times, and the man had just lost his father, after all.
“Next item on the agenda,” Keith Owens said around a mouthful of stuffed quail. “What about Dorian? Do we invite him to join the club?”
Sebastian abstained from commenting. Caution urged Will to suggest they not make any hasty decisions, but before he could voice the thought, Jason spoke up. “I vote we sit on it for a few weeks. All due respect, Seb, but we don’t really know this guy.”
After a brief discussion, it was decided to postpone making a decision. Will was relieved. Jason had razor-sharp instincts. Will trusted his instinct on most matters. By the time his dessert of fresh fruit compote was served, he was too tired to enjoy it. Shoving it across the table, he said, “Sorry, fellows, but if I don’t make it to bed in the next half hour, you’ll have to scrape me up off the street. Been a hell of a week.”
After handing the accounting books to the outside auditors, Will turned his full attention to Jack’s messy personal records. Will had already learned two disturbing things. First, that Diana Foster lacked the required qualifications for the position she’d been given. Second, that aside from a nice raise, she’d been the recipient of several large sums of money deposited to a checking account soon after she’d been promoted to the position of Jack’s executive secretary. Putting that together with a remark Jack had once made about Diana’s mother being ill, Will came to a conclusion that had set his blood to boiling.
It wasn’t the kind of thing he could come right out and ask: Did you sleep with Jack so that he would pay your mother’s medical expenses? Hell, he didn’t know her well enough to ask anything that personal. He wasn’t sure he really wanted to know the answer.
Oh, yeah, and there was a third thing, too. He learned that Diana, in a pair of black slacks, bending over an open carton on the floor, had a sweetly rounded bottom that could make a marble statue salivate.
On the way up to the tower office, Will reminded himself that only a few months ago Jack’s old secretary, Miss Lucy, had been put out to pasture, if not with a golden parachute, at least with a gold-plated umbrella. Shortly after that, Miss Foster had been yanked out of the secretarial pool and propelled upstairs to the executive suite.
Knowing the lady had sold herself to the highest bidder, Will felt slightly sick. She might not look the part, but she’d evidently become just one more in a long line of Jack’s women.
What was she, vamp or virgin?
Obviously not the latter.
Which didn’t change the fact that for the past few months, whenever they’d found themselves in the same elevator together he’d had to stare at the indicator buttons and think about something else. The ranch. His favorite horse. The chances of being trapped overnight in an elevator with Diana Foster.
None of which had helped. He had a feeling that in the pitch-dark depths of a West Virginia coal mine, he would be aware of her nearness. Aware that she had hair like a dark silk waterfall, eyes like melted chocolate and skin that looked cool as snow but hinted at banked fires underneath. If she wore perfume, it was not easily discernible. Instead there was an aura about her that reminded him of dark roses, satiny wood and fine wine.
Probably because he’d seen her on more than a few occasions in Jack’s walnut-paneled offices.
It was Saturday morning. Will and Diana had both come in to clear out the last of the personal items in Jack’s office so that the cleaning crew could do their job and Seb could call in the decorators. He managed to keep his mind on business for almost an hour until she turned, tape roller in hand, her dark hair brushing her shoulder. “Shall I label this box personal and put it with those others for Sebastian?”
“What’s in it? Oh, yeah—trophies, certificates, pictures…” Jack with several politicians. Jack with a couple of Hollywood types. Jack with his foot on the neck of a dead lion, and another eight-by-ten glossy of Jack with a dead blue marlin. “Yeah, go ahead. Here, I’ll move it for you.”
“Use your knees, not your back,” she warned in the voice that had come as something of a surprise the first time he’d ever heard it. Quiet, a little bit husky. The type of voice advertisers paid a fortune for, but without the fake seductiveness that was used to sell everything from potency pills to plumbing supplies.
“Huh?” Real intelligent, Bradford.
“To lift the box. Squat, don’t just bend over. Better yet, drag it like I did all the others.”
Will had a feeling Sebastian was going to want to change quite a few things now that he had the power. Father and son were nothing at all alike. They hadn’t gotten along particularly well, although each was brilliant in his own way.
“Yes, ma’am,” Will muttered, amused at Diana’s bossiness. Nevertheless, he bent his knees slightly, leaned over and lifted the box, which was filled with books, trophies and framed photographs. “Where?” he said with a grunt.
“There.” She pointed.
He set it up on top of the stack by the door and managed to resist grabbing his back. Masking his grimace with a smile, he said, “I could do with some lunch, how about you?”
Turning slowly, Diana surveyed the spacious tower office with its paneled walls, the walnut louvered shutters and the heavy, lined linen draperies. Not for Jack Wescott the usual preference for glass, leather and steel.
“How much more do we have to do? I cleaned out the records room and the bathroom.” A length of hair fell forward, and she brushed it back. That morning her heavy, straight brown hair had been confined in one of those twisted arrangements on the back of her head. He could have told her about hair like hers and the laws of gravity.
“Then that about does it,” he said. “Cleaning staff will be in tonight. They can take down the curtains and either toss ’em or send ’em out to be cleaned. They’ve been here for as long as I can remember.”
She touched the soft, sun-faded fabric the way a woman would. “I don’t think Jack ever even noticed them. I guess most men wouldn’t, but they’re sort of nice, aren’t they? In a subtle, understated kind of way.”
“Yeah, I suppose so.” So are you, lady. In a subtle, understated kind of way.
Will made up his mind to give her the draperies once they came back from the cleaners. Unless her living quarters were a hell of a lot larger than his, he had no idea what she would do with all those yards of heavy, lined fabric. Slipcover her house, maybe.
Still, it eased his conscience, because as soon as they wound things up here, he’d already made up his mind to offer her a bonus and encourage her to leave town. The last thing poor Seb needed after dealing with the sudden death of his father and the appearance of an illegitimate half brother was to have to deal with any possible demands from his father’s ex-mistress.
After washing up in the luxurious washroom, they locked the door and crossed the hall to the elevators. Dorian Brady and two clerks from the computer department got on at the floor below. Will nodded to Dorian. He was still withholding judgment when it came to Jack’s by-blow. There was something about him—almost a watchfulness—that raised a few red flags.
But then, that was probably because Seb was Will’s friend, and this guy, whatever his credentials, was an interloper.
As the elevator sped silently down to the lobby, Diana said,
