Free SEALed with a Ring by Mary Margret Daughtridge

"Listen, if I'm going to be ready for you to pick me up at the beach cottage by five-thirty, I'm going to have to leave soon, and I have a few more things to see to."
       "I'll be so glad when you give up that place."
       JJ was a little surprised by his vehemence. "I won't. I've loved living there. I didn't realize it bothered you."
       "It's just that Topsail Island is so far from Wilmington. I have to factor in another thirty minutes."
       "On a good day," JJ acknowledged. "But you know, I've almost enjoyed the commute. It gives me time to decompress a little. I don't take work home with me quite as much. You have a point though. It's a long way for you to go, only to turn around and go back to Wrightsville Beach. I can drive myself and meet you at the hotel, if you'd rather."
       "No," Blount answered as she knew he would. "That's fine. I don't really mind picking you up."
       Katherine stuck her head around the office door, waving the floor-plan inventory reconciliation report for her signature.
       These days, the car business had more to do with massaging the numbers than with the glamour of cars, even the sexiest high-end foreign cars. Businesses sell ing high-ticket items like cars and boats survived on something called a floor plan.
       A floor plan was a line of credit extended by a lender using the inventory as collateral. The lender kept a list of every car in the floor plan, and every month the car went unsold, interest had to be paid on that car. When a car was sold, the loan on it had to be paid in full imme diately—not at the end of the month.
       Every business that sold big-ticket items and depended on volume walked a tightrope between the amount of in ventory they were required to carry and the interest they had to pay on that inventory. During economic downturns, businesses might be forced to carry more inventory than they could possibly sell. It took fancy footwork to maintain the cash flow and creative financing to stay in the black.
       Sometime in the next week, the bank's floor-plan au ditor would come around to check the vehicle identifica tion number, or VIN, of every car on the lot against what was listed in the floor plan. Mistakes could be costly. If the auditor found cars unaccounted for and for which the bank hadn't been paid, the dealership was considered "out of trust." Being "out of trust" could spell doom. Car dealers everywhere had been forced out of business when they lost their line of credit.
       JJ had invested in new software to keep more accu rate, real-time data on exactly where Caruthers was with the floor plan. "Gotta go, Blount," JJ told him, already studying the numbers. "I'll see you later."
     
    Report signed and dispatched, JJ glanced at the wall clock again. She liked the clock for its polished face and cuneiform-like numerals. She especially liked the large distance that the sleek hands moved to measure the minutes. Unlike the relentlessly changing numbers on the digital clock on her desk, those on the wall clock gave time a sort of spaciousness. There was very little time left before her grandfather's deadline, but she had made it. By midnight, JJ would be engaged.
       She had had a year in which to grow resigned to the inevitable.
       A year in which to search for a legal way to stop her grandfather's machinations—and to learn there was none. The car business had been passed down in the family for three generations. Her great-great grandfather had in sisted it not be divided among his heirs, and the tradition had continued. JJ's grandfather was the sole owner. He could do anything he wished with it, including dismantle it and sell the parts if she didn't get married.
       A year to consult doctors about her grandfather's health—and learn that his heart condition might eventu ally kill him, but so slowly he could very well die of something else first. His mind was as sharp as ever and likely to remain so. Trying to wrest