or sister, she wouldn’t ever want to lose touch.
“Maybe if you talk to Helen,” she said without thinking. “She might have some ideas.”
Jack looked at her. “No, thanks.”
Samantha felt herself bristle. “What is it with you?” she asked. “Why won’t you even give the woman a chance? Name me one thing she’s done that you don’t approve of. Give me one example of where she screwed up big time.”
“I don’t have any specific events,” he said.
“Then what’s the problem? You said you trusted my opinion of her and were going to stop assuming the worst.” He made her crazy. Jack could be so reasonable about other things, but when it came to Helen, he refused to be the least bit logical.
“I don’t think the worst,” he said.
“You certainly don’t think anything nice. She’s pretty smart. Why don’t you talk to her about the business?”
“My father wouldn’t have told her anything.”
“How do you know?”
“He didn’t talk to anyone about the company.”
“To the best of your knowledge. Did it ever occur to you that he might have married her because she’s smart and capable? That maybe when things went bad, he talked to her.” She held up both hands. “I’m not saying I know anything. But neither do you. You treat Helen like she’s a twenty-one-year-old bimbo your father married because she had big breasts. It’s crazy. You have an asset there you’re not using.”
He looked at her. “You’re a very loyal friend.”
“Helen makes it easy to be. Will you at least think about what I’ve said?”
He nodded. “Promise.”
She was fairly sure she believed him. Jack had never lied to her. But why was this an issue in the first place? Why didn’t he already know his stepmother’s good points? Every family had secrets, but this one seemed to have more than most.
“It was just my mom and me,” she said. “I can’t relate to problems inherent in a large family.”
“Want to trade?” he asked, then grimaced. “I’m sorry. I know you and your mom were close. You must still miss her.”
She nodded, thinking she’d missed her most during the last few months of her marriage. When she’d wondered if Vance was really what she’d thought or if she’d been overreacting.
“We’d always had a special relationship,” she said, “but we got even closer after my dad left. There was something about worrying about our next meal that put things in perspective.”
“The man was a first-class bastard,” Jack told her. “You haven’t talked to him since?”
“He never wanted to talk to me. When I got older, I tried a few times, but eventually I gave up. He just wasn’t interested. I heard he passed away a couple of years after my mom.”
“I won’t say I’m sorry. Not about him.”
“I always think that things could have been different. I wasn’t interested in him for what I could get. I just wanted a relationship with my father. But he never understood that. Why do relationships have to be so complicated?”
“Not a clue.”
She stood. “Okay, I’ve taken up enough of your time. I just wanted to tell you that I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
“Thanks, Jack.”
She left, not sure if she’d made things better or worse between them. She had a feeling that the only way to really solve the problem was to make a decision one way or the other and stick to it. If she was going to keep things business only, then she should not go to his office to chat. If she was interested in something else, then she should do that.
Complications, she thought. Questions and no answers. At least her life was never boring.
Jack returned from his working lunch meeting with the vice president of finance to find his stepmother waiting for him in his office.
Helen smiled when she saw him. “I was in the neighborhood,” she said.
Under normal circumstances, he would have been polite and done his best to get her gone as quickly as possible. Since his last conversation with Samantha, he was curious to find out what Helen wanted.
He motioned to the leather sofa in the corner. Helen crossed the room and took a seat. He followed and settled in a club chair, then tried to figure out what was different about her today.
She was still pretty, blond and only a few years older than him. Not exactly a bimbo, as Samantha had pointed out, but still very much a trophy wife.
While she wasn’t dressed in widow’s black—did anyone still do that today?—she’d replaced her normally bright clothes with a navy tailored pantsuit. She’d pulled her hair back and, except for simple earrings and her wedding band, she seemed to have abandoned the heavy jewelry she usually favored.
“How are you doing?” he asked. “Is everything all right at the house?”
She frowned slightly. “I don’t understand.”
“You’re alone in the house. I know it’s large and I wondered if you were coping all right.”
Eyebrows rose slowly. “You can’t possibly be concerned about me.”
He shrugged. “I’m asking.”
“Hmm. All right. I’m doing fine. Yes, the house is big and empty, but your father worked long hours, so I’m used to being there alone.”
Jack shifted in his seat and wished he’d never started the damn conversation in the first place. But he was already into it. “Are you, ah, sleeping?”
She sighed. “Not really. I still expect George to walk in and apologize for working late again. But he doesn’t.” She smiled. “Enough of my concerns. They’re not why I stopped by. I wanted to check on you. It’s been a difficult couple of weeks.”
“You’ve been reading the paper.”
“Several. There wasn’t a lot of mention in the national press, which is something, but we’re getting plenty of local coverage. I feel just horrible, Jack. I wish I could make this all better.”
So did he. “Did you know about the second set of books?”
He watched her as she spoke to see if she got uncomfortable, but her cool gaze never flickered.
“I didn’t. George didn’t talk about the business very much with me. I wanted him to. I was interested. But he just wasn’t one to do that. I do know that for the last year or so before he died that he was under a lot of stress. I had an idea there were problems with the company, but I had
