Sweet Fortune

Vincent snarled. “That woman may be featherbrained about some things, but she knows her duty to her family. She won't walk away from her own people. Everyone depends on her, and she knows it.”
    “Everyone had better stop depending on her, then, because things are going to be different around here.”
    “They sure as hell are.” Vincent's eyes narrowed shrewdly. “I'm canceling your contract, Hatchard. Effective right now. You're fired , you sonofabitch. Get out of here. You've got one hour to clean out your desk.”
    For an instant Hatch thought he had not heard correctly. This was not the result he had calculated. Dazed, he covered his shock by getting to his feet and slowly putting the empty coffee cup down on the desk. Without a word he headed toward the door.
    “Goddammit, Hatchard, you ever change your mind and get your common sense back, you know where to find me,” Vincent yelled after him.
    “I won't change my mind. By the way, that file I left on your desk is the final breakdown on the Spokane job. You can undercut Yorland and Young with that bid and Benedict can still make a small profit. But my professional advice is to forget it. It's not worth it.”
    “Goddammit, Hatch…”
    Hatch went out the door and closed it quietly. He stood still for a minute, adjusting to the one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn his life had just taken.
    “Mr. Hatchard?” Grace's voice was laced with concern. “Are you all right?”
    Hatch forced himself to focus on her. “Call my secretary, will you, Grace?”
    “Certainly, sir. What should I tell her?”
    “Tell her to pack up my desk. Have everything sent to my apartment. I won't be coming back to the office.”
    Grace stared at him in astonishment. “You're leaving us, Mr. Hatchard?”
    “It looks that way.” He gave her a rueful smile as he walked to the elevators. “I've just been fired.”
    “Mr. Hatchard…” The telephone in Grace's hand dropped onto the desk with a loud crash.

    Hatch stood at the window of his high-rise apartment and stared out at Elliott Bay. It was a terrific view and he wondered why he had not spent more time in the front room admiring it.
    The answer to that was simple. Jessie's place had always seemed so much cozier and more inviting, more like home.
    He tore his gaze away from the view and glanced around the place he had rented shortly after moving to Seattle. It was in pristine order, of course. Everything was in its proper place. There was not a speck of dust anywhere. The cleaning service he'd hired saw to that. Damned place looked as though no one actually lived in it.
    He had not even unpacked a lot of his things, he reflected. There had not been time. From the moment he'd arrived he had been immersed in work and in the roller-coaster business of courting Jessie. His apartment looked more like a hotel room than a private residence.
    Fired .
    It was hard to believe it was all over. Hard to believe everything he had been working toward had just gone up in smoke. Hard to believe that Vincent Benedict had called his bluff.
    Impossible to believe he was going to lose Jessie .
    Hatch had been so certain he could force the older man into splitting up the company, so confident of his own ability to deal with Vincent Benedict. He should have known right from the start that Benedict was too tough and too wily and too damn stubborn to get maneuvered into doing anything he did not want to do.
    Hatch had played poker with an old pro and he had lost. He had risked everything on a bluff.
    And threatening to take Jessie away had been nothing more than a bluff. Hatch told himself he should have known Benedict would be too savvy to fall for it. It was crazy to think Jessie would actually walk away from her family and her self-imposed responsibilities to go off with a man who made her nervous. Her first loyalty was to the clan. He had known that from the beginning. Hell, he'd used that knowledge to maneuver her into a relationship with him.
    It was crazy to believe she would run off with a man she had agreed to marry in the first place only because everyone around her was urging her to do so. A man whose main attribute was that he was Vincent Benedict's handpicked candidate to take over the operation of Benedict Fasteners.
    Hatch did not delude himself. He had been in this position once before and he knew how the chips would fall. Jessie was not Olivia. He was fairly certain she genuinely cared for him. But the fact that she had