Her Man Friday(80)
Author: Elizabeth Bevarly

"Well, for one thing, Schuyler was working every bit as hard as I was. He was just doing it in a different area. And for another thing, I got something out of the arrangement that was far more important to me than recognition for my contribution."

"What’s that?"

"Money," she said succinctly. "And lots of it."

Leo’s gut twisted again when he heard her say it flat out that way. So she really was driven by greed. She really had been motivated by personal gain.

"It’s not what you think," she said calmly, clearly having read his nausea on his face. "The money I wanted—and received—from the arrangement was never meant to make my life better. Well, not in the way you’re interpreting it. All of that money, Leo, every last nickel, went to worthy causes. And in seeing it distributed that way, I did, in fact, receive quite a lot of personal gratification."

"But she never received any money," Kimball threw in. "No more than was required for her to live on." He smiled at her in a way that said he would never, in a million years, understand her, but would always, always respect her decision. "She’s an odd duck, is our Lily," he continued.

"Always wanting to do for others, never letting anyone do for her."

"What’s so odd about wanting to help other people?" she asked.

"It’s odd because so few people share your opinion," Schuyler said.

"Oh, you might think so, Schuyler," she responded, "but you haven’t met the people I have working with different charities. You’d be surprised how many people do care."

Kimball sipped his martini, feigning—somehow Leo knew he was faking it—boredom. "Yes, I think I would be surprised," he said.

"I’m not going to get into this with you tonight," Lily said. But there was something akin to amusement mixed with the bemusement in her voice. "You already know my stand on this. Whether you believe it or not, there really are some things in life that are more important than money."

Kimball rolled his eyes, and Leo got the feeling that this was an old argument with the two of them. "Very easy for you to say, Lily. You grew up with every comfort a person could have. Mondo houses, private academies, convertibles on your sixteenth birthday, cotillions, yachts, and Chateaubriand for dinner every night."

This time Lily was the one to roll her eyes, something that only reinforced Leo’s conviction that they were playing out an old scene. "Convertible," she corrected the billionaire. "Singular. I only got one convertible for my sixteenth birthday. Which, I’ll remind you, got repossessed three months later. Along with everything else we owned. And we did not have Chateaubriand every night."

"Oh no?" Kimball asked.

She shook her head, but smiled devilishly. "Only Wednesday was Chateaubriand night."

"And I suppose you’re going to tell me you ordered pizza from Domino’s every Friday night."

"Of course not," she retorted with a haughty sniff. "We had Cook whip us up a prosciutto-and-shitaake pizza from scratch, just like any other self-respecting Main Line family would."

"We couldn’t even afford Domino’s in my family."

"Yes, yes, yes. So you’ve said a million times. And you couldn’t afford ice cream, or new shoes, or a basketball, or a dog, either. Tell me, did you also have to hike barefoot for ten miles through five feet of snow to get to school everyday?"

Kimball shook his head before enjoying a thoughtful sip of his martini. Then he replied, "No. We couldn’t afford snow."

"Poorboy," she said with a warm smile.

"Debutante," he retorted just as fondly.

The two of them exchanged a look that held a wealth of affection and understanding behind it, a look that made Leo wish he’d known Lily for as long as Kimball had. But he was beginning to realize that, although she shared a bond with the billionaire that was different from the kind of relationship she would ever have with anyone else, the one she shared with Leo was—and would always be—no less important.

"Besides, I’ve never needed anyone to do anything for me," she added imperiously, lifting her chin. "I’ve managed very well on my own."

"So you have," Kimball agreed. "But, Lily. Darling. You really are going to have to do something about your solitary status. And Mr. Friday here does seem to be a decent sort." He turned to throw Leo a meaningful look. "You are a decent sort, aren’t you, Leo? Do assure me that I haven’t misjudged you most profoundly."

"Depends on what you mean by ‘decent,’ " Leo said, his brain still buzzing from everything he’d learned here in the last several minutes.

"You won’t take your findings to my—our—board of directors just yet, will you? You’ll let me and Lily have a word with them first, yes? They do, after all, require a certain… handling. Surely you noticed that about them."

Leo didn’t answer. Frankly, he had no idea what to say. He still couldn’t quite believe that Lily Rigby had been instrumental in building Kimball Technologies into a multi-national, multi-billion dollar industry. He still couldn’t quite believe that she had given all that money away—given it all away—to people and charities and organizations who might see their lives and situations improved as a result.

Could he?

"Just tell me this," he said.

"Anything," Lily assured him, and he knew that whatever it took to straighten all this out, she was willing to do it.

"Everything the two of you have done—the structuring of the business, the appropriation of the money, the donations to all the charities…"

"Yes?" she spurred him further.

"Has it been legal? Ethical? Moral?"

"It has most assuredly been legal," Lily told him. "We have all the documentation and records to prove that. And it’s all moral, too," she continued. "We never lied to anyone, Leo. We just let them assume what they wanted to assume. Schuyler and I were a team from the beginning. We just never told anyone for sure that I would be the one making the final decisions and that I would be the one running things. They all drew their own erroneous—and sexist, I might add—conclusions. So none of it was illegal or immoral."

"How about ethical?" he asked.

She and Kimball exchanged glances that were none too casual.

"No, I don’t suppose it was ethical," she conceded. "But it was necessary."

"Why?" Leo asked. "I mean, you’ve told me why it was necessary to put yourself in charge and keep that part a secret, but what about all the charitable donations? Why did you have to keep all that a secret? What was the big deal with giving away millions of dollars annually? I would have thought that would just make Kimball look better in the eyes of the public."