by Moriah Jovan
“Wondering if I did everything I could,” he finally replied.
“You got her seen and gave her the best care money could buy,” Sebastian said.
Palliative, not curative.
“If it makes you feel any better,” Bryce offered, “her first obstetrician should’ve suspected something was wrong and checked her over.”
The second one missed it, too. The third—
Mr. Hollander, I want to admit her so I can run some tests. Something’s wrong, and we need to find out what.
—had called in a neurologist who finally uncovered it: early-onset multiple sclerosis, progressive, undiagnosed for over ten years.
I’m sorry, Mrs. Hollander. There is no cure. No drugs. And this is...serious. I don’t know how much longer you’ll live, to be quite honest.
Sixteen years, eight of them spent lying in bed in a deteriorating state of consciousness.
“What are you not saying?” Sebastian was nothing if not persistent.
Mitch continued to say nothing.
“Oh, don’t start piling on the guilt. You got nothin’ to feel guilty about.”
Oh, yes he did. He felt guilty for not remembering her, for not missing her. Shouldn’t a widower grieve longer?
Or at all?
“Mitch,” Sebastian said with some impatience. “Her body died last year. Her essence left years ago. You’ve done years of grieving.”
Mitch was not shocked that Sebastian had read his mind. It was to be expected; they were brothers, after all, their bond forged in the blast furnace of adversity. It was also to be expected that Sebastian would spout facts to negate emotion he didn’t understand.
“Elder,” Mitch murmured finally, an edge in his voice, “you don’t know from guilt.”
“Mitch—”
“Shut up, Taight,” Bryce rumbled. “You have no idea.”
So the three of them stood there a moment longer in silent companionship. Trust Sebastian to bear Mitch’s temper with equanimity whether he deserved it or not.
Ah, well. That was what brothers were for. Mitch had no one else to vent on, that was for sure.
Mitch pushed away from the glass, turned with a well-practiced hearty cheer he rarely felt, and rubbed his hands together. “All right. Let’s get this party started.” He looked at his board of directors.
Sebastian Taight.
Bryce and Giselle Kenard.
Knox Hilliard and Justice McKinley.
Morgan Ashworth.
All here to implement the reorganization of Hollander Steelworks, which had begun to stumble under the weight of its own success.
Then there was Eilis Logan, Sebastian’s wife, Mitch’s biggest customer for J.I.’s products, who had come to look after the health of her own company. Mitch had no doubt Wall Street and the rest of manufacturing were waiting for news of this meeting.
Ah, but it had to be done. This reorganization would rejuvenate his company while taking a lot of weight off Mitch’s shoulders.
Never mind the idea to reorganize had taken root while getting quite a bit closer to proving that Greg Sitkaris was a thief.
Never mind it had come up while Mitch stood in the midst of a hundred or more beautiful, scantily clad women—knowing he could have any one of them (or more) if he so much as crooked his finger...
“We’re missing somebody,” Mitch said, needing to shake that off. Another layer of his guilt, wanting to move on.
Not knowing how.
Or with whom.
“Cassie St. James,” Sebastian said as he seated Eilis at the foot of the conference table. He proceeded to position himself as close to her as he could without pulling her onto his lap. “Traffic must be heavy.”
“Who is she?” Mitch asked as he sat at the head of the table, and the others, who seemed to be waiting to see if Mitch were truly okay, followed his lead.
“Me,” Sebastian said, “version 2.0. Cassie wrote her MBA thesis on my rationale for deciding whether to fix or raid any given company.” Mitch raised his eyebrow and Sebastian nodded. “She got roundly pummeled and ridiculed for daring to suggest that my decision was predicated on the teachability of a company’s leaders.”
Mitch, along with almost everyone else, stared at Sebastian in shock. “She figured it out?”
“She sent me her thesis before she turned it in; had it down to the last detail, examples, anecdotes, quotes, patterns, data analyses, and footnotes wherever she could see a deviance from my norm. She speculated that could indicate Knox’s involvement into any particularly complex project I was working on. That really got trashed.”
“You told me about that,” Knox said. “Did you go back her up?”
“I would’ve if she’d asked, but she didn’t. She refused to budge in her defense, though, and ended up nearly getting herself drummed out of her program. I told Jack about it, so he hired her. He’s been wanting a clone of me on his staff for years.”
“Have you ever met her?” Mitch asked.
“I have not and furthermore, I’ve only communicated with her by email once—to get her to do this.”
His brow wrinkled. “You’re handing the whole thing over to her?”
“Yup. I didn’t want to end up sleeping on the couch for the foreseeable future.”
Eilis chuckled.
“How long has this woman been with Jack?”
“About a year, I think. He hired her just before she was scheduled to defend her thesis.”
Mitch let every suspicious thought he had show on his face and, predictably, Sebastian read him correctly. “Mitch, I’ve been watching this woman work and I’ll go so far as to say she’s better at being me than I am.”
“She’s certainly faster at it,” Eilis said, staring at Sebastian speculatively, “but she’s rough on the ego. She doesn’t do the same soft-shoe routine Sebastian does.”
“So, what, she cuts about a year off your process?”
Sebastian nodded. “’Bout that, maybe a little more. I figure it’s probably what I should have done all along, but...”
“It’s your inner nurturer, Midas,” Eilis teased with a nudge that garnered her a pleased grin.
“She’s, what, twenty-four, twenty-five?” Bryce asked. “And she’s the phoenix rising out of the ashes of Sebastian Taight’s sudden career change from corporate raider to full-time artist and stay-at-home dad?”
“Not that young, but otherwise, yes.”
Knox glanced at his watch. “Late. Dammit, I hate late.”
Mitch glared at Sebastian. “Me too. Why hasn’t she called? Why hasn’t Jack called?”
“He’s afraid of offending you,” Sebastian shot back. “He can’t tell when you’re being funny.”
Knox laughed then. “Shit, nobody else can, either.”
“Jack annoys me,” Mitch groused.
“Jack annoys everyone,” Eilis offered. “Even his wife.”
The eight of them settled in to wait, and Mitch relaxed as they began to indulge their favorite pastime while together: Poking fun at each other.
“So, Bishop Hollander,” Ashworth boomed. Morgan Ashworth never said anything. “How’s the wife hunt going?”
“I could ask the same of you,” Mitch shot back with a smirk, not in the least offended, and the snickers and laughter around the table rose, Morgan’s guffaw outstripping the rest. “You have anything to confess yet, Elder Ashworth?”
He held up his hands in truce. “Not me, Bishop. I’m pure as the wind-driven snow.”
“My ass,” Giselle Kenard returned. “I saw the way you checked out that carpenter as we came in.”
“Looking is not the same as doing, dear Cuz. Tell her, Mitch.”
“True. But did you lust after him in your heart, Elder?”
Morgan snorted. “I’m not confessing to anything.” He pointed at Giselle. “And you have no room to talk, O Freshly Excommunicated One.”
“Pffftt. Shall I tell our bishop about your Playgirl stash?”
“Y
ou mean the one that doesn’t exist?”
“Ha! I caught you.”
“Twenty years ago, at which time you decided you wanted to share in the eye candy. All afternoon. I was not amused.”
The table erupted in laughter. “I can’t believe you’re still mad about that,” she grumbled underneath the noise.
“I might not be if you hadn’t stolen them.”
She sank down into her chair and bit her lip. “I still have them if you want them back. They’re kind of, um...dog-eared, shall I say.” Bryce stopped laughing and looked at her, one eyebrow raised. “Well,” she said defensively when she caught her husband’s look. “It’s not like I need them anymore. You know, ’cause you— Believe me, I don’t need— You, you’re—”
“Giselle,” Bryce growled, though Knox and Justice, Sebastian and Eilis, were all coughing and choking on their laughter.
“They’re at Mom’s, okay? In storage. And they have been for years. I moved on from pictures to words and—” She shot up in her chair and stuck her finger in Bryce’s face. “—You don’t seem to mind my library. You’ve practically got Tropic of Cancer memorized and you’ve done—”
Bryce clapped a hand over her mouth. “Okay. Got the point.” He looked at Morgan. “You want those back?”
“No.” Morgan glared at Giselle. “I should’ve drowned you when you were a kitten.” Then he took a deep breath and looked back at Mitch, who simply rolled his eyes at the family’s ribaldry. “Speaking of bishops,” he said smoothly once the hilarity had died down. “Why haven’t they fired you yet?”
“I wish they would,” Mitch said. “You try going into year seven running a ward the size of mine and knowing you’re on the short list for stake president.”
He caught Bryce’s shudder out of the corner of his eye and chuckled.
“Now, see, this is what I like about my situation,” Morgan said. “I don’t have to worry about being called as bishop or anything higher than what I am. And I don’t get stuck teaching rugrats. It’s all I can do to grin and bear all the little bastards at family gatherings. I have my brush with greatness being second counselor and that’s more than enough for me.”
Mitch stared at him. “Second counselor? I didn’t know that.”
He shrugged. “Lucky that way. I figure the Lord gives me little consolations to make up for the big one I don’t get.”
“I empathize,” Mitch murmured as he stared down at the table, no longer quite as amused as he had been. Fifteen years of celibacy. At least. One did not beg a dying woman for sex, no matter how badly one needed it.
He had.
Still did. Spending the past week at Whittaker House and having to endure its three-day bacchanalian masquerade—in complete misery—had made that perfectly clear.
Kenard clapped him on the back and squeezed his shoulder with a big, comforting hand. Yes, of all the people at that table, even Morgan, Bryce understood the most. They’d talked about it privately, the two of them; had compared notes, had given and received solace as only people with similar experiences can do. Had he been the bishop to hear Bryce’s confession—
Some days he wondered if Bryce would ever come back from his excommunication and Mitch shook his head at the senseless waste of a believer—two, if he counted Giselle.
If nothing else, Mitch’s long experience as a bishop had taught him a large measure of compassion. He was just tired of spending every free moment at church.
He needed a vacation.
But where would he go? With whom? His daughters had their own families now and his son had his own life. So what would he do there, alone? When Mina was well enough, he had no money and no time. When he’d amassed enough cash and time to take his family somewhere nice, Mina was too weak and he’d had too many worries to be able to relax. He’d lived his entire life without having gone somewhere specifically to relax and have fun. Now that he had the cash, time, and fewer worries, he had no one to go with.
He waved a hand and looked up at his motley collection of friends who looked back at him with varying degrees of concern they tried to hide. His mouth twitched as he studied the men. “All four of you born and bred in the Church, only one of you eligible to hold the priesthood—and he’s gay. Nobody would believe it.”
The laughter, rich and sincere, broke out again and Mitch was glad. These people, his adopted family, knew him better than anyone, let him be himself—not dad, not CEO, not bishop, not scientist. Just Mitch. And he did not want to be maudlin around them.
“Mitch?” The double doors to his office suite opened and his assistant poked her head around. “Ms. St. James is here.”
He nodded and all eight of them stood to welcome the newcomer. He regretted it, really. An unknown would put paid to the impromptu party; the in-jokes would have to cease.
It was only his years of training as both a businessman and a bishop that kept his expression impassive when Ms. St. James walked in. It was only the fact of his suit coat’s length that kept everyone in that room from knowing how sex-starved he must really be to react that fast to the sight of her. In her late thirties—not mid-twenties as had been assumed—she was, at first glance, fairly ordinary-looking.
But not at all ordinary.
She smiled with a calculated reserve, noting, he was sure, that this was a table of people familiar with each other and she was the outsider, though not the enemy. Mitch could see that she knew they’d expected someone much younger and that she had intended to catch them all off guard.
With age came credibility and she had just turned the balance of power upside down.
She would need that edge to get past Eilis’s objections.
Morgan, ever the extrovert, immediately glad-handed her, then began to introduce her around. Mitch took the opportunity to study her while she chatted with each member of his family.
She looked Parisian, tall, slim, with skin the color of café au lait, heavy on the lait. Her black hair was sleek, pulled into a tight twist at the back of her head. A hint of a mole just above the left corner of her full mouth gave her an air of mystique. She stood about five-eleven in modestly high-heeled black shoes. She had dressed conservatively, in a pencil-slim, mid-calf-length black skirt and a severe white button-down blouse underneath a black blazer. Ruby cufflinks in French cuffs folded back over her blazer sleeves and a simple Tiffany watch were her only jewelry.
Expensive simplicity.
“And this,” boomed Ashworth, “is the man himself, Mitchell Hollander, founder and CEO of Hollander Steelworks.”
“Mr. Hollander,” she said, her voice husky as she offered her hand and met his look, her light brown eyes clear and without guile.
“Ms. St. James,” he replied and took her hand. He shook it in his most bishoply way, the grip just firm enough and his other hand over hers. The handshake that said As one of the Lord’s representatives, I care about you and I’ll do what I can to help you. The handshake he now used as a defense mechanism because his immediate interest in her bore absolutely no resemblance to anything spiritual.
“Please, call me Cassie.”
He released her hand carefully, all the right signals sent, none of the wrong ones, and inclined his head. “Call me Mitch.” He gestured to the empty chair at his right, between him and Bryce. “Make yourself comfortable. If you’ll let Darlene know what you’d like to drink, we can get started.”
* * * * *
Rough Boy
I walked into the CEO’s executive suite, saw them all in their natural habitat, and was immediately caught off guard.
Me!
I couldn’t say why. I knew what they all looked like, save Hollander. And it wasn’t as if I had never seen half a dozen beautiful people in a room together before.
Perhaps it was the attitude that filled the room, of camaraderie, of...friendship...that made me uncomfortable with them. A room full of testosterone with no posturing, no competition— It felt almost like...love?
Couldn’t be.
Still, as much as they had surprised me, I had surprised them, exactly as I had intended.
Most of them would not have expected a woman their age; after all, Jack Blackwood specialized in training up very young Big Swinging Dicks. The young had the energy and drive to do the job to his satisfaction and they didn’t have the family commitments that would keep them from the 24/7 availability he demanded. Jack enjoyed spawning ruthless little business bastards as if they had his genes, and the younger the better.
When people succeed early, they can retire early.
As Morgan introduced me around, I assessed each of them intellectually and sexually. Yes, Jack had told me to keep my hands off, but a pretty lover with a high IQ would assuage my burgeoning restlessness, and I was looking at a room full of people who filled the bill.
Ashworth himself. He was no exception, and I’d been attracted to him from the moment we met. Large, animated, utterly masculine, with rich mahogany hair and piercing ice blue eyes, Morgan wouldn’t trip anybody’s gaydar, but then, neither would Nigel.
Knox Hilliard. Blond and tan, with the same color eyes as his cousin Morgan, Knox was not much younger than I, but he looked older; in my experience, blond men don’t age well. I didn’t find him particularly attractive, but he had a quick, warm smile and the charisma of an entertainer or prophet. I could see why Clarissa was so smitten, and I wished I had thought to bring her if only to meet...
Justice McKinley. She was the May to Hilliard’s December. Only a year older than my eldest daughter, she seemed like such a sweet girl in person, with her freckles and short, bouncy auburn curls, fashionable glasses perched on her pixie nose, all trumped by a perfect hourglass figure dressed to utmost advantage. But her utterly telegenic beauty hid a cutting wit she used to slice and dice—on national TV—politicians who displeased her. I would relay this meeting to Clarissa tonight in excruciating detail and enjoy watching her writhe in envy.
Giselle Kenard. Her muscular little body hung nude in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. On canvas, she was gorgeous, with long flaming curls accentuating her agony. In person, though, she radiated humor and I could not guess her age. Her ice blue eyes betrayed her blood ties to both Hilliard and Ashworth, and her rather dull honey-colored curls—caught up in a yellow-ribboned ponytail—made her cute. Barely. My taste in women does not run to barely cute.
