Innocence with Diamonds

Bastien Heidecker opened the door to his boardroom and walked in. For several seconds, none of the attendees noticed his presence, absorbed as they were by the catastrophe displayed on the high-definition screen. His financial director, Henry Lang, was the first to see it. "Mr. Heidecker. We just watched the latest news..." The short, dark-skinned man took the remote control, pressed a button, and returned to his seat. Bastien watched the other employees take their seats. He was already angry, but his fury grew even more when his eyes fell on the screen. Her frozen image stared back at him. Despite the storm brewing beneath the surface of her calm exterior, Bastien couldn't blame his team for being fascinated by the woman at the center of the chaos threatening their company. Ana Duval was perfection personified. The half-Colombian, half-English model's beauty combined innocence and defiance with a touch of carefully cultivated vulnerability. This combination had won over every manly man in the Western Hemisphere and made her famous before she turned twenty-one. What the hell! She had won him over too. Already at fifteen, Bastien had known that the skinny, lamb-eyed eight-year-old girl he'd had the misfortune to spend a terrible winter with was nothing but trouble. What he hadn't anticipated was that sixteen years later she would bring that trouble right to his doorstep. He looked at her silky smooth black hair, her slender, delicate figure, and the legs that a flatterer had once described as "three feet of creamy paradise." Against her will, her body reacted as she remembered the proximity of that body to her own just two months ago, and the soft, meaningless words whispered in her ear. He pushed that memory aside, sat at the head of the table, and looked at his second-in-command. "What's the latest stock price?" he asked. The other man grimaced. –Less than half of what it was yesterday and they're still falling. –What do the lawyers say? Can they make this go away? Henry, his second, looked at his watch. "There's a court hearing this afternoon at two. They're hoping that since this is Miss Duval's first offense, the judge will be lenient..." "Alleged offense," Bastien corrected through gritted teeth. Henry frowned. –What do you say? –Until proven otherwise, this is just a presumption.