Chapter 11

"You look great!" was Jean's exclamation as she greeted Sara on their return. Logan had gone directly up to speak to Charles, and Sara had gone to drop their things in their downstairs room and get her things unpacked.

Sara studied herself in the mirror. The time spent at the cabin had brought back her muscle tone, and sparring with Logan in the meadow behind the house had sharpened her fighting skills. She was whole, now, the limp gone, and she felt much better than she had when she'd left.

Logan had insisted she tell him everything. And though she hated to see the expression on his face when she told him some of the worst things that had happened to her, it had helped to not have to carry such terrible things around in her head anymore. Having someone to help her share the burden of her memories helped her find a measure of peace.

"I feel better," she admitted to Jean as she dumped the dirty clothes into the hamper. "Uh, Jean… before I left, the nightmares… I'm sorry you saw some of that."

Jean hugged her. "I'm sorry you had to suffer through that."

Sara hugged her back. "I have to talk to Charles. Is he in his study?"

"Yeah. I think Logan's in there, too."

Sara went off to find him.

Upstairs Logan told Charles everything that had happened. He gave him a bare-bones sketch of some of the things she had told him, concluding with, "Sara said her father had forged her signature on her prenuptial agreement giving Ryan control of her company."

"Is there a way to break that agreement?" Sara asked as she came in, holding a sheaf of papers in her hand. Xavier put on his reading glasses and perused the document she handed to him. "I decided that if it's mine I should have it. He's lost his Senate seat, his career, and his respectability. I lost a lot more. I'm going to try to get everything that's mine back. I want to hurt him like he's hurt me, and the best way to do that is through his pocket." She sat back and waited as Xavier read the agreement.

Xavier struggled to keep his face impassive as he read the document. Sara's father had wanted his promotion so badly he had literally sold his daughter for it. According to the agreement, if anything ever happened to Sara, Ryan would get everything. If they ever divorced, Ryan would get everything. And Charles had heard of Meredith Pharmaceuticals; he owned stock in the company. It was quite a large one, though its stock had dropped over the last six years or so; he knew why now.

The signature on the end of the document was patently false. The hand that wrote it was supposed to look like her handwriting, but it lacked the artistic, elegant flourish that made Sara's handwriting so unique. "Yes," he said finally, removing his glasses, "I don't think there will be a problem breaking it. Sara, have you any idea what you'll do with Meredith when you get it back?"

She looked taken aback. "No," she confessed, looking slightly sheepish. "I hadn't thought about it yet, I figure I'll find out what kind of state Richard's left it in before I do anything else."

"Mmmm. Let me see what my lawyers can do. This won't be easy; I expect your ex-husband will fight this as much as possible. However, let me see what I can find out for you while we do that. I can tell you that it is quite large, and up to about six years ago, quite successful. From what Logan told me, I assume things began to go downhill after your mother died. The Senator was not so much concerned about how much money it made as he was about how much he could drain from it. At present it is down to four international offices rather than the ten it had before your mother passed away. Several lucrative contracts were turned down in favor of smaller ones that did not work out, and two of those contracts have been canceled in the last year and a half."

"International offices?" Sara's voice cracked. "I had no idea…how do you know all this?"

"I own stock in the company," Charles said, eyes twinkling a bit. "And Dr. MacTaggert, the head of Muir Island Research Center, has been attempting to buy your company, or at least secure a contract with it, for some time now."

Sara blinked. "Oh, wow. Please, see what your attorneys can do, and let me know what you can find out about Meredith. I'd really appreciate it, Charles."

"I shall do so. In the meantime," he smiled at her, "Welcome home. I am glad to see you back."

She grinned, a sunny smile that lit up her face, "It's good to be home. I didn't realize how much I missed it here." She giggled. "As nice as Warren's 'rustic cabin' is, it's not home."

Xavier chuckled. "He does have a somewhat different idea what constitutes 'rustic,' doesn't he? The first time he mentioned it, I was imagining a log cabin on a mountainside somewhere. Imagine my shock when he showed me a picture of the place!" They laughed.

Xavier picked up his glasses and reached for his Rolodex. "Let me call my attorney and see what we can do about having the agreement annulled. Meanwhile, I'm sure the flight was long, and you'd like to get unpacked and settled in. And the others have a present for you they're probably itching for you to see." He refused to say anything further, instead waving them out of his office as he picked up the telephone.

"Logan! Sara!" Gambit hailed them as they passed him in the hall. He was wearing an ear-to-ear grin, greasy jeans, and very little else, Sara noticed with a blush. "'S good to see you bot' back. Logan, come down to de garage, we got somet'in we want your opinion on. Sara, not yet, you hafta wait. I t'ink de girls are making lunch in de kitchen. We oughtta be done in a half hour, cherie, t'en you come see, eh?" He hustled Logan off, and Sara went with some bemusement to the kitchen to find preparations for lunch well under way. "What's Gambit being all mysterious about?" she asked Rogue as she joined her at the sink slicing fresh vegetables for a salad.

Rogue glanced at Jean, Betsy, and Storm, and they giggled all at once, which confirmed to Sara that they were in on the surprise too. "Ah, just gettin' up a s'prise for ya, sugah," Rogue said, looking like the cat that ate the canary. Jean and Storm had identical expressions. Betsy was trying to keep a straight face, but her lips kept trying to twitch in a smile. Sara pounced on her.

"What is it? Betts, come on!" She tickled Betsy in the ribs. "Tell!"

"I can't," Betsy howled with laughter and tried to fend her attacker off with a carrot. "Warren swore me to secrecy!"

Sara leaned back against the sink and pouted, which sent all of the women off into laughter again. "Oh, Sara," Rogue gasped, holding her sides, "You should see your face! Na, ya just hafta wait!"

Logan stood in the garage door, his eyes full of the sight of Sara's surprise. "Wow," was all he could manage.

Scott slid out from under the front, sweaty but triumphant. "We were hoping you wouldn't bring her back until we finished," he said, eyes twinkling. "I kind of wanted to take her out for a test drive, but I guess Sara will have to do that. I just hope she lets me borrow the keys sometime!"

Logan shook his head. "Yer gonna have ta stand in line," he said, walking around, drinking in the details. "What, didja guys get new panels fer it?"

"Yep," Bobby put down the polishing cloth he was using on the trunk lid. "Practically new everything. The old stuff was too badly rusted. We rebuilt her engine, got a new transmission and carburetor, and repainted it. Sara still had the original tags for her, too, and we had them reregistered. So she's got a genuine fully restored historic piece here--" He was interrupted by a clattering outside the door. Sara pulled it open, and froze.

Her 71 Chevelle sat gleaming in the garage lights, her bright red paint polished to a high shine, fully restored and looking beautiful. Sara swallowed several times hard, before she found her voice. "Guys, she's gorgeous. My god, how did you find time for all of this…wow." She ran a hand lightly over the hood. "I don't know how to thank you for this. Wow." She stood for a moment. "Candy Apple Red, huh?"

"Yeah," Scott looked uncertain. "We couldn't find Shadow Blue in the store, and Storm said you were due back today, so we settled for Red. We can order it at the parts store and repaint it when the paint comes in if you want."

"Oh, no…no, this is fine, this is wonderful…wow… jeez, I can't stop saying that…"

Scott dropped the keys into her hand. "Here. Go ahead and take her out for a spin. Just remember, I want to borrow the keys sometime!"

She hugged him so hard he thought his ribs were going to crack. "You got it, Scott," she whispered. "Logan, care to come along?"

"Wouldn't miss it, darlin'!" he hopped into the front passenger seat, and she slid into the drivers' seat as the guys opened the garage door. They were off in a squeal of tires, and Scott winced. "Take care of her!" he yelled at the taillights.

It wasn't as hard as Xavier thought it would be. The judge took a look at the signature on the form, saw the signature on Sara's license, and annulled it on the spot.

It didn't take long for the president of the company to learn about the change in hands. Xavier arranged for a business dinner between him and Sara at an upscale restaurant downtown, and Sara dressed carefully for it. She was glad she had when she met him; he was a grizzled middle-aged man with a lot of experience in the company, and the first thing she found out about him was that he thought she would fire him.

"Why would I do that?" she asked in puzzlement. "I don't know anything about Meredith. I need someone fairly high up who I can trust who knows how to handle this." She sipped at her soda as he contemplated this. "Look, Mr. Harmon, my mother left me this company. My husband took it when we got married; believe it or not, I didn't know this company belonged to me until after it was taken from me. I've gotten it back now through a stroke of luck," She decided not to go into details. "I don't know the first thing about what it requires to handle a company. I actually don't even know a whole lot about the company period. Why don't you tell me what has been going on, and I'll try to follow along." She smiled charmingly at him, and he launched into a detailed analysis of the company and its movements over the last six years.

She listened as he talked, and found out what her ex-husband had been doing with her company while she was unaware. And she was horrified.

Meredith Pharmaceuticals was, six years ago, one of the biggest sales-and-research drug corporations in the world. They developed, tested, marketed, and sold drugs for everything she could think of, from basic aspirin to anthrax vaccines. At the time of Catherine Meredith's death, they had branches in Tokyo, Moscow, Paris, London, Berlin, Rome, Beijing, Los Angeles, New York, and Washington D.C. Sara's eyes bugged a bit at the thought of all that, and frowned as Mark Harmon went on. The year after her mother died, Richard Ryan had closed and liquidated the Los Angeles and Berlin branches, and now she knew where the campaign money had come from for his Senate push. The next four years had seen the closure of the Rome, Paris, and Beijing branches, and last year Tokyo closed, too.

Part of it was that Richard had been spending huge amounts of money to keep himself in the senate seat, the other problem was that he had been trying to curry favor with those in power. He had told Mr. Harmon to turn down lucrative contracts with several major health systems and governments to sign smaller, unimportant contracts with his private friends. Two of those contracts had been reneged on, and the resulting profit loss for the company, amounting to some three billion U.S. dollars, had crippled it so that the closure of the Tokyo branch, one of the most profitable in Meredith, had been a necessity. Sara was appalled that Richard had been that careless.

"We got an offer from a Scottish company six months ago," Mark Harmon said, "Muir Island Research. They're a very well known, established facility," and Sara nodded, having heard that much from Xavier, "and they're offering us a way out of the hole. A contract to share resources and information in an effort to combat this Legacy Virus everyone's worried about. It will pay us nearly four million by the end of this year and eight million each succeeding year until we find a cure or vaccine. When I contacted your husband about it, I strongly recommended that he allow us to sign the contract; it would allow us to keep in business. He seemed quite careless about the entire thing, and told us not to sign with them."

He stirred the ice around in his glass. "Unbeknownst to him, I had been talking to the head of Muir Island about buying the company outright. We're close to the red, and the best I could think of was to sell the company after declaring bankruptcy." He looked at her. "I'll be honest with you, Mrs. Ryan, if I were in your position I'd do it. Trying to get the company back on its feet is going to require a great deal of time and attention, and there's no guarantee that it's doable. We've just lost too much money and have exhausted too much of our funds. Our stock is down. What do you want to do?"

Sara thought about all the possibilities. "I'm not ready to call it quits yet, Mr. Harmon. As long as there's a chance, I'll take it. Please arrange a meeting between Muir Island and us, and draw up the appropriate paperwork for the contract. The contract, Mr. Harmon, not the sellout. I hate to think about all our people suddenly finding themselves jobless, with the economy the way it is."

He looked at her. "Are you sure you want to do this, Mrs. Ryan? It will require a great deal of time and expense, and there are no guarantees."

She held up a hand. "Yes, Mr. Harmon, I do, and please call me Sara. Sara Michaels. I'm getting a divorce from the good Senator Ryan, and the sooner the better."

"Your husband is Senator Ryan?" Something about the way he spoke made her look up from where she was digging in her purse for her wallet.

"Yes."

He reached for her hand across the table, not quite touching it, in a gesture of support, and he caught her eye with a sympathetic smile. "I read about the divorce in the papers. I'm very sorry, Sara, I didn't know he was the one I was speaking to all this time."

She gave him a small smile. "The sooner he and I separate the better off we all will be," she said, waving for the waitress to bring their check. "So I shall see you…soon, I hope." She scribbled her cell phone number on a card, then Xavier's mansion's number under that. "Please call my cell number first, but if it's urgent and I happen not to have it with me, call the number below it. It's Professor Charles Xavier's number. Someone will answer it, and I'll get the message."

"Charles Xavier?" Here was another surprise, Harmon thought.

"Yes, do you know him?" Sara wrote a check for the amount on the slip of paper and dug a ten out of her wallet for the tip.

"Not personally, no, but he's part owner of the company that owns Muir Island Research," Harmon said.

Sara chuckled as she stood. "Well, let's see if I can talk to him. In the meantime, please arrange the meeting, Mr. Harmon." She collected her purse as he stood too.

"Call me Mark, please. And it was a definite pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Ry—uh, Ms. Michaels." He shook her hand and left.

"You didn't tell me you owned part of Muir Island Research," Sara said accusingly to Charles as she poked her head into his study.

She entered at his invitation and gave him a detailed description of the evening. Charles sat soberly while she talked, and was silent for a while as she finished.

"Sara, are you sure you want to do this?" he said. She nodded. "You've got a lot going on, Sara. The X-Men alone would be a full-time job for anyone, much less working at the hospital and trying to manage a corporation all at the same time." He leaned forward, clasping his hands on the desktop. "I would have suggested that you take Mr. Harmon's advice. It will take a lot of time to accomplish what you want, to get Meredith up and running again. You're going to have to take an extended trip overseas, to see what can be done about the branches there. And do you really want to spend that much time away from Logan?"

It was something Sara hadn't thought about. "I didn't think about that, Charles. I think I should talk to him before I decide anything else."

Logan was watching TV in their room as she entered, dropped her purse on her desk chair, and pulled her high heels off. Logan pulled her foot into his lap and rubbed her aching toes as she sank back onto the bed with a sigh. "I don't know why you women wear these things," he said mildly. When she didn't reply he took a closer look at her. "What's wrong, darlin'?"

It came out in a rush. Logan sat there and let her talk herself out, noting the intensity on her face and the animation in her body language. She wanted to go, but she would give it all up to stay with him, if that was what he wanted. Part of him wanted to tell her to stay, to never leave him, but another, wiser part of him knew that this was important to her, and that it would also help her find herself. She was dependent on him, as she had been dependent on her husband, and it wasn't right.

"Sara," he hugged her. "Go."

She seemed about to say something else, so he placed a finger over her lips and said quietly, "Go. It's important to you, and I can see that. I will still be here waiting for you when you get back, Sara. We'll all still be here. This is home for you." He kissed her.

She snuggled against him. "Are you sure?"

"Yes," he said firmly.