“You better talk fast.”
I let out a sigh when he buried his face into the crook of my neck. “I really liked the shaggy look on you when we first met.”
His head popped up. “At Stanford?”
“That is where we first met, right?”
“Princess, you and I met even before we got to this place. But yeah, that was where we reunited in this lifetime.”
The butterflies in my belly flapped as they normally did whenever he made some mention of us being “written in the stars” as he put it.
“You liked my hair long?”
I nodded. “I did. I love it short, too, but you were so damn handsome with that long, seventies look. Even though every other guy had the same long hair, you stood out above them all.”
He kissed my bare shoulder before pulling down the strap of the dark blue negligee I wore. He pressed another kiss to my shoulder, and then to my lips, allowing his lips to linger over mine, savoring the moment.
Pulling back, I laid my head against the cool, Egyptian cotton bed sheets. “Did you ever doubt us? Me?”
He paused before looking me in the eye. “Not for a second.”
****
Then
Robert
I strolled into the usual diner where Rick and I met, nodded at the waitress who’d become used to seeing my face—every Wednesday morning at seven a.m. I’d been doing this same routine for the last three months. Meeting with Rick to get what new information he’d been able to uncover. It seemed like every time we parted ways I grew more and more pissed off and tense. Even Deborah was beginning to ask why I was so damn agitated while at home. This shit needed to end soon.
“Look, man,” Rick began as soon as I sat down across from him.
That wasn’t a good sign.
“I told you I hated to be the one to bring you this type of information, but I caught something else.”
“What now?” I questioned, angered already but needing to know what the fuck was going on at Townsend.
“Your father’s into some odd shit.”
I snorted. That news was nothing new.
“I uncovered at least three different houses that he owns under subsidiary companies in the Townsend name.”
“Houses?”
Nodding, Rick slid a folder across the table. That was the signal that he was done talking for the moment and it was my turn to do some viewing or reading. Or in this case, both.
I slid the papers out of the folder to find images of what appeared to be rather unkempt homes. But behind the photos was a stack of papers. The dates on the papers went back years. It looked like a number of different wire transfers, purchases of goods and services. Some I recognized were for Townsend, while some I didn’t recognize at all. There were a number of real estate forms which didn’t make any sense.
“My father has sat on Townsend’s real estate division for years. Why is he acquiring these properties? And what reason on Earth would he have to acquire these run-down homes?”
“Those aren’t for Townsend business. At least, not in the way you’re thinking about it. Those homes,” he motioned his head toward the photos while chewing his steak, swallowed, and said, “are where he conducts the business he’d rather no one found out about.”
Quirking an eyebrow, I redirected my attention at the photos again. “Tell me more,” I demanded, still staring at the images.
I heard Rick’s knife and fork hit the plate, and a rustling of the paper napkin as he presumably wiped his mouth before speaking. “Your father isn’t one hundred percent on the up and up.”
“No one who runs a nearly billion dollar company is,” I retorted.
