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I do miss her sorely though, but I held fast to all her little anecdotes and adages that had always kept me one step ahead and above my peers.
So, while most of my girlfriends had been goo-goo eyed over Mr. Storm, I hadn’t given him a second glance. Back then I was well on my way to becoming a cross between my parents. Flighty, in the way I flitted away my days and nights doing nothing but seeking out the next party or social event, but still savvy enough to know the worth of a dollar. This is why I still had a few dollars in my savings, though not enough to keep both my mother and myself in the lifestyle we were accustomed to.
I’d of course appreciated his dark good looks; who wouldn’t? His jet-black hair, which he wore cropped close and those piercing blue-grey eyes that always seemed laser focused on the camera whenever he was snapped. The dimples in his cheeks that were evident even without a smile, and that strong jawline that said he was all man and serious with it, I’m sure had melted many a heart from coast to coast.
My disinterest stemmed more from my personal promise to myself that I would never marry someone like my dad, who was consumed by his business. My dream was to marry a man who worked a nine to five, left work at the door, and was happy to spend time with his wife and kids. Obviously from the write-ups on Storm, he was not that guy. In fact he seemed to be a lot like daddy from what I heard.
Sure I loved my dad, but I wouldn’t want to be married to him. I well remember all the missed recitals and plays, ballgames and pretty much my whole childhood. His idea of parenting was to give me every material thing my heart desired, but his time, which I would’ve gladly traded for, was given to his business.
With that idea firmly planted in my mind, the likes of Jason Storm held no appeal for me, good looks notwithstanding. But now it seems, after closer acquaintance, he has invaded my mind and refuses to leave, though I try at every turn to keep him out. Even my dreams, when I do sleep, are overtaken by him and that snide smirk which seems permanently planted on his smug face.
It hadn’t been that way in the beginning. When I first sought him out, it was to get to the bottom of his thievery. I’d convinced myself that he had swindled daddy out of his company, the company he’d inherited and expanded over the years. The one he’d always boasted to me would be his legacy, a legacy he planned on leaving to his only daughter. I could hear him even now, telling me that I never had to worry a day in my life because my future was already set.
I shied away from such thoughts as well and went back to dwelling on my degradation. Though the furor that had first surrounded him when he moved here had died down somewhat, the name Jason Storm wasn’t new to me but the man himself was. Even though in the last month or so before he died I’d heard daddy mention him a time or two, since I’d never paid too much mind to his business dealings in the past, this time was no different and I’d barely given non- interested murmurs for answers whenever the subject arose.
Had I not been so selfish I would’ve noticed the change in the man I loved more than life itself. I did notice that he’d lost a little weight, but had put it off to another one of his intense business ventures. He always got like that when he was going after some deal. Gaunt, restless and hyper, almost jittery. So when I did notice those things this last time I made no note of it.
After he’d taken his own life and it came about that he’d sold the company, my future, I had no choice but to get to the bottom of it. I may not have delved too deeply into the machinations of the company that would one day be mine, but I had some working knowledge of the particulars. I knew enough to know the financial worth of the business, and if it was so that daddy had sold it for whatever reason, there should be more money than was left once the dust settled.
At the back of my mind I suspect that there was more to it than what the accountant had shared. There’s no way that a man as fastidious as Timothy Bronson had let things get so bad that he’d sold his company for pennies on the dollar, leaving his wife and child without support.
It was with that premise that I had first approached the formidable Jason Storm. I was sure that there was some shady dealings on his part, that in fact he had swindled my dad and that was what had led to his death at his own hand. I had no evidence of this, and going through daddy’s papers hadn’t pointed to any such thing, but I still could not fathom that things had been as cut and dried as they’d been relayed to me.
