Being at the courthouse by eight was no problem.She and the two men who were going to be on her side would make things all right for her.If they didn’t, then it would be something that she would have to make a decision on.Walking away didn’t seem as daunting as it might have been a few weeksago when her father was sucking up to her and being nice.
~*~
Devlin hadn’t been given a copy of the will until he showed up.After reading it over, really just skimming it, he knew that Sen was going to be walking away from billions of dollars.It was a shame too.But there were too many stipulations in the will for her to follow that would have her giving up her freedom by a great deal and having to deal with a company that nearly ran itself.But he knew that his newest sister-in-law valued her freedom as much as he did.When the attorneys from the law firm showed up, he had a feeling that they were just as much of a bully as their client had been when he was alive.
It took them another half an hour to get down to business.He had no idea what the holdup was, but kept his mouth shut.He noticed, too, that Ivan and Sen had also decided to let them do what they wanted, and it wasn’t until she was handed the will that she turned it over to him.Her copy would be the same as his, and he was going to recommend that she not take the deal that was keeping her from having a life.
“Mr.Ranger’s death had put us in a bind.”He didn’t expect that, so he sat up straighter in his chair to hear what the problem was.“If you don’t mind me saying so, I do hope that we can get this resolved as soon as possible.To have Mr.Ranger off our books is going to be a godsend.He wasn’t a man that I would normally do business with.”
“I didn’t much care for him either.”Sen stood up and got herself a bottle of juice that was in the center of the table before sitting down again.“What do I have to do to get the money?And just so you know, that’s all I’m here for.To see how much money I’m supposed to get and what his stipulations are for me getting it.I’m not opposed to walking away from it all if there is too much in his favor.He’s dead now, and I’m in charge.”
The first attorney smiled but covered it with a cough.“Yes, well, he had a lot of stipulations about the money, but there are loopholes in your favor.Two of the stipulations have been taken care of in that you showed up today on time and that you brought an attorney with you.He figured that you’d just show up on your own, and that would be the end of the will reading.I don’t know why he thought that you worked in a good law office, and I would imagine that they told you what to do.”
“I’m a smart woman, and no one has to tell me what to do.In that, you tell me the terms, and I’ll tell you mine.”He nodded and smiled bigger this time.“How much is the estate worth?”
“Ninety-eight billion dollars with all the lands and properties that he owned.The biggest chunk of it is in the business that he wants you to run.I’m assuming by the way his death was so sudden that he didn’t get to tell you what he wanted you to do.”Sen said that he’d not and handed the copy of the death certificate over to the first man.“I see that you’ve come prepared.I like that.Some of the things that Mr.Ranger said about you led us to believe that you were a simpleton simply because you’re a woman.After doing research on you, we’ve found that to be untrue.Let me tell you what has to be done so that you can walk away from here with the biggest payoff that we’ve ever had at this office.”
Devlin was impressed with the will once he was able to read it over word by word and how many places it was in favor of Sen.The attorneys had to do that because he didn’t see Howard putting in the kind of terms that would favor Sen.As it stood right now, she only had to run the company on her own for a year and show profit the first quarter and she’d be free to sell it or hire someone else to take over.Also, she wasn’t to be married, but that was taken care of because she’d been married before Howard died, and that nullified and voided that part of the terms.There were other things like that in the will, and each time they came to one of the terms that didn’t have Sen getting the money, there was a term in there for her to have it voided.The only thing that they couldn’t take care of was the house that she was to live in while running the company.
“You don’t have to live there if you and your husband already have an estate that is larger than the one that he expected you to live in.And from what we were able to gather, you don’t.The way you can fix that is to add onto your home or increase the value by ten percent, then it’s all yours.Can you do that?”She asked how she was supposed to do that.“If you pay off the house, that would do the samething.Can you afford that?”
“I can.I’d rather not, but if that’s all it takes, then we can do that.”She cleared her throat and asked her question.“Why couldn’t I be married, and what does that have to do with Ivan and me being married already?”
“It stipulates that a husband would want you to be at home and have babies, something that he didn’t care for you to do.However, since you were married before he died and didn’t tell you the stipulation of the will, then that’s all gone.He knew you were married and didn’t take it into consideration that you were to divorce him before he died.Knowing the man the way that I do, I’m sure that he would have gotten around to it sooner rather than later.”
“He was a tyrant.”No one agreed nor disagreed with her.“I’m willing to work for the company for a year.After that, I’m going to decide what to do with the rest of it.I might sell it.”
“He puts in there that you can’t, but once you work your year then you’ve taken care of all his terms.”She asked him what he meant.“It means that once you work the year, the terms of the will have been met and you are free to do what you want with it.With all of it.”
“That’s all I have to do is work for a year at a business that I don’t understand.”He said that there would be people around to help her.“I should hope so.I’ve never run a business in my life.And that’s all I have to do is show a profit in the first quarter and work out the year, and then I get all the money?I know that sounds greedy, but he was a right bastard in his last days, and I should get something to compensate me for having to put up with him.”
“You should have been in our shoes, is all I can tell you.”She told them that she was sorry, and Devlin agreed with her.After going over the paperwork, she was to get a good deal of money from the estate to keep her in pretty things.While he didn’t know what that meant, he had a feeling that it was bribery on his part to make her feel like she was getting something for nothing.Since the business was doing so well right now, he didn’t see any problem with her making a profit during the first quarter.It sounded to him like the attorneys for the will had taken some liberties with the will to help Sen out.He might well have done the same thing, knowing the way that Howard had treated everyone that he came in contact with.
Devlin made notes on what the paperwork meant to Sen and Ivan.He could see that there were places that were going to be hers that came with the estate, and he was thinking that Sen and Ivan would never need money again.Not even if they both lived to be a hundred years old, they’d never be able to spend the money that was coming to them, not to mention the money from the estate of her aunt and uncle.
It took them the next three hours to get things in order.Sen would start working as soon as she gave her two weeks’ notice at the clerk’s office, and that would start her working for the firm.She said that she was going to ask Brandy for help too, and he thought that would be the smartest move she’d ever made.There was no telling how many enemies she was going to run into at the firm simply because Howard had been such a bastard, but she’d have at least someone on her side and be able to do what needed to be done.
They were provided lunch when it was time, and he enjoyed talking to the other attorneys.Devlin might well have enjoyed working for them had he been looking for a job that would keep him out of working for Brandy and Lica.He thought that they’d done a good job of helping Sen out, and they seemed to not care at all if there was going to be a fallback on the will.So far, it had worked out in her favor, and he was glad that his first impression wasn’t right.She was going to be a multibillionaire, and he had no doubt that she’d be just as generous with her money as Brandy was with hers.
Sen seemed to be asking the right questions.The only thing that concerned him was the house.Paying it off would make it have more equity, but would it be enough?The house that Howard had lived in was just over ten thousand square feet, and the one that Sen and Ivan lived in was just over eight.Maybe if they added a deck to the back of it, maybe that would be enough, as long as it was enclosed.He could see that working.
After the meeting was over and Sen had all her paperwork, the people from the firm congratulatedher on getting the money.They seemed to act like they wanted her to have the money from the very beginning, and that had worked out in her favor.If not, if Sen had decided to walk away, then the firm would have had to manage the business and the charities that had been named until the money ran out.That would have taken centuries for it to happen, and he could understand why they were working so hard to have Sen get the vast estate.He hoped that someday, if something like this came up, he’d be as slick as the other attorneys had been in getting things squared away for the client, rather than just for the man making out the will.Howard might have been a shrewd businessman, but he was a bastard, too.
He was glad that Sen was able to walk away with one hundred percent of the business shares and a check for another billion.She was going to use that to pay off the house and do what he said, put a large screened-in back deck that would surround the pool and make a nice addition to the house they were already living in.
He was sort of jealous of them for having the funds to do whatever they wanted when it came to their home.Not that he couldn’t afford to do things to his own place when he got one, but right now he was living in a two-bedroom house that he wished he’d never purchased.
When he’d been given the money from Brandy to buy him a house, he’d been excited to own something that wasn’t a condo.He’d not liked living in the condo because it was too close to everyone else.Not that he had anything against children, but they could be loud during the day when he was trying to work from home.He didn’t have that at the house he had bought, but lawn mowers were going all the time, which annoyed him somewhat.Needing to get away from his home, he stopped off to get himself some supper on the way back to his place.
His house did have a nice office that he’d been using.Brandy had provided him with the money to get himself a good computer system set up so that he could work for her.There had also been filing cabinets—he was a man who liked hard copies of the things that he did, as well as a fax machine and copier.The problem was that he didn’t have it set up in a way that he liked either.It didn’t flow.
He’d been in Sen and Ivan’s home.It looked as if they had lived there for decades instead of just a month that they had been there.There were so many homey touches that he loved going there just to sit on their couches and close his eyes.He also loved the way the dining room was so big looking because the doors that were to open up to the deck seemed to bring the indoors out into the deck.That’s why he thought making their deck bigger and screened in would make their dining room ten times larger than it looked.
He had a list of things that he wanted in a house, thanks to his brothers all finding their own, and he took notes on what they had.First and foremost, he wanted a nice-sized deck so they could all sit out on it in the evenings and talk.He thought it would also be nice to have it screened in, too, so that he could enjoy it in the earlier months of the year as well as deep into fall.Yes, he wanted a deck; he thought and was going to be the uncle with the best stuff for the kids when they started coming along.
Chapter 2
Lisa wasn’t sure what to think about her new boss; he’d only taken over the management the week before.He seemed to be all right, but there was something about him that had her thinking that he was just one short fuse from blowing up.He was forever counting to ten and sometimes beyond to cool himself down.She just waited for him to cool off before she spoke to him again.Or like this time, she’d just walk away.She didn’t need the drama.
