Heartland by David Hagberg

stewardess went back up the aisle, and Newman watched her go. She was a plain girl, but she had a pleasant Spanish face and a warm smile. How different his life would have been, he thought, had he never met Jorge Vance-Ehrhardt. Had he never fallen in love with Lydia. How different, and how much less complicated.
    Lydia squeezed his hand, and he turned back to her again. “Any regrets?” she asked.
    â€œLots,” he said. “But not because I married you.”
    Lydia gazed down the aisle toward where their stewardess was talking with another. “You’re not sorry you didn’t marry someone less complicated?”
    â€œSimple women bore me,” he said.
    â€œI’ll never bore you.”
    â€œI don’t think so.”
    The aircraft lumbered up to the terminal and stopped, but before the loading tunnel was attached, the stewardess came back to them. “You may deplane now, your car is waiting. And may I offer my congratulations?”

    â€œThank you,” Newman said. He unbuckled his seat-belt, then got up, helping Lydia out of her seat. They went down the aisle, the other first-class passengers looking up curiously. Boarding stairs had been pushed up beneath the waiting tunnel at the front door, and the stewardess smiled at them again as they left the aircraft.
    It was hot outside, and the air smelled strongly of burned jet fuel and automobile exhaust. Paul Saratt, Newman’s business assistant, was waiting at the bottom, a huge grin on his face.
    â€œWelcome to Mexico City,” he said, as they came down the steps. “And congratulations.”
    Newman shook his hand. “Thanks, Paul, but don’t say a thing to Lydia about our plans, she has no idea yet what’s going on.”
    â€œMay I offer my congratulations to you, Mrs. Newman,” Saratt said gallantly.
    â€œOnly if you tell me what’s happening here,” Lydia retorted testily.
    â€œMy lips are sealed,” Saratt said. He was a heavyset man of medium height, with white hair and a wide, pleasant face. He had worked with Newman for the past eight years and knew almost as much about the grain business as Newman himself, and certainly more about Newman’s actual holdings. They had become great friends, and Newman trusted him more than any other person on the face of the earth. It had hurt Saratt that he was not invited to the wedding, but he said he understood. Newman had the distinct impression, however, that Saratt did not entirely approve of Lydia.
    He led them to a waiting Rolls and, when they were in the back seat, climbed in the front with the uniformed driver. They headed rapidly across the field, toward the
private aviation hangars and terminal.
    â€œWill someone tell me what’s going on here?” Lydia asked.
    Saratt did not turn around, and Newman stared out the window, a silent grin on his face. Two weeks ago he had arranged all this with Saratt, and now he intended to play it to the hilt. As far as the Vance-Ehrhardt family knew, he and Lydia would be spending the next couple of days here in Mexico City, and then a week and a half at the family’s estate near Mazatlán, before returning to the States. Several weeks ago, however, he had been offered the use of a lovely villa overlooking the Mediterranean just above Monaco, and he had accepted. Very few people would know where they had gone, which was the way Newman wanted it. He knew he would have felt uncomfortable in a Vance-Ehrhardt house, with a Vance-Ehrhardt staff watching his every move and reporting back to Jorge.
    Despite himself, Newman found his thoughts drifting back to the business, specifically his relationship with Jorge. Had his and Jorge’s positions been reversed, Newman had no doubt that he would have reacted much the same as the older man. He too would have been hurt, then angry. Yet it was part of the grain business. From the earliest days it had been a cut-throat enterprise. And after the