CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘WHAT exactly do you do, Lance?’
His blue eyes whipped round at her question. They’d been travelling in virtual silence for nearly an hour, the only sound in the car some faint music from the radio.
‘You don’t have to talk for the sake of talking,’ he said, returning his eyes to the road ahead.
‘I realise that. I want to know. Bud told me once you worked in the export division of Sterling Industries. But what exactly does that entail?’
He slid her a sharp glance. ‘Then you don’t know?’
‘Know what?’
‘I moved on from that position twelve months ago. I now run Sterling Industries. I’m the managing director.’
Angie blinked her astonishment. ‘No. I didn’t know. I... I naturally thought your father occupied that position.’
‘He did. Theoretically. Unfortunately, he hadn’t been a hands-on CEO for many years, and Sterling Industries was beginning to suffer. His choosing to live in Sydney wasn’t conducive to good management, considering all the companies’ head offices are in Melbourne. But that was my mother’s doing. She refused to live in Melbourne, and what she wanted, she got. By the time I took over, Dad’s neglect plus the recent recession had put some areas of the business into deep trouble. I’ve been lucky enough to turn things around and we’re now in a position to take advantage of the growing economy.’
Angie was both surprised and impressed. ‘So how did you come to take over, Lance? Did you talk your dad into taking early retirement?’
‘No. He died.’
Angie sucked in a shocked breath.
‘It was in all the papers,’ he added. ‘The business section, that is.’
‘I don’t read the business section very often,’ she murmured.
‘I had no idea you didn’t know. Bud knew, because he rang me at the time. I presumed he must have told you.’
‘No. He didn’t. He never mentioned it. Oh, God, I... I’m so sorry, Lance. You must have thought me very rude for not contacting you, or sending a card or something. How did your dad die? Had he been ill?’ She recalled a tall, handsome man at Lance’s wedding who’d not looked a day over fifty, although he had probably been older.
‘Yes. Very ill. He had cancer of the pancreas and liver. There was nothing the doctors could do. He died less than three months after the original diagnosis.’
‘How awful for you all. Your poor mother must have been devastated.’
‘Oh, absolutely,’ came his caustic reply. ‘So devastated that she had to take herself off around the world to recover—her trip starting the day after the funeral. Last month she became Mrs Jonathon Winthrop the third. Fortunately, for me, Mr Winthrop lives in Texas, and can’t travel due to some rare blood disease he has. I would say the next time I see my darling mama will be at my new step-papa’s funeral. Though maybe not,’ he added with savage sarcasm. ‘If I’m a minute or two late I’ll probably miss her. She’ll have moved on by then.’
Angie was about to defend his mother with some soothing platitude but decided not to. She hadn’t liked the woman—had despised her, in fact—and didn’t blame Lance one iota for feeling the way he did. She’d been a cold and unloving mother, and, it seemed, a miserable wife—a beautiful but cold bitch, whose priorities in life were money and social status.
‘I see,’ was all she said, which brought another sharp look.
‘Yes, you would,’ Lance said, admiration in his voice. ‘Any other woman would have made some inanely sympathetic remark and not meant a single word of it. But not you, Angie. You’re your mother’s daughter. Straight down the line. You’ve no idea how much I appreciate that. A man would always know where he stood with you. There’d be no deceptions. No lies. No bull.’
She felt warmed by his compliments, yet perturbed at the same time. What she wanted was the same from Lance. No deceptions. No lies. No bull. Ever!
‘Then tell me what you do, Lance,’ she insisted. ‘Give me a run-down of a typical day in the life of Lance Sterling. Or, better still, a typical week.’