Entwined - SF5 (30 page)

He raised one delicate eyebrow, but pulled the document in question from a file folder and spent a few minutes refreshing his memory of its terms. "It’s the Smith Grandchildren’s Trust, but as you no doubt know, Jamie is the only grandchild. She is entitled to income distributions, but only on a discretionary basis. The only items that the trust will pay for without question are educational expenses. That includes tuition, books, fees and supplies for any legitimate educational purpose. Jim and Catherine are both trustees, and they make all decisions regarding discretionary distributions."

Ryan scrunched up her nose and cocked her head at the little man, asking, "How does that work? Does that mean their decision must be unanimous?"

"Yes," he said, pursing his thin lips at her.

Ryan nodded, and Tuck continued, "The trust distributes 25% at age 21, 25% at 25, and the remainder at 30 or upon marriage, although that will likely not occur now," he observed dryly.

"Are the distributions automatic?" Ryan asked, aware that Jamie had not received her distribution.

"The first two are not," he said clearly, a decided brusqueness to his tone. "The trustees can defer either of the first two until age 30. I believe in your case you chose not to ask for your distribution at your 21
^st
birthday, correct?" he asked Jamie.

"That’s correct," she agreed.

Ryan followed up, "If she changes her mind is there any problem with taking it now?"

"No," he said carefully as he glared at Ryan. "If her trustees agree, she may take that distribution at any time."

"What if the trustees do not agree," Ryan asked, her mouth asking the question before her brain could override it. "Does she have any way to force them to make the payment?"

"No, Miss O’Flaherty," he said with his eyes narrowing. "She does not."

His attitude had begun to irritate Ryan several minutes earlier, and it was getting worse by the moment. "What if they are being unreasonable?"

"The standard of reasonableness rests solely with the trustees. Of course, you could waste hundreds of thousands of dollars of Miss Evans’ trust on a court fight, but I’m confident you would not win." His eyes had turned into little blue steel ball bearings in his tiny head, and Ryan again wished that she had not accompanied her lover on this little excursion.

"These questions are rhetorical, Mr. Gray," Ryan said evenly. "Jamie asked me to help her understand the trust more fully. That is my only concern."

Jamie considered jumping in, but Ryan was doing a good job of telling the pompous little man off, so she let her roll.

"Of course," Mr. Gray agreed with a thin smile. "I implied nothing more."

"Does Jamie have the ability to make investment decisions?" Ryan asked, determined to get through the questions that had been troubling her no matter how irritating Mr. Gray was.

"No, she does not. The trustees have no discretion either. Mr. Smith trusted our very capable investment department to handle all aspects of the financial decisions."

"Do you have a list of what her current assets are?"

"Yes, but Miss Evans gets a full report every quarter. That is how often we print that report."

"I keep all of those, Ryan," Jamie informed her. "They’re at home."

"Let me make sure I understand one thing," Ryan said carefully. "Your investment department has full authority over all of the assets in Jamie’s trust."

"Correct," he said.

"I assume that one person is really in charge of her portfolio?"

"Yes, generally that’s true."

"How many accounts does that one person manage, if you have any idea?" Ryan asked in a neutral tone.

He looked a little uncomfortable but he answered. "Probably about 400 or so."

"Is his or her salary based on their performance or is it straight salary?"

"Our money managers are paid very well, young lady. They are some of the best in the business, I’ll have you know!" he declared, with his ire starting to show.

"Did you answer my question?" Ryan asked pointedly, batting her big blue eyes.

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, obviously trying to control his temper. "There are people in the investment group who study the market carefully and make recommendations on buys and sells. They are compensated according to their performance. However, the individual investment manager for Jamie’s account is paid a very generous salary. We structure it that way so that they are not under the same pressure that an employee of a brokerage firm would be. It’s not in their best interests to buy and sell stocks frequently just to move things around."

Ryan nodded her dark head, deep in thought. Finally the blue eyes peeked out through her bangs as she said, "But it doesn’t reward outstanding performance either, does it?"

"It is a delicate balance," he admitted. "The investment world is a very complex one, Miss O’Flaherty. It is impossible to maximize return while providing safety. Mr. Smith was very happy with our philosophy and our performance. I think we have provided ample evidence that his choice was a good one."

"I’m not disputing that, Mr. Gray. I’m just asking questions to help Jamie understand this more fully."

He stood to his full five feet and said, "I just hope that your influence leads Miss Evans to draw the correct conclusions about our performance. Now I must leave to meet a client. My secretary will bring you a copy of the agreement if you can wait a few moments." He indicated an elderly woman sitting at the desk just in front of his own. "It was a pleasure to see you again, Jamie." Turning to Ryan he extended a hand and said, "I assume we’ll meet again, Miss O’Flaherty."

With that terse signoff, he was gone.

"Do I just have a knack for pissing people off, or what?" Ryan muttered as she stared after his departing form.

"You must, although I don’t understand it for the life of me," Jamie mused. "I think you’re terribly charming, and you’ve yet to piss me off."

Ryan turned and caught the dancing green eyes gazing up at her. "I guess that’s the only opinion I should care about, huh?"

"You betcha, Baby," she agreed wholeheartedly.

As soon as they arrived home Ryan gathered the statements that Jamie had brought from their house and started to pore over them. She didn’t hear the cell phone ring, nor did she notice when Jamie left the room for quite some time. A pair of warm lips upon her neck eventually startled her out of her concentration. "Yipes!" the dark haired woman cried. "How did you come in without my hearing you?"

"You are so intent there, Tiger, that I don’t think you’d notice if I was chopping wood!"

Ryan laughed at this exaggeration but she had to concede, "I get kinda focused."

"Kinda indeed!" she scoffed. She started to strip off her golf clothes to slip into one of Ryan’s big T-shirts, her normal lounging attire. "Mother says ‘hi’," she commented as she sat down on the bed.

"When did you talk to her?" Ryan was certain that Jamie had not used the phone located right next to her computer, so she was puzzled by the comment.

"She called just a few minutes after we got home, Hon. I went outside and played with your poor dog while I talked to her."

Scratching her head in puzzlement, Ryan commented, "I thought my hearing was really good. Maybe I should have it checked."

"Your hearing is excellent, Babe. You just get so into things that you are absolutely oblivious."

Playfully sparkling blue eyes regarded her as Ryan said, "You normally don’t mind that I throw myself into whatever task is at hand…so to speak."

"I’m not complaining about your powers of concentration in the least, Love. It’s all good."

"I thought your mom would be in transit now. Did she call you from the plane?"

"Nope. My uncle David came down with a touch of the flu, so the rest of the family decided to postpone the trip for a few days. She’ll probably go next Friday."

"Cool," Ryan said. "She seemed kinda bummed that she wasn’t going to get to see your father before she left. Maybe they can spend some time together before she has to leave."

"Yeah. I hope so too. So, what did you find out about the state of my finances, Babe?"

"Well, the performance has been less than overwhelming," Ryan admitted. "I spoke with Brendan, and he explained that corporate trust departments were often chosen back in the days when a return of three or four percent was acceptable. Your grandfather wanted to make sure that principal was maintained, and he obviously thought that was more important than growth. If you still feel that way, you may as well leave your distribution where it is."

"But doesn’t that seem silly in this wild stock market? God, Mother has doubled her portfolio in the last four years!"

"Obviously you could make a lot more money, but you have to realize that you’d be putting your principal at risk."

"I think we could strike a more moderate balance, Honey. I’d like to improve the performance while still being relatively conservative, and it doesn’t sound like I can do that where my money is now."

"Well, it’s clear that you have no ability to influence their decisions. If you want more control you do need to take your distribution."

"I think we should do it," Jamie declared.

Ryan stood and stretched, unkinking her back after a long period of inactivity. "Why don’t you wait until you have some idea of how you want to invest it first, Babe. Get your ducks in a row, and that will prove to your father than you’re competent to handle the money."

"As usual, you’re the smart one," Jamie said sweetly, kissing her enthusiastically.

"Smart enough to have picked you," Ryan agreed, puckering up for the kiss that she knew her compliment would merit.

After dinner that night Ryan gave Jamie the high sign, and the smaller woman went back downstairs in accordance with their previously arranged agreement. Ryan decided that she may as well get a very unpleasant task out of the way, and she thought it best to do it alone. Conor was on a date, so it was just father and daughter left in the dining room when Jamie excused herself.

Looking at his daughter’s carefully composed face Martin cocked his head a bit and said, "If you were ten years younger, I’d guess that you’d either skipped school or broken something expensive."

"That bad, huh?" his daughter grinned. "I don’t know why I am so horrible at hiding my feelings."

"You know what I’ve always told you, Sweetheart," Martin said calmly. "Get the bad news over with and then figure out how to fix it."

She nodded slightly, taking a breath as she observed, "This one might be beyond my ability to fix."

Seeing the very serious look in her eyes, Martin reached across the table and grasped her hand, his gaze penetrating. "There’s nothing wrong with you, is there, Siobhán?"

You’re scaring the poor man, Ryan, just spit it out, will you?
"No, no, nothing like that," she assured him, pleased when his shoulders relaxed visibly. "Actually, in a way, it’s good news."

"I presume that means that in another way, it’s bad news," he guessed, nodding at the confirmation in her clear blue eyes. "Well, let’s have it."

"Okay." Ryan exhaled heavily and said, "The good news is that I have finally figured out what happened to me in high school, and I feel immensely better about the whole affair."

"That’s wonderful, Sweetheart," he enthused. "Tell me all about it."

"I will, Da, but there are parts of my story that you’re not going to like one little bit."

Her ominous warning in place, Ryan began to relate her tale.

Nearly half an hour later, Jamie heard the dining room chairs scrape across the floor. Checking her watch, she considered,
Not bad. A half hour to get all of that out is quite a feat. And I didn’t even hear Martin raise his voice. Maybe Ryan’s better at keeping him calm than she thinks. I think I’ll go up and check to make sure everything’s okay.

Opening the door, Jamie
reached the first step when she heard Martin’s rage-filled voice cry out, "Of all of the low-down, dirty, stinking things I’ve ever heard in my life…"
Okay, maybe she needs just a little more practice at this
. She grimaced, closing the door even as every instinct told her to go rescue her partner.
She wants to do this alone…I have to respect that. Damn, it’s hard to respect that!

"We’ve been friends with that man for twenty-nine years!" Martin cried, pacing back and forth across the living room floor. The small dimensions of the place made his trip very short indeed, and the quick changes of direction he was forced to make made Ryan tenser than she already was.

"I know that, Da, and I agree that he made a very poor choice, but I think you have to give him credit for doing what he thought was right, even though it wasn’t the best thing for me."

Martin stopped abruptly and glared at his daughter, and she had a brief flash of how the opponents of her great-grandfather’s bare-knuckle fights must have felt right before they were knocked flat. "You’re defending him! How could you, Siobhán?!"

His blue eyes were nearly white with rage, and Ryan briefly regretted not letting Jamie handle this discussion for her also. "Da," she said, as calmly as she could, "I was furious at first, too, but I think you have to at least give him the opportunity to explain his decision. He’s been a very good friend to you. Don’t let this ruin 29 years."

"I’ve ruined nothing!" he yelled. "This is his doing!"

"Okay, so it’s his doing," Ryan said. "Isn’t everyone entitled to a mistake?"

"Not when my daughter is involved!" He was breathing so heavily that Ryan feared he would pass out.

"Da, please don’t do anything while you’re this upset," she begged, afraid that her father would march down to the church and strangle the poor man.

"He made his bed, now he can lie in it!" With that he stormed toward the door, stopping only when Ryan dashed in front of him and placed both hands on his chest.

"Da," she said, her voice shaking, "I’m begging you not to confront him until you’ve had time to calm down. Please!" Tears were streaming down her face now, and to her great relief they were effective at causing the irate man to stop and consider her request.

He was so angry that his entire body was shaking, and he finally took in a breath and nodded his head. "I’ll be at your aunt’s," he said, sidestepping his daughter and stalking out the door.

"Well that was two tons of fun." Ryan flopped down on the loveseat in their room, looking quite worse for wear. Her hair was mussed, probably from running her hands through it, and her eyes bore telltale signs of recent crying.

"I bet you have a headache, don’t you, Love?" Jamie asked softly, noticing the ungainly way that Ryan had moved about the room. Whenever she was very tense, she seemed to carry the stress in her neck and shoulders, and her posture reflected that fact.

"Yeah. A bad one." Admitting to pain wasn’t something Ryan did readily, so her immediate acknowledgment indicated it must be bothering her a lot.

"Let me rub your back, Sweetheart," she offered. "I can help get some of the tension out."

Without a word, Ryan started to strip off her T-shirt and bra, her compliance causing Jamie to fret even more about how much pain she must be in. Ryan lay face down on the bed, waiting patiently while Jamie retrieved the massage lotion from the bedside table. "We’re almost out of lotion, Love," she reminded her partner as she poured the last of the vanilla-scented lotion into her palms to warm it.

" ‘Kay. I’ll get more."

"It really upsets you when your father gets that angry, doesn’t it, Honey?" she asked softly, beginning to stroke the long bands of muscle along Ryan’s spine.

"Could you hear him?’ she asked.

"I think the neighbors heard him, Honey," Jamie revealed. "I didn’t have any idea he could yell that loud…or curse that much. Although I didn’t understand most of the cursing…thankfully."

That merited a small chuckle from Ryan. "The worse it gets, the more he throws Irish expressions in. He was practically screaming in Gaelic there at the end–and he doesn’t speak Gaelic!"

"He’s not angry with you, is he, Honey?" Jamie’s fingers were probing deep into the rigid muscles along the tops of Ryan’s shoulders, feeling some of the tension start to ease.

"No…well, maybe a little bit," she admitted. "He’s angry that I didn’t tell him some of this when it happened, but I think he’s more frustrated with me than anything."

"So where did you leave things?"

"He promised he wouldn’t talk to Father Pender until he calmed down. He’s headed over to Aunt Maeve’s right now. With any luck, she’ll talk him out of strangling him. I think it’s at least a double mortal sin to kill a priest."

"You really don’t think Father Pender told Sister Mary Magdalene about you with any animosity, do you, Love?"

"No…I really don’t, Jamie. We’ve had our go-‘rounds, but I think he genuinely likes me. He knows I’m headstrong, and that I have serious problems with the dogma of the Church, but I really think that he respects me and wouldn’t go behind my back just to hurt me. He was misguided–and what he did was wrong, but when I think about it, I can understand that he was trying to help, even though it was ineffectual."

"Why do you think he went to Sister Mary Magdalene instead of talking to your father?"

"If I put it in the best light, he probably didn’t want to tell Da if I hadn’t told him yet."

"But you don’t believe that, do you, Love?" Her gentle touch was helping to relax Ryan, even though the subject matter of their discussion was very upsetting.

"No…I don’t, and I know Da doesn’t either. I think he did it because he thought I was the aggressor with Sara, and that I might convince some of the other girls to go down my evil path with me."

Jamie’s hands stilled and she paused for a long while. "Why on earth would he think that, Honey?"

"I’ve always been too headstrong for him to really trust, Jamie. Even as a kid we had our troubles ."

The last of the lotion had largely disappeared, and Jamie’s hands were starting to meet with some resistance. "I need to go into the bath to get a massage lotion substitute," she added, starting to slide off Ryan’s hips.

Ryan grabbed her leg and held her in place. "No need. I feel a lot better now. Let’s just cuddle for a while, okay?"

"Hmm…cuddle, huh? I hope you know that I will never refuse to cuddle with you, Babe, so you really don’t even have to ask. Just get into your cuddle position, and I’m there." She leaned over and placed some warm kisses on Ryan’s vanilla-scented neck, breathing in the delightful scent along with warm skin and Ryan’s shampoo. She waited until Ryan turned over and held out her arm, snuggling up against her chest automatically. "What could you possibly fight with a priest about when you were just a kid, Honey?" Jamie asked.

"Have I not told you about the big controversy about Michael’s funeral?" Ryan asked softly.

Jamie was quiet for a moment, finally saying, "I’m pretty sure I’d remember that discussion, Honey. I can’t for the life of me think of how a funeral would be controversial."

Ryan’s chuckle caused Jamie’s head to bounce a bit on her chest. "You didn’t know Michael," she laughed quietly. "I know I’ve told you about how ill he was during his last year."

Jamie nodded silently, her cheek rubbing lightly against the baby-soft skin of Ryan’s breast.

"Months and months before he died, he asked me to do him a favor." She was quiet for a moment, obviously recalling the events. "He asked me to sing one of his favorite songs at his funeral." Her voice was barely a whisper, and Jamie cuddled up closer, providing warmth and support with her physical presence.

"Was that the cause of the controversy?" Jamie asked, knowing that Michael had an enormous love for all music, and guessing that perhaps the song was inappropriate for a church service.

"Kinda," Ryan agreed. "It wasn’t the content so much as the fact that it wasn’t in our hymnals. Father Pender doesn’t like to go outside the lines very much, and he was very reluctant to allow a contemporary song to be played."

"What was the song?" Jamie asked.

"It was a Stevie Wonder song from the 70’s. Do you know much of his work?"

"No, not really. Um…was it really popular? Maybe I’ve heard it."

"No, I doubt it," Ryan said. "It wasn’t a big hit, but Michael loved it. He said it summed up his feelings about religion in just a few verses."

"Will you sing it for me, Honey?"

Ryan nodded, "I will someday, Babe," then added, "but not now. I don’t think I could get through it today."

"That’s okay, Honey. No rush."

"I promised that I’d sing it, and shortly after that he lost his ability to recognize me." Hot tears started to fall, and Ryan wiped them away with the back of her hand as Jamie’s hold tightened. "That was so hard, Jamie," she whispered. "To have him lying there, wasting away before my eyes, and not be able to talk to him. It was just so hard."

Shrugging out of Ryan’s embrace, Jamie scooted higher on the bed and enveloped her in her arms. "Shhh," she murmured, "don’t cry, Baby."

Ryan sighed heavily, and rolled over to get a tissue. "It’s hard for me to talk about that time," she said. "I honestly think that was the hardest thing I ever went through. Harder even than when my mother was sick, because I knew what death was by this time."

"I can’t imagine," Jamie said, having never experienced the death of someone so close to her.

Ryan shook her head, trying to stop the images that still assaulted her memory. "Anyway, the bottom line is that when Michael died, Father Pender looked at his list of requests, and said that the song couldn’t be sung. I thought Da or Aunt Maeve would talk to him and set it straight, but Da sat me down and said that if I wanted to honor Michael’s wishes, I had to make it happen on my own."

Jamie was aghast that Martin wouldn’t go to bat for his young daughter, and her shock was clearly evident on her face.

"In retrospect, Da did exactly the right thing," Ryan informed her. "I was a wild little thing in most areas, but I was really, really shy when it came to expressing my opinion to authority figures. Having to do this myself was a wonderful lesson for me." She smiled slowly, her sadness still evident. "Years later, I found the instructions Michael had written for Aunt Maeve. He said he wanted me to handle everything concerning his musical requests for the funeral, and that he knew it would be a tough sell." She looked at Jamie with her watery blue eyes and said, "Even when he was dying, he was trying to help me grow up. He knew I’d have to come out of my shell and make a scene to get Father Pender to include that song–for all I know, the song wasn’t even important. He was just trying to teach me a lesson about standing up for things that were important to me."

"I can understand why you miss him so much," Jamie whispered. "He sounds like a wonderful man."