LOVING THE HEAD MAN (35 page)

       Sylvia frowned.  “What other part?”

       “Why Dad would keep having me around?  Why he never treated me like anything but the son he loved.  I mean, he loves me more than you do, everybody knows that, and you’re my biological mother.  And I was looking for signs of mistreatment, too.  Boy, did I look. But they were never there.  He just
kept loving
me.  That’s why I always wanted to be around him, and used to beg you to let me live with him after y’all broke up.  Because he loved me so much, and I didn’t want to lose that.”

       “But if you knew,” Sylvia said, “why did you keep trying to get us back together, if you knew Robert wasn’t your real father?”

       “Fear,” Zack said and Robert’s heart went out to him, understanding exactly what he meant.

       But Sylvia didn’t understand it at all.
 
“Fear?” she asked. 
“Fear of what?”

       “Of him not wanting me around anymore, if there was no chance of getting you back.”

       “But,” Sylvia started, still not understanding.  “But that can’t be right.  That can’t be the only reason you wanted us back together.”

       “But it was.  I knew you weren’t good for him. I love you, Mom, but you were terrible for Dad.  I just had to keep him interested in you as his potential wife, so that he could stay interested in me as his potential son. 
Or, at least, stepson if he married you.
  That would at least give me some claim to him.”

       Robert’s heart dropped.  It was all true.  Sylvia admitted it, in a fit of rage, when Zack was only two years old.  The father, according to her, could be anybody.  She was on location in Greece for months, was drunk and doped up most of that time, and she slept around liberally, at least that was how she had put it. 

       Robert walked up to Zack and put his hands on either one of his small shoulders.  “You’re right, Zackary,” he said.  “I’m not your biological father.  But you are my son.  You’re nobody else’s but mine. You understand me?”

       Zack’s heart soared, as tears appeared in his eyes.  “Yes, sir,” he said to the man he loved more than life itself.  And he threw himself in his father’s arms.

       Robert wrapped his arms around Zack.  This was his boy, his only child, even though they shared no blood kinship.  But this was his child and would always be his child.  He looked at Sylvia.  And he could see the regret, the pain of her trail of bad decisions, deep within her eyes.  She wanted him to hold her. Her eyes were begging him to hold her.  But Robert, instead, took his son and walked back out of the kitchen door.

Three hours later, after lunch, and Robert was in that same kitchen washing dishes, when Zack yelled: “Dad, come here!”

       “What is it, Zack?” Robert asked, relieved that Sylvia and her drama had packed up and left, and not interested in any more.

       “Just get in here,” Zack replied.  “It’s about you.”

       Robert frowned, set the plate he was washing in the drain, and walked into his living room, drying his hands on a towel as he came.  “About me?” he asked.

       “Yeah,” Zack said, staring at the TV.  Robert walked up to the back of the sofa where Zack sat, and stared at the TV, too.

       It was an apparent press conference and Bree, to Robert’s surprised, was there.  Also present was Lee Clayton, Alan DeFrame, and Deidra Dentry.  “What’s this about?” he asked.

       “Has to be about you,” Zack said.  “Or Alan and that Deidra woman wouldn’t be there.  And hey Dad, that’s probably why Lee Clayton was helping Bree.  He was helping her to clear your name.”

       Robert stared at Bree, at the most gorgeous woman in the world to him.
 
His love for her couldn’t possibly be any stronger. 

       “My client has a brief statement,” Alan stood behind the podium and said.  “After which there will be no questions or no further comments on this matter.”  Then he stepped aside and allowed Deidra to step forward.

       “I just want to say,” she read from her prepared remarks, “that I have decided to drop my lawsuit against Robert Colgate.”  The camera clicks went wild.  She hesitated, glanced at Bree, but continued.  “After searching my conscience and reviewing in my mind the events of the past months, I reached the conclusion that I have made a dreadful mistake.  Mr. Colgate wasn’t the man who was harassing me.  In fact, no one at Colgate and Associates was harassing me.  It was just a terrible misunderstanding on my part.  I therefore contacted his attorneys,” she looked back at Bree and Lee, neither of which were Robert’s attorneys of record, “and we all agreed that I should come forward with the truth.  So therefore I wish to cancel any lawsuit and to apologize to Mr. Colgate and his family for all of the pain that my allegations had undoubtedly caused them. 
Thank-you.”

       And she and Alan, and Bree and Lee walked off of the stage united. 

       Zack looked back at his father.  “Wow,” he said.  “You think Bree orchestrated that?”

       Robert smiled.  “It would be just like her,” he said with a grin.
 
Wow, he thought, was right.

***

The revolving doors of Colgate and Associates revolved to the entrance as Robert entered the lobby and headed for the elevators.  It had been over two months since he last stepped foot in his building, and he felt like he was coming back home.  Monty had met the company plane and entered the building with him.
  
The two men made their way to the tower.

      
But first Robert stopped the elevator on the twenty-first floor, stepped off, told Monty he’d see him in a few, and made his way to Brianna’s office.

       Her secretary, stunned to see Robert, nearly swallowed her chewing gum.
 
And then she stood to her feet.

      
“Mr. Colgate,” she said.

      
“Hello, Alice,” he said without breaking his stride.
 
“Miss Hudson in?”

      
“No, sir,” Alice said to Robert’s disappointment.
 
He had wanted to surprise her.

      
He stopped walking.
 

      
“At least not in her office.
 
She’s Mr. Dougan’s office up in the tower, from what I understand, sir.”

      
Robert hesitated.
 
Dougan.
 
It figures, he thought.
 
“Thanks, Alice,” he said, and then headed in Dougan’s direction.

      
Bree was already there.
 
Being drilled, schooled, scolded, all of the above, by Matt and Wade Furst.

      
“It’s bad enough,” Matt said, “to not even know that you had even met with my client’s accusers, but to then hold a joint press conference with them and not even bother to mention it to me?
 
The attorney of record?
 
It’s downright criminal, I tell you!”

      
“And you’re the one who fired Pru Cameron for insubordination,” Wade reminded her.
 
“Yet nothing Pru has ever done could ever match your little stunt.”

      
“And that’s exactly what it is,” Matt added.
 
“A stunt.
 
Where the hell do you get off?” he wanted to know.

      
His office door opened and Robert, with Matt’s secretary behind him trying to give Matt warning, walked in.
 

      
Matt and Wade both flew to their feet.
 
Bree, who was already standing, smiled.

      
“Well, hello there,” she said.

      
“May I join the inquisition?” Robert asked, smiling too.

      
Bree laughed.

      
“It’s hardly funny, Bobby,” Matt said.
 
“And what are you doing here?
 
We weren’t expecting you back for another week.
 
But I guess that’s another thing Bree failed to mention.”

      
“Bree didn’t know herself,” Robert said.
 
He wanted to pull her in his arms, but knew such a display of affection would do her no favors in this room.
 
But he did give her a good look over.
  
“What’s going on here?” he asked her.

      
“You said it right,” Bree said.
 
“An inquisition.”

      
“That’s not fair,” Matt said, “and you know it.
 
Did you know about this, Bobby?
 
This joint press conference she held?”

      
“No, I didn’t.
 
I was washing dishes, minding my own business, when my son called me to the television.”

      
“Did Zack come with you?”
 
Bree wanted to know.

      
“No.
 
I told him we should be back sometime tomorrow.”

      
Bree smiled.
 
“Good.”

      
“I thought we’d first go pick up your younger siblings, let them join us for a few days in Laramie.”

      
“Oh, Robert, that would be great!”

      
He also had to tell her about the fact that Zack wasn’t his biological son, and how Zack’s knowledge of it didn’t change their close father/son relationship one iota, and he didn’t want her knowledge of it to change anything either.
 
But that would be a very private conversation.
 

      
“So you didn’t know, either,” Matt said.
 
“You were as shocked as the rest of us.
 
What the hell is going on here, Bobby?
 
I didn’t give Hudson
nor
Lee Clayton any right to represent you at any meeting!  Let alone calling some joint press conference.
 
What the hell kind of mutiny is this?”

       “Keep your shirt on, Matt, it’s over with,” Robert said.

       “But where does she get off?”

       “She gets off with me,” Robert said.  “That’s where she gets off.  Anything that concerns me is her business and her purview.  She was just exercising her right.”

       Matt exhaled.  “It’s a damnable
thing,
I’ll tell you that, Bobby. 
A damnable thing.”