She didn’t bother with a cab. Despite wearing high-heeled sandals, Zoe could walk miles of Manhattan sidewalk and never feel pain. It was part of being a New Yorker. And with the turbulence of her thoughts, she barely remembered entering the subway and riding across town.
At the front door to her father’s high-rise, luxury apartment, Zoe waved to the doorman. Elderly, with gray hair and a glowing smile, he’d been around for years. “Hello there, Ms. Zoe,” he said. “Come to protect your pops from your fellow reporters?”
“That bad?” Zoe asked, pausing beside the desk to study him.
His brow inched upward. “It’s been a madhouse. Reporters everywhere. If I didn’t know you, I’d think the whole lot of them were bloodsuckers with no care for anything but the story.”
Zoe let out a breath. “I’m sorry you have to deal with all of this.”
He winked. “I’ll live. You just go see that daddy of yours and work through all this mess.”
With a nod and an attempt at a smile, Zoe headed for the elevator. The ride up to the twentieth floor felt like an eternity. Her stomach twisted into a tighter knot with every ding of a passing level. Her father might not be the most thoughtful person, but he was quick to defend his honor. The fact that she hadn’t heard from him or her brothers gave her a bad feeling.
When the door opened to reveal her oldest brother Mike, Zoe wasn’t surprised. Tall, with blond hair and blue eyes, at thirty-six he was single and handsome. No. Not true. Mike was happily married to his job. Just like her father. How her mother had lived with his ways Zoe would never know. A second later, Rick appeared. Five years younger than Mike, the similarities between the two brothers were remarkable, except for one thing. Somehow, Rick had dark black hair like his father. The only one of the siblings who’d inherited that trait.
“We had a feeling you’d be around,” Rick said, scrubbing his hand across a recently shaven jaw.
Mike pulled the door back and motioned her forward. “Come on in.”
“Thanks for letting me find out about all of this from the press,” Zoe said, as she slid past them both. “A great surprise for a reporter.”
“Sorry, Zoe,” Mike said from behind her. “I meant to call.”
Zoe whirled and shoved her fists into her hips. “Meant to call? Is that the best excuse you can come up with?”
Mike shut the door and turned to Zoe, irritation evident in his face. “It’s been hell. We—”
“I don’t want your excuses,” Zoe spat. “Just talk.”
“If it isn’t my lovely daughter.”
Zoe rotated to find her father standing near the dining room table just past the entryway, cup in hand. Like her, he had a coffee habit. Dressed in a silk robe, he looked tall and distinguished. Even from a distance, she could see he looked tired. And older. At sixty, most guessed him to be fifty. Today he looked his age.
“Why don’t you join me for coffee, little one,” he said. “We’ll chat about current events.”
Zoe felt Rick’s hand on her shoulder. An act of comfort Zoe found calming. Rick worked for Marks and even looked like Mike on the exterior, but he had a softer side that the corporate world had never quite destroyed. At least, not yet.
Zoe reached up and touched Rick’s hand before walking toward the table. “Hello, Father.”
She pulled out a chair and sat down at the deep mahogany table, reaching for the delicate china filled with coffee her father sat in front of her. Sleep had been slow in coming and had been restless. Caffeine sounded damn good. Answers sounded better.
Rick chose a seat next to her, while her father, in his normal fashion, took his spot at the head of the table. Mike, as usual, stood alone, leaning against the bar that separated the dining area from the kitchen.
Her father spoke before she could finish her first sip of coffee. “Mike and Rick didn’t call because I forbade them to.”
Swallowing, Zoe almost choked on the hot liquid. “And why is that?” she asked, setting her coffee on the tabletop. “You didn’t think I had the right to know before the rest of the world?”
“I meant to talk to you before the news got out,” he said with a heavy voice. He ran his hand over his thin, gray hair. “The next thing I knew, it was all over the papers, and I had fireballs being thrown at me left and right.”
Grasping her fingers together in front of her, Zoe studied him. The tension in the room was palpable. “What happened?” she asked.
“As you know your Uncle Ray does my financial management. I did what he advised me. With my upcoming retirement, I won’t hold the control at Marks. Selling off my stock seemed a natural step toward the future. We started slowly diversifying my portfolio and the next thing I knew the authorities came knocking.”