The Billionaire's Hidden Heir

Chapter Six

Julian’s POV

Forty floors above Ashford Falls, Julian Ashcombe Whitmore the Third stood at the window of his office with a glass of water he hadn't touched, watching the city spread out below him like something he owned but didn't quite belong to.

"You're not listening," said Marcus Webb, his chief of staff, from the doorway.

"I'm listening."

"You're not. I said the deal closes Thursday and you said 'good,' but the deal closing Thursday means you fly out tonight, Julian. Tonight. Not next week."

Julian turned from the window. Marcus had worked for him for six years, long enough to know when Julian's mind had wandered somewhere it shouldn't, and long enough to say something about it without worrying he'd get fired for it.

"Ashford Falls," Julian said. "Right. Tonight."

"You feeling alright?"

"I'm fine."

"You've said that four times today and it's not even noon." Marcus stepped further into the office and set a folder on the desk. "Your father called while you were in the Hartley meeting. Twice."

Julian's jaw tightened, just slightly, the way it always did at the mention of his father lately. "What did he want?"

"He didn't say. He never says. He just wants you to call him back before you get on that plane."

"I'll call him from the car."

"You said that yesterday too."

Julian picked up the folder without opening it, mostly to have something to do with his hands. "Anything else?"

"Camille called the house line. Said dinner's at seven if you're not flying out until later."

"I'm flying out at six."

Marcus didn't say anything to that, but the look on his face said plenty, the kind of look that had become familiar over the past year, ever since Julian had started finding reasons to be somewhere other than home at dinner time. It wasn't dislike. It wasn't even disapproval, exactly. It was something closer to concern, the kind an old friend allows himself when he's watched a marriage go quiet from the inside.

"You want me to call her? Tell her you'll be late?"

"I'll call her myself."

He didn't call her himself. He told himself he would, all through the afternoon, through two more meetings and a phone call with his lawyers about a zoning issue on a property in the northern part of the state, and by the time he looked at his watch again it was nearly five, and the car was already waiting downstairs to take him to the airport.

He called Camille from the back seat, watching the city slide past the tinted window.

"You're not coming home for dinner," Camille said before he'd even finished saying hello. Not a question.

"The deal in Ashford Falls closes tomorrow. I have to be there tonight to close it properly."

"You said last week it wasn't closing until Thursday."

"It moved up."

There was a pause on the line, long enough that Julian could hear the sound of her moving through the house, a door closing somewhere, the particular silence of a woman deciding whether an argument was worth having.

"Fine," Camille said finally. "Go close your deal."

"Camille."

"What, Julian?"

He didn't have an answer ready, and that was the problem, wasn't it? There had been a time when he'd have had an answer ready without even thinking about it, some small warmth in his voice that came naturally instead of something he had to reach for. He couldn't remember exactly when that had stopped being true. He only knew that it had.

"I'll be back Friday," he said instead.

"I know," she said, and hung up before he could say anything else.

The car pulled up to the private terminal twenty minutes later, and Julian sat there for a moment before getting out, looking at his own reflection faintly in the window glass, a man who had everything anyone could reasonably want and felt, more days than not lately, like he was standing outside his own life looking in through a window he couldn't quite open.

His phone buzzed. His father.

He almost didn't answer it. Almost let it go to voicemail the way he had the last two calls, but something made him pick up this time, maybe just to get it over with before the flight.

"Julian." His father's voice, even now, even sick as he'd been getting lately, still carried the particular weight of a man used to being obeyed. "You closing this deal tonight?"

"Tomorrow morning. Tonight I'm celebrating with the Hartley people, locking in the relationship before we sign anything."

"Good. Good, that's good business." A pause, and Julian could hear something underneath his father's voice, something careful. "We need to talk when you're back. About the vote."

"What vote?"

"The board vote, Julian. In six months. About succession." His father's voice hardened slightly. "You know what I'm going to say before I say it, so I won't waste both our breath pretending otherwise."

"Say it anyway."

"The company needs an heir before that vote, son. Not a nephew. Not a cousin's boy from the Delaware side of the family. A direct heir, from you, before the board sits down and decides who's steering this ship long after I'm gone." His father coughed, a wet, tired sound that Julian had grown used to hearing more of lately. "You understand me."

"I understand you."

"Camille and the doctors, is there any—"

"We'll talk when I'm back," Julian said, sharper than he meant to, and his father, for once, let it go without pushing further.

The flight to Ashford Falls took just under two hours, and Julian spent most of it staring out the window at clouds instead of working through the papers in his lap, thinking about his father's voice, about Camille's silence on the phone, about the particular exhaustion of being told what your life was supposed to look like by men who'd never once asked what you actually wanted it to look like.

By the time the plane landed, the Hartley people were already waiting at the hotel bar with a bottle of something expensive open and waiting, and Julian told himself he'd have one drink, maybe two, enough to be sociable without losing the thread of the night, and then he'd go up to his room and sleep before the signing in the morning.

He had no way of knowing, walking into that bar with his tie loosened and his mind still tangled up in his father's voice, that somewhere across town three women were already deciding exactly how much he'd end up drinking that night, and that none of it would have anything to do with celebration at all.

"Julian, sit, sit." Warren Hartley waved him toward an empty stool, already halfway through what looked like his second drink. "You look like a man who needs to stop thinking for one evening."

"That obvious?"

"You've got a face like a closed door. Loosen up. We closed the hard part already; tomorrow's just signatures." Warren signaled the bartender. "One more for my friend here."

"I should probably slow down."

"Slow down tomorrow. Tonight we celebrate." Warren clapped him on the back, hard enough to rock him slightly on the stool. "You know what your problem is, Whitmore? You work like a man who's still trying to prove something to somebody, even though you've already got more money than the rest of us combined. Who exactly are you still trying to impress?"

Julian turned the glass in his hand, watching the light catch the amber liquid. "My father, probably. Old habit."

"Fathers." Warren laughed, shaking his head. "Mine's been dead eleven years, and I still catch myself wondering what he'd think of a deal before I sign it. That feeling doesn't go away, son. You just learn to drink through it a little better."

Julian laughed despite himself, and the bartender set another glass in front of him, and somewhere behind them the rest of the Hartley associates were already loud with laughter over something one of the junior partners had said, the whole bar humming with the particular ease of men who had just made a great deal of money and intended to enjoy the feeling of it for exactly one night before the paperwork made it real and boring again.