once he’d realized she was having an affair with his business partner. For all he knew, Jack might’ve been planning to marry the woman, even though Jack had sworn he would never let himself be trapped into marriage again.
But, if that had been the case, surely he’d have had his lawyers drawing up a prenuptial agreement, and there’d been nothing like that in the works when he’d died. As a rule, Jack had even his mistresses sign a settlement agreement so that they couldn’t come back to haunt him. Dorian’s mother had signed one, but obviously Dorian didn’t consider the terms of the agreement to apply to him.
Waiting for the elevator, Will stroked the back of his neck, massaging away the tension that always seemed to settle there. Jack’s will, which had been read four days ago, had been simple and direct. Other than a few token gifts to his household staff, Sebastian had inherited everything the IRS didn’t claim.
As executor of Jack’s estate, Will was still trying to reconcile a few discrepancies in his personal accounts. Jack had been notoriously delinquent when it came to balancing his own checkbooks.
Nodding to the night security guard who let him out of the building, Will set off to walk the eleven blocks to his own apartment. Maybe fresh air would work a miracle. Maybe his headache would ease and the incomprehensible entries on Jack’s personal check stubs would miraculously begin to make sense.
And maybe he would quit obsessing on the quiet, elegant beauty who had begun to crop up in more than a few of his dreams.
On the long walk home, Will mulled over a few minor discrepancies he’d come across just today. While the business’s financial records were in excellent condition, thanks largely to his own hand on the controls, Jack’s personal affairs weren’t quite so tidy. In building the empire that bore his name, he had stepped on more than a few toes, cut more than a few corners and no doubt had paid off his share of politicians and predatory women. Which might account for the unexplained drafts for tens of thousands of dollars in the past few months.
Poor guy. He’d been warned more than once to tone down his lifestyle. Will had often heard him joke about having a few wild chickens come home to roost. One of them, Dorian Brady, already had.
How many more would there be?
Urged by the board to take over as president, Will had declined the honor. With Jack gone, he was now the senior partner, but getting himself mired any deeper in corporate crap wasn’t among his long-term plans for the future. Once he turned over his tenth-floor offices to the mandatory outside auditors, he would have to clear out Jack’s tower office to prepare for the new regime. Which meant he was probably going to need the help of Jack’s secretary. He didn’t know whether to dread it or look forward to it. All he knew was that the woman affected him in a way no woman had in nearly twenty years.
Midlife crisis?
Yeah…probably. And dammit, he didn’t have time for it now.
Shoulders hunched, the tall, lean Texan strode along the empty sidewalk. This time of night, traffic was light. The weather was unusually mild for February despite the wind and the threat of rain. If he finished up by Friday, maybe he could spend a couple of days out at the ranch.
Or maybe not. There was still a lot of sludge to wade through before the company could move ahead at full speed. For a business the size of Wescott Oil to be run like a mom and pop market was not only criminal, it was damn near impossible in this age of government regulations and demanding stockholders. But by bribing and threatening the right people, Jack had managed to do things his way right up to the end.
The end…
God, what a waste. At fifty-eight, he’d looked no older than Will himself did at forty-one, thanks to great tailor, a good barber, a personal trainer and a top-notch plastic surgeon. For a man who routinely managed to tick off half of the Texas legislature and buy off the rest, he’d been one hell of a guy. He was going to be missed.
While a scratchy recording of Fleetwood Mac flowed from a battered portable phonograph, Diana propped a bare foot up on her lap and carefully painted her big toenail a deep shade of coral. Tears ran a crooked trail down her face, not because she missed Jack, exactly, but because…
Well, because it was such a waste. Underneath his crazy suspicions and his domineering ways, he’d been a good man. In some ways. At least he’d been good to her when it mattered most. Her mother had had the very best care right up to the end, and if it meant giving herself—Diana refused to call it selling herself—to a man like Jack Wescott, then it was well worth the shame.
Or the guilt. Whatever she was feeling, it probably wasn’t grief, which was even more of a reason to feel guilty.
She screwed the cap on the bottle of nail polish, which she used only on her toes where it wouldn’t show, and grabbed a tissue to blow her nose. “Get over it, Foster,” she muttered. People said that all the time. Get over it. Deal with it.
And she would, she really would. She was nothing if not a realist. The thing was, she had never really wanted to be anyone’s lover, especially having grown up in a household where love was never a factor.
Her parents had been what she’d once heard referred to as “tie-dyed rebels for peace.” When the rebellion had lost its luster, her father had left his wife and daughter to “find himself.” Lila, her mother, had gone to work in the cosmetics department of a local discount store for minimum wages and no benefits other than a minuscule discount.
Her father had eventually come back—still lost—and taken a job selling paper products. Less than a month later he had gotten drunk, blacked both his wife’s eyes so she couldn’t go to work, and then left town again.
They’d been “flower children.” Their mottos: Make Love, Not War; If It Feels Good, Do It.
Growing up, Diana had rebelled against her parents’ entire generation. Eventually she might have ended up marrying some nice, dull man, the antithesis of her own father. Someone who would have been good with children and kind to pets. Someone who would, at least, be there for his family.
Jack hadn’t been a dull man, nor had he always been nice. And while she’d let herself believe at first that he wanted to marry her, that had never been in the cards. He had set out on a deliberate campaign to seduce her, and once he’d discovered her weakness, he’d succeeded.
And now Jack was dead and she would soon be back in the secretarial pool. Jack’s son Sebastian would be the new chairman, and Sebastian already had his own executive secretary, one who was more qualified for the position.
Diana’s mother had never reconciled herself to the fact that her only child—her little princess—had settled for a secretarial course instead of trying for a college scholarship. “But, honey, you’re so creative,” she’d exclaimed so often in her fade-away voice.
“You mean because I used to write those awful poems for your birthday and Mother’s Day? Mama, grow up. It’s about time somebody in this family did.”
That had been several years ago, before her mother had been diagnosed with cancer. Since then Diana had come a long way. She had found a job to help pay the bills and had ended up working for a man who had insisted on doing things in a way that would have probably driven most secretaries up the nearest wall. The system they’d worked out together had been somewhat unorthodox, but it had suited them both.
Well, she thought, sniffing and sighing heavily, that, too, was over. Done with. Fini. Period.
