The Golden Chance Read Free Page A

address.”
    “She did say something about you wanting to dodge reporters but when she found out I wasn't interested in doing an interview, she opened up.”
    “You mean you applied pressure and she caved in.” Phila sighed. “So you are the muscle for your families. Poor Thelma. She tries, but she isn't very good at resisting pressure. She's been a bureaucrat too long.”
    “You, I take it, are better at it?” Nick's brows rose skeptically.
    “I'm a pro. And I'll save you a lot of time by telling you now that there's nothing you can say that will convince me to change my mind. I'm not about to sell back the shares in Castleton & Lightfoot that Crissie left to me. Not for a while, at any rate. I have some serious thinking to do about those shares. I may have some questions I want answered.”
    He nodded, looking neither annoyed nor startled. He just looked disturbingly patient.
    “What questions do you have, Phila?”
    She hesitated. The truth was, she did not really have any questions. Not yet. She hadn't been able to think clearly enough to come up with any. She was still trying to adjust to the trauma she had been through lately.
    First there had been the trial, which had dragged on for weeks, and then had come the shock of Crissie's death. Phila thought she would have been able to handle the trial if that had been all there was to deal with at the time. But the news about Crissie had been more than she could handle.
    Beautiful, bold, flashy Crissie with her California looks and her vow to get what was coming to her. The night of the vow came back to Phila now, a clear, strong image in her mind. It had been the first time she had tried more than a sip of alcohol.
    Crissie, looking a worldly twenty-one at the age of fifteen, had talked the clerk of an all-night convenience store into selling the teenage girls the cheap wine. Crissie could talk any man into anything. It was one of her survival skills.
    She and Phila had gone to the small town park near the river and drunk their illicit booze out behind the women's rest rooms. Then Crissie had outlined her plans for the future.
    There are people out there who owe me, Phila. I'm going to find them, and I'm going to make them give me what's mine. Don't worry. When I do, I'll cut you in for a piece of the action. You and me, we're like sisters, aren't we? We're family and family sticks together .
    Crissie had learned the truth of her own words the hard way. She had found the people she felt owed her and when she had tried to make them accept her, she had discovered the real meaning of a family sticking together. They had formed a solid wall against her and her claims of kinship.
    “I don't know if I'm ready to ask my questions yet,” Phila told Nick. “I think I'll wait and ask them at the annual C&L stockholder's meeting in August.”
    “The stockholders of Castleton & Lightfoot are all family.”
    “Not anymore.” Phila smiled, really smiled, for the first time in weeks.
    Nick Lightfoot appeared amused. “Planning to make trouble?”
    “I don't know yet. Possibly. Crissie deserves that much, at least. Don't you think? She loved to stir up trouble. It was her way of taking revenge on the world. Making a little trouble on her behalf would be a fitting memorial.”
    “Why was Crissie Masters important to you?” Nick asked. “Were you related?”
    “Not by blood or marriage, and that's probably the only kind of relationship you would understand.”
    “I understand friendship. Was Crissie your friend?”
    “She was much more than a friend. She was the closest thing to a sister I ever had.”
    He looked politely quizzical. “I never met the woman, but I've heard a lot about her. From what I've heard, the two of you don't appear to have had much in common.”
    “Which only goes to show how little you know about either Crissie or myself.”
    “I'm willing to learn.”
    Phila thought about that, and she did not like the direction her mind was taking. “You're