Chapter 1 #2
They’d talked about children, and since neither one of them wanted to give up their jobs right now, they were going to wait.
They were young enough to work for a while before having children.
She could see how hard it was on Lica and Brandy to have a child and work too.
She didn’t want to do that. Even though Brandy was thinking about slowing down on her job to stay at home, she wondered how long that would last. Being a stay-at-home mom didn’t appeal to her like it did to Brandy.
Going home to take a nap, she’d not been sleeping well at night, she knew that she’d feel better when she woke up.
For the past several days, she’d been taking an hour-long nap during the day just so she could go to bed early after supper.
She knew that once she was back to sleeping better at night, she’d feel better, but for now, it didn’t bother her when she was able to lie down for a little while and sleep well.
She missed having Ivan beside her, but she would be back to sleeping normally when everything was finished with her parents.
And that couldn’t be soon enough for her.
After getting up, feeling a great deal better than she had before, Sen worked at her desk for several hours before Ivan came home.
He’d called to tell her that he was going to be late, and she was all right with that.
Apparently, someone had hit a dog out on Forty, and he was in terrible shape.
She hoped that he’d be able to save the poor dog as she hated to see anything suffer needlessly.
After supper, the two of them sat on the couch and watched the news.
It was a nightly thing for the two of them, but she noticed that Ivan kept dozing off.
She did as well, but not as badly as he’d been.
Getting up at nine, the two of them were in bed before nine-thirty and asleep not long after that.
They needed this vacation more than she’d thought, and she was going to make some arrangements to get a start on it tomorrow after work.
She clerked for Judge Rainer at the courthouse and loved her job.
Of late, she’d been taking a lot of time off because of all the personal things going on with her parents, but she knew that as soon as things were somewhat normal, she’d be back to work in no time.
It was something that she looked forward to.
Having normal in her life. She wondered if things would ever be normal again.
The next morning, she was up before Ivan.
Since he had to go to work at ten, she let him sleep until eight thirty.
It didn’t make him late for work; in fact, he seemed to be in a better mood than before, and they kissed as they headed out the door.
Of course, it was raining again, like it did every spring, but she was all right with that as it was warm out and not a cold rain.
Going to work, she sat at her desk and worked until lunch.
It was nice to get into a rhythm of things, and she was grateful for the work that kept her mind preoccupied with other things that were going on in her head.
By five, she’d got her desk cleared of things that had been piling up.
Proud of herself, she stopped by the grocery on the way home to get herself a treat.
She loved ice cream and decided that this was a night for something different.
Instead of getting the usual vanilla like she normally would have, she got strawberry crunch and had a bowl of it as soon as she was in the door.
She felt better than she had in the last few weeks and owed it all to being able to get some rest. It helped that she had been talking about what was going on in her life with Ivan, who knew it all anyway, but she thought that with him by her side, things were going to work out.
If she had to walk away from whatever her father had left her, she would.
There was nothing holding her back from just giving it all up for her own sanity.
She didn’t need any more stressors in her life right now and thought that she had a good handle on things for someone who had been through what she’d been through in the last month and a half.
There was a light at the end of the tunnel, and she was happy that she could see the end.
Being at the courthouse by eight was no problem.
She and the two men who were going to be on her side would make things all right for her.
If they didn’t, then it would be something that she would have to make a decision on.
Walking away didn’t seem as daunting as it might have been a few weeks ago when her father was sucking up to her and being nice.
~*~
Devlin hadn’t been given a copy of the will until he showed up.
After reading it over, really just skimming it, he knew that Sen was going to be walking away from billions of dollars.
It was a shame too. But there were too many stipulations in the will for her to follow that would have her giving up her freedom by a great deal and having to deal with a company that nearly ran itself.
But he knew that his newest sister-in-law valued her freedom as much as he did.
When the attorneys from the law firm showed up, he had a feeling that they were just as much of a bully as their client had been when he was alive.
It took them another half an hour to get down to business.
He had no idea what the holdup was, but kept his mouth shut.
He noticed, too, that Ivan and Sen had also decided to let them do what they wanted, and it wasn’t until she was handed the will that she turned it over to him.
Her copy would be the same as his, and he was going to recommend that she not take the deal that was keeping her from having a life.
“Mr. Ranger’s death had put us in a bind.
” He didn’t expect that, so he sat up straighter in his chair to hear what the problem was.
“If you don’t mind me saying so, I do hope that we can get this resolved as soon as possible.
To have Mr. Ranger off our books is going to be a godsend.
He wasn’t a man that I would normally do business with. ”
“I didn’t much care for him either.” Sen stood up and got herself a bottle of juice that was in the center of the table before sitting down again.
“What do I have to do to get the money? And just so you know, that’s all I’m here for.
To see how much money I’m supposed to get and what his stipulations are for me getting it.
I’m not opposed to walking away from it all if there is too much in his favor. He’s dead now, and I’m in charge.”
The first attorney smiled but covered it with a cough.
“Yes, well, he had a lot of stipulations about the money, but there are loopholes in your favor. Two of the stipulations have been taken care of in that you showed up today on time and that you brought an attorney with you. He figured that you’d just show up on your own, and that would be the end of the will reading.
I don’t know why he thought that you worked in a good law office, and I would imagine that they told you what to do. ”
“I’m a smart woman, and no one has to tell me what to do. In that, you tell me the terms, and I’ll tell you mine.” He nodded and smiled bigger this time. “How much is the estate worth?”
“Ninety-eight billion dollars with all the lands and properties that he owned. The biggest chunk of it is in the business that he wants you to run. I’m assuming by the way his death was so sudden that he didn’t get to tell you what he wanted you to do.
” Sen said that he’d not and handed the copy of the death certificate over to the first man.
“I see that you’ve come prepared. I like that.
Some of the things that Mr. Ranger said about you led us to believe that you were a simpleton simply because you’re a woman.
After doing research on you, we’ve found that to be untrue.
Let me tell you what has to be done so that you can walk away from here with the biggest payoff that we’ve ever had at this office. ”
Devlin was impressed with the will once he was able to read it over word by word and how many places it was in favor of Sen.
The attorneys had to do that because he didn’t see Howard putting in the kind of terms that would favor Sen.
As it stood right now, she only had to run the company on her own for a year and show profit the first quarter and she’d be free to sell it or hire someone else to take over.
Also, she wasn’t to be married, but that was taken care of because she’d been married before Howard died, and that nullified and voided that part of the terms. There were other things like that in the will, and each time they came to one of the terms that didn’t have Sen getting the money, there was a term in there for her to have it voided.
The only thing that they couldn’t take care of was the house that she was to live in while running the company.
“You don’t have to live there if you and your husband already have an estate that is larger than the one that he expected you to live in.
And from what we were able to gather, you don’t.
The way you can fix that is to add onto your home or increase the value by ten percent, then it’s all yours.
Can you do that?” She asked how she was supposed to do that.
“If you pay off the house, that would do the same thing. Can you afford that?”
“I can. I’d rather not, but if that’s all it takes, then we can do that.” She cleared her throat and asked her question. “Why couldn’t I be married, and what does that have to do with Ivan and me being married already?”