LOVING THE HEAD MAN (34 page)

       Bree looked at Deidra as if she had lost her mind.  “
I’s
sorry
?  What the hell kind of English is that?”

       “My schedule is tight, ladies,” Alan said.  “Let’s get on with it, shall we?”

       “Yes, lets,” Alan said.  “My schedule is tight also.  So again, Bree, what’s this grand deal you’re here to offer us?”

       “Drop this idiotic lawsuit, or prepare for the onslaught.”

       Alan frowned.  “What onslaught?”

       “We will make public every family secret the Dentry family has held from generations back, and we will do so repeatedly.”

       Deidra smiled.  “What are you talking about? What family secrets?”

       “Oh, we’ve got a ton.  From illegitimate black babies, to alcoholism, insanity, assaults, rapes, and, as for that wonderful former Supreme Court Justice granddaddy of yours, the second family in Virginia and the physical abuse of the first family.”

       Deidra’s’ smile was now gone.  She stared at Bree.  “How did you. . . How could you know . . .”
  She
looked at Alan.

       Alan, at first, had planned to dismiss such talk.  Go public all you want, he had planned to say.  But that look on Deidra’s face stopped him cold.

       “And we won’t stop there,” Lee said.  “Because there is that matter of an abortion, by you, Miss Dentry, because the father, to our shock, happens to be your father’s best friend.”

       Deidra touched Alan’s shirtsleeve, her face unable to conceal her growing terror.  Alan looked at Deidra.

       “It’s nothing but talk,” he said to her, confused by her reaction.  “I can’t, we can’t--”

       “Yes, we can allow it,” Alan assured her. “It’s just a bunch of smoke and mirrors anyway, a bunch of innuendo and gossip and a lot of nothing in the end.  Let’em
go
public.  Who cares?”

       “No!” Deidra shouted.  “It’ll destroy my mother, my family. No!”  She looked at Bree.  “You will not publish any of that craziness, I mean none of it.”

       “Drop your lawsuit, apology to Mr. Colgate,
admit
you lied and lied repeatedly on him, and you have nothing to worry about.  But if you choose to fight, if you chose to continue this nonsense, then fine.  Continue it.  Fight on.  But rest assured we will be fighting back and fighting back with everything we can find, every nasty little rumor we can dig up.  Because if you think for a second, Deidra, that I’ll sit back and let you destroy the reputation of the most honest, the most forthright man I have ever met, then you are monumentally misinformed.” 

       Deidra stared at Bree with such fire in her eyes that Bree wondered if she would singe herself.  Then she stood and left the room.  Alan stood too, still confused, and followed her, telling them to hold on a moment as he went.

       When t he door closed, Lee smiled.  “It worked,” he said.  “I can’t believe it worked.”

       “I told you it would,” Bree said.  “Deidra is the most prideful woman in the world.  If these rumors or whatever you want to call them, become public knowledge, because water cooler conversations, she would be doomed.  And so would that Dentry legacy they have always worked so hard to achieve.”

       “Then why in hell did she bring this lawsuit to begin with?”

       Bree smiled.  “Pure vengeance,” she said.  “She lost the spot and therefore the man who selected Pru Cameron instead of her must be punished.  It’s a family tradition with the Dentrys.  That’s what my research found, and I was amazed at how obvious the pattern was.”

       “And so she goes to Alan, who had gotten fired--”

       “And who had undoubtedly promised her the position for sleeping with him,” Bree added, “yes, she went to Alan.”

       “And Alan wouldn’t mind a little revenge of his own for Colgate firing him.”

       “Exactly,” Bree said.  “It was payback for both of them.  And payback is a bitch, it really is, but it’s a bitch that bites both ways.”

       Lee smiled, and then laughed.  “If I get in trouble,” he said, “I want you as my attorney.”

       Bree laughed.  As she did, however, the door opened again, and Alan reemerged, only this time he was alone.

       He stood at the table in front of them.  “Against my advice, completely against it, my client has decided to agree to your terms.”

       Bree’s heart soared.

       “But as for me,” Alan said, “I’ll keep that story as alive as if it was the very air people
breathe
.  Robert Colgate will never be free of those allegations.”

      
“Even though they’re a pack of lies?”
Bree asked.

       “Especially so,” Alan, true to himself through and through, said.

       Bree nodded.  “Okay,” she said, reached into her briefcase, pulled out her small recorder, and pressed play.

         “
You know why,”
Alan was recorded saying
, “
because
, contrary to what you may think, Mr. Colgate has put me solely in charge of the selection process.  It’s one hundred percent my decision.  However, I will decide in your favor, Bree, and decide without hesitation, if you give me what I want.”

       “And what exactly is that?”
Bree was recorded asking.

       “Ah come on, Brianna!  The airhead act doesn’t do you justice and I’m way too smart to fall for it.  You know what I want.  You know I’ve wanted it since the moment I laid eyes on you.  I want to fuck you,
that’s
what I want.”

       “
Isn’t
Pru and Deidra and those other pretty Prada girls giving you that already?”

       “Pru, are you kidding?  Who the hell wants that prudish bitch?”

      
“Deidra then, surely.”

       “Oh, yes, Deidra is available to me anytime I want her.  Only that kind of easy lay takes the excitement out of it, know what I’m saying?  So forget about her.  If you give me what I want, you’re in.  No ands, ifs or buts about it.  You’re in.”

       “I want in,”
Bree was recorded saying
, “but never like that.”

      
Bree pressed the stop button and looked at Alan.  He stared at her, his smug arrogance now replaced with uncertain fear.

       “What do you want us to do?” he asked.

NINETEEN

Zack came into the kitchen to find his mother staring out of the window.  Her bags were packed and ready to go.  She, in fact, would have left last night but she hoped to give it another try with Robert after Bree left town.  She even crept to his bedroom naked late that night, hoping to surprise him enough that he’d forget Bree and give her some.  But he had locked his bedroom door.

       Zack had heard her crept, too, and
  had
heard her bang on his father’s bedroom door in anger when she realized it was locked, and then she gave up and went to bed.  It was a painful night, Zack recalled.  And the pain continued when he glanced out of the kitchen window and saw his father working out on a bench press in shorts and a sleeveless shirt, and realized that was who his mother was standing there staring at, he sighed. 
And in sighing, got his mother’s attention.

       “Where were you all morning?” she asked him.

       “Running some errands for Dad,” he replied.  “He’s back there, right?’ he asked, as if he didn’t know already.

       “Yes,’ Sylvia said, turning back to look out of the window, “looking as fit as ever.  It’s amazing that a man like him had a high attack two months ago.”  Especially yesterday, she thought inwardly, with that workout he put on that Brianna person. 

       “Yeah,” Zack said, walking up to the window and looking out too.  “I’m built nothing like him.”

       Sylvia glanced at her son, and then back at Robert.  “No.”

       “It’s probably only natural though,” Zack said. 
“Since he’s not my father.”

       Sylvia stopped cold, and then turned at looked at Zack.  “What did you say?” she asked him, her face a mask of anguish.

       “I’ve known for years,” Zack said, still staring at Robert working out.  “He’s not my father.”  Then he looked at Sylvia.  “Is he?”

       Sylvia, looking stricken, hurried to the door and yelled for Robert.  “Robert, please come,” she yelled.  “Please come now!”

       Robert, not used to Sylvia showing that kind of emotion, hurried from his bench press and ran across the back patio and into the house.  When he arrived in the kitchen, his face drenched in the sweat that his best workout in months created, he saw Sylvia standing beside Zack.

       “What is it, what’s wrong?” he asked.  But Sylvia was staring at Zack, and Zack was staring at her. 

       “How did you know?” she asked Zack.

        “It bothered me for years, but I didn’t know how to ask.  So I just kept looking.  You’d drop hints every now and then, but that wasn’t what did it for me, not really.”

       “What did it for you then?”

      
“A gut feeling.
  I just knew he wasn’t my biological father, I just knew it.  We were nothing alike.  We looked nothing alike.  I just knew it.  But I couldn’t figure out the other part.”