“I wouldn’t call it war. I don’t know. Maybe it is. I know he wants to win at my expense, and I can’t let it happen.” He hadn’t even realized he was being followed, but then he was sure Charles had gotten someone good. Would he put someone on Sylvie now? “I didn’t realize he’d hired anyone, though I told you I thought he might set someone on you when he found out about the marriage. I’ll talk to him. I’ll hire a bodyguard.”
She shook her head vigorously. “Absolutely not. If Charles wants to waste money on following me around, let him. That will be the most boring job the PI ever took on. Do you know what I do in a week? Tour parks and sewage management systems. I listen to a whole lot of people complain. On Saturday, I’m throwing out the first pitch in our Little League tournament. So bring on the investigation.”
“I didn’t think . . .”
“I’m not worried about it, Rene. I’ve always got eyes on me. Papillon is laid-back when it comes to politics, but there’s always someone who would like leverage on me. You don’t work in politics without being threatened.”
“Who?” He would show anyone who came after his wife exactly what it meant to be threatened.
“That’s a very intimidating look,” she said with a nod and absolutely no sign of intimidation whatsoever. “Scary and yet still attractive. And no, I’m not giving you my list of political enemies. I think you would have fun taking out some of your frustrations on them, and honestly, they’re harmless.”
Unlike his enemies. “Still, I want to know if you feel uncomfortable in the least.”
She was quiet, sipping her bourbon for a moment before her eyes lifted to his. “Did you know your aunt thinks my mother is the reason she got married?”
He stilled. He should have known that would get out. “My aunt doesn’t respect many people, but she has an affection for your mother.”
Sylvie sighed and took another sip. “That’s a good call then. I’ll make sure Mom comes out to the B and B to talk to her on her birthday weekend. She can bring her cards with her. Strangely, the cards often do what Momma wants them to. She did a reading for Estelle Bodon the other day that told her to let her hair go natural for a couple of months. It was starting to fall out from all those chemicals she was using.”
He sat up because, despite the casualness of her words, he knew this was serious. She’d danced with him and things had seemed all right, but now he could see that she’d been thinking, waiting for the right time to bring up what had happened. “You don’t have to do that. I’ll handle my aunt. I don’t want to force your mother into this problem.”
A brow arched over her eyes, that intelligent stare slicing through him. “I rather thought that was what the Martine women were here to do—take care of your problems.”
Damn. He should have turned them all around and walked out of that restaurant the minute he realized the horde had descended. “I need this marriage, Sylvie. That doesn’t mean I’m going to put you on the front lines of this war of mine. I’m sorry for anything Ashley said to you. She can be mean when she’s disappointed, and she’s almost always disappointed. I’ll make sure she doesn’t bother you again.”
“Gabriel told me she asked you for a job and you turned her down.”
“She did. She wouldn’t fit into the corporate culture we have at the company. You should know, though, that I did give Gabriel a job. He’s been working in the financial offices and he’s on a management track. I’m not evil. I’m not trying to keep anyone down, but Ashley would only cause trouble. She’s got zero real interest in business.”
“They said something about their father leaving them in a bad place.”
“Yes, he left the marriage, though I don’t think it had been much of a marriage for a long time,” Rene replied.
“I can imagine that would be hard.”
“Did they try to tell you it was all their dad’s fault? Don’t believe it. Aunt Helene did her own damage. I’ve paid off her bills three times in the last decade to the tune of a million dollars.” He had to lay it out for Sylvie or she would think he was the bad guy here. “I paid for her divorce attorney. I paid for Gabriel’s last year of college because he was going to have to drop out. That was my money, not the company’s.”
Her expression had softened. “How does it work? The whole family company thing? It seems like a lot.”
She had no idea. “I think it probably worked far better during my grandfather’s generation. My father had a brother who wasn’t interested in the company, and three sisters who never expected to take over. They were happy to cash checks and give my dad free reign. That started to change later on as they got older. They saw other companies going public and they got stars in their eyes. My dad knew if we went public, we would lose all control and we would probably turn into something we wouldn’t want to turn into. We also would lose control of being able to take care of our family the way we always had.”
“And how was that?”
He fought the urge to wince because there had been a hint of judgment in the question that let him know Ashley had done some damage. “When my father took over the company, it was decided that all of the siblings would get shares and they would be paid dividends. Now, most of the family worked for the company so they had a salary, too, but over the years the cousins and their children have chosen not to come into the company. They live off of their own careers and the dividends we pay.”
“I suspect sometimes they think they can live off their dividends alone.”
“Yes, and that includes Ashley’s parents,” he explained. “Her mother was given a large trust that should have lasted her lifetime. She lived beyond her means and got the whole family in trouble. I did what I could.”
Sylvie seemed to think about that for a moment. “What would happen if you did take the company public? Would that be enough money for the family?”
He’d thought about it a lot. It would solve so many of his problems, but it wasn’t what his father had made him promise. It wasn’t what his mother expected of him. “If we sold out, every family would get a large chunk of cash, though it would go to whoever is the head of the individual families, and obviously as time goes by and the families split the original stock, it would be less.”
“The aunts and uncles have a bigger chunk than the cousins.”
He nodded. “And in the case where the aunts and uncles are still alive, the cousins would get nothing until they inherited whatever was left, and some of my relatives would spend like there was no tomorrow. The way my father set things up, the company can take care of this generation. I don’t know about the next. I’ve bought up some of the stock from relatives who didn’t want to deal with the company. Some have sold to Charles. For now, this is how I have to work. At some point down the line, we’ll come up with something else.”