The Successor (18 page)

She took another sip of wine. “Are you uncomfortable?”

“Beth, I asked you a question and I—”

“Are you uncomfortable?”

“What about?”

“Our age difference.”

He liked that, getting right to the heart of the matter, even if she had changed the subject. “I’m not sure. Are you?”

She started to giggle—and after a moment it made him laugh.

“What’s so funny?”

“How you don’t want to tell me you’re uncomfortable about it, but at the same time you do want to tell me.” She reached for his hand and wrapped her fingers around his. “How you don’t want to admit that you’re interested in me, either. Because you’re worried that I’m not interested in you in the same way.” She squeezed. “So, I’ll go first. Even if all this makes me feel like I’m in high school again.”

He winked at her. “At least you said
again.
I thought you were going to tell me tonight you were
still in
high school.”

“Very funny.”

“I’m not kidding. When the waiter took your drink order, he looked at me like I was the dad and you were the babysitter.”

She was laughing hard now. “He did not. Stop it,” she ordered when she saw he was going to make another crack. “Look, I’m very attracted to you, and not because of who you are. Not just because you saved my life the other day, either.”

“Not
just
because I saved your life? You mean there’s something else?”

She shot him a coy look. “Maybe.”

“What?”

She gave him the once-over, eyeing him up and down. “Well, your looks would do in a pinch,” she kidded, “but there was something else that got me while we were running through the woods. Maybe it was those gray eyes. I’ve never seen anything like them.”

He’d heard that before.

She shrugged. “I don’t know for sure, but that’s okay.”

“It is?”

“Yeah, I like mystery. I like to wonder why I’m attracted to someone.”

So did he. “Are
you
uncomfortable about the age thing?” he asked directly.

“Not at all. I already told you that. The guy I was seeing before I got chased around the woods by those goons was almost fifty-two. I like older men.”

It was the same thing Allison had said a number of times. “Why?” He wanted to see if Beth gave him the same answer.

“They know what they want. Most men who are younger than forty don’t. They’re still immature. And they don’t know how to treat a woman, either. I’m a lot like my mom. I like being pampered.”

Christian gazed at her for a few moments. Yep, same answer. “What were you thinking about after I told you my father was dead?”

Beth slid her hand from Christian’s. “Nothing.”

“Come on, Beth.”

“Hey, I barely know you.”

He realized he was going too fast, but it was a habit he had a hard time breaking. Time was such a precious commodity. He always felt that he was running out of it, that he had to go faster and faster. Especially as he got closer and closer to the age his father had been when he died. “Sorry, I’m just—”

“I was thinking about my mother being sick.”

Smooth move, Gillette. He should have realized something big was going on. He shut his eyes for a moment. He spent all day trying to understand the psyches of the senior executives who ran the Everest portfolio companies for him so he could understand how to motivate them, and he’d forgotten that he ought to be doing the same thing here. He’d missed the signs because he’d been trying too hard to make a connection. “What’s wrong with her?”

“Breast cancer.”

Christian winced. “I’m sorry.” He pulled the folded white handkerchief from his suit jacket pocket and handed it to her as a tear ran down her cheek. “What’s the prognosis?”

“It’s terminal.” She shrugged, trying to seem strong. She took the handkerchief and dabbed her eyes. “It spread to her lymph nodes before they could get it all out. It’s all through her body now.”

“Jesus.”

“And my father left her for another woman a year ago. A month after she was diagnosed.” She looked over at him. “All she has is me.”

He gazed at her. Suddenly she was just a vulnerable kid facing the toughest time of her young life. He’d pushed her to open up and she had—even though she hadn’t wanted to. Now it was his responsibility to help.

“Christian,” she said softly, “I’m scared.”

“THIS IS ALL GOING TO
work out very nicely, isn’t it, Victoria?”

Lloyd Dorsey limped back into the great room of his Washington town house with a Scotch for her. “I get to run Jesse Wood out of the White House, and you get total control of Everest Capital. You won’t ever have to worry about Christian Gillette snubbing a deal of yours again. Allison Wallace will do whatever you tell her to do.” He handed Victoria Graham her drink as he sat down beside her on the antique sofa. “
And
you won’t have to worry about this ridiculous health insurance thing Wood’s trying to push through. Once he gets caught up in the Cuba scandal, he’ll forget everything else. He’ll just be trying to survive at that point, which he won’t. I’ll personally see to that.” He smiled and held his glass up. “To us.”

She touched her glass to his. “To us.” He was still so damn handsome, still so damn charismatic. Still had the same effect on her he had had that day in the University of Florida law school classroom, when they’d seen each other for the first time. “Yes, it all sounds very good,” she admitted, taking a long sip of the honey-colored liquid. “Lloyd, what’s actually going to happen to Christian?”

“Don’t ask.”

“I want to know.”

“Why?”

She put her glass down on a table beside the sofa. “He’s made me a lot of money over the years.”

Dorsey groaned. “We’ve been through this so many times. Didn’t Gillette basically tell one of your board members he thought you were off your rocker? That he thought you were going over the legal line with that Ohio deal?”

She didn’t answer.

“Vicky.”

A few years ago she’d gone to Christian and asked him to buy an Ohio insurance company for her. MuPenn was competing directly with the company in a couple of big markets, which was driving premiums down for both firms, she’d explained to him. And she’d already gone to the insurance regulators seeking permission for MuPenn to acquire the Ohio company, but had been turned down by both states. So she wanted Christian to buy the company using Everest so they could “rationalize prices,” as she’d termed it, in the competing markets. Basically, have an informal agreement—after Everest did the deal—between MuPenn and the Ohio company not to compete on price. In fact to raise prices and keep them equal because they were the only two big carriers in the region. Which was completely illegal. A clear violation of the Robinson-Patman Act, punishable by years in jail.

Technically, there wouldn’t have been anything the regulators could have done or said if Everest made the acquisition because MuPenn was just a limited partner with Everest, with no “official” control over anything Everest did. At least, that was what she’d initially thought—she’d found out later that the Feds could actually have prosecuted her if they’d been able to prove complicity between Christian and her. It was the only time she’d ever asked Christian for a favor, but he’d treated her like any other Joe off the street despite the huge amounts of money MuPenn had invested with Everest over the years. And it had made her as mad as she’d ever been, though she’d never told Christian. Of course, he’d quickly figured out
why
she wanted to do it.

Christian had his young people at Everest do the acquisition analysis—run the numbers—of the Ohio company, then told her it wasn’t going to happen and, in so many words, told her that there wasn’t going to be any further discussion about it. Even today, the Ohio firm was still a thorn in her side, driving MuPenn’s earnings per share down a couple of percentage points each quarter. But what had really gotten to her at the time—what had
really
irritated her—was that she had believed Christian had seen one of MuPenn’s board members at a dinner party and told him that she had tried to skirt the law. He’d been right—she had been trying to skirt the law—but he hadn’t needed to tell her board member that, hadn’t needed to rat her out. She’d been forced to address the issue in a closed session of the executive committee a few days later, and while nothing had come of it—the board hadn’t taken any kind of punitive action—she’d almost had to live under a dark cloud for a while.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Dorsey said softly, leaning over and kissing her on the cheek. “Why don’t we finish these drinks upstairs?”

She gazed at him as he pulled back. “You’ve got everything all planned out, don’t you? How to take Wood down, make yourself president, and keep me happy without having to lose half your net worth in a divorce. You’re a smooth operator, Senator Dorsey.”

Dorsey gave her a hurt puppy-dog look. “That was a mean shot, Vicky. You know I’m going to tell my wife soon. I can’t just sit her down and tell her we’re getting a divorce. It has to be a gradual thing, almost her idea, you know? I wish you wouldn’t treat me like—”

“Oh, stop your whining,” she scolded, standing up. “Come on, let’s go. I can’t believe I’m doing this, but I can’t resist you.”

CHRISTIAN CHECKED
his watch: eleven thirty. He’d just said good-bye to Beth. He’d offered her a ride wherever she wanted to go, but she’d politely turned him down, saying she didn’t want to bother him, and he hadn’t wanted to press. The dinner had gone too well and there was no reason to push it. They’d already made plans to see each other again in a few days.

“So, Romeo, how’d it go?” Quentin asked.

Quentin had picked Christian up in front of the restaurant right after Beth had caught a cab. “I’m sure we won’t see each other again,” Christian answered. He could tell that Quentin was relieved. “Not anytime soon anyway.”

“Why not? What was the death blow? Her dad call while you were having dinner to remind her she had a midnight curfew? Find out he was younger than you are when he called?”

“Very funny.”

“Come on, what was it?”

“She didn’t know who the Beatles were.”

Quentin nodded triumphantly. “I told you. You don’t have anything in common with that girl, do you?”

Christian shook his head as they passed through Times Square, headed downtown on Broadway in Quentin’s BMW 760. “Let’s put it this way, dinner went four hours. You know me, I’ve got the patience of an empty hospital.”

“Ha ha.”

“If it was obvious we didn’t have anything in common early on, don’t you think I would have been out of there after the appetizer?”

“But what about the Beatles?” Quentin grumbled, obviously disappointed. “I thought you said she didn’t—”

“She knew more about them than I did. She’s up on music, sports, politics, movies. Our vintage, too. She’s amazing.”

“What does she do?”

Christian cocked his head to one side as Quentin dodged a cab at Thirty-sixth Street. “I don’t know.” He’d completely forgotten to try to pin her down on that stuff, he was having so good a time. Quentin had reminded him on the phone right before he’d gotten to the restaurant to dig for answers at dinner, answers they hadn’t gotten in the car in Maryland. Answers to such basic things as where she was from, where she’d gone to school, what she did for a living. But somehow all that had slipped his mind. “I figured you’d get answers to all that stuff.”

“Well, I didn’t,” Quentin muttered. “I couldn’t find anything on a Beth Garrison anywhere. Not one that fit her description, anyway.”

“Did you talk to your buddies down in D.C.?”

“Not yet, but I will.”

“What about the Maryland troopers who interviewed her the other day?”

“I tried. I’ll be able to get that file, but it’s going to take a little longer than I hoped. They weren’t real helpful.” Quentin shook his head. “I don’t like this. I don’t like that it’s so hard to find out anything about her.”

Christian waved. “Ah, it’s nothing. She’s probably just a small-town girl who went to Washington to try to spice up her life and got caught up in something she couldn’t handle. She’s probably an embassy secretary or something. I think you ought to be more worried about this.” He gestured ahead, toward downtown and the clandestine meeting they were going to.

Strange thing about dinner tonight, Christian realized, was that, in a way, Beth had reminded him of his half sister, Nikki, who’d passed away a few years back. He and Nikki had been close growing up until Clayton had died and Christian’s stepmother, Lana, had cut him off from the family. Then they’d reconnected when she’d gotten sick. Christian had actually paid for Nikki’s treatment because she didn’t have insurance and Lana had pleaded poverty—which was a joke. Beth had the same joy for life as Nikki, even some of the same mannerisms. He’d realized that early on during dinner when she’d lifted her left eyebrow and leaned back slightly—the exact thing Nikki always did.

“So this is the guy from Camp David?” Quentin asked.

Christian shut his eyes for a few moments, still mentally at dinner.

“The same guy that handed you the file on the way out of there?” Quentin pushed.

“Yeah.” Debbie had interrupted Christian’s meeting with Jim Marshall to let him know that the special caller was holding. The man Christian had told her was to have priority access all the time. A man she should put through to him anytime, no matter what he was doing. “Dex Kelly.”

“You should have had a rolling code or something, not just a name. People forget faces pretty quick, and it’ll be real dark.”

“A name like that’s good enough. Besides, I’ll recognize him.” Kelly had one of those faces you didn’t forget. Dark eyes, straight, dark eyebrows, defined features: a turned-up button nose, thin lips, hollow cheeks, and a pointy chin with a deep cleft. He was older, midfifties probably, with a paunch that bulged over his belt. “If it isn’t him, I’ll know fast. Besides, you’ll be watching. You’ll see if I’m in trouble.”

Quentin shook his head worriedly. “These guys are good. I may not know.”