Chapter 9 Cole
Cole
A dozen executives, ranging from useless to abysmal, sat around a long table under gleaming office lights.
Geoff, my chief financial officer, clicked through another disappointing slide in his shoddy undergraduate-level presentation.
It looked like he’d thrown it together last night.
He deserved to be sacked on that basis alone, but I couldn’t stomach another one of Lucas’s “you can’t sack everyone” lectures.
“As you see, this is the first year the shareholders won’t be receiving a profit,” Geoff said.
I leaned back in my chair and tried not to yawn.
I could have done without a meeting with my board of directors today.
A decent night’s sleep had evaded me ever since I’d heard the news about Roy.
Impossible to get the image of Charlotte looking so forlorn on her doorstep out of my head.
I was so tired lately, my eyes felt like piss-holes in the snow.
The air-conditioner hum grew loud in the silence.
Lucas raised an unimpressed eyebrow. “You could at least pretend you care.”
I’d employed Lucas because it was good to have people around who weren’t too scared to be honest with me, and occasionally he came up with a useful suggestion. Today wasn’t one of those days. Today, he was just annoying the fuck out of me.
“The shareholders have been profiting off my hard work for years. They can suck it up for now. Loss is part of business. I’m not worried about it.”
Lucas squeezed his stress ball in his hands. “They won’t be happy.”
So? Plenty of people aren’t happy. I’m not happy right now, listening to this bullshit.
I’m not happy with Ryan’s coffee breath and the way Malcolm’s ties are bright enough to trigger a migraine.
I’m not happy that Gabe Rivers still won’t return my calls, or that I went to great lengths to put the perfect contract together for Charlotte and she hasn’t replied.
It had taken six months for her to even text. Now she hadn’t responded to my follow-up on the contract.
“The shareholders’ feelings don’t interest me. I’m interested in how we get back on track,” I said.
“The shareholders should interest you.”
“Why? A couple of voices of dissent aren’t an issue.”
Lucas held my death glare without flinching. “People say that Beatrice might flip.”
This fucking brother of mine never lets anything drop. “Beatrice has always been loyal to me.”
“You’ve pissed her off, like you manage to piss everyone off.
Apparently, you were rude at last week’s annual conference, and she’s annoyed.
She’s not the only one. A couple of others are getting braver and calling for new leadership.
If enough of them flip, they’ll have the majority vote, and then you’re out. ”
My blood turned to ice. They could get fucked.
This was my company. I wouldn’t be dictated to by people who got high off the smell of their own farts.
I wouldn’t even be having this conversation if Charlotte had agreed to the deal.
Nothing would have shut the shareholders up faster at that annual conference than pulling my wholesome childhood sweetheart wife out of the bag.
Lucas sat back in his chair with a smug look. “Just a suggestion, but maybe if you held the shareholders in a little less open contempt, it would help your cause.”
“I hold most people in open contempt. I don’t know why they’re taking it so personally.”
The door opened, and my PA stepped in hesitantly. I snapped my gaze to her. “The building better be going up in flames. I can’t imagine any other reason you’d interrupt us in a board meeting.”
She hurried to me and leaned down to whisper in my ear. “I’m sorry to disturb you, Mr. Thorner. You asked me to inform you immediately if I had a call from a Miss Charlotte Ackroyd.”
Heat climbed the back of my neck. I angled my body away from the table. Everyone was still looking at me, but I dropped my voice to a whisper. “Charlotte called? What did she say?”
“She’s in reception.”
Fuck. She’s here now? In the building? My tie felt suddenly too tight. I stuck a finger under my collar to loosen it.
“You’re fully booked for the next three weeks. Shall I make her an appointment and send her away?”
I caught my reflection in the floor-to-ceiling window and smoothed my hand over my hair. “No. Escort her to my office.” I stood and addressed the room. “Let’s pick this up another time.”
Muttering broke out among the gathered board.
“We still have another half hour of this meeting. We haven’t even covered the essentials,” Lucas said, glancing at the clock.
Charlotte had come all this way. How? Train? Why hadn’t she called me to let me know? I would have picked her up in the chopper. “We’ll reschedule. Talk among yourselves if you like.”
Lucas blew out an impatient breath. “Talk among ourselves? These are crisis talks, Cole. Who’s going to run the meeting?”
“I trust you can figure it out.”
“You can’t just walk out of here. This is too important.”
I was out of the door before I had to listen to anyone telling me what I could or couldn’t do.
From my office on the mezzanine, I watched my PA escort Charlotte through the rows of desks in the open-plan area below. A turquoise dress hugged her curves and thick thighs, and a cherry-red handbag shaped like an old-fashioned telephone bounced at her hip.
People usually approached my office with slumped shoulders and fear in their eyes.
But Charlotte glided on her worn Converse, lost in her own world.
Her lips moved slightly as though she was rehearsing what she wanted to say.
She looked like a rainbow cutting her path through a sea of monochrome.
Heads turned subtly to watch her progress. She didn’t appear to notice.
The air caught in my throat. Did this mean what I hadn’t dared hope? She wanted to discuss the contract? Don’t get too excited. She’d backed out once over text. Maybe she was coming here to tell me never to contact her again. But couldn’t she do that over the phone?
I took my position behind my desk and shuffled a stack of paper, pretending to look busy as she walked past the glass at the front. No sense in her thinking I had nothing better to do than cancel all my meetings and stand around waiting for her. Her knock sounded.
“Come in.”
She stepped inside and hovered by the door.
“Charlotte, what a surprise. You should have let me know you were coming. I would have arranged transport.” I smoothed my tie and gestured to the chair opposite. “Please. Take a seat.”
Her unimpressed gaze slid over endless sparkling chrome and glass. “Nice office.” She took in the expansive London skyline behind me with a skeptical brow. “I never imagined you working somewhere like this.”
“Somewhere like what?”
A wry smile played on her lips. “It’s very . . . corporate.” She raised a hand to her ear, miming a telephone. “Buy low. Sell high.”
I drank her in from behind my massive mahogany desk.
Shadows danced under her eyes, but she looked in better health than when I’d last seen her.
Charlotte had been pretty as a teenager, but as a grown woman she was breathtaking.
Even as she mocked me, heat thrummed under my skin.
Her little smirk made it impossible to think of much else besides bending her over my desk and making her mine.
I cleared my throat. “What can I do for you?”
“Tiff thinks I should marry you.”
“And what do you think?”
She perched on the chair opposite my desk with her deranged telephone-shaped handbag in her lap.
“It’s a lot of money. I suppose I’d be mad not to take you up on it.
” She chewed the edge of her orange-painted thumbnail.
“So if the offer is still open, I’m considering it, but we need to iron out some details. ”
The offer was more open than ever, since the shareholders had decided now was the perfect time to gun for me. “I’m all ears.”
“First off, you’re asking me to lie.” She pulled the contract out of her bag, flicked through the pages, and presented it to me on the desk. “Tiff knows what’s going on, but you expect me not to tell anyone else the truth?”
I glanced at the section she’d highlighted neatly in neon yellow. “That’s generally how a confidentiality clause works.”
“I don’t like to lie.”
“You should try it. You might enjoy it. The arrangement has to stay confidential. That’s nonnegotiable.”
Her eyes narrowed with a flicker of resentment as she assessed me. I held the challenge in her gaze. Go on. Argue for it. Let’s have some fun.
Her shoulders lowered and she gave a small, resigned shrug. “Fine.”
“Fine? That’s it?”
“You said it was nonnegotiable.”
“So, you just give up?”
Her eyes searched my face and darted away. “It’s not worth the fight.” She flicked back a few pages and tapped at the contract. “This states you expect my loyalty and fidelity. What does that mean? Do you expect me not to date outside of our . . . arrangement?”
Yes. Ideally. Did Charlotte date much? I’d checked in on her over the years. Nothing creepy. Just the occasional calls to old contacts in the area. Whenever I’d asked after her, she’d always been single.
“There might be some flexibility down the line if you want to take a lover—discreetly, of course.”
Her expression flickered with a brief wry spark. “Take a lover? I didn’t realize we’d stepped into the Regency period.”
That teasing smirk again. Yes, I wanted her pressed beneath me over this desk, but first I needed her sitting on my face, moaning for me while I tasted her. “Next objection?”
She shrugged. “No one should make big life decisions after a bereavement.”
“There’s no better time. Death shows us how short and precious life is. There is no guarantee of tomorrow.”
She rolled her eyes, but her voice was indulgent. “That one sounded rehearsed. You’ve got all the answers, haven’t you?”
“I try.”