“Yes, I know. But you could do that, too, you know.” Now it was Cornelia’s turn to sigh. “All right, Georgie. I’ll quit ‘bugging’ you, as you’ve so inelegantly expressed it. And I’ll just pray you won’t regret this decision some day.”
“Thank you, Mother.” Now that she’d won her point, Georgie could afford to be magnanimous. She walked to her mother’s chair and knelt before her. “You know I love you, don’t you? And that I’m grateful for everything you’ve sacrificed for us? We can agree to disagree about this one thing, can’t we?”
Her mother smiled. “Yes, but that doesn’t mean I won’t continue to worry about you.”
Georgie raised herself up and kissed her mother’s still-smooth cheek. “I know. I guess I can’t ask for miracles.” Then she grinned. “Although if anyone can accomplish miracles, it’s you.”
“Look who’s talking, Miss I-Finished-College-in-Three-Years-and-Got-My-Master’s-in-Less-than-Two.’”
Although Georgie had never had problems with self-confidence, sometimes her mother’s praise and her sisters’ admiration made her uncomfortable. She was not exceptional or brilliant, and she kept trying to tell them so. She just knew what she wanted, she worked hard and she didn’t waste her time. If she made a bad decision, the moment she realized it was bad, she rectified it. Her sisters were all hard workers, too, but some of them lacked confidence and hesitated before making changes. It was a mystery to Georgie that the four them, so close in age, all born to the very same mother and father, could be so different.
Take Tommi, for instance. The only place she seemed to feel completely sure of herself was in the kitchen.
“So what’s on your agenda now?” her mother asked. “Has Alex made any decision about where you’ll go next?”
Georgie shook her head. “God, I hope so. We’re meeting for lunch tomorrow. Aside from anything else, it’ll be nice to see him again.”
Her mother frowned. “I thought you were working at Alex’s office the past couple of weeks while waiting for a new assignment.”
“Not at the office. I’m doing research for him at home. But I’ll sure be glad to get back into the field. I like research, but not that much.”
Despite this minor complaint, Georgie loved her job, loved that Alex allowed her to have a say in what she did and where she did it. Since coming to work for him at the Hunt Foundation nineteen months earlier, Georgie had been happier than she’d ever been in her entire life.
Alex was a dream boss. One of the things about him she liked most was that he treated all his employees with consideration and respect. P.J., his wife, was one lucky woman. In fact, if Georgie ever found a man like Alex, she might even change her mind about getting married.
“What’re you smiling about?” her mother asked.
Georgie started. She’d forgotten her mother was sitting there. Not a good idea. Her mother was too sharp. She had an uncanny ability to almost read a person’s mind, to the chagrin of all her daughters. “Oh, nothing. Just thinking how happy I’ll be to get busy again.”
Georgie had come home from the Sudan right before the Christmas holiday had begun and had now been on hiatus more than three weeks. She’d told Alex she didn’t need that much time off. After all, she had no husband, children or pets to worry about. And although she was the newly proud owner of a small, loft-type condo in near downtown Belltown, the maid service and condo maintenance she paid for took excellent care of her property when she was away.
“Well,” her mother said, “I hope, if he’s sending you out to the field again, he sends you somewhere peaceful this time. It worries me when you go into countries where there’s so much civil unrest.”
“You know Alex would never put me in danger.”
Cornelia raised her eyebrows. “Afghanistan is terribly dangerous. And so was Burundi. And even the Sudan.”
“I was never in danger in any of those places.” But Georgie mentally crossed her fingers, because she wasn’t telling her mother the entire truth. Sure, she’d been in supposedly protected zones in those countries, and in all cases she’d been accompanied by representatives from the UN, along with a security detail, but still … no one was ever completely safe surrounded by warring factions, and she’d had one or two close—and scary—calls.
Cornelia nodded, but Georgie knew she wasn’t convinced. Giving her mother another kiss, she said, “I’ve gotta run, Mom. I’m getting my hair trimmed. My appointment’s at three o’clock.”
“Phone me tomorrow?” her mother said as she walked Georgie to the door.
“Why? So you can call Alex and yell at him if you don’t like where he’s sending me next?” teased Georgie.
Her mother laughed. “Don’t think I wouldn’t.”
“Oh, I know you would.” And the worst part was, Alex would probably listen. Sometimes Georgie despaired of ever leading a totally independent life. But that’s what she got for taking a job with someone so closely intertwined with her family. Although she and Alex Hunt referred to each other as cousins, they were not really related. Their fathers had been best friends as kids, and as young men they’d co-founded a company that eventually became HuntCom.
Of course, the company’s huge success came years after George Fairchild’s death, so neither he nor Cornelia had benefitted financially the way Harry Hunt, Alex’s father, had. It wasn’t for lack of trying on Harry’s part, though. Harry Hunt wasn’t perfect, but he was nothing if not generous to the people he loved. And George Fairchild’s wife and daughters were high up on that list. Harry had tried everything he could think of to give Cornelia money, and she had thwarted every attempt. He had managed to gift each of her daughters with $100,000 upon their high-school graduation, along with an honorary seat on the HuntCom board. Furious, Cornelia had refused to talk to him for months afterward.
Cornelia was proud. She wasn’t willing to take money she didn’t feel she deserved, no matter how much she could have used the help at the time. And the same applied to her daughters.
Georgie admired her mother more than just about anyone. How many women would have had guts enough and strength enough to hold their heads high after finding out, after his death, that the husband they’d trusted had gambled away every bit of their life’s savings, including their stock in HuntCom? How many women would refuse to take the easy way out that had been offered by Harry Hunt? Not many, Georgie thought.
Cornelia Phillips Fairchild hadn’t wasted a whole lot of time feeling sorry for herself, either. She’d sold the family home, the one asset George Fairchild had not been able to touch, because it belonged to Cornelia outright—her inheritance from the maternal grandmother she’d been named for. She’d bought the much smaller Craftsman-style bungalow in Queen Anne that she still lived in, and she’d taken a job as secretary at the small private girls’ school where her daughters were enrolled. In that way, with what she got for the girls in Social Security, what remained from the sale of the big house and her small salary supplementing free tuition for the girls, she was able to keep their lives as close to normal as possible.
Yes, her mother was a remarkable woman, and Georgie thought the world of her. Even so, she mused as she drove away from the family home, she was no longer a child who needed her mother’s guidance, especially when it came to her love life … or lack thereof.
Georgie hoped they’d settled that subject today and that Cornelia wouldn’t be raising it again. Then she grinned. Of course her mother would raise it again. Her mother wasn’t the type to give up easily.
Well, I’m not, either. No one was going to talk her into doing anything she didn’t want to do—absolutely no one.
Zachary Prince was ready for the weekend to begin. Although he really liked his job, today he was tired of being cooped up in the office, tired of all