WORTHY, Part 3 (The Worthy Series) Read online

  “Of course,” Milo said quickly. “Anything you want. Felix has given me all of the appropriate documents. You just have to tell me what, where, and when, and I’ll make it all happen.”

  “Thank you,” I said, looking at the lawyer appraisingly. He was going to be a valuable asset to me, if that was true. I didn’t want to get bogged down in the legal soup. That wouldn’t be something April Smith would do. “So, what kinds of cases has the firm taken on lately?”

  Felix launched into a description of everything that had been opened recently, and I took the opportunity to observe my surroundings surreptitiously. The boardroom was very nice — a long, dark, wooden table with a polished, satiny finish was the centerpiece, with several comfortable leather chairs circling it. The lighting was very flattering — not that I had to be concerned about that kind of thing anymore — and a row of windows looked out onto an expanse of workers. Most of them kept stealing curious stares into the room, probably wondering just what my purpose was there. I didn’t look like either of my parents anymore. I was a stranger to them, April Smith, there to shake things up.

  “Do you have a pet project in mind, April?” Felix asked after he’d given me the rundown.

  I hoped my smile wasn’t too unnerving. “I do, in fact.”

  “Do tell.” The old man uncapped a pen and held it over his pad of paper.

  “Wharton Group.”

  My smile faded a little when I didn’t see Felix’s pen scratching away. I looked up at his face, which was a mask of disbelief.

  “What did Wharton Group do?” he asked, nonplussed.

  Ruined my life, I could’ve said. It robbed me of my happiness, very nearly of my sanity, and it plunged me into a state of despair. Wharton Group had been the start and finish of everything. Jonathan’s feeling like he needed to lead his family’s company had dragged us to Chicago in the first place. His continuing desire to prove himself as the CEO had taken him from me on our wedding night. How was I supposed to sit there and take it? Wharton Group had to go.

  “Felix, I’m going to say something, and I hope you won’t get offended,” I said, studying my hands before looking back at his wrinkled old face.

  “I’m very hard to offend, April.”

  “I know that you have been in charge of the firm — in an interim capacity — ever since my parents died. But now I’m the CEO.”

  He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down, and there was a part of me that regretted whatever feeling I had inspired inside of him, the one he was trying so hard to hide. Was it contempt? Fear? Dread?

  But the rest of me celebrated. This was April Smith now, and she got what she wanted and did what she wanted. If April Smith desired a course of action, everyone around her was going to make that happen for her.

  God, it was empowering to slip into this persona, to stop being myself, to turn my back on the hurt and assume this new life.

  “I want a full investigation into Wharton Group,” I said, speaking calmly and clearly. “If there has been any fraud, any waste, any misdoing, any tax law flubbed, I want a report of it. Does that make sense?”

  “Yes, of course,” Felix said, still looking at me with that strange expression on his face.

  “Is that going to be easy to remember?” I asked. “Are you sure you don’t want to write anything down?”

  “I think I will definitely remember that you want a full investigation into Wharton Group,” Felix said, his face a careful mask. “It’s just going to take some time. It’s a big company, spread out across the world.”

  “I know it is,” I said. “That’s why we’re going to devote all of our time and resources to this one.”

  I had both men gaping at me now, but it was my prerogative to remain unflustered, to keep plunging forward.

  “Did I mumble?” I asked sweetly.

  “We’re working a lot of cases right now,” Felix said. “A lot of worthy causes being championed right now.”

  “Are you implying that the Wharton Group investigation is not a worthy cause?”

  “It’s just that we have no proof that there has been any wrongdoing,” Felix said, his face breaking out into a very noticeable sweat.

  “Yet.” I smiled, spreading my fingers out across the surface of the table. My manicure looked very fierce — fire engine red nails. “We don’t have any proof of wrongdoing yet. I’m sure we’ll turn something up, given all the assets we command.”

  Felix stuck a finger under his collar and tried to loosen it, to pull the constricting garment away from his neck, to give himself some room to breathe.

  “Can I make one request?” the old man asked.

  “Of course,” I said. “I hope you always feel that you can come to me for anything. My door here will always be open, so to speak.”

  “Can we finish the cases that are open now before devoting everything to the Wharton Group investigation?” Felix pleaded. “There are a lot of people who stand to be helped right now with what we have going on.”

  I paused for a moment to consider. What would April Smith do? She would want to go after the Wharton Group with everything at her disposal. But Michelle Wharton wouldn’t let her. Michelle Wharton didn’t want anything else to have to suffer because of the Whartons.

  “Fine,” I said. “But the moment cases move from being open to being closed, those resources — staff, time, funding — then belong to the Wharton Group investigation.”

  “All right,” Felix said, his Adam’s apple bobbing again in what I hoped was a gulp of relief and not an effort to swallow any words he was afraid to say.

  “I have a request,” Milo said, and I turned my attentions back to the lawyer with my eyebrows raised.

  “Yes?”

  “I’d like to spearhead your Wharton Group investigation,” he said.

  “You what?” Felix spluttered, looking as surprised as I felt. “I think you have enough to do with the Smith estate.”

  “It’s just settling some things, that’s all,” Milo said dismissively. “I’d like to devote my attentions to a worthy cause, and I think the Wharton Group thing is it.”

  “I think that’s a wonderful idea,” I said, my brain working in overdrive. Yes, this was becoming a very, very wonderful idea. I’d have my own go-to lawyer on point with this case, someone I knew was attracted to me. Then, to twist the knife a little deeper in Jonathan’s side, I’d become intimate with Milo. It was the most logical step I could take, I thought. I was interested in the lawyer. I wasn’t about to lie about it.

  And besides. If Jonathan was getting his jollies with Violet, I felt like I had a free pass with Milo. I’d never slept with Brock, no matter what the photos indicated, no matter what anyone said or believed.

  If Jonathan had been hurt by something that had never happened, it made me smile to think of what kind of devastation he’d face if I consciously slept with another man.

  “In fact, I think we should meet over dinner tonight to formulate our plan of attack,” I said, staring at Milo.

  “Plan of attack?” Felix yelped. “I thought this was an investigation.”

  “It’s just an expression,” I laughed. “You’re as cagey as ever, aren’t you?”

  “That’s how people as old as him stay alive and kicking,” Milo joked. “Isn’t that right, Felix?”

  The old man looked like he’d eaten something sour, but he didn’t rise to the lawyer’s bait.

  “Anything else?” I asked. “Or can we get on to that dinner, Mr. Singh?”

  “Please, it’s Milo,” he said. “And I’d love to go to dinner.”

  “It’s only 4:30,” Felix remarked, scowling.

  “It’s a working dinner,” I reminded him. “And besides. We’ll beat the rush.”

  “Are you in the mood for anything in particular?” Milo asked as we walked out of the boardroom, leaving Felix behind to mope and scowl at the walls.

  “I am in the mood for several things,” I said suggestively, aware of just how thro
aty my voice had become. I could really play it up if I wanted to. “But as for food, it’s up to you.”

  Milo looked at me for several long moments, the corners of his lips quirking up in a small smile, before he cleared his throat.

  “I would love to take you to one of my favorite places in the city,” he said. “Are you ready to go?”

  I glanced at the corner suite that was to be my office. I hadn’t even entered it at all today, instead touring the building, talking to my employees, and holing up in the boardroom to be glowered at by Felix.

  “Yes,” I said, turning my back on the office. There was always tomorrow to visit it and see what I needed. Right now, business required me to go elsewhere. Very pressing business.

  “Your car or mine?” Milo asked.

  “Yours,” I purred. “I cab it.” Living in Chicago, there were very few reasons to keep a car. The last thing I wanted to be doing was worrying about parking and driving in the city streets.

  “Perfect,” he said. “I was about to suggest it. I love driving.”

  “I love that you love that,” I said, laughing. The lawyer was as cute as a button, and he was proving himself useful in more ways than I imagined. A sexy chauffeur, a red tape cutter, a minion to do my bidding at the firm, and a bed warmer? Things were really looking up.

  Milo’s car told me just how well he was doing for himself: extremely. It was a red Audi convertible with all the bells and whistles, and it was exciting to even sit in.

  “Where are you going to take me?” I asked, looking over at Milo, who seemed at home behind the wheel, his hand caressing the stick shift suggestively. I had several ideas of where I wanted to go and hoped he was getting the picture, too, as I uncrossed my legs and crossed them again so that my stiletto pointed in his direction as it dangled off my bare foot.

  I never wore pantyhose. They were much too constricting, especially for business transactions like this.

  “Anywhere you want to go,” he said, his beautiful eyes lingering on the arch of my foot. “But for right now, the best Indian food in all of Chicago. Almost as good as what Mama used to make.”

  “You’re Indian,” I said, intrigued.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Milo said, starting the car with a roar of its powerful engines. “Born here, though. The parents came over here after they first got married to study to be doctors. They stayed until I was eighteen, but then went back to the homeland to spread the wealth of their knowledge over there.”

  “That’s very charitable,” I said, clenching my jaw as Milo zoomed out of the parking garage with a screech of the tires. A car like this deserved to be driven to the edge of its abilities, but that didn’t mean that I had to be comfortable with it — not with my history with cars. I didn’t want the metal death traps to try to take my life for a third time.

  “My parents are good people,” Milo said. “I try to talk to them every week. They wanted me to — well, they wanted lots of things — but most of all they wanted me to become a doctor and rejoin them in India.”

  “I notice that you’re not a doctor,” I remarked, trying to keep my diction easy as he gunned it through a yellow light at an intersection before a bridge. The Chicago River was as green as always as it blurred by.

  “I’m super squeamish, it turns out,” Milo said. “Took an anatomy class in high school and fainted dead away when we got to piglets.”

  I shuddered. I didn’t think I’d be any better at sinking a scalpel through any kind of flesh.

  “Maybe this isn’t the best conversation to be having before dinner,” he observed, glancing over at my shiver.

  “I don’t mind,” I lied. “So, were your parents disappointed?”

  “They were happy as long as I did something worthwhile as my career,” he said. “Lawyer wasn’t ideal for them, but I’m good at it, and it pays the bills.”

  “It certainly does,” I said, rubbing my fingers over the supple leather of the driver’s seat, tantalizingly close to Milo’s ear. He didn’t say anything, but his ever-present smile got even wider.

  “What I miss most about them is home cooking,” he said. “It’s so hard to find authentic Indian food done right, but this place really delivers. It’s my little secret.”

  We found some street parking, and I raised my eyebrows. This place certainly was a secret. I hadn’t even ever been in this part of Chicago before. When I’d been running around as a Wharton, I’d been dragged to only the best and most exclusive eateries. At first glance, Milo’s Indian restaurant didn’t look like much. The building was dilapidated from the outside with a flickering neon light displaying the name: Ganesh. A jolly-looking statue of a deity with an elephant trunk beckoned us inside.

  “This is … charming,” I tried, taking Milo’s arm to steady myself on the cracked and broken sidewalk beneath my heels.

  “Yeah, yeah,” he laughed, patting my hand. “I know it looks a little rough. You just wait until you taste it. Everything is delicious.”

  “Do you think your car will be all right?” I asked, glancing around. We were getting quite a few looks — some high rollers in the wrong part of town.

  “I come here at least once a week,” he said. “I’m a regular. The car will be just fine — let me worry about that. You just worry about what you’re going to get.”

  “I’m not a picky eater,” I said, stepping into the restaurant as Milo held the door open for me. “In fact, I’m quite adventurous.”

  Being an adventurous eater was the only way to survive in the woods. Especially the first winter I weathered, I had considered the serious possibility that I might have to eat insects — if I could dig any up in the freezing temperatures. Being alone for so long had forced me to experiment constantly with my food as both a means of entertainment and a way to keep from being bored at meals.

  Those days seemed like they had happened a million years ago. Now I had so many choices that I sometimes didn’t eat anything simply because I couldn’t pick a restaurant.

  Most times, though, I didn’t eat because I couldn’t stand the thought of putting anything in my stomach. It was so empty.

  “We can go somewhere else, if you don’t like the looks of it,” Milo said softly. I jumped, not realizing how long I’d been standing there, staring off into space. I needed April right now, not Michelle. I needed to remember my mission — to develop Milo into a powerful ally.

  “Absolutely not,” I said. “I was just standing here, entranced by the delicious smells wafting from the kitchen.”

  It was a lie, but the moment I uttered it, I realized that the restaurant did smell wonderful. My belly gave a tentative rumble. I’d breakfasted on vodka that morning, unable to stomach anything else, so I took it as a positive sign that I’d be able to take a few bites of something at dinner.

  “Right this way,” Milo said, directing me with a light touch on the small of my back. The touch made me inhale, and I leaned back a little bit to get even more contact. He seemed strong, and I wondered just what was hidden beneath his tailored suit.

  We sat at a table toward the back and picked up a couple of menus tucked behind the napkin dispenser. I opened mine up and blinked a couple of times, realizing I’d never had Indian food.

  “What’s good here?” I asked, my eyes roving over the exotic names and impossible pronunciations.

  “Everything,” Milo said, watching my reaction. “I know people say that all the time, and it’s kind of a cop out, but I have literally never been disappointed by a dish I got here. What’s your favorite Indian dish?”

  I bit my lip and let my eyes slowly move up from his chest to his face. “Right now, it’s you,” I said, letting the words and their meaning hang in the air. “I’ve never had Indian … food.”

  Damn. April was really, really good at flirting. I surprised even myself as Milo grinned. Maybe it was all those romance novels I’d read during my time at the cottage coming through for me right now.

  “Well, I hope to remedy this situation immed
iately,” Milo said. “Is there anything you absolutely don’t like? Any food allergies?”

  I shook my head. “I’ve never come across something I didn’t like. I’m not picky.”

  “You look like you’re picky,” he said, eyeing me. “Looks like you’re extremely choosy about the things you put in your mouth.”

  Oh, my. Milo could flirt, too.

  I lowered my eyes and hoped I wasn’t blushing too noticeably when I stumbled upon a strange dish on the menu.

  “Bunny chow?” I blurted out, breaking the sexy mood. “Is it really rabbit?”

  Milo burst out laughing. He had a really, really nice laugh — the kind that made me join in. How long had it been since I’d laughed? Too long.

  “No, it’s just colloquial,” he said. “Bunny chow’s not actually rabbit.”

  “I’ve had rabbit before,” I remarked. “It’s pretty good, prepared correctly.”

  “You really are an adventurous eater,” Milo observed. “Hang on, though. Is that why you’re so skinny? Have you reaped the consequences of your adventurous eating?”

  “Nothing like that,” I said, giggling. “Now, tell me about this bunny chow. I’m intrigued.”

  “Well, it’s not from the homeland proper,” he said. “It’s a South African spin on Indian food. I had it once when we visited with one of my cousins living in Durban. It’s curried meat stuffed into a loaf of bread. Kind of cross between street food and comfort food.”

  My stomach yowled at this. “I think I really want bunny chow,” I said. “Wow. I don’t think I could’ve ever anticipated those words coming out of my mouth.”

  “Two bunny chows it is,” Milo said, beckoning the lone waitress over to the table. He ordered us a bottle of red wine, which surprised me. Ganesh definitely didn’t seem like the kind of place you could order a bottle of wine.

  “I told you I was a regular here,” he said after the waitress had poured our glasses and left again. “They’re pretty good at accommodating my tastes. I like wine with my Indian food, and they like my money.”

  “Is this where you bring all the girls?” I asked, raising my eyebrows as I took a sip of wine. I wasn’t any judge on vintages or years or even all the different variations of reds and whites, but this one tasted all right to me. Milo was a little more discerning as he sniffed into his cup and rolled a mouthful around before swallowing it.