Her Man Friday(77)
Author: Elizabeth Bevarly

They both turned then to see Schuyler approaching. He, too, was dressed in a flawless tuxedo, his fingers curled around the stem of a martini glass streaked with cool condensation. He covered the few feet left between them, then fixed his attention entirely on Leo.

"You’ve disrupted my entire household since you came to Ashling, Mr. Freiberger, and I think the least you could do is tell me why."

"His name isn’t Mr. Freiberger," Lily said.

"Yes, I know," Schuyler conceded, still looking at Leo. "But it will do for the next few moments, until we get this all straightened out." He glanced down at his watch. "Dinner won’t be served for another half-hour. Shall we retire to the library for this? It could, after all, get ugly. No need to ruin everyone’s appetite."

Leo turned a questioning gaze to Lily. "He knows about this?"

Lily nodded. "Of course he knows. He and I were up all night discussing it. And between the two of us, we hope we can make you understand something very important."

Schuyler turned away from Leo then for the first time, and gave his full attention to Lily. He opened his mouth to say something, then took in her attire and her new attitude. Then he smiled. "Why, Lily, darling. You wear it well. Something tells me that perhaps we should have done this years ago."

She smiled back. "I only hope it doesn’t all blow up in our face tonight."

Leo was obviously becoming impatient, because his voice was tinted with irritation when he said, "Would somebody care to enlighten me as to just what the hell you two are talking about?"

For another scant moment, Schuyler and Lily gazed at each other, both knowing that everything was about to change, and trying to preserve, for one or two final moments, what had been a way of life for them for so long.

Then, after a quick sip of his martini, Schuyler turned back to Leo. "Freiberger," he said, "you might want to fix yourself a drink before you join Lily and me in the library." He smiled wryly. "Methinks you are going to need it, old man."

And without awaiting a reply, he spun on his heel and strode confidently out of the dining room without a backward glance.

"He’s right, you know," Lily said, lifting her own drink for Leo’s inspection. "Help yourself, and we’ll see you shortly."

And without awaiting a reply, she spun on her heel and strode confidently out of the dining room without a backward glance.

Chapter Twenty

This was too weird.

As Leo watched Lily trace the steps of her employer in exactly the same manner in which the billionaire had strode out of the room himself, a wave of déjà vu washed over him. Man, it was as if one of them was a shadow of the other, something that frankly gave him the creeps. And because of that, he had no qualms about following their instructions regarding a drink. So when he approached the library a few minutes later, he was armed to the teeth with a Scotch and water, and he wasn’t afraid to use it.

There. That oughta hold ’em off.

Kimball’s library was, like the rest of the house, a study in conspicuous consumption. The fifteen-foot ceiling was a gridwork of elaborate, stylish molding, and the shelves were crammed with books, many of them leather bound. The furnishings were likewise overwhelmingly leather, and the mingling aromas of old books, and tanned hide, and mellow Scotch made Leo feel just so damned grateful to be alive.

As he stood in the doorway looking in from the hall, he saw Lily and Kimball on the far side of the room, framed by the massive Palladian window behind them and, beyond it, the illuminated landscaping outside. Their heads were bent in quiet conversation, and they seemed to be both troubled and resigned about whatever they were discussing. Neither had noted Leo’s arrival, so he took a minute to study them in private.

Even if they weren’t lovers anymore, there was an intimacy between them with which Leo wasn’t sure he would ever be completely comfortable. Then he realized that in acknowledging such a feeling, he was allowing himself to think that he and Lily had a future together, and that simply wasn’t the case at all. Whatever she had to tell him tonight, even if whatever that was excused or explained what she had been doing with Kimball’s company over the years—and that was a pretty major if—he wasn’t sure it would be enough to repair the damage that had been done to their newly generated feelings of trust and affection and fidelity for each other.

The damage had occurred in the roots of their relationship, and had cut deeply into those roots before their affection—okay, their love, he admitted grudgingly—for each other had had a chance to fully blossom. And that kind of wound almost never healed completely. The flower of their affections would have to be awfully sturdy to sustain such a blow.

And when the hell he had decided to become such a friggin’ poet, Leo would never know. In addition to everything else Lily had done to him—made him fall in love with her, crawled into the center of his heart and rearranged all the furniture there, tied him up in knots—she’d made him whimsical. Dammit. He was never going to be the same.

He couldn’t get over the change in her this evening. He just wished he could identify how, exactly, she had changed. There was an air of command about her that hadn’t been there before, an unmistakable confidence in who and what she was. But precisely who and what she was still remained a mystery. As did so much else.

"So?" he said as he ambled into the room, feigning a casualness he didn’t feel. "You have my undivided attention. Convince me not to take what I’ve found to the board of directors of Kimball Technologies, Inc. Tell your boss why you’ve been stealing money from him for years, and see what he has to say about it."

To Leo’s surprise, Kimball didn’t bat an eye at the allegation. Instead, he smiled as if Leo had just reminded him of an old joke he had enjoyed years ago.

"Yes, Lily, darling," he said, turning his attention to his secretary. "Do tell me. I’d love to hear all about it."

"That’s funny," she replied, smiling in much the same way Kimball was. "You never wanted to hear about it before. You always told me, ‘Lily. Darling. I don’t want to know. Just do what you have to do.’ "

"Yes, well, there was a reason for that, wasn’t there?"

"Not a very good one."

"Lily. Darling. You—"

"Would somebody please tell me what the hell is going on?" Leo interrupted. He was getting tired of the by-play between employer and employee.

But instead of offering the explanation Leo had demanded, Lily turned to look at him full on and made a request—or was it a command?—of her own. "Before I spill my guts to Mr. Not-Freiberger, I’d like to know more about him," she said. "So, please tell us all about yourself, sir."