Five Minutes Late: A Billionaire Romance (47 page)

Everybody stared, Uncle Sheridan grinned like a bastard, and I decided that two could play this game.

“HE IS SO HAVING HIS WAY WITH ME RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE KETCHUP PACKETS, BABY!”

I decided to crank it up a notch, just in case they didn’t hear me downstate.

“I WON’T BE ABLE TO WALK STRAIGHT FOR A WEEK!”

Devon fired back, “MUST I HAVE WORDS WITH YOU, UNCLE?”

Uncle Sheridan was way too classy to yell at the top of his dignified lungs, but since every customer and employee in the place had shut up to listen to us, we could all hear him just fine.

“If you can’t satisfy her, Devon, then I simply must step up and do my duty.”

Everybody joined in after that. A girl sitting two booths down hollered, “AND HE’S FLEXIBLE LIKE GUMBY!” Another one yelled from the middle of her tittering pals, “AND TIRELESS, TOO!” A cashier added, “AND INVENTIVE!” and some guy who was probably way jealous of the old Jedi’s charm bellowed, “HE’S GONNA PUT SOMEBODY’S EYE OUT WITH THAT THING!”

Through it all, Uncle Sheridan wore a ‘who, little old me?’ smile that could have charmed the panties off a supermodel. I just about laughed myself into a seizure, while our fellow McDonald’s patrons gave us a round of applause, plus a few more comments about my honorary uncle’s legendary sexual prowess.

Devon dialed his voice back to something like normal volume, and after a few more giggles, the attention of the crowd drifted away from us.

“Uncle, I do so hate to interrupt your vigorous fondling of my girlfriend, but I called to see if you might perhaps be available to sit in on a meeting at two o’clock? It seems one of the Allisonia Technologies executives I have to pretend to listen to attended school with you back in the days of yore; if you’re here to hold his hand and make sympathetic noises, I rather think he and his fellows will be more inclined to accept that I’m buying them out whether they like it or not.”

“Dear God, tell me it’s not that fool Blakemore – the man’s so dreadfully dull, he could put a statue to sleep.”

“The same, I fear – but at least it will give you a chance to rest up from pleasuring my exhausted Ashley until she screams. And Ashley, I trust we’re still on for eight o’clock sharp in the theater tonight? I’ve lined up a series of terribly loud films featuring giant robots and explosions, just for you.”

“It’s a date, big guy – but this time, you have to make the mannequins promise not to talk so much, okay?”

“They’re simply in awe of your own flexibility, my Ashley, but I will certainly speak to them. Until tonight, then.”

Uncle Sheridan took Devon off speaker, said goodbye to him in approximate privacy, and then dropped the phone back into his pocket.

“Well, it seems that the symphony must get along without begging me for funds this afternoon. I can’t say I’ll be missing their company, but I imagine they’ll insist on rescheduling at some inopportune time or other.”

He looked around at the lunchtime crowd, and then turned back to me. “My apologies, Miss Daniels, but I’m afraid I have a few small matters I should take care of before that meeting – would you mind if I left you now? I imagine there’s a great deal more we could discuss as regards Devon, but I hope I’ve been of at least some small help to you – and of course I would be more than happy to speak to you again, whenever you wish.”

“Sir?”

He looked at me, all calm and attentive and every inch the perfect gentleman. “Yes, Miss Daniels?”

I don’t know what brought it on and I felt like six kinds of bitch for asking, but I had to know. Maybe it was relevant, maybe it meant something, maybe I was exercising my newfound talent for asking nice guys awful questions, or maybe I just really was a gold-plated bitch.

“Sir, what happened to Alva?” 

He’d started to stand, ready to head back out to his day and the little things he needed to square away before that meeting – but thanks to me and my big mouth, he froze, just for a second. He froze, he sighed, and then he sat back down, while I wanted to punch myself in the face for being such a big nosy ball of nosiness.

“Sir, I apologize, it’s none of my –”

“It is your business, Miss Daniels.”

Color me puzzled – I could have sworn I was just being a prying bitch. “I was just curious, Uncle Sheridan, and it’s really not – ”

“It really is, and I should have brought it up myself – if you’ll indulge me for a few more minutes of blathering, you’ll see why.”

He glanced past me at the world outside the restaurant’s windows, but something told me he was looking into the past, looking at a world that had Alva in it – a world that was long gone.

He turned back to me, and he sat up straight. He adjusted the knot on his already perfect tie, and ran a hand over his flawlessly styled waves of white hair. He clasped his hands together in front of him, and if it weren’t for the way his knuckles were blanched white, anybody would have thought he was every bit as calm as he was trying to look.

“Alva was tireless. In the three glorious years we were together, we traveled everywhere, met everyone, and we … well, I’ll leave the personal side of things to your imagination, but trust me, that was glorious as well.

“She was a tiny creature, but with the energy of a dynamo – always in motion, always laughing, always full of a million ideas and projects, and yet always at my side, and always with time for me. Whenever Alva looked at me, I was the center of her universe, and I saw nothing but her.

“Towards the end of that third year, her energy flagged just a bit, now and then. I thought she might perhaps be taking on too many charity projects – Alva was a miracle worker when it came to persuading wealthy people to part with their money for the sake of a worthy cause, and she championed more causes than I could count. She laughed at my concern, assured me I was worrying about nothing, and I believed her – her enthusiasm for life was infectious, and who could possibly doubt anything she said when she wore that radiant smile?

“Somehow, I think she knew.

“When the end came, there was so little warning. One night, out of nowhere, she became violently ill – I rushed her to the hospital, terrified beyond words, and waited for hours as the doctors poked and prodded and fussed. Her symptoms were a mystery to them, it seemed – until one of the standard blood tests revealed that her white cell count was through the roof.

“As I sat by her bedside, clutching her slim hand in mine, they told me Alva had fallen victim to a rare form of leukemia, one whose early symptoms are few and shifting, and easily mistaken for mere fatigue. By the time the disease shows its true colors, it’s far too late to do anything but wait.

“Alva and I did not have to wait for long. Two days later she shuddered through a massive heart attack; she survived, barely, but I looked at the fading bloom on her lovely face and knew she was not long for this world. 

“She drifted in and out of consciousness for three more days, assuring me when she was able to talk that she’d be all right, that I’d be all right, and I so wanted to believe her – and then just before dawn on a Thursday morning, another heart attack shook her tiny frame and she was gone.

“Just like that, between one breath and the next.

“She was twenty-two years old.”

Silence.

I said nothing. What could I possibly say?

That McDonald’s was wall-to-wall crowded, and I suppose those kids kept chattering away, but I sure didn’t hear them.

That was the quietest moment I’d known in a long time.

I reached out and took both of Uncle Sheridan’s hands in mine. We sat there, alone in the middle of that mob of people, and I thought about how Alva had been three years younger than me.

I also thought about how I wanted to stab leukemia in the face, lots and lots of times, with one huge and seriously sharp knife – I pictured the blade as being jagged and rusty for some reason, but maybe that was just me.

Uncle Sheridan looked down at our joined hands. When he looked up and trained his sharp old eyes on mine, he was once more calm, focused, and way tougher than the likes of me.

“Do you remember when we first met?”

“Outside Devon’s office, that morning he dropped the bomb on me about being his new personal assistant – I was kind of in shock at the time, but I remember meeting a suave old Jedi master who was dressed to the nines, sure.”

“Would you like to know what I thought of you in that moment? My first impression?”

“Let me guess – a chubby girl who totally didn’t belong there?”

He shook his head. “You impressed me as being an earnest, well-meaning young woman who would likely serve Devon well, if he gave you half a chance – of course, I assumed he’d soon drive you away with his moods and his erratic personality, because that was what happened to all of his personal assistants.

“I am glad I was wrong about that. I am grateful beyond words that Devon found you, and that you came to mean so much to him – much, much more than all those grasping, whining, self-centered actresses and models and such who took shameless advantage of his generous nature, who exploited his fears and insecurities for the sake of headlines and profit.

“Miss Daniels, I said the story of how Alva left us was very much your business. I said that for a specific reason, a reason that I need you to understand.”

He paused, drawing in a deep breath. “Alva was always there for me, and then one day she was not. From that day to this, life has been largely without color for me, a practical exercise with little heart to it. My love for Devon gives my existence what little meaning it has, and so I want more than anything to know that you will always be there for him, as Alva was for me.

“I need to know that you will stay with him through whatever may come, whatever this plan of his might be, whatever else fortune might throw your way – I need to know that you will always stay by his side, no matter what happens.”

“Always, sir.”

He nodded. “Good, that’s settled. Now, as much I’d like to stay and enjoy your company further, I do have this and that to take care of – if you will excuse me?”

I gave Uncle Sheridan’s hands a final squeeze, he smiled like the lordly old gentleman he was, and he stood up.

I watched him go, watched him walk away through the circulating rivers of young people, and then I turned my attention to my burger and fries – they weren’t going to eat themselves, after all. I pulled out my phone too, deciding there was no time like the present to ask Google just what had happened to Kevin Killane.

Something said stop.

Something deep inside me said to stop – or maybe it was something from outside, I don’t know.

Something said to stop, turn around, and watch Uncle Sheridan again.

So I did.

He walked past the front counter, and I watched as he stopped to smile and trade a few words with the cashiers and cooks. They joked with him, he laughed, and I watched as he walked to the door.

I saw him pause, stand to one side, and hold the door open for a very pregnant girl. Then he went outside, and I remember how the sun lit up his thick mane of white hair as he looked both ways, stepped off the curb, and walked to where his stylish old antique limousine waited in a nearby parking space.

I watched as his driver stepped out and held the door open for him, and I remember how he flicked away a stray bit of paper – it might have been somebody’s crumpled receipt – that the wind blew up against the pinstriped sleeve of his immaculate suit.

I watched him slip inside the car. I watched the door thump shut, sunlight flashing off the chrome trim, and then I couldn’t see him anymore.

I watched every little inconsequential detail of how Uncle Sheridan left that McDonald’s. I’m glad I did.

I never saw that sweet old man again.

31. Together and Apart

We lost Uncle Sheridan a week later.

It was quick, it was clean, but it cut me to the heart that he was alone when it happened – alone in a crowd of strangers.

It was a sunny day in late October, a warm few hours of sunlight that brought everyone out onto the streets. Crowds thronged the sidewalks, couples held hands, street vendors sold steaming hot pretzels, buskers tootled on their saxophones, and Uncle Sheridan decided to walk to a meeting at Killane Corporate Holdings.

Hey, why not? It was a sweet warm day, right?

Later, I talked to the cops who stopped traffic and waved impatient, honking drivers around the spot where it happened. I even tracked down several of the people who were walking near the most badass Jedi master in the known universe in his final moments, the businessmen and students and street people and hustlers and tourists who were his last company on this earth.

They all agreed – it happened in an instant.

You might say it happened between one breath and the next.

One moment, he stood waiting at the curb with a dozen or more strangers. A few heartbeats later, the light changed and they all started walking across State Street, dress shoes and worn sneakers and sandals slapping against the black and white stripes of the crosswalk, everyone intent on their destination on the far side.