Free Judgment of the Grave by Sarah Stewart Taylor

was still capable of sympathy after dealing with as many grieving families as she had over the years. She sat down in the chair across from him and leveled her blue eyes at him. “Did you talk to Cecily?”
    He closed the catalog and swiveled his chair away. “I couldn’t. Pres has a doctor’s appointment tomorrow and this thing with the body in the woods…She was really upset when I called. I just couldn’t do it.”
    “Pres told you what he was doing up there yet?”
    “I don’t know. Just walking.” But he hadn’t answered her question. Pres hadn’t told him anything, hadn’t wanted to talk about it at all.
    She got up, smoothed the front of her skirt, and leaned over to kiss his forehead. “Bruce, I love you and I know this is really hard with Pres and everything, but we’ve got to get this settled. Especially with…well, if we’re right, it could just be a really bad situation for everyone. And if we want to start branching out when your dad retires, she could make trouble about it. We’ve got to get those shares back.”
    Bruce looked down at the desk. It was the fourth time they’d had this conversation that week and he repressed the desire to snap at her. She was right, of course. The stupidest thing he’d ever done had been to allow Cecily to claim a third of the shares of the monument company during the divorce. He’d been so guilty, willing to do anything to make her go away so he could be with Lauren, and she had been so angry, she’d wanted to do anything to hurt him. Asking for the shares had been her way of exerting her power, though she’d said it was because of Pres. And he supposed it was fair on some level. When they’d first gotten married, the monument company had been deeply in debt, two or three years from shutting down if he and George had continued on the path they’d been following. But Cecily had some money her father had invested for her, and she had put it all into the company. They’d expanded, gotten better lines, improved the whole look of the place. She had deserved something, but he knew he should have just bought her out.
    “He won’t have anything else,” she’d said when she’d told him what she wanted. Bruce remembered feeling like he was going to cry and telling her that of course he would always provide for his son.
    “But we don’t know that,” she’d countered. “You say that now, but when she ”—she couldn’t say Lauren’s name—“has the baby, you may feel differently. This is the only way to make sure that Pres will be taken care of.”
    He’d felt so guilty that he’d been more than happy to agree.
    But Lauren was right. It had to be taken care of, sooner rather than later. They’d been to the bank and had talked about taking out a loan to buy her out. It would be difficult, but it could be done.
    If she agreed, he reminded himself. If she agreed.
    “Okay,” he said finally. “I’ll talk to her tomorrow.”
    She caressed his cheek. “Where’s your dad?”
    “I don’t know.” He shut down the computer and swiveled his chair around to face her. She gave him a sexy little grin and sat down on his lap. “You got any appointments?”
    “Uh-uh,” he said, already kissing her neck. Her hair smelled of strawberries and vanilla.
    “Good.” She opened her mouth a little to him and placed her right breast in his hand. They were practiced and it took only a few moments before he was unzipped, before her pink wool skirt was up around her waist. The desk chair creaked and in a few minutes it was all over. It was the way they always did it in the office, quickly, focused on him, worried that George would come in. If they thought about it, they both knew that that was part of the turn-on, that it reminded them of those early days when they could be together only at the office.
    Bruce had known the first time he’d seen her. Not that he was going to fall in love with her, marry her, have two children with her. But he had known that he was