LITMIR.BIZ

      Chapter One

      Race Logan’s daughter yanked on the heavy bank door as if she meant to tear it off its hinges. Warm noon air gusted into the lobby with her, riffling papers and the top page of the tearaway calendar on the wall. The elderly teller glanced over the rims of his glasses—first at the date, then at the high hands of the regulator clock and finally at the young woman who stood there tugging off her gloves.

      He plucked off his spectacles, put them on again and gulped. “Miss Honey!”

      “Hello, Kenneth.” By now she had whisked her porkpie hat from her head and was stabbing the pins back into the velveteen confection.

      “Aren’t you...shouldn’t you be...?” Kenneth Crane crooked a finger under his tight collar to make room for his Adam’s apple as he swallowed hard and loud. “I thought you were east...at school.”

      Honey Logan sniffed in reply, an eloquent proclamation that not only was she no longer east, but she was very much here and intended to remain.

      “Y-your father’s not here,” the teller stammered. “Actually no one is supposed to be here this afternoon. Only...only me.” His eyes sought the calendar once more, then jerked to the clock. “You see, Miss Honey, any minute now we’re expecting...we’re going to be...”

      “Just go on with whatever you were doing, Kenneth,” Honey snapped as she moved toward the paneled oak door that separated the president’s office from the lobby of the bank. If the fussy old teller tried to stop her, she was prepared to jab him with a hat pin.

      “But, Miss Honey...”

      She slammed the door on his protest. For a minute Honey leaned against the smooth oak surface, breathing in the familiar fragrance of the dim, cool office, letting it fill her senses. Leather. Her father’s Cuban cigars. The pungent, clean scent of ink. Or was it money? She’d never been entirely sure.

      Her gaze lit on the vacant swivel chair behind the massive oak desk. Its tufted leather bore the impression of Race Logan’s wide shoulders. “Daddy, I’m back,” she whispered. “And I’m staying, whether you like it or not.”

      She tossed her hat onto the horsehair sofa, then crossed the room and plopped into her father’s chair, kicking it into a spin that ended abruptly when her foot collided with the safe.

      Staring at the huge black vault with its embossed faceplate and brass combination lock, Honey remembered the day it had arrived on the back of a mule-drawn wagon. Was it ten years ago? Eleven? It seemed like yesterday, but she couldn’t have been more than nine or ten then. She remembered how the sun had blazed on the gilt letters—Logan Savings and Loan. Most of all, she recalled the way her fingers had itched to turn the big brass dial and the way her heart had swelled with pride to see her name—Logan—in such bold, beautiful letters. So beautiful. So important. So...responsible.

      For the past few months she’d been toying with the notion of changing her name, and the sight of the imposing vault convinced her now. She was indeed going to take back the name with which she’d been christened—in memory of her mother’s first husband, Ned Cassidy, who had died the day she was born. It was a name as sober and imposing as the iron safe before her. “Edwina.” She said it softly, savoring the feel of it on her tongue. Just heavy enough. Like oatmeal or one of her mother’s Christmas fruitcakes, neither of which she particularly cared for, but the name had a gravity that was infinitely appealing.

      “Honey.” She had Race Logan to thank for that. He couldn’t abide anything that smacked of the Cassidys, back then or now, and when he’d come back from the war to discover he had a daughter who had a Cassidy name, he’d tricked her into naming herself by asking “What’s your name, honey?” She’d given the obvious and parrotlike response and had been Honey Logan ever since. Well, if she’d named herself once, she thought, she could certainly do it again.

      She swung the chair full circle and gazed thoughtfully at the desk top. Her father’s distinct, almost stern penmanship covered an assortment of papers there. The little oval tintype of her mother gazed calmly from its place beside the crystal inkwell.

      They were going to kill her. For the first time since her abrupt and unannounced departure from Miss Haven’s Academy in St. Louis several days ago, Honey felt her courage wavering. She swallowed in the hope of drowning the butterflies that were beginning to flutter in her stomach. Bankers didn’t suffer from butterflies, she reminded herself. Bankers didn’t succumb to doubt and dread. They were tough and strong. Like her father.

      She glanced at the gold lettering on the safe again. Bankers were, above all, responsible. And that was exactly what she intended to be. Unless, of course, her father killed her before she got the chance.

      Heaven knew Race Logan was capable of it. And although her father didn’t say much about that aspect of his life, Honey had listened to her Uncle Isaac spin stories over the years about her father’s legendary exploits as a wagon master on the Santa Fe Trail. The moral of most of those stories, however, wasn’t about murder. It was about hard work and responsibility.

      Honey had taken those tales to heart. There was nothing she wanted more than to follow Race Logan’s example. But while she craved responsibility, her father merely wanted her to be safe and secure—preferably in his own house, on a high shelf in a glass box whose key rested comfortably in his vest pocket. Having just spent the past two years in a glass box called a finishing school, Honey had decided she was indeed finished—with glass boxes.

      But how in the world was she going to convince her father? The mere mention of the word responsibility now was guaranteed to bring a dark scowl to his handsome face and his voice would surely thunder like God Almighty’s when he proclaimed, “Don’t talk to me about responsibility, young lady. Not after you walked out of school the way you did.”

      Well, she hadn’t walked out, Honey thought now. Not exactly. It had been more like storming out. She hadn’t wanted to attend Miss Haven’s Academy in the first place, but her father had insisted. Then, after nearly two years of trying to please him by applying herself diligently to the study of music and literature and the domestic arts, Honey had had enough of arias and sonnets and delicate stitchery. She yearned to accomplish more.

      Longing to follow in her father’s footsteps, she had at last approached the academy’s directress about her wish to pursue a new and individualized curriculum. But after Miss Euphonia Haven’s palpitations subsided, the woman had sniffed indignantly and had informed Honey in no uncertain terms that the study of higher mathematics and finance was unsuitable for young ladies. So Honey had packed her trunks and taken the first train home. Unsuitable! She’d show them unsuitable!

      This was her rightful place. Honey shifted in the big leather chair, aware of the way the back and seat had been molded by her father’s solid frame and how the leather on the arms had been nearly worn away by his sleeves. She was, after all, his eldest child. Didn’t she deserve the opportunity to be his heir? Surely she could convince him.

      If not, perhaps her mother could. Tiny Kate Logan had gone toe-to-toe with her strapping husband more than a few times over the years on her daughter’s behalf. Honey smiled wistfully now, remembering the last time her mother had come to her rescue by engaging her father in an all-out bidding war for a supper basket he was determined to keep from any and all of his daughter’s young suitors. Although her mother had won, Honey hadn’t enjoyed the fruits of the supper basket or the victory all that much. The beau in question had turned out to be little more than a fawning fool. The first of many.

      On the other hand, her mother might not help. Not long after that bidding war and giving birth to her fifth child, Kate Logan had announced her unconditional withdrawal from the fray.

      “I’m

Скачать книгу