For the Children

Or was she just weak? Choosing the easier way of pretending all had been well, rather than being honest with the boys.

Some things could remain buried forever, but there were others the boys would eventually have to know….

Not now. Not yet. They were still children. Her little boys.

And Brian was already treading such dangerous ground.

KIRK TOSSED his cell phone from one hand to the other and then back, looking down at the elegant kitchen tile again; 6:00 a.m. Arizona time meant that it was eight o’clock in Virginia. He’d put off the call all weekend. Another hour and it would be time for him to head in to work. He liked to be on the corner long before the first kid arrived at school, and there was an early choir practice that morning.

Another hour and he’d make it. He could do this—follow through on his decision to abandon his old life as CEO of Chandler Acquisitions, the career that had consumed him to the point of heartlessness. He could outlast the temptation of making a final perfect deal. He was actually gaining a measure of peace in the job his old friend, Steve McDonald, had offered him during a painfully dark night several months before. Back then he’d been slowly killing himself—with hard truths and liquor. These days, taking care of the children as he’d promised Alicia he would, he actually slept at night.

He could put down the phone; the number implanted in his memory would eventually fade, along with the rest of Friday night’s messages begging him to handle just one more deal.

Someday, maybe even his uncanny ability to remember them at all would disappear.

The Gandoyne company produced aluminum cans, specifically for food products. Aster Sealants owned the patent on a material that would seal and reseal aluminum lids. This sealant had various uses, but if it was put together with food-product storage it could make both companies wealthy beyond their wildest dreams.

The caller who’d left the number was Gandoyne’s son, who had no interest in taking over the business, who was worried about his father’s health and who had heard of Kirk’s win-at-all-costs reputation. He’d gone on to say that both companies were family-owned, headed by stereotypical patriarchs intent on doing business in the same way as their fathers and their fathers before them. They refused to sell stock options. Refused to let anyone else have any say in their businesses or give up the least measure of control.

“Leave them to it,” Kirk told the cup of coffee he’d poured, which had grown cold. He dumped out the offensive liquid, rinsed the mug and put it back in the cupboard.

“You can’t do that,” Susan used to say. “It wasn’t washed.”

“My mouth never touched it,” he’d tell her.

“But the coffee did.”

“And coffee is just what it’ll have in it the next time I use it.”

“It’s still wet,” she’d say next.

There wasn’t a lot Kirk managed to do right around the house. Of course, you couldn’t blame him much on that score. He’d never spent enough time around a house to learn.

And he’d tell her, “It’ll be dry by tomorrow morning when I need it again.”

She’d quit arguing, but her eyes would be speaking loud disapproval. And he’d bet his living trust that she’d go back afterward and wash the mug. Probably the whole cupboard of mugs in case any of the others were contaminated by his inadequate sense of what was sanitary—and acceptable.

Leaning against the counter, staring at the cell phone on the tiled island across from him, Kirk felt satisfied that, at least in this imagined exchange between him and Susan, he’d had the last word.

Gandoyne and his family were going to lose his empire if he didn’t reinvent his business practices. Aster Sealants would get an offer too good to refuse. Or if they said no, they’d lose out altogether when some young upshot fresh from Podunk College U.S.A. found a way to make the edges of an opened aluminum lid nonsharp and resealable. If Aster could do it, so would someone else.

And that someone would sell to another someone who made aluminum cans. Those two someones would get filthy rich while two old men went bankrupt.

The cell phone rang.

“Chandler.” Some habits died hard.

“Douglas’s name is on the birth certificate.”

Alexander Douglas. Susan’s new husband.

“I expected as much.”

“In the state of Arizona, that makes him the kid’s father.”

Kirk lowered the hand holding the phone. Watched the coffee in the pot. Put the phone back to his ear. “The bastard has my wife. I’ll see him in hell before he gets my son, too.”

“Arizona laws are pretty clear.”

“File whatever you have to file to get me a paternity test.”

“You aren’t thinking straight, Kirk.” Kirk knew Troy Winston only dared say the words because he couldn’t see Kirk’s face. That muscle in his jaw started to tic.

“I’ve never been thinking straighter,” he said softly. “That child is mine, and I will do whatever it takes to be a part of his life. If I have to sue, I’ll sue. Just get me that paternity test.”

“Sure thing, boss.”

Kirk was pleased as he disconnected the call—in spite of the offended tone he’d heard in the voice of his most trusted associate.

He was sorry he’d been rough on Troy. Maybe even sorry that this would rock Susan’s world. But he was going to do this.

He was determined.

And he was Kirk Chandler.

Thumb on the keypad of his cell phone, Kirk dialed the direct line to Edgar Gandoyne. It was now almost eight-thirty in Virginia. And Kirk had half an hour to get to work.

“ALL RISE.”

Valerie walked through the hall door leading from her office to the courtroom after a five-minute break, taking a deep breath as she went through the change from emotional woman to detached judge.

“You may be seated.”

The six other people in the small room sat as she took her seat on the bench. Smiling at Ashley, the court clerk who usually worked with her, Valerie checked the day’s files.

Mona, the bailiff working this morning’s schedule, announced the first case in the same clear, unemotional voice Valerie had been hearing since her first day on the bench.

As Ben White’s name was announced, Valerie glanced up, looking at the four people sitting on the dais eight feet in front of her and six feet below. Behind them was a hard wooden bench that could seat maybe four visitors. And an upholstered, sound-buffered wall.

An intimate setting for their little party.

The visitor’s bench was empty.

Ben was looking down. She waited.

A couple of seconds later the twelve-year-old boy gave a surreptitious and very hesitant glance in her direction.

She smiled at him. And forced herself to ignore the catch in her lungs. Ben might be the same size as Blake and Brian, but his life was not theirs.