Double-Cross My Heart (40 page)

“Well,” Wendi said, “that’s a violation of company policy! You were hired under false pretenses. It’s justification for dismissal.”

No one responded to this comment. At the other end of the table, Michele sat back in her chair, an expression of surprise and dismay on her face.

“In all the years that I’ve worked here,” Eden continued, determined to go on, “I have never betrayed one of this company’s formulas. Nor, to give him credit, would my uncle have asked me to do so.”

“Your uncle owns Beauty By Georgette? This company’s largest regional competitor?” Sarah Briggs asked.

“Are we sure no proprietary information has leaked to our competitor?” Wendi looked at the others around the table, but no one responded to her question either.

“Yes, George Thompson is my uncle,” Eden confirmed, meeting the Sarah’s gaze. “I won’t bore you with the reasons why I came to work for this company. I think it’s obvious why I lied about this. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have been hired. But beyond acknowledging this biological tie that I know will be seen as a threat to the company, I have something else to say.”

She took another breath, keeping a grip on her composure, her hands clenched tightly on the edge of the table. “This company has been in significant financial and management trouble for nearly a year—“

“Financial trouble? I don’t know what you mean!” Michele said, bristling.

“That’s ridiculous!” Wendi chimed in, speaking at the same time.

“Please hear me out,” Eden said, conscious that Sol wasn’t saying a word. “Surely, you are aware that our revenues have been falling, even more than the economic indicators would warrant. You all know that. In addition, we have an aging product line and we desperately need to get some new products ready for the market. As a company, I believe we have great potential, but on paper, we face serious problems.”
“That’s why Michele wanted to develop that face cream for older customers,” Wendi commented, sending the older woman a fawning smile.

“That product is a failure,” Michele declared, still staring at Eden, her face puzzled.

This was the moment, Eden knew, the instant in time that she’d been dreading for months. Everything depended on how she presented herself right now.

There was no more hiding the truth.

“No,” Eden said, stiffening her back bone, “it actually isn’t a failure. The initial reports from Bergere weren’t good—“

“But, Eden,” Michele protested, “all the reports were bad.”

“No,” Eden said again, making herself look at each person seated around the table, her gaze stopping when it met Michele’s. “This is also where I’ve been less than honest—the fact of my relationship to my uncle has had no impact on this company, regardless of what you might believe—but I have been actively hiding the truth about this product. I’ve kept from you, all of you, the fact that this anti-aging cream may be very lucrative.”

A ripple of reaction went around the table.

“The product has promise?” Sol asked, speaking for the first time since she walked into the room. He looked at Eden with an unreadable expression.

“More than that,” Eden admitted, meeting his level gaze with deliberate effort. She felt like a worm. Saying aloud what she’d been doing over the last few months made her wonder if she’d been temporarily insane, but she hadn’t seen any other choice. “The anti-aging face cream actually has significant income potential. A summary of the final product research is in front of you.”

Several board members began shuffling through their papers. At his seat at the far end of the conference table, Dave Sanders found the copy of the report and began to scan it.

“Why have you kept this information to yourself?” Sol asked evenly, having extracted his copy from the folder.

“I don’t have a good reason,” Eden told him, keeping her voice just as level. “I did have a reason in the beginning, but upon consideration, it’s not good enough.”

“Of course not!” Wendi said, edging forward in her seat, her hand on the table. “What you’ve been doing is dereliction of duty and deliberately trying to hurt the company. You must have been planning on selling the formula!”

“I made this…difficult choice,” Eden said, catching and holding Wendi’s gaze, “due to my concern for this company and some recent…management decisions. I felt, rightly or wrongly, that in the best interest of the company this information was best kept from general dissemination.”

Silence greeted her statement, several of the board members exchanging glances. The inference was clear. She’d taken this extreme action out of a significant distrust of Michele’s management of the company.

Sarah Briggs’ gaze fell to the table top, but Sol kept his eyes on Eden.

Feeling like a rock was weighing down her chest, she couldn’t quite make herself look back at the woman at the head of the table. But she felt Michele’s gaze on her, despite the old woman making no response to her words.

“There’s something else you need to know,” Eden said, looking down at the glossy table top for a minute. “I was contacted several months back by Alex Holt of Holt, Inc. He expressed a significant interest in Michele Cosmetics.”

The room grew even more silent as the directors absorbed this statement. At the end of the table, Michele seemed to have difficulty assimilating this additional blow. She’d lost color and seemed suddenly shrunken in her chair.

“Yes, I believe you all know who Alex Holt is,” Eden said with a touch of grim humor. She’d gone back and forth about whether or not she even needed to reveal Alex’s actions regarding the company. His astounding withdrawal from the struggle for control of Michele Cosmetics had changed the playing field drastically. She still couldn’t quite understand everything he’d said this morning.

He’d pulled out of a million-dollar deal…for her? Because she meant something to him? Facing

this meeting, she hadn’t had time to sort it all through.

But after several hours of consideration, she’d known, even with him withdrawing his attempt to get control of the company, she had to come clean this morning with the entire story. No one needed to know anything about her personal life, but she felt compelled to put her business actions into context. If it hadn’t been for the threat Alex represented to the company, would she have made the same choices? Would she be even now taking this action?

Regardless of what happened between them from now on, her life was better for his coming into it. She’d needed to come to some realizations for some time.

Continuing, she said, “Mr. Holt has been actively planning an acquisition bid to get control of Michele Cosmetics. It was in response to his involvement in the situation that I kept back the data on the face cream.”

Every face was turned toward her, all of them displaying tremendous interest in her words.

Eden went on. “Alex Holt has been positioning himself to make a hostile takeover bid for this company. He knew about my having kept the truth about my uncle a secret. He made this clear to me and asked for my cooperation.“

“You bitch!” Wendi spat.

“When he approached me,” Eden continued without acknowledging the slur, “he stated that he believed I was not receiving fair treatment from this organization in that I should have continued to be in line for the chief executive officer position when Michele resigns.”

Wendi seemed to have turned to stone.

“It was at the point of this conversation that I realized how much trouble the company was in,” Eden said, some of the tension inside of her uncoiling now that the truth was unfolding. “I want to make it clear to you that I gave Alex Holt the impression—actively—that I was working with him to get control of this company. I gave him information on the company—most of it bogus—but I did give it to him. I also—and I’m not proud of this—spoke to the reporter who wrote that article in
Wall Street Weekly.”

Eden felt Sol’s gaze stab her.

“I did that to convince Alex Holt I was working with him. I acknowledge my actions openly and I admit that my motivation was, in addition to protecting this company from the demolition that Alex had planned for it, also to gain for myself the executive directorship of this company once the takeover bid was fended off.”

A tiny sob escaped from Michele.

“I’m sorry,” Eden said, her voice softer as she looked at her mentor. “You’ve built this company and have kept it strong for many years, but you know you’ve lost interest. Your life is taking other directions and you’ve earned the right to retire, even if the thought scares you.”

Michele said in a broken voice, “You have no right!”

“No, maybe not,” Eden acknowledged. “But I’ve put in a lot of years here, too. And I have a great concern regarding your decisions lately, and how they effect the employees at this company.”

She’d say nothing about the managers who gave her statements endorsing her leadership of the company. It could only do harm now. Even Dave didn’t deserve to have his part in the plan revealed. She’d take no one down with her.

“You witch!” Wendi burst out suddenly, her assumed sweetness completely dissipated. “You sold this company out in order to keep me from running it? My God! I can’t believe you had the audacity to come here today!”

“I had hoped by playing along with Holt, Inc, to buy time for my own plans. I believed, and still believe, that I could pull the company out of its slump. I was planning on coming here today and telling you that I’m the best person to run this company and that you should remove Michele from the company leadership now—“

Michele seemed to sag back in her chair, her face both stunned and haggard.

“—and place me—not Wendi Williams—in control of the company. I’ve acquired damaging information about Ms. Williams that I was going to place before you as evidence that she is not the person who should be in charge of this company. I’d also planned on revealing then the promise of this new product.”

“You say you
were
planning to tell us you are the person to run this company?” Sarah asked.

“Yes,” Eden said. “Several things have occurred in the last few days that have changed my original plans. For one thing, I was informed just this morning that Alex Holt is no longer interested in acquiring this company.”

A babble of voices spoke all at once, Michele’s faint expression of relief mixed in with Dave’s surprise and Sarah’s questioning voice.

Eden lifted her hand. “His reasons for this change aren’t significant to any of you and are, I gather, personal, but for whatever reason, the company doesn’t face a challenge from him. I am sure, however, that with our weakening market position, other companies will be taking note.”

Sol said quietly, “So the threat from without is lessened?”

“For now,” Eden said, looking at him.

“What else has changed?” he asked.

Eden drew in another steadying breath, “I’ve changed my mind about seeking this job. If I have to lie, cheat and backstab to get this position, I’ve realized I don’t want the job.”

The board members looked at her without comprehension.

“Someone who cares for me,” Eden said with a sudden catch in her throat, “has asked me to look at myself and see if this is who I want to me. I have looked…and the answer is, no.”

From her spot next to Michele, Wendi’s face showed bafflement.

“I came here today to tell you all this,” Eden said, talking to the board members, “and, finally, to tender my resignation, effective immediately.”

“Resignation?” Sarah Briggs exclaimed, her expression surprised. From the far end of the table, Dave Sanders gaped at her.

Eden was conscious of the board members shocked faces, some expressions registering consternation, as well.

“My actions the past few months,” she said, “have been devious and exhausting. This is not who I want to be. I have a tremendous desire for this company to prosper, but I’m not willing to sacrifice my soul for it.”

She hesitated in the act of turning toward the door. “One last thing, in addition to Bergere’s final report on the new product, I’ve given you proof of Ms. Williams’ financial misconduct in her last job—“

Wendi’s gasp was audible.

“—in the folder in front of each one of you. I’m not particularly proud of how I discovered this information, but it is reliable. What you do with it is up to you.”

Eden paused, looking at them all with a faint smile. “That’s all I think. Thank you.”

With that, she left the room feeling lighter and stronger than she had in months.

Shutting the conference room door, Eden walked quickly down the hall, following the corridors that led to her office.

Alex. She needed to talk to him.

She went through Cheryl’s outer office with hardly a pause, walking quickly past her assistant’s desk.

“How did it go?” Cheryl ask, looking up from her work.

“Fine.” Eden crossed her office to her desk, the door ajar behind her. Not wasting time trying to guess where Alex might be, she tapped in his cell number and waited impatiently while the call connected.

She’d made this momentous decision in her life for herself, but he’d been a huge part of her torturous process these last few months. He hadn’t been completely honest with her, but he’d really been the one who pushed her into coming to terms with her life. Having said her piece to the board, she was gripped by a feverish urgency to speak to Alex.