or more exciting than the one she had worked in since she had graduated from college?
He was just trying her on for size, taking his first test drive in an old, out-of-style car that he could afford to make mistakes in. She felt like slamming on the brakes and making
him walk. When she pulled into the tidy apartment complex parking lot and waited for
him to get out, she offered not a word of friendship or meaning.
Brazil stood outside her car, holding the door open, staring in at her.
“So, what time tomorrow?”
“Ten,” she said, shortly.
He slammed the door, walking away fast, hurt and upset. Women were all
the same. They were warm and wonderful one minute, and turned-on and all over him the next, which was followed by moody and distant and didn’t mean what happened.
Brazil didn’t understand how he and West could have had such a special moment at the
truck stop, and now it was as if they weren’t even on a first-name basis. She had used
him, that’s what. It was empty and cheap to her, and he was certain this was her modus
operandi. She was older, powerful, and experienced, not to mention good-looking, with a
body that caused him serious pain. West could toy with anyone she wanted.
Vy So could Blair Mauney III, his wife feared. Polly Mauney could not help but worry
about what her husband might engage in when he traveled to Charlotte tomorrow, on US
Air flight number 392, nonstop from Asheville, where the Mauneys lived in a lovely
Tudor- style home in Biltmore Forest. Blair Mauney III was from old money, and had
just come in from the club after a hard tennis match, a shower, a massage, and drinks
with his pals. Mauney had come from many generations of banking, beginning with his
grandfather, Blair Mauney, who had been a founding father of the American Trust
Company.
Blair Mauney Ill’s father, Blair Mauney, Jr. ” had been a vice president when American
Commercial merged with First National of Raleigh. A statewide banking system was off
and running, soon followed by more mergers, and the eventual formation of North
Carolina National Bank. This went on, and with the S&L crisis of the late 1980s, banks
that had not been bought up were offered at fire sale prices. NCNB became the fourth-
largest bank in the country, and was renamed US Bank
Blair Mauney
III knew the minutiae about his well-respected bank’s remarkable history. He knew what
the chairman, the president, the vice chairman and chief financial officer, and CEO got
paid.
He was a senior vice president for US Bank in the Carolinas, and routinely was required
to travel to Charlotte. This he rather much enjoyed, for it was good to get away from
wife and teenaged children whenever one could, and only his colleagues in their lofty
offices understood his pressures. Only comrades understood the fear lurking in every
banker’s heart that one day Cahoon, who tolerated nothing, would inform hard workers
like Mauney that they were out of favor with the crown. Mauney dropped his tennis bag
in his recently remodeled kitchen, and opened the door of the refrigerator, ready for
another Amstel Light.
“Honey?” he called out, popping off the cap.
“Yes, dear.” She briskly walked in.
“How was tennis?”
“We won.”
“Good for you!” She beamed.
“Withers must have double-faulted twenty times.” He swallowed.
“Foot-faulted like hell, too, but we didn’t call those. What’d you guys eat?” He barely looked at Polly Mauney, his wife of twenty-two years.
“Spaghetti Bolognese, salad, seven grain bread.” She went through his tennis bag,
fishing out cold sweat- soaked, smelly shorts, shirt, socks, and jock strap, as she always
had and would.
“Got any pasta left?”
“Plenty. I’d be delighted to fix you a plate, dear.”
“Maybe later.” He fell into stretches.
“I’m really getting tight. You don’t think it’s arthritis, do you?”
“Of course not. Would you like me to rub you down, sweetheart?” she said.
While he was drifting during his massage, she would bring up what her plastic surgeon had said when she had inquired about a laser treatment to get rid of fine lines on her face,