Sleeping With My Boss: A Standalone Novel (An Alpha Billionaire Romance Love Story) (A Dirty Office Romance) (115 page)

She nodded. I could tell that she wasn’t
absolutely convinced that she was experienced enough to handle a case of this
magnitude, but my mind was made up that she was the one I wanted. She finally
said, “Okay, where do I start?”

“You’re having breakfast with Miles
Brigham IV in about two hours at his home. He can tell you what he knows, and
you, as his attorney can tell him what, if anything he can tell the
authorities.”

“Okay,” Alicia said as we both stood up.
“I’ll get familiar with his file in the meantime.”

 
“No, there’s no time for that now. Brigham’s
estate is upstate. You will be going straight to the airport from here. His
private jet will pick you up in about forty-five minutes, and you will be
driven from the landing strip to his estate.”

“My head is spinning a little bit here,
Adam.”

“I know it’s a lot to take in all at once,
and I’m sorry. We have to be proactive here and get ahead of the press and the
FBI, if possible.”

She nodded. Her auburn hair shone
underneath the fluorescent lights of my office, and I wanted to just bury my
face in it and forget about everything. I knew there was no time for that – and
there was also the chance that she might not want me to touch her right now.

“Alicia.” She turned to look at me and the
desire to touch her practically overwhelmed me. She locked those gorgeous hazel
eyes into mine and waited. At last I said, “Marjorie and I go to court on
Monday. Hopefully, that part of my life will be over soon. Please, don’t give
up on me just yet.”

She only nodded again. I was hoping for
more than that, but the truth was, I knew it was more than I deserved after all
I had put her through. She was much more patient than most women would have
been and much more patient than myself. She closed the door behind her as she
left, and I could only hope that she wouldn’t close the door on us just yet.

CHAPTER
SEVEN

ALICIA

I once again tucked away my thoughts about
Adam and me and set out to meet the man that was the subject of every news
brief in America right then. Brigham’s plane was extravagant, to say the least.
I was the only passenger, yet the jet was fully staffed. I was offered food,
coffee, juice, tea, and even a champagne mimosa. I chose the coffee, and then
asked for a few moments of privacy so I could familiarize myself with Miles
Brigham IV.

His file was thick. Adam’s people had done
their job well. Adam had investigators on staff whose only job was to gather as
much background as possible on prospective clients. Adam believed that the more
you knew about a person, the better you could represent them.

Brigham’s file went all the way back to
his birth. He was born to mega-wealthy parents, who had also been born to
wealthy parents, and so on and so forth. The Petroleum Company had been in the
family for over a hundred years. Miles IV had inherited it earlier than most of
his predecessors. On the eve of his twenty-fifth birthday, his parents were
both killed in a single engine plane accident. They had been flying out to New
York from Texas for his birthday party. Miles IV was young, but his entire life
had been spent in preparation for the day he would take over the company. He was
what the financial community referred to as a “whiz kid,” taking the profits up
and over where any other oil company had ever gone. There was speculation
amongst Federal Authorities and financial wizards that all of Miles IV’s
business dealings were not exactly legal, but if there were any hard evidence
of that, it was yet to be found.

Miles IV had been married four times. His
most recent ex-wife had only been 22 years old when he married her. She was 23
when she divorced him. What brains the man had for business was lost when it
came to love. At 54 years old, he had given hundreds of millions of dollars of
his and his family’s fortune to ex-wives. His attorneys had always urged him to
get a prenuptial agreement prior to marrying them, as did his children, both of
whom were now grown and rightfully concerned that if their father continued his
liaisons with these types of women, there would be no inheritance left for
them.

Miles began to get into politics about
five years ago. From what I had read thus far, it seemed to me that his choice
was based on a cross between boredom with his everyday activities and needing
more places to put his money in order to keep the IRS from taking huge chunks.

Vick Landon had approached him almost four
years prior after meeting at a democratic rally and spoke to him about the
benefits of investing in the American president. The President was just a
hopeful at the time, but Vick had said that with the right financial backers,
he could go all the way and do great things for this country. Alicia wasn’t
certain if the country was Miles IV’s main concern or not, but it would seem he
decided there was something great enough there for someone that he invested
hundreds of millions of dollars into the president’s campaign. Thanks to that
support, the presidential hopeful was able to put on a campaign that outdid all
of his competition and convince the constituents that he was the right man to
restore financial order to America once again.

Vick shot to the top of political circles
quickly after that. If not for him, the President may have never received
enough funding to get where he was. Miles Brigham IV was always welcome at the
White House, and to the chagrin of some of the President’s close advisers, he
was perhaps more involved in policy making than he should have been.

Adam’s good friend Alex Fritz was a close
friend of Vick’s. They ran in the same circles, and it was through Alex that
Adam had made the contact with Brigham, and our business relationship was born.

As I read through the file, I made note
that Mr. Brigham had also been implicated in many crimes over the years, none
of which amounted to an arrest, much less a conviction. Being accused of things
was one thing – proving it was something else entirely. Miles Brigham IV had
the money and the connections to pay the best lawyers, and in some cases,
evidence and even people just disappeared.

Brigham’s most controversial problem had
taken place almost ten years prior, when his third wife, thirty-two-year-old Kelly
Brigham, a former topless dancer and self-proclaimed cosmetic surgery addict
“fell” off of a cliff while hiking in the hills with her husband. Police and
press were suspicious, due to the facts that for one, Kelly Brigham was not an
outdoorsy type of girl, secondly, many people had overheard her and Miles IV
arguing loudly earlier in the day, and finally, a busboy in the restaurant at
the lodge where the couple had been staying had reportedly overheard Miles IV
telling Kelly that she should “watch herself” because people “disappeared off
the sides of cliffs in this place all the time.”

The problem with their case was: Kelly’s
family, who consisted only of her crack-addict mother and her drug dealer
brother stood in Miles IV’s corner and told all who would listen what an
amazing husband he had been to Kelly and how he had “turned her life around.”
The police suspected a payoff there,
You
think?,
but again, could prove nothing.

The people that had said they heard the
argument in the lobby of the lodge that day either recanted their stories,
saying they “must have been mistaken” or left no forwarding addresses in which
the police and district attorney could track them down. The busboy from the
restaurant was one of the people who had “left town.” No one at the lodge knew
where he may have gone, and the police had been unable to track him down.

I sat the thick file down, yawned, and
stretched out my legs. I poured myself a glass of water from the fresh pitcher
the attendant had left me a bit ago and mulled over what I had just read. The
biggest question on my mind was the one question I would never ask Mr. Brigham.
“Is he a murderer?”

I pictured Miles Brigham IV. I had met him
once and had seen him coming and going many times at the office. He was a tall,
distinguished-looking man. His gray hair was stylishly cut to just above the
collar of his shirts. He rarely wore a suit. Instead, he wore famous brand
shirts and designer jeans. I had not ever really noticed his shoes, but he
struck me as a cowboy boot kind of man. I had a hard time picturing this man
tossing his wife off of a cliff or bludgeoning a man to death. I knew, though,
that looks are very often deceiving and recalled what Adam had said earlier
about it not mattering if he was guilty or not. I knew that. My job was to give
Miles IV the best defense possible. Innocence or guilt was for a jury to
decide, not me.

My plane landed on that thought, and I
filed away my concerns about whether or not Mr. Brigham had killed his wife,
tucking them away for later. When I stepped off the plane, I saw that the great
man himself was waiting to meet me. He stood at the bottom of the steps of the
ramp, his long, black limousine parked alongside him. He smiled a wide,
welcoming smile as I descended.

"Ms. Winston, I presume?" he
asked as he offered a hand to help me down the last few steps. I smiled back
and took his outstretched hand with my free one.

"Yes, Mr. Brigham, thank you."

"We have met before, haven't
we?" He motioned to his driver to retrieve the bag I carried. “I recall
seeing you several times afterwards. I regret that we never had time to get to
know one another."

"Well, I am looking forward to
working with you," I told him as the driver held the door to the car open
for us. "And, thank you for the amazing ride here. That had to be the
smoothest flight I've ever been on."

Brigham laughed and said, "I reckon
I'm a bit spoiled. I can't even remember the last time I flew commercial."

We both slid into the roomy backseat of
the car. Brigham offered to pour me a drink as the driver began the journey. I
wasn't much of a drinker and wanted a clear head for our work this evening so I
declined and accepted a sparkling water, instead.

"So, Mr. Brigham, if you don't mind,
tell me what has happened thus far."

Miles sighed loudly. "This is all so
unnecessary. I have done many things, young lady, but I assure you, murder is
not one of them."

I gave him a reassuring smile and nodded,
but I couldn't help remembering what I had read about his third wife. I shook
that off and said,

"Our goal here, Mr. Brigham, is to
avoid your arrest completely. I need you to tell me anything and everything you
know about Vick and whatever you may know about who or why someone would want
to murder him. I also need to know why the police would think you would be
involved in this."

"Well, for starters, I hated that
little rat bastard. When I feel a certain way about someone, I tell them
straight out. I told him more than once. I'm afraid I told him in front of more
than one person. I think I even used the words once that the little SOB should
be wiped right off the face of the earth."

I winced. We would have to work on the way
he phrased things if this ever went to court.

"I didn't mean that, literally. I
just say things when I get angry, and I don't think about how they sound or
even who may be listening. It's given me cause for the services of many a good
lawyer over the years."

He said the last with a small chuckle as
he drained the contents of his glass. I was not shocked to see him chugging bourbon
so early in the day. His penchant for loose, busty women was no match for his
penchant for alcohol, and the press had played them both up in more ways than
either of them could count. I continued on with my interview,

"Do you mind telling me why you
loathed Vick so much?"

As he poured another snifter of scotch, he
said, “I met Vick when he was nothing but a snot-faced kid with a lot of big
dreams. He was smart, I'll give him that, and I was impressed with the boy's
tenacity. He had gotten a job working on the President's campaign right out of
college. He worked every angle there was to get donors for the campaign,
including me. Did you know that I am the reason he got the job as the campaign
manager? He finagled a promise from the President's right hand man that if he
could get me on board, the job was his."

Miles laughed again, but there was little
humor in it. "He started out trying to work me the way he did everyone
else. He gathered as much background on me and my company as he could, and
tried to work the 'I'll get him to back every law and proposition that you want
passed’ angle. I told him straight out that I had enough money and enough
friends in high places that I tended to get what I wanted, either way.

“Then, the steel-balled little bastard...excuse
my language, I'm not used to speaking with ladies that often. Anyways, he did
something that surprised me. He just came straight out and told me about the
promise he had received to be the President's campaign manager. I was impressed
with that, I have to say. Hell, I was gonna give my money to somebody, right?
Gotta keep those tax write-offs piling up. So, I agreed, Vick got the job, and
the rest as we say, is history."

I waited a moment for him to go on, and
when he didn't, I said, "I'm sorry, Mr. Brigham, but that doesn't really
explain why you hated him."