beating to a factory supervisor who was trying to form a union. The beating was given on H.J.’s orders. GiGi had explored the possibility of making amends to the family of the man who had died, but he’d left no descendants so she’d moved on to other incidents.
But the prison chaplain had relayed information that there was another person caught in the fallout of Glassman’s deadly errand. An innocent whose existence was unknown until Gus Glassman revealed it to the prison chaplain.
Gus Glassman had left behind a then-two-year-old daughter.
When GiGi heard that, she’d assured the chaplain that she would find the lockbox and Gus Glassman’s daughter and take care of everything.
“I didn’t want this to wait any longer so I’ve been looking into it since the minute I said goodbye to the chaplain,” GiGi went on, “and you aren’t going to believe it, Lindie—she’s a stylist for that salon, Beauty By Design. The one that Vonni said a lot of her brides are using instead of Camdens.”
“The one that advertises their special-occasion team?”
The seventy-five-year-old matriarch nodded. “The hairdresser who manages the shop and does the special occasion events is Abby Crane—”
“Gus Glassman’s daughter,” Dylan contributed. His cousin Cade had just told him over lunch—after Dylan’s profuse apologies to Cade and Cade’s wife, Nati. “But you can’t be thinking that Lindie could find a way to make amends to her in the middle of this sprint to her wedding!”
“What I was thinking,” GiGi said to him with that putting-him-in-his-place tone that he recognized well, “is that if we could get this group to do the wedding, the girls might all get their hair done the way they want and in the process we’d be establishing contact with Abby Crane.”
Mellowing her tone, GiGi included Lindie again as she went on. “According to the chaplain, Gus Glassman made sure his daughter wouldn’t know who her father was, or anything about where she came from. All he left her with was a blanket and a note saying her name was Abby. But I have learned that she grew up in foster care, moved around from home to home—”
“No telling how happy or unhappy that might have left her,” Dylan interjected. “She could be a pretty tough cookie. So let me do it. That’s why I came by—Cade told me about what you’d found out. And I should be who does this project.”
“You want your hair, makeup and nails done for the wedding?” Lindie goaded him.
“I could start with a haircut to get my foot in the door so I can tell her who she is,” he suggested.
“But we also need someone to do wedding hair,” GiGi reasoned. “That’s two birds with one stone.”
“And I’m in charge of security for the wedding—and security for everything leading up to it—and trying to keep the circus that’s developed around this to a minimum,” Dylan reminded her. The task was a natural fit for him, given his usual position as head of all Camden business security.
Lindie had met her fiancé, Sawyer Huffman, only a little over a month ago when GiGi had sent her on her own make-amends mission.
But Sawyer Huffman had made a career out of mounting very public opposition to every Camden Superstore being opened in the country. So when word had leaked that these two adversaries were coming together—coupled with the fact that any Camden major life event drew the media—it had caused a flurry of attention that was complicating the already problematical planning of a big wedding in a month’s time. A month’s time when they’d begun. Now the wedding was just over a week away.
“In order to have people outside of Camden Superstores doing anything with this wedding I need to find out if this woman can be discreet,” Dylan reasoned. “I need to check out the salon to see if you girls can go in and get what you need done without photographers taking everyone’s pictures through the windows—”
“And you do need a haircut before the wedding,” GiGi commented.
“So give me this make-amends mission and I can start with a haircut. That’ll get me in the door. Then I can approach Abby Crane about doing the wedding and to tell her that I know who she is. After twenty-eight years this shouldn’t wait any longer. It has to be one of the worst things we’ve learned about what was done in the past,” Dylan finished.
Both Lindie and GiGi sobered noticeably. It was clear to see they agreed.
“So let me take care of it,” Dylan reiterated.
For a moment neither Lindie nor GiGi said anything.
Dylan wasn’t sure whether that was due to the weight of what had happened twenty-eight years ago, or because no one in the family particularly trusted him these days.
Then, with some levity to her skepticism, Lindie said, “You’re going to be the one to set up a hair-and-makeup trial for me and my bridesmaids?”
“Sure. Why not?”
“And you know that if we don’t like what Abby does, we won’t hire her, either, and that’s going to make the other part a lot harder.”
“I’m up for any challenge,” he claimed.
“The first one will probably be scheduling your own haircut in a busy salon on short notice,” Lindie said. “Let alone getting them to fit in a test run and an entire wedding party in just over a week.”
“I’ll do whatever it takes,” he assured them.
Lindie looked to GiGi, who put Dylan under the kind of scrutiny she’d used on them when they were kids trying to bargain themselves out of punishment.
When Dylan didn’t waver she seemed to give in without much enthusiasm and said, “Well, give it all a try and let’s see how you do.”
“And make it fast!” Lindie added, before she said she had to run and left Dylan alone with his grandmother.
Who returned to staring at him.
“Lunch went all right?” GiGi asked after they heard the front door close behind his sister.
“I think so. Nati wasn’t really warm and fuzzy toward me, but she said she accepted my apology.”
“And Cade?”
“We’re okay.
