dripped from every pore in his body. Talk about being out of shape. He took a moment to wonder if he was going to have a heart attack. If that happened, the gold digger would get all his insurance money. Screw that! First thing tomorrow, he was going to change his will and the beneficiaries on his insurance. He’d leave everything to Wilson. “Bitch!” he seethed.
How did undying love go to deep hatred in sixteen hours? He needed to read up on the rules of gold digging.
Gus settled himself behind the wheel of the rickety van. Rickety my ass, Gus thought when he turned the key in the ignition. The engine purred like a kitten. He frowned when he realized it sounded better than the engine on his beloved Porsche.
Gus sat for a moment, the soft purr of the engine almost lulling him to sleep. He reached across the seat, but Wilson wasn’t there. He wanted to cry at what was happening to him. All in the name of love.
The roads are quiet tonight, Gus thought as he steered the cumbersome van down the highway. As if by rote, he finally took the turnoff that led to his office. The thought of lugging his suitcases and the duffel bags up the steps to his office almost made him turn around and leave. Damn, I am tired.
An hour later, all his belongings were stacked up in his office. Wilson’s laundry basket remained in the van, to be dropped off at his grandmother’s house. It would have to wait until morning. That’s when it hit him like a bolt of thunder. He hadn’t done his own taxes!
Shit! Shit! Shit!
Gus fired up his computer, tapped furiously, and hit the PRINT button. He filed for an extension. And his gold-digging wife could just file her own damned taxes. No more joint anything where she was concerned.
Gus turned off the computer, ripped off his suit jacket, wadded it into a ball, and lay down on the floor. He was asleep in a nanosecond.
It was dark out when Gus rolled over and groaned. He was disoriented, and then he remembered where he was. He groaned again as he struggled to get up. He peered down at his watch: five-ten. His only option under the circumstances was to head for the Hampton Inn and rent a room. Every muscle in his body screamed as he opened his suitcases and pulled out casual clothes, clothes that were wrinkled and messy. He jammed the clothes and his toiletries into a duffel and left the building. He’d given all his employees the rest of the week off in appreciation of all their hard work during tax season, so he had no worries about his staff seeing the disarray in his office.
As he was making his way down the stairs, Gus made a mental note to call a locksmith to change all the locks on the office building. It was going to be a pain in the butt, but there was no way he wanted his gold-digging wife to have access to the building.
Since it was just the beginning of the early morning rush-hour traffic, Gus made good time to the Hampton Inn. The drive over, registering, and trekking to his room took all of twenty minutes before he was headed for the shower in his new home away from home. He used up another twenty minutes showering, shaving, and dressing before he headed downstairs to order breakfast. He was starving, which surprised him. How can I eat like this with a broken heart? He amazed himself at how he wolfed down three eggs, two rashers of bacon, six pancakes, and a dish of fresh fruit. By the time he ordered his second cup of coffee, he felt almost normal.
Gus’s thoughts were all over the map as he sipped at his coffee. He had shifted mental gears so many times, he was forced to pull a pen out of his jacket pocket along with the little notebook he always carried. More often than not, he never scribbled anything in the little spiral book. But, for some reason, it was comforting to carry it. Within minutes, he had a long list of things he had to do. He scribbled the word immediate in capital letters. First, though, he had to go out to the farm and drop off Wilson’s gear. Then he had to sit down and have a talk with his grandmother and the two aunts. He felt a lump the