Gayle Wilson - Her Private Bodyguard

Porter’s touch brought Val out of her heartsick reverie and made her realize that the brief graveside service was over. The people who had gathered around the final resting place of Charles Valentine Beaufort were already beginning to stream back to their cars, parked haphazardly along the edges of the vast cemetery.

She supposed she should have listened to whatever the minister had had to say about her father, but she didn’t really need any eulogy to remind her of how he had lived his life. Or of how much she had loved him.

“There wasn’t a better man in this world than Charlie Beaufort,” Johnson said softly. “I never had a better friend.”

Touched by the quiet sincerity in his voice, Valerie leaned forward to press her lips against his cheek. His skin was as soft as old velvet, crepey with age. But then, Porter was even older than her father.

Actually, she remembered, he was the oldest of that small group of men who had founded Av-Tech Aeronautics. They had had no way of knowing then what an industry giant the tiny company they had started on a shoestring after the Korean war would become. Maybe if they had, things would have been different.

“So sorry about your daddy, honey,” Emory Hunter said, as soon as Porter and his wife moved away. Emory patted her cheek, just as he had when she was a little girl. “Charlie was a real good man. Maybe the best I’ve ever known. That should be a consolation to you, just like the size of this crowd should be.”

He indicated the hundreds of people scattered across the sweep of green lawn, centered by the tent they had set up over her father’s grave. They hadn’t lowered the casket yet. Maybe they didn’t do that until everyone was gone. She wasn’t really up on funeral etiquette, which was a good thing, she guessed.

“It is a consolation,” she agreed, finding a smile for another of her father’s partners, men she had literally known all her life. “And it helps to know he had friends like you.”

“You call me in a few days, and we’ll talk some about your old man. I know stories I bet he never told you. Probably didn’t want you to know what a hell-raiser he really was,” Emory said, laughing before his expression sobered. “It’s good to talk about folks after they’re gone. Healthy to remember the good times. It keeps them alive for us a little longer.”

Hunter had never lost his Southern accent, despite the number of years he had lived in Colorado. Since he was now in his late sixties, Val didn’t suppose he ever would.

“I will,” she said, smiling at him. “I’ll call, I promise. And thank you, Emory. Your friendship meant a lot to Dad.”

He moved away, and Valerie turned to the next person waiting for her attention. Soon the faces and the condolences started to run together. She seemed to be repeating the same phrases over and over again, her mind a million miles away, just as it had been during the service.

All she wanted to do was to get this over and go home. Get out of these clothes and into a pair of jeans. Ride out the tension that had grown into an ache between her shoulders. Get the scent of hothouse flowers out of her nostrils and the sound of all these voices and their words of comfort out of her head.

That wasn’t a lack of respect for her father. He would have been the first to agree that riding over the isolated landscape they both loved was a better idea than standing over his grave. Charlie Beaufort had loved the high desert and the mountains with a deep and abiding passion. Just as he had loved the ranch that sat in a small, sheltered valley in the middle of the tract of rugged land he’d bought more than forty years ago. He had built the main house and most of the outbuildings with his own hands.

During the past ten or fifteen years, however, when Av-Tech had really taken off, he hadn’t had time—hadn’t taken time, Val amended—to get away and visit it. When she was a little girl, they had gone out to the ranch almost every weekend. Piled in an old station wagon, her mother, father and Val would spend Friday evening driving out there, arriving long after midnight.

Some of her best memories of her father were associated with the ranch. Those were the memories she wanted to get in touch with. And those were the years she wanted to remember.

“Val, honey, if you’ve got a minute…” Harper Springfield whispered in her ear. “While they’re finishing up here…” Hand firmly on her elbow, Harp, another of Av-Tech’s founders, applied pressure to direct her away from the grave, where people were still waiting in line to speak to her and her stepmother.

Constance Beaufort’s perfectly coifed blond hair and beautiful features were covered by a sheer black veil, her slender figure clothed in a black designer suit, black hose and black kid pumps. There wasn’t a spot of color or a piece of jewelry, except for her gold wedding ring, of course, to spoil the image Connie was aiming for.

The grieving widow, Val thought as she turned away. Who had been grieving in earnest when she’d learned the terms of her late husband’s will. Charlie Beaufort might have been foolish enough, Val thought regretfully, to marry a woman younger than his daughter. But thankfully, his lawyers had been smart enough to make him have her sign a prenuptial agreement.

There would be a generous settlement for Connie, plenty of money to live on, but she would get no shares of Av-Tech. And there, of course, was where Charlie Beaufort’s real wealth lay.

Only when Val managed to pull her eyes away from her stepmother’s artful performance did she realized where Harp was leading her. On a slight rise looking down on the grave site, the co-owners of her father’s company were standing in a semicircle, waiting for Harp to bring her to them.

She had thought the firmness of Springfield’s grip on her arm was an unnecessary and unwanted concern for her bad leg, but now it began to feel like some kind of strong-arm tactic. Although she would much prefer to believe the latter than the former, she couldn’t imagine why her father’s partners would think she needed to be coerced into meeting with them. Most of them had bounced her on their knees when she was a baby.

They were looking decidedly nervous, however, as she and Harp approached. Because she was now the majority owner of the company that had been their bread and butter for so many years? After all, they were of a different generation. They might have concerns about a woman directing an international company, especially one that specialized in cutting-edge missile delivery systems and the latest satellite technology.

The first thing she needed to do, Val decided, was let them know she had no intention of trying to run things. She didn’t have the expertise, even if she had wanted to. And she didn’t want to, of course. She had walked away from her father’s money more than ten years ago. She wasn’t going back to that life now. No matter what his will had said.

“We all thought we needed to talk about what happens next,” Billy Clemens said as she and Harp walked up to the group.

Trust Billy to cut to the chase, Val thought. The most outspoken of the four men who had been her father’s partners for more than forty years, Clemens was also Val’s least favorite, although she could never quite pinpoint the reason. Billy was fond of saying that with him, what you saw was what you got. He was right. Val just didn’t particularly like either.

Maybe her father hadn’t, as well, Val thought, although he had never openly expressed any disparagement of Clemens. However, if her dad had arranged for his shares to be divided among his partners at his death instead of saddling her with them, Billy would now be the majority owner, and all the responsibility that went with the position would be his instead of hers.