And here, just for a moment, she’d thought he was being serious. Instead, he was asking for one of those simpering write-ups in the People section. Frustration threatened to cut off her air supply. She tossed the folder on his desk in disgust. “Owen, this is just a dressed-up fluff piece on steroids.”
“Oh, really?” He picked up the folder. “St. John Adair, raider par excellence of the corporate world, the mere mention of whose name sends CEOs dashing off the sunny golf course and to their medicine cabinets in search of the latest high-tech antacids. The man who’s fondly referred to as Darth Vader by even his closer associates. The man who has no biography, is said to have arrived on the scene full-grown, springing out of some shaking multi-mega business corporation’s worst nightmare.”
She was aware of the man’s name, but not his awesome power. The focus of her interests lay elsewhere. “Business corporations don’t have nightmares.”
Owen’s thin lips curved. “They have Adair,” he contradicted. “And we have nothing on him. No one does.” He held out the folder to her. “You want a challenge, there’s your challenge. Find out everything you can on Adair—find out more than everything you can on him,” he amended. “I want to know what elementary school he went to, what his parents’ names are, does he even have parents or was he suckled by wolves in the Los Angeles National Forest like Pecos Bill—”
Sherry struggled to keep back a smile. This was way over the top, but she had to admit, Owen had her curious. “Pecos Bill didn’t grow up in the Los Angeles National Forest—”
“Good, that’s a start.” He tendered the folder to her again. “Give me more.”
Eyeing him, she took the folder from Owen. “You’re serious.”
“Yes, I’m serious. Nobody else has managed to get anything on him or out of him other than ‘Veni, vidi, vici.’ I came, I saw, I conquered.”
“I don’t need the translation, Owen. Julius Caesar, talking about his triumphs,” she added in case he was going to clarify that for her, as well.
Owen had launched into his coaxing mode, one of the attributes that made him good at his job. “You can be the first on your block to find something out on him.” He pretended to peer at her. “Unless, of course, you think it’s too hard—” He reached for the folder.
It was a game. She knew what he was up to and because of the friendship that existed between them, played along. She backed away to keep him from reaching the folder. “No, it’s not too hard.”
The grin transformed what could charitably be called a homely face into an amazingly pleasant one. “That’s my girl.”
She looked at the folder, already planning strategy. “When’s the deadline?”
“The sooner the better. You tell me.”
Now that she thought of it, she remembered her father saying something about Adair. Something along the lines of his coming out of nowhere and creating quite a sensation. Her first impulse was to call her father and ask if he had any connections that could lead her to the man, but she quickly squelched that. She wasn’t about to walk a mile in borrowed shoes unless there was no other way. She didn’t want to be her father’s daughter, she wanted to be Sherry Campbell, use her own devices, her own sources.
She turned the folder around in her hand. “And you really think of this as an investigative piece?”
Owen gave her his most innocent expression. “Is this the face of a man who’d lie to you?”
She couldn’t help but laugh. “As I recall, you’re the one who told me about the Tooth Fairy.”
To that, he could only plead self-defense. “Your tooth had fallen out. You were crying your eyes out.” He spread his hands out. “You were five years old. What was I supposed to do?”
“Exactly what you did.” Wheels began to spin. Mentally she was already out of the office. Sherry slapped her hand across the folder, her eyes sparkling. “Okay, you’re on.”
“Great.” He was already back looking at the computer screen. “Don’t forget to shut the door on your way out.” The assignment she’d brought in was still on his desk. He held it up. “And give this other piece to Daly.”
She darted back to retrieve the paper. “I’ll do it in my spare time.”
He nodded, satisfied. “Good.” The familiar sound he was waiting for didn’t register. Owen glanced up from his screen. “The door?”
Sherry nodded as she crossed the threshold and eased the door closed behind her.
A smile sprouted and took root as she deposited the assignment into the yellow folder and tucked it under her arm. It wasn’t the kind of thing she’d been after, but if it was a challenge, then she was more than up to it. God knew she needed something meaty to work on before she completely lost her mind.
The woman’s voice, crisp, clear, with “no nonsense” written over every syllable, echoed in Sherry’s ear, “No, I am afraid that Mr. Adair is much too busy to see you. Try again next month. At the moment he’s booked solid.”
The woman sounded as if she was about to hang up. “The man has to eat sometime,” Sherry interjected quickly, hoping for a break. “Maybe I could meet with him then.”
She could almost hear the woman sniff before saying, “Mr. Adair has only working lunches and dinners. As I’ve already said—”
Undaunted, Sherry jumped back in the game. “Breakfast, then. Please, just a few minutes.” That was all she needed for openers, she thought, but there was no reason to tell the guardian at the gate that.
Unmoved, the woman replied, “I’m sorry, I can’t help you.”
“But—”
The next moment Sherry found herself talking to a dial tone.
With a sigh she hung up. She was getting lazy, she thought. The way to get somewhere was in person, not over the telephone. She knew that. If the mountain wouldn’t come to Mohammed, then Mohammed damn well was going to come to the mountain. With climbing gear.
Although these days, she thought, pushing herself up out of her chair, she wasn’t sure just which part she would be cast in, Mohammed or the mountain.
The meeting had run over. It was within his power to call an end to it at any time, but Sin-Jin Adair liked to choose his moments. Authority wasn’t something he believed in throwing around like a Frisbee; it was a weapon, to be used wisely, effectively. So he had sat and listened to the employees that he’d culled over the past few years, as he’d taken over one corporation after another. Keep the best, discard the rest. It was a motto he lived by.
A bastardization of his father’s edict. Except that his father had applied it to women. Sin-Jin never did.
“Leaving early, I see.”
He nodded at his secretary. Like everyone else around her, Edna Farley was the soul of efficiency. He and Edna had a history together, and her loyalty was utterly unshakable. It was another quality he demanded, but one he could be patient about. He valued the kind that evolved naturally, not one that was bought and paid for. If you could buy loyalty easily, then it could just as easily be sold to a higher bidder, thereby rendering it useless. That he paid his people top dollar ensured that they would not be tempted to look elsewhere in search of worldly goods.
“Not as early as I’d like. Go home, Mrs. Farley.”
“Yes, sir.” The woman peered out into the hall as he strode out. “Don’t forget the Cavannaugh meeting tomorrow. And Mr. Renfro said he would be calling you at eight tomorrow morning.”
“Good night, Mrs. Farley.”
Walking away, he smiled to himself as the less-than-dulcet tones of Mrs. Farley echoed behind him, reminding him of appointments he didn’t need to be reminded of. Everything he needed to know about his schedule was not tucked away in some fancy PalmPilot, but in his mind. He had a photographic memory that had never failed him.
Reaching the elevator, he pressed for a car. Just as he stepped inside, he was aware that someone had slipped in behind him. The floor had appeared deserted a moment earlier.
“Sorry,” a woman’s voice apologized a second after he fe
lt someone bump into him from behind.
Turning around, he was about to say something when he saw that it had been the woman’s stomach that had made contact with him.
Rounded with child. The phrase came floating to him out of nowhere.
So did the smile that curved his lips ever so slightly. “That’s all right.”
Sherry looked down innocently at the bulk that preceded her everywhere these days. She placed her hands on either side of the girth.
“Can’t wait for this little darling to be born so I can move it around in a stroller instead of feeling as if I’m lifting weights every time I get up.”
Because pregnancy, children and loved ones existed on an unknown plane, Sin-Jin could only vaguely nod at her words. A rejoining comment failed to materialize. The only thing he noted was, pregnant or not, the woman was extremely attractive.
His father had said there was no such thing as an attractive pregnant woman, but then, his father had demanded perfection in everything around him, if not in himself. The man was interested in ornamental women, not pregnant ones. Like a spoiled child in a toy store, his father had gone from one woman to another, marrying some along the way. He was vaguely aware that the man’s tally stood at something like seven.
Or was it six? He’d lost count. The slight smile widened on Sin-Jin’s lips, curving somewhat ironically.
Not bad, Sherry thought. The man was almost human looking when he smiled. She already knew that he was handsome. That much she’d gleaned while surfing the Internet for more than two hours, trying to piece together anything she could find on the man. She’d discovered that Owen was right. There wasn’t anything on St. John Adair that didn’t have to do with business. It was as if he disappeared into a black hole every night when he left the impressive edifice that bore his name.
It made her feel like Vicki Vale, on the trail of Batman.
Well, Batman was smiling, she thought. Perhaps not directly at her, but close enough.
Maybe Adair had a weak spot for pregnant women. It would be nice to be given an ace in the hole because of her condition for a change.
She took a deep breath, bracing herself. No time like the present.
Leaning around Adair, Sherry pressed the emergency stop on the elevator. The elevator hiccuped and came to an abrupt, jarring halt between the eighteenth and seventeenth floors.
The smile on his lips vanished instantly as a score of different scenarios crowded into his mind. Was he being threatened, kidnapped? There’d been two botched attempts at that in the past four years. He began to doubt the woman was pregnant. It made for a good disguise, put a man off his guard.
He was on his guard now. “What the hell are you doing?”
Sherry’s smile was sweetness personified as she looked up at him. “I was wondering if you could give me a moment of your time, Mr. Adair.”
Chapter Two
For one heartbeat, there was nothing but silence within the elevator. Sin-Jin stared at the only other occupant in the car as if she had lost her mind. He wondered if she was dangerous in any sense of the word.
“Who are you?”
Sherry was ready for him. Opening her purse, she took out the press card that she’d carefully laid on top just before entering the multiwinged building that bore Adair’s name. This was not the time to fumble through the various paraphernalia that she deemed indispensable and always dragged along with her.
She held her identification card aloft for Adair’s perusal. And watched a transformation.
The unfriendly look on his face turned to something that, in a different era and country, would have reduced pagan worshipers to quivering masses of fear had Adair been their emperor, or, more probably regarded as their god. She felt a little unnerved herself.
Sherry shook herself loose from the hypnotic effect and squared her shoulders. Fierce expression or not, he wasn’t about to make her back down.
Adair’s glare was hot enough to melt the plastic on her ID. “You’re a reporter?” It sounded like an offense second only to being a serial killer.
Damn, but she could see how he could strike fear into the hearts of those around him. She reminded herself that she wasn’t afraid of anything except a magnitude-seven earthquake.
“Investigative,” she informed him crisply, as if that fact took her out of the general pool that merited his disdain and elevated her to a higher plateau.
It didn’t. Electric-blue eyes nearly disappeared into small, darkly lashed slits. “All right, then go investigate something.”
The growled order only had her stiffening her backbone. She met him on his own battlefield, smiling sweetly. “I am. You.”
“The hell you are.” He reached past her to press the elevator release button only to have her hit the red stop button again. Stunned, he glared at her. “You will stop doing that.” It was a command, brooking no disobedience, no dissent.
Her smile never faltered as she met his words with a condition. “I will if you promise to answer a few questions for me.”
Mrs. Farley had pleaded with him to take on a bodyguard. Had even gone so far as to line up several for him to interview, but he’d then refused flatly, thinking it a waste. Now he wasn’t all that sure. At least bodyguards would keep annoying reporters where they belonged. Away.
“I never make promises I have no intention of keeping.” Again he pushed the button to restart the elevator and again she stopped it. “Look, lady—Mrs. Campbell—” he amended, exasperation evaporating the very air in his lungs.
“Right in the first place, wrong in the second,” she informed him cheerfully, then suggested, “Why not just Sherry?”
She didn’t think it possible, but his dark expression darkened even more.
“Because, ‘just Sherry,’ I don’t intend to get that friendly with you.” He hit the release button and the elevator made it to another floor before she abruptly halted it with a counterpunch. “You keep this up and the cable’s liable to break. We’ll wind up free-falling the rest of the way. That might be on your agenda, ‘just Sherry,’ but it’s not on mine.”
The glare he shot her bordered on filleting her nerves. She could see his underlings scattering and running for cover like so many Disney mice before the villainous cat in Cinderella. The thought did a lot to calm her nerves and made it difficult for her not to grin.
Sin-Jin’s eyes slid to her belly. “Are you even pregnant?” It could have been a ruse used to allow her to gain access to his floor. In his experience, reporters were capable of all sorts of devious deceptions.
She surprised him by taking his hand and placing it on her distended abdomen. “Most definitely.”
As if burned, Sin-Jin pulled his hand back. Although not soon enough. He’d felt the stirrings of new life beneath his palm. The child she was carrying had moved—probably on cue, he thought cynically.
What was a pregnant reporter doing here, lying in wait for him? He thought of the meeting he’d just left. “If this is about the Marconi merger—”
Sherry cut him short. “It’s not,” she told him. Raising her eyes to his face, she dug up all the charm she could muster. “It’s about you.”
Suspicion entered his eyes. He’d never had any use for reporters, feeding off the misery of others for their own ends. “What about me?”
“That’s exactly what I want to find out. What about you? Nobody knows anything about Darth Vader, the Corporate Raider.”
He winced inwardly at the label. If it was meant to flatter him, it missed its mark by a country mile. The limelight had never meant anything to him. Sin-Jin didn’t do what he did for any sort of recognition. He did it because he was good at it, good at trimming fat off selected businesses and getting them to run more efficiently. Once he accomplished what he set out to do and the businesses were running at their maximum peak, he grew bored with them, selling them off to other corporations while he turned his attention to something else.
That this sort of thing attracted a great deal
of attention and generated an almost obscene amount of money was without question. But it was never about the money. It never had been, perhaps because there’d always been so much of it when he was growing up. Every movement he’d ever made had been cushioned in it, as if somehow money could take the place of everything else that was deemed important in life. Like parental love and warm memories to draw on when things became difficult.
He’d had the best upbringing that money could buy. All needs taken care of, everything done in a utilitarian fashion. It was the kind of upbringing that could have produced an emotional robot, which was what his enemies had accused him of being.
If no one knew anything about him, it was for a reason. Because he wanted it like that. “And it’s going to remain that way,” he informed her.
As he reached to bring the elevator back to life, she moved to block his access. “Why?”
For just the smallest second, he almost forgot that they were stuck, suspended between the eighth and ninth floor like a yo-yo that had gotten tangled in its own string. The annoying woman who kept insisting on getting into his face had eyes that were probably the deepest shade of blue he’d ever seen. Undoubtedly, she used that to her advantage, just as she used her present condition.
“Does the word privacy mean anything to you?” he demanded. “Or is that particular term missing from the lexicon distributed to the ignoble fourth estate?”
“Ouch, they weren’t kidding when they said you could fillet a person at ten paces with just your tongue.”
“No,” he informed her tersely, “they weren’t.”
But rather than take offense at his words, she smiled, her face lighting up as if he’d just given her a ten-carat diamond instead of an insult.
She probably saw it as a challenge. He supposed he could relate to that. Challenges were what he responded to himself. The harder something was to obtain, the more he wanted to secure possession.
A Billionaire and a Baby Page 2