Bennie and Adam Plan a Wedding

Chapter 3

Bennie

Well, this week wasn’t off to a great start, first the office had gotten broken into and now having to deal with Adam’s sister, Claire. Adam and Claire grew up in a rough part of town, Adam got out by hard work and Claire did the same by marrying money and she quickly forgot her roots and was better than everyone else. She still had a problem with Adam being gay, “it’s just phase” she kept telling him. She only tolerated me, because of my family’s money. She thought I could help her take another step up her social ladder. I told Adam I didn’t care where or how we got married, a huge church wedding or a Justice of the Peace was fine with me. Claire was his only family, so he wanted her there, which I was fine with, but she soon took over and started to plan “her” dream wedding. Hopefully, when we meet with her on Thursday, we can finally convince her to just keep thing simple.

If all that wasn’t enough, on our second day of getting the office back in order, I got a call from Fred Tucker, the CEO of Harlow Industries.

“Hey Bennie, how are you?” He asked as I answered my phone.

“Good Fred, it’s a little bit early for the quarterly board meeting, isn’t it?” I said, that is usually the only time he called me.

He chuckled, “yes, that isn’t until the end of next month. Actually, your mother is the one who wanted to meet, she didn’t give me too many details, but can you come to my office this afternoon at 2?”

I answered, “things are kind of nuts around here right now, but I guess I could slip away for bit. You have no idea what mother is up to now?”

“Sorry Bennie, I don’t. All she said was to call you to come in and talk about your role with the company, when I tried to ask more, she just dismissed me. Get him here this afternoon, please, was all she said.”

I chuckled, “well that sounds like mother, maybe she is finally going to fire me.”

Fred laughed, “you know that isn’t her call, I’m sure she just wants to see you.”

This caused me to laugh even louder, “right Fred, I’m sure that's it, I’ll see you at 2.”

“Thanks Bennie, looking forward to it.” He ended the call.

Adam looked from the pile of papers he was sorting through, “what was that all the about?”

I rolled my eyes, “I have been summoned to a meeting with my mother.”

He asked, “what for?”

I shrugged, “I’m not sure, neither is Fred, maybe she’s upset that she hasn’t gotten her invitation to our wedding yet.”

Adam snickered, “we haven’t even set the date yet, hey why don’t you invite her over Thursday night, and we can let her, and Claire decide everything for us.”

I shook my head, “God help us, if that were to happen, we would definitely be eloping.”

We ordered lunch in as we were still cleaning the office, as soon as were done eating I left for my meeting. I needed to stop by home and change into a suit and tie, mother would have me thrown out of the office if I wasn’t properly attired. I arrived shortly before 2 and walked into the office of Harlow Industries.

Beth, Fred Tucker’s assistant, greeted me as I walked in. “Hi Mr. Harlow.”

I stopped her, “Beth, what did I tell you?”

She smiled, “sorry, hi Bennie, Ms. Harlow and Mr. Tucker are waiting for you in his office, please go right in.”

I smiled back, “thanks, Beth.”

I walked in, Fred was sitting in his chair and mother was sitting in one across from him.

I extended my hand to Fred as he stood up, “good to see you again Fred.” I turned to my mom, “Mother.”

Fred held his hand toward the second chair, “please Bennie, have a seat.”

Mother said, “good to see you Bennett, how are you?”

I sat down, “you tell me mother, you are the one who summoned me here today.”

She gave me a stern look, “well, yes, I should get right to the point. It has come to my attention that you are getting married.”

I figured out why I was here, “yes mother, I am. Did you ask me here to congratulate me?”

I saw Fred suppress a smile. Mother gave me another look.

“No Bennett, I also understand you are marrying a man, is that true?”

I nodded, “yes mother, I am, his name is Adam Edwards, and he is the best thing to ever happen to me, I love him very much.”

She asked, “did you consider how this would look to others, I mean how this would reflect upon the Harlow name?”

I stood and my blood started to boil, “I don’t care what you or anyone else thinks, or how it will reflect upon “you”, because you are the Harlow name. I have told you, I love Adam and you will not stop me from marrying him.”

She left out a humph, “well then, maybe we will have to rethink your role with this company then.”

I laughed, “my role? You just trot me out when you need someone to present a check or look good for the cameras, because you can’t be bothered by some trivial event. You know my interest in this company, you can do whatever you want.”

Fred spoke up, “Victoria, you know very well that you can’t remove Bennie from the board. He owns enough shares of the company that he can only be removed by a vote of the entire board, you don’t have enough votes, hell, I’m not sure if you would have any votes.”

She huffed, “so, what do you expect me to do, just accept this?”

He looked her in the eyes, “yes, I do.” He folded his arms across his chest. “Victoria, I seem to remember a similar conversation to this one nearly 30 years ago. You stood right here in this very office and told your father that he was going to be a grandfather and you were going to be a single mother. He gave you a lot of the same reasons why this was a bad idea, just like you are giving Bennie right now. You stood up to him just as Bennie is doing today. Bennie has every right to make his own life with whomever he chooses, I think you are more upset that he doesn’t work here.”

I smiled to myself, there were only ever two people who could talk to my mother like that, Fred and Grams. It was very satisfying to watch.

She stood up. “Well fine, I still think this is a bad idea, this Adam is probably just after your money, you need to be careful. Don’t come running to me when he bleeds you dry.”

I laughed, “I am marrying Adam, not his sister.”

She looked at me, “what does that mean?”

I waved, my hand, “never mind, Adam is not like that, he has never once asked me for a penny, he has his own successful business and is happy living a simple life.”

She turned to the door, “well, I can see this was a waste of time. Bennett you can do whatever you want. Fred, maybe you can talk to him about that other thing we talked about and get that going. I’m sure you can get through to him better than I can.” She walked out the door.

I turned to her, “it was nice to see you again mother, I’ll be sure and send an invitation to wedding as soon as we set a date.”

I turned to Fred, he was sitting there laughing, “I’m sorry Bennie, I didn’t know she was going to do that, honest.”

I sat back down, “it’s ok Fred, I’m really not surprised at all. So, what was that other thing she talked to you about?”

He explained everything to me and about a half hour later I was walking out of his office.

Beth smiled at me, “congratulations Bennie, I’m sorry, I heard you tell your mom you would send her an invitation to the wedding when she left.”

I said, “thanks Beth, I’ll send you the invitation, I am sure my mother won’t be using it.”

I returned to the office, Heather, Dallas, and Adam were still filing away loose papers, they had made progress.

Adam smiled, “how was your meeting?”

I laughed, “oh just great.”

He asked, “what happened?”

I told him the whole story and that mother would probably not be attending the wedding.

I continued, “I did have a good talk with Fred after she left. The corporation needs to change the way they do their charitable donations. They want me to head up a the newly formed Bennett T Harlow Foundation. Instead of having the board of directors voting each quarter on where to donate money, they started the foundation to decide what to do with the money. They just give a lump sum every year and I give it away.”

Adam said, “wow, they trust you to do that?”

I nodded, “yeah, well not just me, there is a five-member board, me, one other guy from the board of directors, and three other people that I get to choose. The upside is, I don’t have to go to the quarterly meetings at the Harlow office. I never did care about the business, but I do like the charity part, so it’s a win/win for all of us.”

He asked, “so who are the other members?”

I said, “I’m not sure yet, I was thinking about asking if you would be interested.”

Adam thought a minute, “well, I’ll have to think about that.”

I smiled, “sure, think about it, no pressure if you aren’t comfortable with it, that’s fine. If it is ok with you and Dallas, I would like to use the meeting room here for meetings.”

He said, “sure, it’s ok with me as long as Dallas agrees.”

Dallas looked up from his filing, “as long as I don’t have to be on the board, I’m good.”

I said, “thanks El Paso, I appreciate it.”

Dallas shook his head and went back to sorting his papers, Heather was smirking as she listened to the exchange.

Adam said, “he does something nice, and you still have to pick at him?”

I chuckled, “he likes it.”

I got back to working on the papers on my desk, I needed to catch up with the others since I had been gone most of the afternoon.

Travis came in the door, “I see you got your door fixed, the office is looking much better too.”

Adam said, “hi Detective Berns, any news on the who did this?”

He said, “please, call me Travis, I just wanted to see if you found anything missing yet.”

I said, “no, the computers and printers are all here, I don’t think we are even missing a stapler.”

Travis said, “that’s what we thought, it looks like he was just looking for information. So far, the only prints we have found belong to you guys, that’s not surprising, he probably wore gloves.”

Adam asked, “what do we do now?”

Travis said, “do you know if any documents are missing yet? That might tell us a little bit more about why he broke in.”

Heather quietly said, “I haven’t found the W-4 forms yet.”

I asked, “what forms?”

She said, “the forms we all filled for me to do the payroll, they have our names, addresses, social security numbers and all that personal information on them.”

Travis took a deep breath, “you guys may all want to watch your banking and financial accounts for a while.”

Adam asked, “so they did all this just to steal our personal info?”

He scratched his head, “it does seem like over kill, but keep an eye on those things just in case.”

We finished up for the day and all headed home after Travis left. Dallas was the first to leave, I think he may have been trying to catch Travis. Adam smiled at me when we both looked each other.

We got home, made some dinner and I crawled in the shower thinking about the day’s events. The meeting with my mother, the personal info stolen from the office. I was rinsing the shampoo from my hair when Adam stepped in the shower with me. I loved it when he did that, my hands were immediately all over his perfect, slick body, his nipple was healing nicely. Once we were both good and clean, we stepped out to dry off and head to bed to finish what we had started in the shower. Before we made it to bed, Adam’s phone was ringing. The call must have gone to his voice mail, he smiled at me, “good, now where were we.”

Just as we started to kiss again, my phone was ringing. I looked at my screen, “oh jeez, it’s Dallas, how does always know when to disturb us?” Adam had looked at his phone, “better answer it, my missed call was from Dallas too.”

I answered, “this better be good, San Antonio.”

I quickly changed my mood, “sorry Dallas, sure right away, we’ll be there in few minutes.”

I ended the call, “Dallas’s apartment was broken into and trashed, just like the office.”