The Best Laid Plans

The Best Laid Plans
Sidney Sheldon

He wanted power; she wanted revenge. The magnificent novel by the internationally bestselling author of The Other Side of Midnight and Morning, Noon and Night.He wanted power, she wanted revenge…‘Dear Diary: This morning I met the man I am going to marry.’ It was a simple enough entry in a young woman’s diary which gave not the slightest portent of the elaborate chain of events that was about to occur.The Best Laid Plans tells the explosive story of the beautiful and ambitious Leslie Stewart, who learns that for some men power is the greatest aphrodisiac; and of Oliver Russell, the handsome governor of a small southern state, who finds out why hell has no fury like a woman scorned.With the unexpected twists and turns that are the hallmarks of his mega best-selling novels, Sidney Sheldon spins a tale of two equally determined people headed on a collision course. Oliver has a strategy to win the White House; Leslie has a scheme to make him wish he’d never been born. They both should have known that even the best laid plans can go dangerously astray…in a deadly dangerous way.

SIDNEY SHELDON

THE BEST LAID PLANS

DEDICATION (#ulink_014743e7-a751-5a03-b7ee-adea009ffb32)

This book is dedicated to you with my appreciation

CONTENTS

Cover (#ufe9a5e26-60bc-5ae7-88b4-70baa2d3dc19)

Title Page (#u1ef540e4-8371-5cd7-8924-e1dfc0fd21c8)

Dedication (#u7d07fc0e-44b6-57d0-a454-a345020f5556)

Chapter One (#ufc9ea382-3db9-561c-bddd-07b36bfc531b)

Chapter Two (#uead684a2-671d-5ebe-b02b-9d9ed6e8cd3d)

Chapter Three (#ua80d4a12-5911-57ae-9c4c-f627903c870a)

Chapter Four (#u0a7d308c-fc7e-500d-99e6-31c0df2f139c)

Chapter Five (#u8b89baa7-cf1b-58e1-b2e4-eefbed2054ab)

Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)

Books by Sidney Sheldon (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter One (#ulink_e870f12c-2209-5c48-bdc6-b8b43d17693e)

The first entry in Leslie Stewart’s diary read:

Dear Diary: This morning I met the man I am going to marry.

It was a simple, optimistic statement, with not the slightest portent of the dramatic chain of events that was about to occur.

It was one of those rare, serendipitous days when nothing could go wrong, when nothing would dare go wrong. Leslie Stewart had no interest in astrology, but that morning, as she was leafing through the Lexington Herald-Leader, a horoscope in an astrology column by Zoltaire caught her eye. It read:

FOR LEO (JULY 23rd to AUGUST 22nd). THE NEW MOON ILLUMINATES YOUR LOVE LIFE. YOU ARE IN YOUR LUNAR CYCLE HIGH NOW, AND MUST PAY CLOSE ATTENTION TO AN EXCITING NEW EVENT IN YOUR LIFE. YOUR COMPATIBLE SIGN IS VIRGO. TODAY WILL BE A RED-LETTER DAY. BE PREPARED TO ENJOY IT.

Be prepared to enjoy what? Leslie thought wryly. Today was going to be like every other day. Astrology was nonsense, mind candy for fools.

Leslie Stewart was a public relations and advertising executive at the Lexington, Kentucky, firm of Bailey & Tomkins. She had three meetings scheduled for that afternoon, the first with the Kentucky Fertilizer Company, whose executives were excited about the new campaign she was working up for them. They especially liked its beginning: ‘If you want to smell the roses …’ The second meeting was with the Breeders Stud Farm, and the third with the Lexington Coal Company. Red-letter day?

In her late twenties, with a slim, provocative figure, Leslie Stewart had an exciting, exotic look; gray, sloe eyes, high cheek-bones, and soft, honey-colored hair, which she wore long and elegantly simple. A friend of Leslie’s had once told her, ‘If you’re beautiful and have a brain and a vagina, you can own the world.’

Leslie Stewart was beautiful and had an IQ of 170, and nature had taken care of the rest. But she found her looks a disadvantage. Men were constantly propositioning her or proposing, but few of them bothered to try really to get to know her.

Aside from the two secretaries who worked at Bailey & Tomkins, Leslie was the only woman there. There were fifteen male employees. It had taken Leslie less than a week to learn that she was more intelligent than any of them. It was a discovery she decided to keep to herself.