Five Minutes Late: A Billionaire Romance (41 page)

“Ah, there you are, Miss Daniels. Please, have a seat.”

Uncle Sheridan nodded at the far side of the booth he occupied as if he were inviting me to sit down at a gold-and-mahogany antique table in the dining room at Buckingham Palace – the glow of civility coming off the man was enough to class up even garish surroundings like these.

I slid into the bolted-to-the-floor plastic booth and set to work on my dripping, savory, so-good-and-so-bad-for-me bagel. On the other side of the scarred Formica table, Uncle Sheridan went back to reading the Wall Street Journal, waiting politely for me to absorb my breakfast while he read the latest financial news with the patience of a rock – an elderly, distinguished, obscenely wealthy rock.

Between bites, I eyed his copy of the Journal and asked, “Anything earth-shaking in the world of high finance today? Do I need to start burying jars full of cash in Mom’s backyard?”

The paper rustled as he turned a page. “Various experts are panicking over the Nikkei Index, but that’s nothing new – in tomorrow’s edition, they’ll be fussing over a different imagined crisis and the Japanese market will be forgotten until the next drop in prices. A university physics laboratory in Göttingen reports tentative success in their cold fusion experiments, though I wouldn’t jump to invest in that sort of thing just yet … and of course, Devon’s gutting of Killane Industries is already becoming the stuff of legend.”

He turned the paper so I could see the front page. A banner headline proclaimed “KILLANE STRIKES AGAIN – Enigmatic Genius Destroys Family’s Assets, Aids SEC Investigation” over a picture of Devon looking all brooding and brilliant, while a smaller shot showed some random Killane asshole in handcuffs.

I put away the last bite of my bagel and wondered just how much the headline writers of the world knew about Devon. For that matter, how much did I really know about him? Vastly more than they did, sure, but that still wasn’t nearly as much as I needed to know.

Time to get down to business, Ashley.

I wasn’t here for junk food or casual chit-chat with the most adorable old man this side of the Dalai Lama. I was here for answers.

“Uncle Sheridan, it’s sweet of you to come down here and talk to me – um, I’m not taking you away from any urgent business missions, am I?”

He flipped his paper closed, folded it into a neat rectangle and set it to one side on the table.

“Miss Daniels, it is always a pleasure to spend time with you. In a world set about with insincerity and endless grasping after power and prestige, you are refreshingly genuine and down-to-earth.”

“I’m all kinds of average, sir, trust me.”

“I trust your insights into other people, Miss Daniels, but I fear you may not see into yourself quite as clearly. You are intelligent and determined, you have your priorities straight in a fashion that executives and students alike would do well to imitate, and you are steadfastly loyal to Devon, which counts for a great deal in my view of the world. You are, in short, anything but average.”

He paused to open a tiny container of fake cream and empty it into his coffee. While he stirred the mixture, he added, “As for business affairs, my schedule is quite light today – I have a meeting this afternoon with the board of directors of our city’s perpetually needy symphony orchestra, but beyond that, my time is my own. For that matter, are you quite sure I’m not keeping you from anything?”

“No, sir.  I told Devon I needed to check in with you about a few things, so he said he’d get by without me until this afternoon. I kind of implied you and I would be chatting about miscellaneous business stuff, but seeing as how he’s so wicked smart and all, I figure he might know perfectly well we’re here to talk about him.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt it for a moment. Devon is the most intelligent man I’ve ever known, by quite a large margin.”

“Bet he didn’t get that from his dad’s side of the family, huh?”

Uncle Sheridan snorted. “Hardly. The Killanes have a mean sort of cleverness, one well suited to business dealings, but no one would call them smart. My Alva was the only Killane ever born with a ready and lively intelligence – had she lived, I like to think she would have given the rest of her family a piece or three of her mind on a regular basis, keeping them in line and forcing them to behave as decent human beings. Of course –”

The old man broke off. He closed his eyes and sighed. When he opened them again, he stared down at his coffee.

“Of course, if she had lived, everything would be so different.”

Tough old Jedi that he was, Uncle Sheridan pulled himself together after a few seconds, shaking free of the memory. He gave me a weary smile, and then turned to look all around the restaurant.

I looked with him. We just sat together in silence for a minute, in the middle of that crowded, noisy McDonald’s, watching the laughing, gossiping, arguing, endlessly young and alive students all around us.

“Sir, mind if I ask why you wanted to meet me here? I mean, you’ve got way too much style for this place.”

“It’s simple enough, Miss Daniels – I find being surrounded by young people on the cusp of forging their own destinies is quite invigorating, in its way. At my age, it is all too easy to fall into the mental trap of assuming you’ve seen and heard everything, and that young people are merely recycling all that has gone before; but here, in the midst of new lives and new ideas, it is impossible to maintain that illusion.”

“So you’re saying you don’t come here to pick up hot young things for a night of learning what the Force is really all about?”

“Oh, I never said
that
, Miss Daniels.”

Dammit, he caught me with that one in mid-swallow – I choked on my orange juice, laughing like a mental patient, while he sipped his coffee with the angelic smile of a Buddha.

“Uncle Sheridan, you’re a wicked old man, you know that?”

His innocent smile widened. “I know that Alva would have adored you.”

We were way off topic, but I had to ask. “Uncle Sheridan, what was she like?”

He settled back in his seat, reached out to his cooling cup of coffee, and turned it in a precise circle. He tilted his head and stared down at the cup’s new position, while I wondered if I’d fallen into asking another way-too-hurtful question.

When he looked up at me again, a different, thoughtful sort of smile spread across his face.

“My Alva was like a comet – she was with us only a short time, but in that time, she shone brightly.”

“How did you two meet?”

“Ah, that first amazing night … I was attending a charity ball that benefited a forest conservation trust my father had established, in the distant days when he was still alive. Such affairs tend to be dreadfully dull, but as the senior Montvale available, I was obligated to put in an appearance.”

“Um, just a second – ‘Montvale’? I know this is ignorant of me, but ... well, I knew your last name wasn’t Killane –”

“Dear God, no – as it happens, my full and entirely too long and extravagant name is Sheridan Grant Sherman Montvale.”

“So, you’re named after three different Union generals? Who was the Civil War buff in the family?”

He sighed. “My father. That man could quote chapter and verse about every battle ever fought in those awful years, and as I was growing up, he made sure that I and my siblings learned more about casualty figures and strategies and the virtues of rifled muskets versus cavalry pistols than we ever cared to know.

“None of us escaped unscathed from the naming process, by the way – my sister is Lee Jackson Beauregard Montvale, and my younger brother is Lincoln Davis Montvale.”

“Sounds like he got short-changed in the four-name department.”

The old man grinned. “That he did, and rest assured that Lee and I never let him forget it.”

One of the cashiers from the front counter showed up at his elbow just then, and swapped out his old cup of coffee for one that was fresh and steaming, because of course a sweet old guy like him could get tableside service in a fast-food restaurant without even asking for it. He smiled and thanked her like the courteous gentleman he was, and stirred some alleged cream into his new coffee as she hurried away.

“As for the ball … it was midway through the evening and I was standing near the bar, making conversation with a boring but generous donor. I was just in the middle of delivering a carefully reasoned political opinion that I was ever so proud of, when I felt someone behind me tugging at my elbow.

“I turned around and looked down at a tiny, golden-haired sprite of a woman who looked up at me, smiled, and informed me that I was a complete idiot if I believed such nonsense.

“I had no idea who she was, but I looked down into that lovely, glowing face and I knew in that moment I was lost.”

“Love at first sight?”

He nodded. “We were married six months later. I have never recovered from that day. Alva was … she would laugh if she heard me put it this way, but Alva was an angel. She was my angel.”

I wondered what had happened to his angel.

Uncle Sheridan sipped his coffee, made a face, and added more fake cream. He took another sip, nodded in approval, and set the cup down. He turned it, adjusting its position just so, and then he looked up and stared right at me like a laser – a very well-mannered laser, but still.

“Miss Daniels, I hope that you can be Devon’s angel. Few men are so fortunate as to be blessed with someone like Alva, but that boy deserves an angel who will love him and fight for him, a woman who can save him from … well, from himself, I suppose, and from all that has been done to him.”

I sure as hell didn’t see an angel when I looked in the mirror, but if that was what Devon needed, then I would damn well find a way to be angelic.

28. Taken

First things first, Ashley.

“Sir, just what has been done to him? I want to be … well, everything that you said for him, but there’s so much I need to know, and a lot of it is stuff that Devon either can’t or won’t tell me. Will you help? I’ve got about five thousand questions, if that’s okay.”

“I will assist you in every way that I can, Miss Daniels. First, may I ask what he has already told you?”

“Well, last Saturday night he gave me a blow-by-blow account of how Kevin “Father of the Year” Killane tore him right out of his mother’s arms, all to secure an inheritance that the asshole only wanted so he could piss off the rest of his family.”

I told Uncle Sheridan the whole virgin-despoiling, baby-stealing epic just as I’d heard it from Devon. Then I asked, “So question one is how the hell did that bastard get away with kidnapping a terrified child in broad daylight, in front of multiple witnesses?”

“He succeeded because in the eyes of the law, what happened that day was not in fact kidnapping.”

“Sir, you are so going to have to run that by me again – I mean, if it wasn’t kidnapping, then two plus two doesn’t equal four.”

“The important equation here is that the legal system of this country plus money equals whatever result you want, and the Killanes have never been shy about buying their version of justice. Devon’s father applied enough cash to one of the family’s pet judges to persuade the man that a single, impoverished mother must be an unfit mother, and one court order awarding him sole custody later, Kevin Killane had a son and Devon’s mother had nothing.”

“But she fought it, right? I mean, any non-bought judge would see in a heartbeat that the custody order was bullshit, and she’d be able to get Devon back eventually – right?”

The old man shook his head before I even finished asking the question. “Miss Daniels, you would fight such a monstrous miscarriage of justice, yes – I should think that you would tear the throat out of anyone who dared come between you and those you love, and count it a good day’s work.

“But Devon’s mother … I feel that perhaps she was not entirely made for the realities of this world. She certainly had no clue as to how the legal system worked, and not a penny to spend in the pursuit of her son – those twin facts doomed her from the start, I fear.

“Mind you, she did try, in her own way – I have no doubt she loved Devon with a passion, and sad to say, she even felt a great deal for Kevin Killane, despite all that he had done to her.

“From what I understand, she seems to have thought it was all some terrible mistake and that if only she could speak to Kevin, matters would be made right and her son would be returned to her arms. So in the days that followed, she besieged the various Killane residences in this city, searching for her son’s father, begging and crying to whoever opened the door for the right to speak to Kevin Killane and be reunited with her son.”

“She never even tried to go the legal route?”

“Oh, she did end up in court – it seems that the Killanes grew quite tired of this strange, pale woman battering on their doors at all hours and frightening their servants, so they obtained a restraining order. The poor creature was arrested and jailed, a psychiatric evaluation was ordered, and less than three weeks after her son was taken from her, Devon’s mother was involuntarily committed to a private mental hospital upstate.”