Power Play: A Novel Read online

  They were halfway through dinner when Liz mentioned the film festival she wanted to go to the next day. She knew that cultural events weren’t his favorite activity, but once in a while she could convince him to go with her. Marshall preferred business-related events. He was all about his work, and usually so was she, but she enjoyed other things too, with a broader scope.

  “I have tickets for tomorrow, in the city. What do you think?” she asked with a hopeful look, and he was quick to shake his head.

  “I’m going to L.A. tomorrow. I need an extra day down there this week. We’ve had some problems in the office, and I think they need the big guns to help resolve them, so I’m going down a day early. Why don’t you take a friend?” he suggested, looking relieved. He spent every Wednesday and Thursday in their L.A. office, and had for the past ten years. When they were younger, it gave her time to do things with the kids, and they were used to it by now. He left on Wednesday mornings and came back on Friday nights, in time to do whatever they had planned for the weekend, although he was always tired after his two days in L.A., and liked staying home on Friday nights. “By the way,” he added, “I’ve got Japanese clients coming in this weekend. I’ll play golf with them on Saturday and Sunday, and I thought we could take them to dinner on Saturday night.”

  “Do you want to entertain them here?” She had a good caterer she used for important evenings, so she could pay full attention to their guests.

  “The Japanese like fancy restaurants, and they’re bringing their wives. I thought maybe Gary Danko, or the Ritz. Besides, that’s less work for you.” He smiled at her as she cleared the table, and served him fresh fruit for dessert. “Sorry about the film festival,” he said with a slightly guilty look and she laughed. She knew him well.

  “No, you’re not. You hate that kind of thing. I just figured I’d ask. I’ll take a friend.” She had a number of friends she did volunteer work with, or knew through their kids, whom she invited to events like that. She could seldom convince Marshall to go. It was the price she paid for being married to a successful man, and part of the normal landscape for her. She was used to Marshall being busy, at meetings, traveling around the country, or in L.A., or exhausted and just not in the mood to go. He made the effort if he knew it was something important to her. He knew this wasn’t, but it would be fun for her. She was good about keeping herself entertained when he was away.

  Marshall went upstairs and showered after dinner, and then read a stack of reports he had brought home, while Liz curled up in bed with a book. She had gone to say goodnight to Lindsay, who was talking to friends on the phone about the concert she had to miss, and she had given her mother a dark look but kissed her goodnight anyway. Evenings were always peaceful and quiet in their home, especially now with only Lindsay at home. It had been a lot livelier when all three kids were still there, and Liz missed the boys. She was grateful that they had both gone to school in the West, close to home. At least she had the chance to see them now and then. And she knew it would be much too quiet when Lindsay finally left. She was threatening to go to college in the East, after her gap year, which she wanted to spend traveling abroad with friends. So Liz only had one year left before she had to face an empty nest, and she knew it would be hard for her. She thought that maybe then she’d start spending a day or two with Marshall in L.A. He had an apartment he used there. Liz just never had time to go with him, and he was constantly busy working anyway. And she didn’t want to leave Lindsay, at sixteen, alone; the temptation for her to get up to mischief with no supervision would be too great. As a result, Liz hadn’t been to L.A. with Marshall in years. She saved herself for his more important trips, like Europe, the Far East, and New York. And with some advance planning, she loved going with him. It was one of the many perks of their life.

  It was after eleven when Marshall finally put his work away and came to bed with Liz. She was ready to go to sleep by then too. It had been a busy day for both of them, and he had to get up early the next morning to go to L.A. on the company plane. It was a lot easier for him than flying commercial, and eliminated waiting, delays, and long security lines. He drove up to the plane, boarded, and they took off for L.A. It was a terrific way to travel, and Marshall was never shy about using the company jet. It was one of the many benefits of his job that he enjoyed. And Liz had been on the plane with him many times in the past ten years, and she loved it too. It spoiled you for any other kind of travel.

  “I’m beat,” Marshall said as he slid into bed with her, which was their code for his letting her know that he didn’t want to make love with her that night. He never did the night before he went to L.A., he had to get up too early and knew he’d be tired the next day if they stayed up late. And they never made love the night he came home either. He was exhausted after long days there. Most of the time they made love on the weekend, usually on Saturday or Sunday, if he wasn’t too worn out after eighteen holes of golf. And now and then they missed a weekend entirely. But sex three or four times a month seemed about right to Liz after twenty-seven years.

  He was sound asleep in less than five minutes, and as she looked at him, in their bed, Liz smiled. He still seemed like a kid to her. He was in great shape, and looked hardly any different than he had when they met almost thirty years before. Since then, he had become her partner, her best friend, the father of her children, and the husband she had always dreamed of. The life they shared was to be envied. Marshall was everything she had ever wanted and hoped for, and more. Even if their relationship was no longer hot and steamy, and they didn’t climb in and out of bed three times a day, no one’s life stayed that sexual after twenty-seven years. She was realistic. She had a fabulous life and a husband she still loved, and who loved her. After twenty-seven years, as far as Liz was concerned, that was pretty damn good, and more than enough for her.

  Chapter 3

  Fiona Carson was swamped on Tuesday morning. She had interviews scheduled with both The Washington Post and the L.A. Times, to do damage control about the leak that had appeared two weeks before in The Wall Street Journal. She was careful not to outright lie about the closing of the Larksberry plant so as not to lose her credibility, and she admitted that it could happen someday, but she said that for the moment, the matter was still under discussion, and at the appropriate time, the board’s decision would be announced. She tried to steer the interviewers off the subject after that and stress the progress they were making in other areas, and the positive decisions the board had made on many issues. Given the circumstances, in the aftermath of the leak, it was all she could say. Because of the interviews, which were a minefield, her day had gotten off to a stressful start. But handling delicate situations was part of her job, and she did it well.

  She was halfway through her first meeting after the interviews, when Marshall Weston boarded UPI’s company jet for L.A., calmly and in style.

  He called Liz when he got settled on the plane, right before they took off.

  “I’ll call you later,” he promised, as he always did. He had forgotten she would be going to the film festival that night.

  “I won’t be home till late,” she reminded him. “I’ll send you a text when I get home. You’ll probably be asleep. I don’t want to wake you up.”

  “I’m having dinner with some of the guys in the office after our last meeting, but I doubt it will go late. I’ll text you when I go to bed.” It had become a convenient way of communicating with each other when he was traveling, or even sometimes when he was in town. They had picked up the habit of texting from their kids, particularly Lindsay, who texted constantly, and had had a BlackBerry since she was fourteen. It was her main means of communication with the world, and Liz found it convenient now too.

  The plane took off a few minutes later. There were twelve seats in the corporate jet, and Marshall was traveling alone. The flight attendant brought him coffee after takeoff, and had The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal neatly folded on the table next to his seat, alth
ough Marshall preferred reading them electronically. But he spent most of the time reading earnings reports, and as soon as the plane landed, a car was waiting to pick him up and take him to the office. He walked into their L.A. offices at a quarter to ten, and was in a meeting twenty minutes later and didn’t stop for the rest of the day. He left at six o’clock, and had the driver drop him off at home. He had an apartment in a building on Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills, and as soon as he got out, he let the driver go. Once he was in L.A., he preferred driving himself. The driver was useful to and from the airport, but Marshall kept a car in L.A., it was an old Jaguar he had bought several years before. It was perfect for L.A.

  He texted Liz and told her to have a good time at the film festival, showered, and at seven-fifteen he took the elevator to the garage in the building, got in the Jaguar, and took off toward the ocean. When he got there, he took a right onto Pacific Coast Highway, and headed toward Malibu. The traffic was as bad as it usually was at that hour, but he was in a good mood as he turned on the radio. There was always a holiday feeling to his two-day stays in L.A., and it felt good to be down there, in the warm weather. The city had a more festive feeling than life up north.

  It took him half an hour to get to the familiar address. It was a mildly run-down house with white shutters and a slightly crooked picket fence. It looked like a cozy cottage, but Marshall knew it was bigger than it appeared. He drove into the driveway, and turned off his car just outside the garage. There were two pink bikes lying on the ground side by side, and he walked in through the back door, which he knew would be unlocked. It led him past a large, slightly disorderly kitchen, and he opened a door into a huge sunny room, set up as an artist’s studio, where there was a beautiful young woman working on a large canvas with a look of intense concentration. Her mane of blond curls was half pinned to the top of her head. She was wearing a man’s undershirt that was well worn and splattered with paint, and she had nothing under it. She had on cut-off jeans that were very short shorts, and she had paint on her long shapely legs too, and rubber flip-flops on her feet.

  She looked surprised to see him, and then sat back on her stool with a slow smile. “You’re here?” She looked pleased.

  “I told you I was coming on Tuesday this week,” he reminded her as he walked toward her with a look that drank her in.

  “I forgot,” she said, but she didn’t look unhappy about it. On the contrary, her whole face melted into a broad smile as he approached her, and she put down her paintbrush and wiped her hands on a towel. He was wearing jeans and an open blue shirt, and he didn’t care if she got paint on him. It had happened before. She reached out her arms to him, and he put his arms around her, nestled his face in her mane of curly hair for a minute, and then kissed her longingly on the mouth. It was a searing kiss that went right through them both.

  “I miss you so much when I’m not here,” he said hoarsely as he nuzzled her neck, and she kissed him again.

  “You know what the solution to that is,” she said softly, but without malice. They both knew that solution, but it had been impossible for him for eight years. “I missed you too,” she said, and then kissed him again. There was an overwhelming sensual quality to her that he had found irresistible since the day he met her, and she felt the same way about him.

  “Where are the girls?” he asked in a whisper. He lived five days out of every week for these moments with her.

  “At the gym with the sitter. They’ll be back soon,” she said, lost in his arms, as he wrapped himself around her like a snake, and she could feel how much he wanted her, as much as she wanted him.

  “How soon?” he asked, and she giggled. She had a wonderful girlish quality to her. She was entirely female, and every inch of her excited him.

  “Maybe half an hour,” she answered, and with that he picked her up in his arms, and carried her up to her bedroom. She was reasonably tall, but thin and as light as a feather. And a moment later, he set her down on her bed, tore his clothes off, as she peeled off her ancient paint-splattered undershirt and dropped the cut-off jeans and the thong she was wearing underneath. Less than a minute later, they were both naked and wrapped in each other’s arms, overwhelmed by the passion that had consumed them for eight years. It had been a white-hot union from the moment they met. She had been a temporary receptionist in his L.A. office, and by the time she left a month later, they were having an affair, and he hadn’t been able to tear himself away from her ever since. He could never get enough of her, he was obsessed with her and always had been. And he came with a roaring sound that was always music to her ears. They were both more careful whenever the girls were home, but now they didn’t have to be and could abandon themselves to each other.

  He lay in bed with her afterward, and looked at her. He didn’t know how it could get any better, but it always did. Just the few days he spent away from her every week made him fall in love with her all over again.

  “I missed you so much this week,” he said, and meant it.

  “Me too.” She never asked him how his week had been, how work was, or about his life in San Francisco. She didn’t want to know. They lived in the present moment, with no past and no future. Ashley Briggs had become the woman of his dreams.

  She was a talented artist, and he had bought the house in Malibu seven years before. She had lived there ever since. They heard the front door slam then, and voices below, and both Marshall and Ashley leaped out of bed and back into their clothes, and then followed each other downstairs with a guilty look. There were two identically beautiful little girls at the foot of the stairs, in gym clothes, with the same lush curls as their mother, and they looked at Marshall with delight and ran halfway up the stairs and threw themselves at him and almost knocked him down, but he was laughing, as he pulled them each toward him with one arm. He was an entirely different man here and had been for all of the years with her.

  “Daddy! You’re home!” Kendall squealed in delight while Marshall tickled her, and Kezia just clung to him with a happy smile. Kendall was the older of the identical twins by four minutes, and she never let Kezia live it down. She claimed priority in everything by virtue of age, but Marshall loved them both. They were like two angels who had fallen into his life, and Ashley was the guardian angel who had brought them to him. He had never felt love in his life as he did for her and their girls. What he shared with Liz was entirely different. That was reason. This was love, as he had never experienced it before.

  “How was the gym?” he asked them as though he had seen them that morning. The girls were used to his schedule and the fact that he was only with them for two days a week. It had been that way all their lives, and they no longer questioned it. Their mother had told them that Daddy had to work in San Francisco for five days a week, and then he came home to be with them. And the rest of the time, Ashley was alone with the girls. It wasn’t always perfect for either of the adults, but it seemed to work. The years had sped by.

  The babies had been an accident, but a fortuitous one. Ashley had been twenty-three when they were born, twenty-two when Marshall met her and was bowled over by her. And now at thirty, this was the life she led, with a man who couldn’t bring himself to leave his primary family nor his wife. After promising to marry her initially, when she got pregnant, he had decided his kids were too young for him to leave them. There had been other reasons since. And Ashley was hoping he would finally make a move when Lindsay left for college. It wasn’t much longer, and then he would have no excuse. He had also been afraid of the potential for scandal, if people found out about her and how they had met, and the impact it could have on his career. Major corporations didn’t always take kindly to their CEOs having flagrant affairs with young women, and fathering children out of wedlock. And the stock market might not like it either, which would be worse. It had been hard to explain that to Ashley, especially when she was carrying his babies. She had cried herself to sleep every night when he wouldn’t get divorced. But now, after all this t
ime, his children in San Francisco were finally older, and she knew he couldn’t live without her. She was praying that sooner or later, he would leave Liz, and move to L.A.

  He had bought her the house to reassure her right before the twins were born, and he paid all the bills for Ashley and the girls. He would have bought her a bigger house, but this was the one she had wanted, and she and the girls were happy there. It suited Ashley to perfection, and he loved staying there himself. It was the coziest place on earth, and even more so when he was in her arms in their big comfortable bed. And yet when he was in Ross, that felt right to him too. He loved Liz and the life they had shared for so many years. In truth, he loved both women and both lives. They were the perfect complement to each other, and he couldn’t have said it to anyone, and never had, but he needed both of them, in different ways.

  “Do you want to go out to dinner?” Marshall offered, and Ashley hesitated. There was always a slight party atmosphere when he was in Malibu with them, and she let him indulge the girls, since they only had their father two days a week.

  “Yes! Yes! Yes!” the girls shouted happily in answer to the question, and they went to a Chinese restaurant nearby that they all loved. And well after the girls’ bedtime, they all came home, and Ashley put them to bed. They shared a room on the main floor, below her own. And Marshall went to tuck them in and kiss them goodnight.

  “They love it when you’re here,” Ashley said softly, when he came back to her room, where she was lying on the bed, sated after dinner, and their lovemaking earlier. Marshall had just texted Liz before coming back upstairs, to wish her goodnight, and so she didn’t call him when she came out of the theater.

  “So do I,” Marshall said about how much he loved being there, and Ashley knew he meant it. And then he lay on the bed next to her, looking up at the familiar ceiling. He knew all the cracks in it, and the shadows, and had lain here a thousand times, thinking about her and how much he loved her. He couldn’t imagine his life without her now. But when he went back to Ross, he couldn’t imagine a life without Liz either. It was the single greatest agony in his life, and he had put off the decision for eight years.