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“Then I will submit my resignation and some, if not most, will return,” said William.

Joy was shocked. “You resign? But it’s your company!”

“SPR isn’t the reason they’re leaving. I’m the reason. As soon as it gets in the unsustainable territory, I’ll have no other option.”

Joy stared at William. He was a man of integrity. Great integrity. He seemed always willing to do the right thing. That was the man she thought she had married. But then why would he have risked so much for a fling that didn’t mean a thing? It angered her. “All of this damage just because . . .”

They waited for her to continue. But she didn’t.

“All of this damage just because of what?” William asked her.

Joy didn’t want to go there, but he asked her. “Just because you couldn’t keep that damn dick in your pants!” she said angrily. “That’s what!”

Jim nor Bobby could disagree with her, but it was jarring to see somebody speak that way to the boss.

It was jarring to William too. He’d always been a man people feared because of the juxtaposition of him on one side, and their lucrative careers in his corporation on the other. But Joy was still worried about William and if he was up to the job of being a faithful husband. He was a great man who did great things, including saving her life at the risk of his own. But would that be the tradeoff? Would she have to let William have his flings, let him indulge his weakness, but stay with him anyway because of his other far-greater qualities?

Joy was inwardly shaking her head. Because she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t stay with a cheater. She could not do it. And it was that reality that was kicking her butt. Because she loved William. Deeply.

But as she was thinking about her Hobson’s Choice that was really no choice at all, the intercom buzzed. William was still considering what Joy had just said to him as well. He was angry with her tone, but he didn’t know how to respond to the substance of it either. He felt saved by the bell.

He pressed the button. “Yes?”

“Maximus Bluff is on his way up, sir.”

“Thank you, Kevin,” William said to his front gate security, and released the button.

But Joy had had enough of William for one day. “I’m going back upstairs,” she said as she stood up to leave. Bobby and Jim were about to stand up too.

But William ordered her to sit back down. “I want you to hear this,” he said. “Sit down.”

Joy stared at him. She allowed him to handle her in so many ways. Mainly because she was so young and he was so much more experienced. But this was a bridge too far. “I’m going upstairs,” she said bluntly, and began leaving.

“I told you to sit back down.”

“And I told you I’m going upstairs,” she said as she made her way toward the stairs.

“Joynetta? Joynetta?” William angrily jumped up, which shocked Jim and Bobby, and he hurried toward the stairs.

Jim Flannagan had heard all about how William went all the way to Bridell, Indiana twice in one month to get her. He heard how he chased her down on an airfield tarmac. But it sounded so unlike the William he’d known for two decades that a part of him didn’t believe it.

But now he wondered if the man who could never love anybody but his deceased daughter love this girl. He married her, which was a shock in and of itself given how different they were, but was it even deeper than that? He heard how he put his body in front of an assassin’s bullet to save her. William did that? Putting himself at risk for a woman? It seemed impossible to Jim. Wholly improbable. Until now that he was seeing it for himself as William raced to the stairs and caught Joy just as she was about to climb them.

He took her by the hand and turned her around. “William, stop!” she cried out as she tried to wrangle away from his hard hold on her.

“I need you to listen to Max.”

“No!”

“It’s about the gunman,” he said. “And us.”

Joy looked at him with a fixed frown on her face. “Us? What do you mean it’s about us?”

“The tape. It’s about the tape.”

Joy stopped wrestling with William when he mentioned that tape. What more could she learn? Or did Max have evidence to support what William claimed about the date-stamp? Although she wanted to just pack up and get out of there, she knew she had to hear it. She so wanted it to be true that she knew she had to hear it.

She allowed him to escort her back to her seat. And then he sat down beside her. And then Max, loaded with information, walked in.