All her life, she had never wanted for money. If she ran out (which she did on a pretty regular basis), she simply dipped into the account her dad had set up. But after the horrible showdown at Blue Cross Ranch, she wouldn’t touch a dime of Lear money that she hadn’t earned. Her new and fervent determination never to accept another dime from Dad had left her to her own devices. Only, she had no devices. And she didn’t earn nearly enough to support the lifestyle she had created. Jesus, but this house, the renovations, her extensive wardrobe cost a lot to maintain. Not to mention the cost of shoes and handbags and food. There ought to be a law for what food cost.
Actually, it was much worse than that—she didn’t know how to stop spending. When her paycheck from LTI was deposited in two-week intervals, she resumed her lifestyle, certain that she would do better. And then she would proceed to her usual rounds of fine dining, lots of good wine, an occasional long-distance outing. By the end of the said two-week interval, she found herself staring at a long line of zeroes and minus signs in her checkbook. Her hopeless money management was made worse by the fact that all those little sayings Grandma and Grandpa had said throughout the years were beginning to make sense. Just to name a few: Money doesn’t grow on trees, young lady! Do you think it rains pennies? You’re just throwing good money after bad! Frightening how accurate they were.
Of course, this was not something she could confide in Jake, seeing as how he was so sensitive about money to begin with. And while he could be really irritating with his remarks about her spending (Don’t you think if you are going to shell out a couple of grand, you might want to know more than it’s a jazz thingie?), she had to hand it to him—he did seem to keep a pretty firm rein on his spending. Like down to the penny.
Mia was no help, and in fact, she was really pretty dangerous. Mia Carpenter lived off her family’s oil money and had never worked a day in her life—unless one counted that three-month stint at Tina’s boutique. If she wasn’t shopping, she was sleeping, and up until this year, Robin had been her staunchest supporter. But the week they flew to Paris to look at wedding gowns, Robin began to see a side of Mia she didn’t particularly like.
The problem was, with all those minuses in her checkbook, Robin could not live up to her share of the shopping and was forced to watch Mia spend without thought. Okay, she was ready to handle that—it wasn’t like dropping a couple of grand here or there was new to Robin. But what she wasn’t prepared for was the horrible discovery that without a lot of things to seek out and buy, she and Mia had precious little in common. In fact, she didn’t particularly like Mia. All the woman could talk about was what a bastard Michael was while she looked for a wedding gown. When Robin tried to engage her in conversation that was a little more meaningful, Mia acted bored and quickly changed the subject. Remarkable—after twenty years of friendship, Robin discovered Mia had the personal depth of a tea saucer.
Just one more thing Grandma was right about. God, was there no end?
Honestly, Robin couldn’t get back to Houston fast enough.
To Houston, where Evan was there waiting for her. Evan, brilliant Evan, who knew every aspect of the freight business. He grasped everything so quickly, immediately placed it in a proper context and explained it to her, taught her so much about the business. He showed her how Lou Harvey was manipulating his books so his operation would look more profitable than it was. He taught her how to age the equipment in Girt’s operation so they could offer a fair price for it. He showed her a neat little trick for figuring out profits-to-earning margins. And he managed to keep tabs on what American Motorfreight was doing so he would not be out maneuvered. How could she not admire that?
But while Evan was very good at what he did, he could also be terribly condescending. He spoke to her as if she was stupid, performed the same analysis she did without even looking at what she had done, and sent her expensive gifts for things so trivial as to be laughable (Good job with Lou on the phone yesterday!). Robin was beginning to realize that Evan didn’t believe anyone was as smart as he was, with the possible exception of her father, and even that was debatable. It was bad enough she was struggling to understand the business, but Evan’s constant disregard of her abilities was confusingly hurtful. There were times Robin was convinced she was an idiot, incapable of carrying the mantle of the family business. Still other times she mentally kicked herself for letting Evan’s arrogance derail her—she could do this!
And to confuse matters, he kept bringing up the new vice presidency in Dallas. “Sort of a super VP, in charge of acquisitions nationwide.”