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“Mom, hi. Is Dad around?”
“Well, hello to you, too. You don’t want to talk to me?”
“Of course I want to talk to you, but I was hoping to talk to Dad and see how he’s doing.” He peeled off his socks and tossed them across the room, connecting with the hamper.
“Your father’s fine. I’m screening his calls. Otherwise, he takes work calls all weekend and never gets any rest. He needs his rest.”
Dad. Once a workaholic, always a workaholic. “Has he been tired since he got home last night?”
“Yes. Fridays are the worst. I don’t know why he continues with this charade of going into LangTel every day.”
“I don’t know why he does it either.”
LangTel was the telecom corporation Adam’s father started from the ground up in the seventies. Adam had grown up heir apparent, but once he went to Harvard Business School, he realized that—just like his father and every Langford man before him—he would never be content taking over someone else’s empire. He wanted to build his own, which was precisely why he started his first company while he was still in school. It made him his first fortune before the age of twenty-four.
Even so, when his parents had asked him to help run LangTel from behind the scenes after his father first fell ill, he had done his familial duty. At the time, Roger Langford’s prognosis was uncertain and they didn’t want him to appear “weak” for fear of the company stock plummeting.
It was meant to be a dry run and Adam passed with flying colors, but it was the worst year of his life—preparing to launch his current company while running interference at LangTel. The timing couldn’t have been any worse—right on the heels of his fiancée ending their two-year relationship. LangTel had worn a hole in his psyche.
“At some point,” Adam continued, “we’re going to have to tell the world that his cancer is far worse than anyone realizes. I’m tired of the song and dance.”
“I agree, but your father doesn’t want to say a word until things have been cleared up for you with, you know, the newspapers.”
His mother couldn’t bring herself to utter the word scandal, and he was thankful for it. At least it had been only photographs that had been leaked and not something worse, like a sex tape. Adam glanced at his Tag Heuer watch, which sat atop the mahogany bureau in the center of the closet. It was nearly nine thirty and Melanie had been clear that she was ready to get to work. “Hey, Mom. Can I put you on speaker?”
“You know I hate that.”
“I’m sorry. I just have to get into the shower in a minute.” He pressed the speaker icon on his iPhone. He shucked his basketball shorts and boxer briefs and tossed them over his head, but missed the hamper this time. “I’ll talk to Dad about it when I’m back in the city. Maybe I can come by on Sunday afternoon after I fly in.”
“Be sure you call first. There are still photographers camped outside our building. You might have to sneak in through the service entrance.”
Such a pain. It was one thing for him to have to deal with the photographers, quite another for his mother and father to have to do it. “Okay.” He grabbed his robe from the end of the bench and slipped it on.
“If you want to stay for dinner, we could invite your sister, too. Your father and I would love that.”
“That sounds great. Anna and I can work on Dad, see if we can talk to him some more about working Anna into the succession plan for LangTel. We both know she’ll do an incredible job.” He no longer talked to his parents about the fact that he didn’t want to run LangTel. It was always dismissed as ludicrous. Now his focus was getting his dad to give his sister, Anna, the chance she wanted and deserved.
“Your father would never dream of letting your sister run the company. He wants Anna shopping for a husband, not sitting in a boardroom.”
“Why can’t she do both?”
“I’m about to lose your father, and now you don’t want me to have any grandchildren? You won’t have any until you find the right woman, and Lord knows when that will happen.”
There she goes. “Look, Mom. I have to go. I have a houseguest and I need to shower.” He strode into the bathroom, across the slate tile floor.
“Houseguest?”
He reached into the shower, cranking the faucet handle. “Yes. Melanie Costello, the woman Dad hired to do this futile PR campaign.”
“It’s not futile. We need to preserve your father’s legacy. When he’s gone, you’ll be the head of this family. It’s important that you’re seen for your talents, not for the women you run around with.”
