LITMIR.BIZ

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thick dark hair.” She paused for a second, weighing her next sentence before continuing. “He could stand a haircut,” she commented.

      He’d gotten nothing but positive responses from the women in his office and the ones he went out with. Obviously this one liked to go against the grain. “I like it this length,” Dylan informed her.

      Cindy responded with a careless shrug of her slim shoulders, then went on as if he hadn’t said anything. “But he dresses well. And if I look at him from the side,” which she did now, moving to another vantage point around the desk, “he looks a little like a younger version of you, Senator.”

      They heard Hank blow out a breath, as if he’d been holding it. “All right, I’m convinced.”

      “Hallelujah,” Dylan enthused cryptically. “Now can we get on with this, please?” He didn’t wait for a response to his plea. “Where are you?”

      Ever since the scene on the courthouse steps, Hank had taken measures to keep ahead of the media hounds. “I’ve been moving around, trying to stay a step ahead of the press.” The silence that met his statement told Hank that Dylan was waiting for him to elaborate. “Staying with different people.”

      “Your mistresses?” Dylan asked. There was a coldness in his voice.

      He didn’t expect the answer he heard. “Hell, no,” his father hooted. “They’re a jealous bunch. They didn’t know about each other,” he confessed. “Now they’re all ready to vivisect me.”

      “That would save the government the cost of a trial,” Dylan commented dryly. He found himself relating to this unreal collection of supermodel blondes. “Can’t say I blame them,” he said almost under his breath, but still audible enough to be heard. “So exactly where can I meet you?”

      “Then you really are serious about wanting to help me?” Hank pressed.

      There was a part of Dylan that still couldn’t shake the thought that he was going to regret this, but he answered in the affirmative. In a manner of speaking. “Unfortunately, I am.”

      Hank thought for a moment, then seemed to make up his mind. There were few enough people whom he could trust. Everyone who’d professed friendship and support during the good times had turned on him. The body count was rising as his choices were diminishing.

      “Meet me at the house,” Hank told him. “I can be there in an hour.”

      “The house” was his sprawling, incredibly opulent estate in Beverly Hills. There were few like it. There were sheiks who had palaces that might lay claim to rivaling the area that Hank whimsically called home, but there was nothing like it around here. And that was saying a lot, given the affluence that could be found in Beverly Hills.

      “Aren’t you afraid that the media will ambush you?” Dylan asked. “From what I hear, they’re camped out in front of the security gates at the house.”

      After the scene the other day, Hank wouldn’t want to come within fifty yards of the media, but fears had to be faced. “There are ways to get in and out undetected if I have to.”

      “Is that how you did it?” Dylan wanted to know.

      His father obviously wasn’t following him. “Did what?”

      “Stepped out on Mother all those times that you were at home?”

      The twenty-room estate, built on the site of a silent-movie great’s one-of-a-kind mansion, had incorporated some of that former legend’s quirky designs, including an underground passage that ran close to a mile and a quarter, eventually coming out into the basement of the estate next door.

      Legend had it that the passage had originally been used by the movie star to sneak away for regular trysts with the woman who eventually became his third wife, when both he and the woman in question were married to other people.

      Dylan could almost see his father scowling on the other end of the line.

      “This isn’t the time for that discussion, Dylan,” Hank informed him.

      “No, I wouldn’t think it would be,” Dylan replied glibly. “Okay, one hour,” he agreed. “I’ll see you there.” But then a complicating factor hit him. “But if I go directly to the estate, the newshounds camped outside the estate gates will suspect something is up.”

      “As long as you don’t stop to talk to them, we’ll be fine. Knowing and suspecting are two very different things,” Hank pointed out.

      “You would be the expert on that,” Dylan couldn’t help observing. “Okay, one hour. I’ll be there.”

      Reaching out, he was about to disconnect the call when he heard his father say, “Oh, and Dylan?”

      Now what? “Yes, sir?”

      “Thanks.” The single word came without a preamble. Not even a mild word of foreshow, a whisper, something to give him a clue this was coming.

      The one sure thing was that he hadn’t expected it. Not from his father. Maybe from one of his father’s handlers or from the staff members he was, or had been, running into the ground—that he could see.

      But from the old man himself? Not possible. And yet, he’d said it. Who knew that the middle of September was the time for miracles?

      The single word of gratitude had sounded genuine. Definitely a first for the old man, Dylan thought cynically.

      “Yeah, well, don’t go thanking me just yet. We’ve got a ways to go with this before you’re anywhere in the clear.”

      But Hank was not about to take back what he’d said. “Just knowing you’re there, in my corner, means a lot to me, Dylan.”

       Like you were there in Mother’s corner, Dad?

      It was on the tip of his tongue to ask that, but it wouldn’t serve any purpose, would just stir things up, muddy the waters. The past was the past and his father was not a man who would suddenly have an epiphany because one of his sons had taken him to task for his very tarnished behavior. It just didn’t work that way. Not where his father was concerned.

      He let the comment go.

      “Okay,” Dylan repeated, his voice somewhat stilted. “One hour. Security code still the same to get in the gates?” he asked.

      “Yes, except that you need to reverse the numbers. I reentered them that way last month.”

      Dylan wondered if his father even remembered that his son did that unintentionally more times than he liked to think of. Most likely the old man didn’t remember that one of his children battled dyslexia.

      Nothing new there. Actually remembering how many children he had, would be a major accomplishment for his father.

      Legitimate children, Dylan qualified. God only knew how many other women his father had gotten pregnant before this latest one had stepped into the spotlight, demanding her due.

      Pressing End, he disconnected the call and shook his head. Though he was accustomed to a fast-paced life, this all still felt like a circus to him. A loon-fest about a man who bore little to no resemblance to the man he’d once known as his father.

      Or had thought he’d known, Dylan amended.

      Just shows that I wasn’t all that bright as a kid, he thought.

      Turning from the desk, he saw that his father’s petite guard dog in the smart light-gray suit was watching him. If it didn’t seem so incredible, he would have said that there was sympathy in her eyes. But that was impossible; guard dogs didn’t feel sympathy. Not that he would have welcomed it anyway.

      “He meant that, you know,” Cindy told him quietly just as Dylan was about to pick up his hand-stitched leather briefcase and leave.

      Which part of the conversation was she referring to? “Meant

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