all that much. What hurt, what felt as if it had crushed her spirit, was that her grandfather had broken his word. He had promised the promotion to her.
She heard a door shut firmly and she blinked, looking around. The meeting was apparently over, and she and the all-powerful Winston Jamison were alone in his oak-paneled office.
“You made your surprise evident,” he snapped.
Cassidy stood and smoothed the straight skirt of her dress-for-success, navy power suit. At five-foot-nine she was easily able to look him in the eye without looking up—the very reason she’d stood.
“Surprise, Grandfather?” Cassidy arched an eyebrow, an action stolen directly from the man before her. “That’s all I gave away? Then I did rather well, don’t you think? Because what I felt was shock! No! Call it what it is—betrayal.”
Her grandfather ran his fingers through his impeccably styled hair. “This is business, Cassidy. Not betrayal. And it was the most difficult decision I’ve ever made.”
“Business? You set me up! You told me that vice presidency was mine. I’ve worked practically around the clock since Harold Overton died. No one has put in more time or seen to it that their teams completed more projects on time than I have.”
Winston Jamison nodded his head, his white hair gleaming in the sunlight that streamed in his office window. “That’s all true but there were other considerations.”
“What other considerations? Dedication? Education?” she asked, knowing full well she was ahead in those areas, as well. She’d carried two majors trying to please him and herself at the same time.
“Jon is a family man. He’s stable. Trustworthy—”
“And I’m not trustworthy?”
Her grandfather looked pained. “No, of course I trust you. It was a judgment call. That’s all. You’ll just have to accept that.”
“Accept that my own grandfather lied to me. Accept that he played fast and loose with a solemn promise as well as the truth. You know, Grandfather, if you treated any other employee the way you have me, you’d be in court faster than a lightning strike can fry a PC.”
Winston’s eyes widened and his face grew red. “Are you threatening me, young lady?” His tone was one she recognized. She had heard it for twenty years, each and every time he needed to haul out the big guns to manipulate her into compliance with his will. His expression was the same.
Disapproving.
Judgmental.
“Don’t try that attitude and tone with me. It won’t work this time,” she growled and leaned her hands on his desk, which put her practically nose to nose with her new nemesis. “Who was it you called the morning Harold died? Who had to cancel her vacation immediately to take over his workload because—let me make sure I get the wording just right here—’ Cassidy, you’re the only one I can count on.’ Too bad you didn’t call Jon. His vacation wasn’t scheduled for another two weeks. But then, he got his time off, didn’t he.”
Her grandfather looked down at his desk and fidgeted with his calendar. “His children were counting on that trip.”
“I was counting on mine. Just as I was counting on that promotion. And my vacation weeks the two years before that. Vacations you begged me not to take.”
“I needed you here—not gallivanting off to some uncivilized place on the globe.”
“Well, you obviously don’t need me around here as much as you’ve led me to believe all these years. And since I have six weeks’ vacation coming to me, you’ll see me then. If I decide to come back!”
Her grandfather stiffened, his bushy eyebrows drawn together, his gray eyes almost as sorrowful as she felt. “I did need you. I do. I was just trying—”
“Don’t, Grandfather,” Cassidy snapped, cutting him off before he could do what he did best—entice her into believing him once again. “Don’t say anything else,” she said, her voice suddenly—maddeningly—full of despair. “Please. It’s too late for explanations and more promises. Way too late.”
With that, angry at both herself and the old man, she turned and rushed from the room, closing the door with a definite thump. She made it as far as the hall to the elevator before the burning started in her stomach, before tears of pain and utter desolation dammed up in her throat, and before she felt each beat of her heart inside her head.
She’d given up her dreams. He’d said that without her he couldn’t run the business he’d spent a lifetime building. And out of gratitude—out of a need to be loved—she’d tucked away her charcoal, pencils and paints and had gone to work for him.
In her little German sports car some minutes and a minor traffic jam later, Cassidy sat in the parking lot and stared up at her apartment building. She’d thought of it as a haven not five minutes earlier. Now its white facade looked cold. Empty. And she knew the inside of her own apartment would be even worse. Gray and depressing. She couldn’t make herself get out of her car.
Her stomach started to burn again, so she grabbed the roll of antacids that she always had sitting on the console and popped one in her mouth. She looked at the roll. Really looked at it this time. She’d stopped last night on the way home to buy it. It was nearly gone. How could that be?
Rubbing the heel of her hand where her stomach constantly stung, Cassidy remembered her doctor’s diagnosis of an ulcer. He’d prescribed medication just last week. Cassidy had never taken the time to fill the prescription. Apparently he was right. She really did need it.
Half an hour later, a prescription bottle and a new roll of antacids on her passenger seat, Cassidy started her car and wondered what to do next. Her grandfather had beeped her no less than ten times since she’d left his office. Her beeper was now turned off, as was her cell phone. She picked them both up off the passenger seat and glared at them. Sometimes these well-touted modern conveniences felt more like a pair of handcuffs chaining her to Jamison Steel.
But right now she was on vacation.
Without ceremony she tossed the offending technology into the backseat and determinedly put them and the company out of her mind.
For the first time since her childhood when she woke up with her grandfather sitting at her bedside in a Colorado hospital, she had no one planning her next step in life. No. This next move was all her own to make.
Rather than feeling free, Cassidy felt suddenly very alone. With her grandfather out of the equation, she had no one to rely on. He was all she had. Her friends were really more acquaintances, and most of them, save a neighbor or two, worked at Jamison.
She looked at herself in the rearview mirror, narrowing her blue eyes. When had she gotten so drawn looking? She fussed with her short, straight, blond hair for a second and bit her full bottom lip. What do you want, Cassidy Jamison? Where do you want to go?
“I want to get away from the rat race,” she said aloud to the near-stranger in the mirror. “I need time to just think.”
A penny winked up at her from next to the nearly empty antacid roll in the console. She remembered a scene from a book she’d read several years earlier. The hero had flipped a coin—a penny—and had driven
