There was no putting this off. Even if Lori wanted to, it would be evident soon enough. And these women had become her friends. Initially, she’d been the one to encourage them to turn to her and one another. Now she needed them. Life certainly had an ironic bent to it.
Her glance swept around the square table. “I think that my ties to this little group are going to get stronger.”
Joanna looked at her, slightly confused before a light slowly began to dawn. The light had already reached Chris, but before she could say anything, Sherry beat her to it. “You’re pregnant.”
Pressing her lips together, Lori nodded.
“And you don’t think you and the dad are going to get together.” It wasn’t hard for Chris to fill in the blanks, given the nature of the expression of Lori’s face.
“Not anymore.” Lori looked down at her dessert. Rivulets of light brown were flowing down along the entire circumference of the tulip-shaped glass bowl, forming a sticky ring around the base. She dabbed at them with her napkin. “My husband is dead.”
Chris looked at her sharply. “Oh, Lori, we’re so sorry.”
“Yes, I know. So am I,” Lori said, her hand inadvertently covering her still-flat stomach, mimicking a motion she’d seen time and again in her classes. She tried to sound positive. “I’ll be all right.”
“Of course it will.” Sherry could see that the woman didn’t really want to talk about it, that what she wanted right at this moment was to have the unconditional support of her friends at a time in her life that could charitably be called trying.
Reaching out, she squeezed Lori’s hand. When Lori looked in her direction, Sherry quipped, “So, how about those Dodgers?”
Laughing, the others took their cue, and the conversation drifted to all things light and airy, temporarily taking their minds away from the more serious areas of their lives.
A great deal of ice cream was consumed within the next hour.
The insidious ringing sound burrowed its way into the tapestry of her dreams, shredding the fabric before Sherry could think to snatch it back and save it for review once she was awake.
The instant her eyes were opened, the dream became a thing of the past.
The only thing she could remember was that it had created a warm haze of well-being within her. Something to do with a man loving her, caring for her, that was it. Instinctively she knew the man had been Drew during his better days, even though the face hadn’t belonged to him.
Was it morning already?
The phone. That horrid ringing noise was coming from the phone, not her alarm clock.
With a huge sigh, Sherry groped for the receiver. It took her two tries to locate it. Her eyes were shutting again, refusing to surrender to the intruding morning. She tucked the receiver against her ear and the pillow.
“This better be good,” she threatened.
By no stretch of the imagination was she now, or ever had been, a morning person. As far as she was concerned, God should have made sure that days began no earlier than eight o’clock, which was still pretty obscene in her book, but at least doable.
“Rise and shine, Cinderella. You told me to call when I had something.”
Rusty. Rusty was talking in her ear.
Her eyes flew open. She struggled to defog her brain. “What do you have?”
“Not overly much,” he warned her.
She knew better. Rusty wouldn’t be calling her at this hour, whatever it was, if it was nothing. He didn’t have a death wish.
“It’s too early to play games, Rusty.” Blinking, Sherry turned her head and tried to focus on her clock. It was barely five o’clock. No wonder she felt like death. “God isn’t even up yet. Talk to me. What did you find out?”
“There’s this mountain retreat. It belongs to someone else, somebody named Fletcher, but Adair likes to go to it just after he does a takeover—I won’t say a successful takeover because when he’s involved, they’re all successful,” he commented. “Going there is his way of celebrating.” The raspy sound that passed for his laugh undulated through the phone lines. “Personally, if I had his kind of money, I’d be out on the town. Hell, I’d be out buying the town.”
Still lying against her pillow, Sherry dragged her hand through her hair. “So he’s shy, okay, we already know that. Where’s this retreat located?”
“At the foot of the San Bernadino Mountains, just outside of Wrightwood.”
She’d been to Wrightwood a couple of times herself. It was a small town, predominantly known for its noncommercial skiing. All the dedicated skiers went to Big Bear, which was located on the other side of Wrightwood. The former offered snow and gridlock during the winter months. Wrightwood offered scenery, charm and relative isolation. She could see Adair going there.
Sherry waited, knowing, even in her semiconscious state, that there was more.
Rusty paused dramatically. “I managed to find out that Adair’s going there this weekend. As a matter of fact, he’s already on his way.”
Sherry took it for granted that what he was telling her was not common knowledge. If it was, Adair would be on his way to a media circus camped out on the front lawn. Given his personality, that would be the last thing he’d want.
She smiled to herself. Rusty never ceased to amaze her. The man was definitely a national treasure. She blessed the day she’d gone to bat with him with their former station manager when the man had wanted to terminate Rusty, saying he wasn’t a team player. It had gained her a lifelong ally.
“I know that I shouldn’t be asking this, Rusty, but how did you find this out?”
She could almost hear his smile as it spread over his generous mouth. He had a nice smile, she thought absently.
“Mrs. Farley keeps religious notes.”
The name was vaguely familiar, but at five in the morning, nothing was overly clear. “And she is?”
“His secretary. Has been for years. As a matter of fact, he brought her with him when he first came to SunCorp.” That was what the corporation had been called before he’d changed the name to Adair Industries. “From what I’ve gathered, Adair trusts her the way he doesn’t trust anyone else.”
That would have been the lioness at the gate, Sherry thought. The woman who hadn’t allowed her to see Adair. She’d asked the secretary for an audience with Adair before resorting to the elevator trick. There hadn’t seemed to be anything remarkable about Edna Farley. Obviously she hadn’t looked closely enough. “Interesting. And you got these notes how?”
“I know a lot of people, Sherry. Some of them don’t stray more than five feet from their computers at any given time.”
Hackers, he’d used hackers. Well, whatever made the world go around, she mused. “Got a location on
