LOVING THE HEAD MAN (30 page)

       “He asked for her,” Zack said and there was a pause on the other end.

       “Asked for whom?”

       “Brianna. 
His girlfriend.
  He wanted to see her even before he wanted to see me.  He asked for her.”

       “So he asked for her,” Sylvia said in a dismissive tone.  “That means absolutely nothing.”

       “It means everything, Ma.  I’m telling you she’s different.  He sees her differently.”

      
“Yeah, sure, until he sees me again.
  Then he’ll forget her name.  Every time we’ve seen each other since we called it quits, he’s taken me to bed. 
Every single time, Zack.
  And it never mattered who he was dating at the time, either.  I take first place every time I show up.  So this Brianna person is nothing,
a nobody
, don’t even worry about her.  As soon as I get back from Milan and pay your daddy a visit, he’ll forget that woman exists.  And you can bet that.  How much you wanna bet?”

       Zack didn’t say it, but he’d bet against it.  She didn’t understand.  Brianna Hudson was different. 
A game changer.
  And none of those old rules applied when playing a brand new game.

***

Tears flowed freely down Bree’s face as she sat in a chair at Robert’s bedside and held his hand.  There were so many tubes going into him, so many machines beeping and bonking and squeezing in and out that she felt even worse than she had before she saw him.  This was serious.  This could have been catastrophic.

       He slept through most of her visit, but then he finally opened his eyes, saw her face, and managed to smile.

       “Hi,” he said.

       “Hi yourself,” she said, sniffling back her tears.

       “You’re a sight for the sore eye.”

       “So are you, honey.” 

       He touched the side of her face. 

       “You gave us such a scare, Robert.”

       “I know. 
Didn’t mean to.”
He tried to smile this time, but couldn’t pull it off.  “I’m not a kid anymore.”

       “I thought, we thought we could lose you.”

       Robert cupped her face, considered it.  She snuggled against his still big, strong, powerful hand. 

       Robert swallowed hard, fighting sleep, pain, and this overwhelming love he felt for Bree.  “I’m not going anywhere,” he said.  “I don’t want you and Zackary worrying about me, you understand?”

       “I understand.”

       The nurse walked up to the bed.  “He needs his rest, ma’am,” she said.

       “Yes, of course,” Bree said, rising, wiping her tears.  But Robert reached out his hand, and Bree grabbed it.

       “You take care of yourself, Brianna,” he said.

       She nodded.  “I will.”

       “And look out for Zack.  His main crime is that he loves his old man too much.”  Robert managed to open his tired eyes wide again, and look directly at her.  “You’re strong like me.  He isn’t.  Look out for him.”

       Bree smiled.  “I will,” she said.  “Now you get some rest.”

       “Some of that much needed rest I’ve been hearing about.”

       “That’s right,” Bree said, but she didn’t have to say anymore, because he was already asleep.

***

The door to Robert’s apartment was opened and Bree and Zack entered as if they were entering a morgue.  It was the quietness that got them.  Although Robert was almost never at home, his presence still was already sorely missed. 

       “I’ll fix something to eat,” Bree said and headed for the kitchen.  Zack, to her surprise, followed her.

       As she pulled out food and set it on the countertop, Zack moved over to the French doors in the kitchen.  Like the doors in the dining hall, these, too, led to the elongated balcony, the balcony where Robert had had his heart attack.  Zack stood against the doorjamb, looking out onto the balcony, remembering the sight of his father on the floor and how much it terrified him.  And the tears began to come.

       Although his back was to Bree, she heard his sniffles.  Robert said he wasn’t a bad kid, but just that he loved his old man too much.  Bree didn’t know about that.  Because she loved his old man even more, and she didn’t consider her love as too much.  But she understood his point.  When you love somebody the way Bree and Zack loved Robert, anything that happens to them seeps the life right out of you. 

       Bree also remembered, however, how she had promised to look out for Zack, even if, was Robert’s implication, he didn’t want her to.  She therefore set the veggies down and walked over to the doors leading out onto the balcony.  She touched Zack on the shoulder.  When he didn’t flinch or otherwise protest, she exhaled.

       “He’s going to be just fine, Zack,” she said, his back still turned to
her,
“you just wait and see.  He’s strong, I’ve never met a man as strong as your daddy, and he’ll pull through this just fine.  Don’t worry. Please.”

       But the tears didn’t lessen and Zack, still devastated, turned and fell into Bree’s arms.  Bree held him as he sobbed like a baby.  “It’s all right, Zack,” she kept saying.  “It’s all right.”

SEVENTEEN

Robert would spend another two weeks in the hospital, moved from ICU within a few days, and then into what they called “step down toward release” within a week.  At the end of two weeks he was released and on his way, not to his Chicago penthouse apartment, but to his cabin, and considerable property, just outside of Laramie, in south eastern Wyoming.  Robert had mentioned the cabin to Bree before, but when Zack told her the full details, and how he loved the peacefulness of it as a kid, the isolation, she immediately made arrangements for Robert to convalesce there.

       It was like another world to Bree, as the company plane landed in Laramie and then the helicopter shuttled herself, Robert, and Zack to the cabin.  Only it wasn’t what she thought of when she thought of a cabin, it wasn’t some square little box of a home surrounded by logs, but a beautiful brick, ranch-style home surrounded by mountain ranges in the far distant, and an open plain right in front of them.  Robert, according to Zack, owned the land almost as far as their eyes could see.  It was breathtaking to Bree.

       Robert emerged from the helicopter looking fit as a fiddle, although if you knew him the way Bree and Zack did, you’d see that his once manic movements had slowed considerably.  Stamina was the issue for him now, as he tired easily.  His team of doctors, to Bree’s relief, had already warned him to ease back into life with a whimper, not a bang.

       And Robert had changed emotionally, too.  He seemed to need Bree and Zack more than he had previous to his heart attack.  He held Bree’s hand, for instance, and would not release it, as they entered the beautiful home. 

       “Didn’t I tell you it was great?” Zack asked, as excited as a kid.

       Bree smiled.  She and Zack had grown closer since Robert’s fall, and she understood now why Robert loved him so much.  “And you still didn’t do it justice,” she said, and Zack beamed.

       Bree had hired a maid service from Laramie to clean and stock the place, and they did not disappoint.  As soon as the luggage was set down in the living room, and Robert was talking with the assistant who accompanied them and would remain in a hotel in Laramie in case he was needed, Bree checked out the place.  It was a beautiful, three-bedroom home with all of the amenities, except, to her surprise, a dishwasher. 

       She looked at Zack, who was giving her the guided tour.  He smiled.  “Dad thinks not having a dishwasher is roughing it.”

       “But a microwave is?”

       “Essential, he says,” Zack said and Bree laughed.  Robert and his situational ethics, she thought.

***

Over the course of the next four weeks, Bree would be back and forth between Chicago and Wyoming as she was forced to begin the screening process for the upcoming new class of trainees.  Robert and Zack both hated when she left, and she hated to go, but she knew, once Robert was back to normal (and he nearly already was), he’d want his business fully functioning and intact.  An important component of that business was his recruitment program, and she aimed to keep it running smoothly.

       During one such visit to Colgate and Associates, however, she found out from Monty that Deidra Dentry had officially filed her harassment lawsuit and was not interested in any out of court settlement, which was Matt Dougan’s entire strategy.  Alarmed, Bree paid a visit to Matt’s office.  He was a partner at Colgate, and was therefore housed in the tower not far from Robert’s suite of offices.

       “I don’t understand what you mean,” Matt said as Bree stood in front of his desk and asked about his new strategy.  “Why would I have a new strategy?”  He was on his feet, about to leave when she arrived, and he grabbed a stack of folders and shoved them into his briefcase.

       “Deidra has officially filed her sex harassment lawsuit and has publically made clear that she’s not interested in a settlement.”

       Matt smiled.  “Public admissions aren’t worth the paper their not printed on.  She’s just talking.  She’ll settle.
In time.”

       “But what are you doing in the meantime to get this matter over with,” Bree tried again.  Matt was really a very arrogant bastard who seemed offended when someone even deigned to ask him a question.  She once asked Robert why so many of his best attorneys were assholes.  He said because they were the best.  When Bree pointed out, however, that he was the absolute best, but wasn’t an asshole, he smiled.  Said what separated him from Matt and the other top-tier lawyers was that he understood that it was God’s grace that made him great, and not some power he possessed on his own.