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“There’s no way those four men work together,” he growled. “Do you realize that in the past six years they have argued over the simplest vote, and almost come to blows over each idea that has been broached to making your companies more efficient and employee-friendly?” He looked outraged. “Do you know one of those bastards nearly hit me?”
“Really?” She hadn’t known that. She had been too busy trying to pin the name Warbucks to one of them.
“Bailey, those four are psychopaths posing as businessmen.” He was in her face, his expression bordering furiously amazed. “They need to be locked away for the safety of everyone they know.”
Bailey stared back at him in surprise. “I’m sure it’s not that bad.”
She turned back to the shrimp bowl on the buffet table and debated a few more when he caught her arm and pulled her around to face him once again.
“Bailey, it is that bad,” he growled, horror obviously reflecting in his gaze. “If you ever, and I mean ever, decide to actually take responsibility for the inheritance your parents left you, then you have a fucking mess on your hands.”
“That boy likes to overexaggerate!” Bailey turned around, reeling from the obvious criticism that she neglected her inheritance, to meet Ronald Claymore’s furious, brows-lowered, forehead-drawn expression. He looked just as pissed as John. “If you end up marrying this brazen little upstart, then we’re going to have words.”
“Ronald, you never could tolerate anyone who could out-yell you,” Samuel Waterstone expressed in precise, cold tones from behind him. “Don’t punish her because he’s louder than you are.” He then glowered at John. “He’s louder than all of us.”
When exactly had the Twilight Zone decided to visit Aspen, Colorado?
“Ignore them, Bailey.” Ford was the only one who showed a reasonable amount of goodwill. A smile quirked at his lips and his gray eyes reflected something she hadn’t seen since she was a child. A sense of fun. “They’ve gotten too old to enjoy a good fight.”
Stephen Menton-Squire was glaring at all of them. “The boy is a damned bastard,” he muttered, drawing disapproving glances from the other three men.
“Excuse me, gentlemen.” John gripped Bailey’s arm at the elbow, his expression filled with irritation. “I don’t think you need to be a part of this conversation.”
“Wait, this conversation involves us.” Stephen turned on John with a fierce frown as he jerked his evening jacket into place and straightened his thick shoulders. “We should obviously be present.”
“In a padded room,” John bit out with a frown just as dangerously dark as the other man’s. “And only if you show some respect when a lady is present.”
He drew her quickly away. Looking over her shoulder, she caught Ford’s obvious chuckle as the other three men began to argue among themselves, again.
It was normal. For the first time since returning home, Bailey remembered something good about the times she and her parents had spent with the four men and their families. When Ben Serborne engaged in a war of words with these men, it made an all-out brawl look gentle.
“They’re like children,” she murmured with a sense of nostalgia.
“I’d rather deal with terrorists armed with nuclear capabilities,” John muttered as he drew her to the dance floor and took her in his arms before glaring back at them. “You need to do something about them where your companies are concerned.”
She looked back at him in surprise. “Not my area. The business was Father’s love affair, not mine.”
“It’s your children’s inheritance,” he informed her, anger still vibrating in his voice as his hand pressed her closer to him and she felt the warmth of his larger body surrounding her.
“I don’t have children,” she pointed out. “And I don’t intend to have any.”
He almost stopped in the middle of the floor, surprise drawing his expression tight once again. “You will eventually,” he finally stated carefully.
Bailey met his gaze with one of determination. “No, John, I won’t. The father of my children died. Remember?” She kept her voice carefully low, kept her lips hidden so they couldn’t be read. But she didn’t hide the truth from him.
She’d rather be alone than to be with a man simply because she wanted a family or children. It wouldn’t be fair to the man, but it especially wouldn’t be fair to the children.
He didn’t say anything. Hell, what could he say? It was the truth. He was going to disappear from her life just as he had the first time, except this time she would know he was out there, without her.
“The business is your legacy,” he finally stated as he tucked her closer to him. “It will go to someone, Bailey. Leaving it to charity is unconscionable.”
“And taking care of it myself is outside my range of abilities,” she told him. “I’m not a businesswoman, John. I don’t want to be one.”
Once this was over, she would take enough of her inheritance to retire. A nice little house someplace quiet, a peaceful little neighborhood where she could retreat from the battles she had faced over the years.
She deserved it, she told herself. She was looking at losing the man she loved twice in one lifetime. There would be no children, no family, and the white picket fence would be for looks only.
How was he supposed to answer that one? John wondered then. She had been an agent from the age of eighteen until she had been fired the year before. She had lived to destroy the person or persons responsible for killing those she had loved. The only time that love had overwhelmed that desire, it had been taken from her.
