Chapter 19
CHAPTER 19
HUDSON
W ith a frown on her face, Alison drives while I try to focus on developing a strategy to get over my Frank Dubois debacle quickly. I keep getting distracted by images of Juliette splayed naked on the bed. There is a reminiscent taste of her juices on my lips, and I can smell her. Even though she’s miles away, I still yearn for her. I wonder how we will survive the next few nights in the house. We’ve both agreed to keep our hands off each other, and I agree it’s the best decision for us. Shaking my head and forcing myself to focus on work, I turn to Alison.
“How are we doing this morning?” I ask. “It’s the end of the month. Let me see the sales report.”
“Sales are up ten percent this month,” she says and turns the corner, beating the traffic light just in time. “What we should worry about is cash at hand. We are leaking more than we are keeping in.”
“The reason for that is obvious. I wouldn’t stress myself over that if I were you. As long as we are making good sales, once this whole trouble with Frank is gone, we’ll be back on our feet in just a couple of months.”
She doesn’t look like she believes that.
“What if it doesn’t end soon?” she asks.
“What will you have me do? Give up and sell to him?” I demand. She’s getting on my nerves, and I know her sour disposition isn’t entirely about the company sales or Frank.
“No,” Alison hisses. “I don’t want you to sell to him. That would be stupid. You went into the stable with Phillipa last night. What happened in there?”
I raise an eyebrow at Alison. “How do you know I was in the stable with her?”
“Elizabeth told me.”
“You’re buddies with Elizabeth Dubois now?”
“No, not buddies. But we have similar worries. We are caught in a fight between two men who are more interested in measuring dicks than finding a lasting solution to the issue at hand. We both don’t want to see our respective companies go up in flames.”
“Measuring dicks. You think that’s what I’m doing with Frank? Playing a game of egos, huh? You think I want to be caught in this game for too long with that narcissist? You think I love that? Oh, you fucking love the company so much! You love the company more than I do.” I sound angrier than I intend and it causes her to tremble.
“You know I didn’t mean it that way, Hudson,” she says.
“So, tell me. What did you mean? I want to know.”
She looks at me, worried about speaking her mind, but whatever she sees on my face tells her she best speak instead of being mute.
“I just don’t understand why you don't want to marry Phillipa,” she complains. “If you marry her, we have a way out—an easy one. We’ve done so much to make that possible. You’ve sacrificed a lot, but then you just want to abandon all the work we’ve put in. You can marry her, you can decide to marry her today, and you’ll be married before the end of the day, but you just won’t.”
“The girl stirs nothing in me. You want to know what happened in the stable? I’ll tell you what happened. She stripped for me. She got naked and begged me to fuck her. All I could think about when I saw her was how unappealing she was to me. The girl is a fucking child!”
“And what about Juliette? They’re the same age.”
Now, we’re getting somewhere, I think. This is why she’s had a frown on her face the whole time.
“This is really about Juliette, isn’t it?”
“No, it’s about the company.
“Don’t fucking lie to me!”
“Okay, okay, I’ll concede. It is about her. I don’t like her, and I told you, she’s a distraction, so what do you do? You fuck her, like that will help at all. I don’t care if Phillipa is appealing or not. What does that matter? You make the girl your wife, you get Frank Dubois as your father- in-law, and you get a free pass to so many funds, you grow your investment. You know I’m right. You see what I’m saying, yet you wouldn’t make the right choice. You know why? You agreed to go with the Phillipa plan if nothing else works. We both talked about it and came to an agreement, but then that bitch came in, and she destroyed everything, set it all on fire. So, yes, this is about her. She’s ruining everything for everyone. Every goddamn thing!”
Alison rounds up, hitting her fist on the steering wheel. I let her cool off before I speak, and because I worry that I’ll speak out of order and then we’ll get into a fight, I don’t let the anger her stupidity stirred in me force me to speak. So, she waits for me anxiously.
Alison has been my personal assistant for over eight years now. She was there when I got the first round of funding to revive the company. I remember the night like it was yesterday, the happiness in her eyes, the look of hope and assurance of the beauty the future holds. We both knew we would shake the world. I had hired her out of college, a bright-eyed lady, eager to work, eager to impress and impress me she has over the years. But I sense her heading down a dangerous path and must steer her away before it’s too late. There is only one way I know to do that.
“Listen, Alison. You’ve been an immense help to me, and I appreciate that, but the next time you raise your voice to me will be the last time I consider you an employee. The next time you call Juliette a bitch will be the last time you ever talk about her in any context whatsoever. The next time you think yourself bold enough to tackle my opinions aggressively will be the last time you have the chance to speak to me. Do you understand that?”
She nods.
“Good. Now, I’ll tell you again why marrying Phillipa would be disastrous,” I tell her.
I go over the same conversation I’ve had with her so many times. If I marry Phillipa, I can’t assure her happiness. I can’t give her the attention she so hungers for from me. I can’t love or cherish her. I don’t see that ever happening, and that begins a slippery slope that I am sure will leave her heart getting broken and her father, who dotes on her, seeking to punish me. A Frank that I don’t deal with today is a Frank I get to contend with in the future. I can’t go through this dance twice.
“You could fake it,” Alison suggests. “Fake it just as you are doing with the new girl.”
The new girl. She still won’t mention Juliette by name. She must despise her so much. Juliette called my attention to it, but I didn’t think it was something to worry about. I still don’t think it is. Alison wouldn’t dare do something stupid.
“How long do I fake it for? Ten years? Twenty years? Phillipa isn’t a fool, you know. She’ll catch on.”
“It won’t matter,” she says. “You said she threw herself at you in the stable. That’s a move from someone very desperate. You can make her your wife, and that will keep her satisfied.”
“I don’t think it will. I know you think of her as some overpampered dove, but there is a cynical side to her. I’ve seen it in her eyes. She’s trouble, and she’s the worst kind of trouble—the kind no one pays attention to. Marrying her will be a distraction. She’ll be a hound constantly nipping at my heels.”
“You can’t bring yourself to fuck her? There are ways, you know? She won’t mind. She loves you and just a touch from you is all she needs to survive on.”
“I know what you’re suggesting. You want me to get her pregnant, so she has that to keep her busy.”
“Yes.”
“You seem not to understand me. I do not want to dally with Phillipa because to do that will yoke me with her father. I do not want to be yoked with Frank and I do not want Phillipa to be the mother of my kids. I’ll be subjecting the poor child to dysfunction.”
Alison sighs and turns her focus to driving.
“You don’t think I can beat Frank?” I ask her.
“I think you can. But I don’t think we have the luxury of time to wait and find out. Frank knows that.”
“We have the Fejitos, remember?”
“Yes, we have the Fejitos. But I don’t trust him.”
“Work on the company alliance he’s provided us. Keep it very secret. If we can support ourselves with that and use their revenue to improve our cash at hand, we’ll be good for as long as it takes.”
“All of a sudden, we have good revenue. Frank will get suspicious. He’ll take a closer look.”
“And he’ll see nothing. We’re making good sales, and from next month, we’ll make even better sales. I’m meeting with Randall this morning. He has a fleet of restaurants here in Manhattan and Dallas and all over the country. If we can get him onboard as a new customer, we can push our sales up more points.”
“We’ll have to cook the books a little,” she says.
I say nothing to that. Going to war with Frank is telling on me more than I wish it was, but then I’m just a fish company going against a finance giant. He has an almost endless supply of funds; I do not.
Then, I remember what Jasmine told me. Frank is having some money problems, and Elizabeth getting cozy with Alison suggests that might be true. Elizabeth has no emotional attachment to this tug-of-war between her father and me and wants her company to stop bleeding money. She wants it to end, and if things were up to her, she’d take the deal I have offered.
“I want you to meet with Elizabeth,” I tell Alison.
“Why?”
“Talk to her about the deal I offered her father. The one he declined.”
“She can’t change his mind.”
“Maybe… but there’s no harm in trying. That’s not why I want you to meet with her. I want you to siphon some information out of her. I heard Frank has money issues lately. I don’t know the source. If it is investments gone bad, we might have some new leverage to work with. But I hope it’s something more juicy. Something he doesn’t want out there. He’s done a good job of keeping it hidden.”
“How did you find out then?” Alison asks.
“I have my ways. Just prod Elizabeth a little. See if she’ll budge. If she wants her father to give up this game, she must be ready to let go of some information.”
“She’ll want something in return,” Alison says.
“Tell her about the deal.”
“She’s no fool. The deal is information she can get from her father if she asks. The deal is just a reason for me to see her again. We need to give her something tangible.”
I think over it for a while, and I know what Alison is suggesting.
“I don’t trust Elizabeth,” I tell her.
“She’s a Dubois. She’s not to be trusted. But you’ll agree, she is the only one in the family with a level-head.”
She has that correct. I know Elizabeth is the one who suggested to Frank that inviting me to the party is a good move and fraternizing with me might make me pliable. I can almost see her whispering to Frank: “Play the father figure.” Frank had failed woefully at that. But that isn’t Frank’s fault. He doesn’t know what it’s like to be a good father.
“Tell her we have a source of funds that Frank can’t touch. Be ambiguous about it, nothing concrete.”
“I think you should meet with her instead,” Alison says. “It will look more believable from you.”
She’s right. Besides, I haven’t ever had a real conversation with Elizabeth Dubois. She is married but opted to keep her father’s name. The wise choice. The Dubois name opens so many doors.
“Set it up,” I tell Alison. “Set it up soon.”