“I wouldn’t have had any advantages at all if it hadn’t been for you.” He paused before going on. “But I paid you back, several times over, I think. When I left your company, I did it because I needed independence. I still do, Angus.”
Angus was perturbed, and made no secret of it. “You wanna be begged, is that it? Okay.” He took a deep breath. “I’m getting close to retirement age. Some would consider me past it. The business needs your leadership qualities to survive.” He spread his hands wide. “There. Does that satisfy your confounded ego?”
“I don’t need to be stroked, Angus, and you damn well know it. I’m thinking about somebody else’s ego.”
“Junior’s?”
“Junior’s. Have you told him about this?”
“No. I didn’t see any reason to, until…”
“Until there was nothing he could
do about it.”
Angus’s silence was as good as an admission.
Reede began to pace. “Junior is your heir, Angus, not me. He’s the one you should be grooming to take over. He needs to be ready when the time comes.”
Angus paced, too, while he collected his thoughts. “You’re afraid Junior won’t get ready as long as you’re around to do everything for him and cover his tracks when he messes up.”
“Angus, I don’t mean—”
“It’s all right,” he said, raising his hand to ward off Reede’s objections. “I’m his daddy. You’re his best friend. We should be able to discuss him freely without wading through bullshit. Junior isn’t as strong as you.”
Reede looked away. Hearing the truth warmed him inside. He knew how difficult it was for Angus to say it.
“I always wanted Junior to be more like you—aggressive, assertive, ambitious—but…” Angus gave an eloquent shrug. “He needs you, Reede. Hell, so do I. I didn’t bust my balls all these years to see everything I’ve built up fall down around me. I’ve got my pride, but I’m a practical businessman. I face facts, bad as they sometimes are. One of those facts is that you’re competent, and Junior isn’t.”
“That’s my point, Angus. He can be. Force his hand. Delegate him more responsibility.”
“And when he fucks up, you know what’ll happen? I’ll lose my temper, start yelling at him. He’ll sulk and run to his mama, who’ll mollycoddle him.”
“Maybe at first, but not for long. Junior’ll start yelling back one of these days. He’ll figure out that the only way to deal with you is to give you tit for tat. I did.”
“Is that what you’re doing now, getting back at me for some slight I’m not even aware of?”
“Hell, no,” Reede answered crossly. “Since when have I ever been afraid to tell you off, or anybody else, if something wasn’t to my liking?”
“All right, I’ll tell you since when,” Angus snapped. “Since Celina was killed. That changed everything, didn’t it?” He moved closer to Reede. “I don’t think any of us has had an honest conversation with the other since that morning. The thing I always feared most was that she’d come between you and Junior.” He laughed with rancor. “She did anyway. Even dead, she put a blight on the friendship.”
“Celina has nothing to do with my decision to say no. I want to feel that what’s mine is mine. Completely. Not a part of your conglomerate.”
“So, it’s strictly economics?”
“That’s right.”
The wheels of Angus’s brain were whirring with fresh arguments. “What if I decided to build an airfield of my own?”
“Then we’d be competitors,” Reede replied, unruffled. “But there’s not enough business to support two, and both of us would lose.”
“But I can afford to. You can’t.”
“You wouldn’t get any satisfaction from bankrupting me, Angus.”
Angus relented and snorted a laugh. “You’re right. Hell, boy, you’re like family.”
“Like family, but not. Junior is your son, not me.”