to building his oil empire. Jack had been equally reckless in his personal life. Will had known about some of it and suspected more, even though the friendship that had begun more than fifteen years ago had cooled over the past few years.
Jack had been a womanizer, both before and after his marriage had ended. That sort of thing wasn’t easy to keep hidden in a town like Royal, where gossip was a stock in trade. What had taken everyone by surprise, however, had been the sudden appearance of an illegitimate son shortly after Jack’s death; Dorian Brady had turned up last month in Royal.
The resemblance between Dorian and Sebastian Wescott, Jack’s legitimate son and heir, was striking enough that no one had doubted the relationship, even before it had been checked out. It seemed that when any of Jack’s old flames got pregnant, he bought them a one-way ticket out of town. Evidently one of them had read about Jack’s death and told her son, who figured it was time to call in a long-overdue debt.
As much as he hated the scandal for Sebastian’s sake, Will couldn’t blame the guy. If Dorian resented Jack’s shabby treatment of him and his mother, he hid it well. Sebastian had accepted him to the extent of taking his half brother into his home and giving him a job in the computer division of Wescott Oil. Now Seb was pushing for Dorian’s membership in the Texas Cattlemen’s Club.
Will decided to reserve judgment.
Jack’s secretary was another matter. The first time he’d seen her, she’d been backing out of the Royal Diner, talking to someone still inside. He’d held the door and waited patiently—tired, but not too tired to appreciate the view.
Not that she’d been advertising the view. Just the opposite, in fact. There’d been nothing at all outstanding in the tan-gray gabardine dress she’d been wearing. The color had a name: one of those colors with “au” in the middle. Mauve, taupe. He could never remember what it was. With her glossy, brown hair and delicate build, it had looked coolly elegant on a day when the temperature could frazzle the calmest nerves.
Two shapely young women passed by the diner licking ice cream cones. They were wearing tight jeans and skimpy, skin-tight tops. He’d barely spared them a glance.
“It’s over next to the library, I think,” the lady standing in the doorway was saying. “I’ve got several boxes to go, once I sort through them.”
Nice hips. Slender build, rounded in just the right places. Gabardine was a surprisingly sexy fabric when it hung—as this did—over a shapely pair of hips, merely hinting at the surface beneath.
He must have sighed. Will knew he hadn’t said anything, because what could he have said other than, “Would you please either come in or go out, lady? It’s nearly three in the afternoon and I haven’t had lunch.”
She turned—gasped—and wiped a three-scoop ice cream cone across his chest. “Oh, my— Oh, dear— I’m so sorry!”
Will backed up, staring blankly down at the mess she’d made of one of his favorite ties. “It’s all right,” he assured her. Then, when she began mopping the mess up with a handkerchief in one hand, the rapidly melting cone in the other, he said, “Look, it’s really all right, okay? No harm done.”
No harm a dry cleaner couldn’t take care of. Trouble was, he had that three-thirty meeting. He could either go home and change clothes or go inside and have a quick lunch.
“Oh, Lord, I can’t believe—and I think I know you, too. That’s even worse.”
He was edging away, wanting to escape before his shoes caught the rest of her melting chocolate ice cream. “No problem. It’s all right.” She looked as if she might burst into tears, which would be the last straw. He didn’t know her. Might have seen her around town somewhere—she was the kind of woman a man wouldn’t notice right off, but when he did, she’d be worth a second look.
Only not today. Not under these circumstances.
“Excuse me, I think I’ll go drown myself.”
Sticky, hot, irritated, he managed a smile. “Swimming pools frown on that sort of thing.”
“Is there still a French Foreign Legion? Do they take women? Look, I’m really, really—”
“Don’t say it. Better go back inside and wash your hands before you get into more trouble.”
She opened her mouth, closed it again and sighed. Looking disgustedly at the melting mess in her left hand, she tossed it in the trash receptacle, sighed again and walked away.
For several minutes Will stared after her. She was worth watching. Again, nothing particularly outstanding—no twitchy little behind, no slinky movements, she simply walked. Where the devil, he wondered, had he seen her before? There was something about her…
The second time he saw her was several days after the ice-cream episode. She was just coming out of the secretarial pool. On his way to meet someone in the lobby, he’d stopped and stared, tempted to go and ask her name and if she worked there and whether or not she’d be interested in exploring a brief, nonbinding relationship with him. Fortunately, she hadn’t noticed. Fortunately, no one else had, either.
Equally fortunately, common sense had kicked in before he could be accused of workplace harassment. The trouble was, his social life had been moderated along with just about everything else as he’d neared the four-oh mark. He was out of practice.
He had seen her several times after that, and the less she did to call attention to her sexuality, the more intrigued he became. There was something challenging about a woman who went out of her way to downplay her feminine attractions. Made a man wonder what was under all the muted colors and understated styles. The lady was a challenge, and if there was one thing Will thrived on, it was challenge.
But not this kind of challenge.
He told himself it was probably something simple—maybe a minor midlife crisis. He’d made a policy of never mixing business with pleasure. In today’s litigious society, it simply wasn’t worth the risk of future embarrassment, awkwardness or worse. Even so, he’d been almost at the point of breaking his own rule and asking her out when Jack had moved in and staked a claim by whisking her up to the executive floor as his personal secretary.
Jack’s tastes had invariably run to leggy blondes in thigh-high skirts, with big boobs and big blond hair. The Foster woman was a marked improvement. Quelling his own disappointment, Will had gone out three nights in a row with three different women and—always the gentleman—had managed to conceal his boredom.
As for what Diana Foster had seen in Jack Wescott, that was easy. At fifty-eight, the wealthy oilman had been in peak physical condition until he’d dropped dead of a massive heart attack. It was widely known that wealth was among the world’s greatest aphrodisiacs, and Jack had been a practiced philanderer who enjoyed bragging about the notches on his bedpost.
At least he hadn’t bragged about his latest conquest. If he had, Will might have decked the man. After which, Will would have been forced to sell his stock, turn in his resignation and move out to his ranch a few years earlier than he’d planned to retire.
What he couldn’t understand now, after Jack’s death, was what the quietly elegant Ms. Foster had gained from the affair. She still drove the same elderly sedan, still wore the same inexpensive classic styles and—so far as he could tell—owned no jewelry other than pearl studs and the type of wristwatch that could be purchased at most drugstores.
