that he was lingering in order to stare at her—which was how it appeared, because his beautiful blue eyes seemed to be taking in every inch of her and his expression said he was enjoying the view.
“Get back to me soon or I’ll come for you...” he threatened in a way that didn’t sound as if they were still talking about helping the Bronsons.
“No promises,” Gia repeated firmly to let him know he wasn’t wearing her down.
But he was. Just a tiny bit.
Enough so that, as she turned from the sight of him backing up the rest of the steps so he could go on studying her, she felt a smile come to the corners of her mouth.
Because although she had no idea why, just the way Derek Camden looked at her made her feel better about herself than the dinner invitation from the minister had.
Chapter Two
“Georgie! You feisty little beanbag, where are you?” Derek called when he went into his grandmother’s house midmorning on Tuesday.
“She’s in the greenhouse.”
“Oh, hey, Jonah. Hey, Louie. I didn’t see you guys up there.”
Jonah Morrison—Derek’s grandmother’s old high school sweetheart and new husband since their wedding in June—seemed to be working on something on the stairs. Louie Haliburton—the male half of the married couple who had worked for the family as live-in staff for decades—was helping him.
“What’s going on?” Derek asked the two older men.
“Fixing the banister,” Louie answered.
“Or trying to,” Jonah added.
“Need help?” Derek offered, even though he was in the midst of his workday and had only stopped by on his way back from a meeting with Camden Incorporated’s bankers in his capacity as chief financial officer.
“Nah, we can handle it,” Louie assured.
“I’ll head for the greenhouse, then. Holler if you change your minds.”
Derek went across the wide entryway, down the hallway that led straight to the kitchen. There he found Louie’s wife, Margaret.
“Hey, Maggie-May,” he greeted the stocky woman, who was old enough for retirement but was still on her hands and knees cleaning one of the ovens.
“Derek! Did we expect you today?”
He leaned over and kissed her rosy cheek. “Nope. Just stopped by to talk to Georgie.”
“She’s in the greenhouse.”
“So I heard. That’s where I’m headed.”
“Staying for lunch?”
“Can’t. Have to get back to the office. I only have a few minutes.” He went through the kitchen to the greenhouse, where his grandmother was watering her prize orchids.
“Georgie...don’t let me scare you...” he said in a mellow tone once he got there, because his grandmother’s back was to him and he didn’t want to startle the seventy-five-year-old.
Georgianna Camden was the matriarch of the Camden family, the woman who had raised all ten of her grandchildren after the plane crash that killed their parents and her husband. The rest of the family called her GiGi. Derek had always affectionately called her Georgie.
“As if I didn’t hear you shouting from the doorway,” his grandmother said, turning off the water.
He crossed the greenhouse to kiss her cheek, too, putting an arm around the shoulders that—like the rest of her—felt as cushy as a beanbag chair.
He gave her a little squeeze before letting her go. “I’m on my way back to the office, but I thought I’d stop for a few minutes to tell you that I went to that church your friend belongs to last night—”
“Jean didn’t see you. I talked to her this morning.”
“Checking up on me?” he asked with a laugh. “I went but I didn’t get in. Some hot little number named Gia Grant caught me at the foot of the steps to the basement and wouldn’t let me go any farther.”
“I know that name—Jean can’t say enough good things about her. She doesn’t belong to their church, she’s the Bronsons’ neighbor and—”
“She’s the one behind this deal to help the Bronsons—I know, the guy who cuts my hair told me. But last night she was also the guardian of the gate. Your friend Jean was right about the meeting to organize the work for the Bronsons, but what she didn’t say was that the Bronsons themselves would be at the church. Gia Grant spotted me coming, recognized me somehow and wouldn’t let me out of the stairwell. She said a Camden would ruin the Bronsons’ night.”
“Oh, dear...”
“Yeah. We might not have known about what went on between H.J. and those people until you read about it in the journals, but it isn’t something they’ve forgotten.”
The man who had started the Camden empire—Derek’s great-grandfather H. J. Camden—had kept a journal while he was alive. Only recently rediscovered, it confirmed what H.J., his son, Hank, and his grandsons, Mitchum and Howard, had long been accused of—ruthless, unscrupulous business practices that trampled people and other businesses.
After reading the journals, Georgianna Camden and her grandchildren were determined to make amends for some of the worst of the wrongs done. Including what had been done to the Bronsons.
“Gia Grant says that no matter how much trouble the Bronsons are in,” Derek informed his grandmother, “they have too much pride to take anything from us. Her recommendation was that we just donate money anonymously.... And the anonymity wouldn’t be so bad for us, because then we’d be avoiding any admission of guilt....”
GiGi shook her head at that suggestion. “I know we need to keep from making any kind of open, public acknowledgment of wrongdoing so we don’t have people coming out of the woodwork to sue us for things the Camdens didn’t do—”
“Big corporations and money make for easy targets,” Derek confirmed. “And you know there are stories out there accusing us of stuff that didn’t happen—so, yeah, if we say some of the accusations are well founded, there’ll be an avalanche of see-I-told-you-so lawsuits for unfounded complaints that will tie us up in court until hell freezes over.”
“We also don’t want to come out and say that H.J. and your grandfather, father and uncle really were involved in underhanded business practices—there’s family loyalty at stake here, too,” GiGi said under her breath, because this was something that she didn’t discuss if Jonah, Margaret or Louie were around.
“So a payout would be a whole lot easier, but it wouldn’t protect us,” Derek acknowledged.
“And we wouldn’t necessarily achieve our goal of making amends with a simple payout,” GiGi added. “In this case in particular, just donating some money might not be the best answer for the Bronsons. Jean says
