IT’S ALWAYS DARKEST BEFORE the dawn had to be one of the stupidest expressions Melissa Theisen knew. She’d worried and raged her way through plenty of middle-of-the-night blackness lately, and when the birds started chirping to announce dawn, she never felt brighter or better. She merely felt one day closer to the edge.
She watched as early morning light crept through the drapes of her Lakeview, Washington, home until she could make out the shapes of furniture in her bedroom. Her mahogany dressing table, and the matching chest of drawers empty of Stephen’s things. The smooth expanse of quilt on his unslept-in side of the king-size bed. The crack in the ceiling above her head. Was it her imagination or was that crack expanding?
Giving up on sleep, she rolled out of bed and padded downstairs to put coffee on, showered while it brewed, then sat at her kitchen table sipping the first steaming mug while she read over the letter once more.
Stephen was two months late on child support payments. Worse, he’d missed his weekend visits with the kids. But not until she’d received the letter from the bank yesterday had she suspected the depth of his betrayal. From the midst of the careful, corporate wording, the word foreclosure jumped out at her like a skeleton leaping out of a closet. Oh, they weren’t foreclosing quite yet, but the threat was there. Not only had Stephen stopped paying her, he hadn’t paid the bank mortgage, either.
Ominously, he seemed to have disappeared.
A year after her divorce, she accepted that he wasn’t coming back. But he’d never abandon his own children.
Would he?
The naive part of her wanted to believe that something had happened to him. The cynical side wasn’t buying that for a second.
Draining her coffee mug, she rose and assembled the ingredients for oatmeal raisin muffins. It was part of her morning routine now, along with baking homemade bread—without a machine, thank you very much. As though knocking herself out to be the perfect homemaker could balance Stephen’s role as the home breaker. The counselor she’d seen briefly after the separation had told her she was overcompensating for the lack of a father in her children’s lives.
So what?
She liked baking. The activity soothed her and gave her some measure of control over the mess of her life. Not that she was fooling herself that a few muffins and a loaf of butter-crust whole wheat could make up for a missing dad, but she had to work with what she had.
By the time she woke the kids, the smell of comfort food filled the kitchen and she was dressed for the day.
She had to shake eight-year-old Matthew twice to get him to wake up. “Morning, sleepyhead,” she said, smiling down at his sleep-pinkened cheeks and the one skinny leg sticking out from under the duvet cover patterned with vivid insects.
He groaned and rolled over. “Hi, Mom.”
Knowing he wasn’t fully functional until he’d been up for a few minutes, she ruffled his hair and left him with a reminder to make his bed. “Fresh muffins,” she said, glancing back. “Your favorite.”
Then she stepped into her three-year-old daughter’s room.
Alice, like her, was a morning person. Fully awake, she sat in bed and chattered to her stuffed dinosaur. With the mixed herd of stuffed animals and dolls in her bed, she could amuse herself for hours.
“Mama,” she cried, holding out her arms.
After a big smacking kiss for her daughter, Melissa performed the morning ritual of greeting the animals and dolls before helping her baby to the bathroom and then getting dressed. Alice was in a pink-and-purple fashion stage. Even at her tender age she was fussy about what she wore. Dresses were preferred, in pink and purple, obviously, but they also had to be good spinning dresses. If a dress didn’t bell out when she twirled, well, what was the point?
Already, Alice was enrolled in tiny-tot ballet and had decided she was going to be either a dancer or a princess when she grew up. Such tough decisions when you’re three.
Hand in hand, the two women of the house walked down the stairs. Melissa taking a moment to feel the tiny warm hand tucked into hers and watch the soft bounce of blond curls. The kids were growing so fast, sometimes she had to stop and concentrate on a small detail so she could hold on to it and hopefully program it into her long-term memory.
Alice was halfway through her second muffin and her apple juice when Matthew stumbled into the room.
“Before you sit down, can you get me a knife from the drawer, honey?” Melissa asked him. She removed the gingham frill from the top of her strawberry jam, ready to pair it with peanut butter for his sandwich.
“Sure.” He yawned and yanked at the drawer. Even as she exclaimed, “Careful,” she knew it was too late. The drawer front came away with his hand.
“Uh-oh,” Alice said.
Uh-oh was right. How many times had she told them that drawer was loose? She couldn’t afford a handyman, and her carpentry skills were in the slim-to-none category, edging strongly toward the “none” end of the range.
She quelled the urge to snap at him. It wasn’t Matthew’s fault. “Sorry, Mom,” he said, looking stricken.
“It’s okay.” She took the drawer front from him and put it on the counter.
His gaze followed her movement, his expression serious and worried. “Ryan Doran’s mom said I come from a broken home,” he said hesitantly, staring at the broken drawer.
Oh, God. What to say?
“Superglue,” she said, “fixes everything. We’ll have that drawer back together in no time.” In fact, there were two items in her toolbox. A single screwdriver with multiple heads, most of which were a mystery, and a tube of carpenter’s glue, which was really amazingly versatile.
Matt nodded thoughtfully. “I told him it’s not our home that’s broken, it’s our family.”
ONCE SHE’D GOT Matthew off to school and Alice dressed, Melissa drove to the appointment she’d made at the bank after she’d received yesterday’s letter. In the bank parking lot, still in her car, she read that devastating single page one more time. Helpless rage spurted through her. “Stephen Theisen, how could you do this to me?” She didn’t even realize she’d vented aloud until her daughter chirped, “Daddy?”
“No, honey.” Melissa turned to the child in the backseat, and her heart twisted. So much love and innocent trust shone from the cherubic face framed by a cascade of blond curls. “He’s not here.”
Alice opened her mouth and Melissa waited for, “I want Daddy,” but after quivering a moment, the pink lips closed again. Melissa pursed her own lips hard to keep them from quivering just as childishly and opened the door.
Damn it, she hadn’t lost everything yet, and she wasn’t going to. The children had been deprived of their father, but they still had a home and a mother. They had friends and a decent school. And she would do anything, anything at all, to make sure they kept the precious stability of remaining in the only home they’d ever known.
Ten minutes past her appointment time, Melissa played with Alice in the waiting area and bristled with righteous indignation. Her ex-husband was supposed to pay the mortgage. Why was the bank bothering her?
A short, unsatisfactory interview with Mr. Cheney, the lending officer who had written the letter, explained why they were bothering her. If the mortgage wasn’t paid, the loan would be called. Then foreclosure would begin.
“But,” she argued, “I’ve got all the paperwork showing that my ex-husband signed over the house to me.”
He checked the computer records and said, “Since you were on the original mortgage documents, you can pick up the payments without any problem.” He glanced at her and then at Alice. “But the house is the collateral for the mortgage, Mrs. Theisen. Is there someone who could lend you some money to get yourself back on track?”
She blinked. “What about you? You’re a lending officer at my bank.”
He shook his head. “Sorry. You wouldn’t qualify for a loan with us. No income, house payments in default.” He was sorry, but that was it. When she tried to explain her situation, he looked at her as though he’d heard a thousand stories like hers and was tapped of sympathy. “Maybe you should trade down,” was his only suggestion.
Trade down? A shiver of pure fear crawled over her skin at the words. She’d spent her childhood being moved from place to place, always trading down, never up. She envisioned the last home she lived in with her parents—the awful trailer across the highway from Big Bull’s wrecking yard on Federal Way.
Mr. Cheney fished around in a drawer and came up with a couple of pamphlets, which he handed her. She read the title of one, “Avoiding Foreclosure,” and crumpled the wad of papers into her bag.
In shock, she lifted Alice into her arms and stumbled out of the cubicle, heading numbly toward the daylight streaming in from an outside door.
“You’re squishing me,” Alice complained and wiggled out of her arms, then took her hand.
Around them, people ebbed and flowed to banking machines, tellers and suited bank reps like Mr. Cheney in cubicles. A sea of people with money to deposit, withdraw, invest. And she, Melissa Theisen, former wife of successful entrepreneur Stephen Theisen, had just been informed she was responsible for more than six thousand dollars in back mortgage payments, plus extra interest and late fees. She had thirty days to pay it and resume regular mortgage payments, or the bank would start foreclosure proceedings on the house.
Stubbornly, her Gucci flats, which had seen better days, refused to carry her out of the building.
There had to be another way.
Melissa hadn’t done anything wrong. She’d followed the examples of those wonderful TV families. She’d married the right man, had had the right children. She’d entertained clients graciously. Done everything she could to help Stephen prosper.
She was rewarded by getting dumped.
Well, she’d had enough of men like Stephen and Mr. Cheney taking things away from her.
A guy in a baseball cap jostled her as she stood trying to figure out what to do. An armed guard lounged in a corner of the marble lobby and looked at her with mild curiosity. Fury at the unfairness of it all began to bubble inside her. No, she wasn’t leaving this bank until she had a better solution than trading down. She stalked to the bank directory and scanned straight to the top of the listed names.
Seth O’Reilly, President and CEO of the First Bank of Lakeview, Washington. He was her man. Before the anger could dissipate, she picked up Alice and marched to the elevator.
The executive offices on the third level were hushed and unhurried. Melissa’s worn shoes sank into teal carpet as she made her way forward.
“Can I help you?” a cool female voice asked.
“Yes. I’m looking for Mr. O’Reilly,” she told the perfectly groomed, gray-haired woman behind the expensive-looking reception desk.
“Do you have an appointment?”
“No, I—”
“I’m sorry. He’s in a meeting. Perhaps someone else can—”
“No. It’s very important that I see Mr. O’Reilly today.”
“He’s not available today.” The woman typed something on her keyboard and scanned her computer screen. “The earliest appointment he has is two weeks Wednesday.”
“I need to see him today.”
“Well, you can’t.”
Later, Melissa would realize that that was the moment she snapped. But at the time it seemed as though the only possible course of action was to find the one man who might be able to help her, and to do it immediately. She walked past the reception desk into a hushed labyrinth of offices and meeting rooms.
“Wait! You can’t go back there. Stop! I’ll call Security.”
Melissa hardly heard the words.
She felt exhilarated by breaking the rules for the first time in thirty-four years. If a little rule-breaking would keep a roof over Alice’s and Matthew’s heads, it was a small price to pay. She stalked forward, knowing instinctively that the farther she got from the reception desk—and the public who paid for it—the closer she’d get to the real power in the bank.
IT HAD BEEN ONE HELL of a morning, and the day wasn’t getting any better. Seth O’Reilly’s stomach felt as if it was being attacked from inside with burning knives.
Which left him in no mood for the weekly executive meeting.
He eyed the silver carafe in front of him with a combination of fear and longing. Coffee was the worst thing he could inflict upon his already suffering body.
He tried to think about something else, but cups rattled against saucers to tease him, while the aroma of fresh coffee tickled his senses.
His doctor had warned him to stay away from the stuff—but then his doctor had never sat through one of these meetings. He poured a long, fragrant, black stream into the empty cup in front of him and drank deeply.
“Well, Seth? What do you think?”
Glancing up at the eleven faces around at boardroom table, he replayed as much of the discussion as he could remember. Stalling for time, he took another hit of coffee, then focused on the ad campaign the marketing director had presented.
A series of full-page mock-ups of newspaper and magazine ads stared at him from easels.
One showed a smiling middle-American family—one dad, one mom, one boy, one girl—in front of a brand new house complete with two-car garage and green velvet lawn. A second ad pictured a young Asian woman proudly polishing her new red sports car, while the third displayed a Generation X couple hanging an Open sign in front of a trendy coffee shop. All the ads carried the same headline— The New Face of Banking. And the subhead read, We’re Banking On You.
Irritation spurted along with the gastric juices that were torturing his gut. “I think they’re tired, trite and unimaginative.”
A grunt of exasperation escaped from Mitzi Youngall, the bank’s marketing director. “Seth, these ads went over great with the focus groups.”
“You asked for my opinion. I’m giving it.” He felt churlish, miserable and sick. He poured more coffee.
Mitzi tossed her newly platinum ringlets as she swung to gesture at the ads. “They’re realistic.”
“You want realism?” He poked his index finger toward the first ad layout. “There’s a fifty-percent chance that family’s going to break up, and the biggest argument will be over who pays for the kids’ braces.”
He pointed at the second ad. “That woman won’t be smiling when she finds out she’s sick of her car in a year and she’s stuck paying for it for five. And as for those kids—” he jabbed his finger toward the spiky-haired, black-clad twentysomethings in front of the café “—in real life they’re opening a goddamn hemp shop, not a coffee shop.”
“With a smoking room in the back,” Carl Fletcher, VP of customer services, added. “And I don’t mean cigars.”
A couple of wary chuckles erupted.
“Well, we can hardly show illegal activities in our ads,” Mitzi snapped.
“Do you have anything else we—” Before he could finish his question, the door to the boardroom flew open, hitting the mahogany-paneled wall with a resounding thump. In charged a startlingly beautiful woman clutching a chubby toddler in her arms.
Everyone turned to stare at the woman, whose eyes snapped fire. Eyes so dark blue they looked purple, above lips so luscious they could advertise…anything at all, and he’d buy it. He blinked, wondering if he’d conjured this woman out of his boredom. But a second glance told him she was no fantasy; she was a flesh and blood woman—and she was rigid with anger. The dark blond hair pulled back off her face exposed the taut jawline. Her breathing was short and shallow, her creamy cheeks flushed, and she faced the room square on. He didn’t need to be an expert on body language to see this woman was humming with fury.
Seth’s masculine eye noted the tall, slender length of her body; his banker’s eye noted that she wore an expensive coat and accessories that had seen better days. She also wore that attitude—and it crackled. Almost before he realized what he was doing, Seth found himself rising from his seat.
Her gaze snapped to his face. “Mr. O’Reilly?”
Yep, the voice was exactly what he would have expected. Crisp and ladylike. She was clearly furious, but she didn’t raise her voice. He admired that kind of control.
He tried for a neutral expression as he answered calmly. “Yes, I’m Seth O’Reilly.” Fifteen years in banking had taught him that irate customers were always easier to deal with if he could defuse their anger first.
Stella, the executive receptionist, and a uniformed security guard piled in behind the woman. “Sorry,” she gasped, glaring at the woman. “I told her she couldn’t come in here, but she barged past me.”
“I’m a customer of this bank, and I’d like a moment of your time, please. Now.” The words were delivered in the same softly determined voice, but Seth heard the quaver underneath and recognized the naked desperation in her eyes. Every chivalrous instinct surged within him. Maybe he couldn’t cure cancer, but he could certainly help a mother who was having a problem with his bank.
He’d opened his mouth to speak when Carl Fletcher beat him to it. “As you can see, Mr. O’Reilly is busy now. I’m in charge of customer services. If you’d like to make an appointment, I’ll try to see you next week.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“Ow, Mama, you’re squeezing me.”
“It’s all right, darling.” That voice was definitely shaking now.
Seth surveyed the faces around the table. The expressions ranged from embarrassment to boredom. No wonder those customer ads were all crap.
Bert, the security guard, looked as though he wished the woman carried an Uzi instead of a child. He’d have a better idea of what to do with a gun-toting intruder.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Seth began. When he had the attention of his executives, he gestured to the woman inside the doorway. “This is the new face of banking. Stella, please seat this customer in my office.” Then to the woman he said, “I’ll be with you in a moment.”
She was still steaming. He could see it in the line of her body, the way she held her chin up. For a second, he thought she might refuse to budge, but then, after glaring at him for another moment, she nodded stiffly and stalked out behind Stella.
The security guard wiped his forehead as he closed the door.
“Really, Seth, I would have thought this meeting was more imp—”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Carl. That woman is the reason we’re in business. Never forget it.”
He glanced coldly at each person in turn. “Excuse me, I have to see a customer.”
Then he smiled for the first time that day.