Chapter 4
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If Cassandra Kelly looked like she wanted to fire me when she first walked into the boardroom, she now looked like she wanted to full-on murder me, dig my grave, and toss me in all by herself. With everyone watching.
But I also knew Cassandra wouldn’t cancel this meeting.
She didn’t seem like the kind of person to act rashly and cancel something at the last minute—and I knew she’d want the results of our preliminary study.
That in and of itself had been expensive, and that’s what her siblings were waiting for.
That was when I’d decided I’d have to swim—fast, sharp, and sure, like the shark I was.
Now, as I launched into my presentation, I shifted my attention to the work.
I felt myself loosen up, the words coming easily as I strode around the room.
Some of these were things I said at every client meeting of this type.
Our experience. How we’d started. How we’d resurrected massive, deeply in-debt firms everyone else said were dead.
I could talk about this stuff in my sleep, but I knew better than to give anything but my absolute best here.
I needed to win everyone over, including Cassandra.
Because if I did manage to salvage this project, it would be she and I working closely together. For six weeks.
But I couldn’t think about that now. Instead I went on, flipping through my succinct, sparing slides with the pointer—images mostly, and a few hard-hitting numbers I used only to hammer points home, or to keep names and numbers in my clients’ minds.
As the minutes flew by, I could feel it working.
I always knew when I was killing it. I could feel the energy building in the room.
This morning’s events may have shown that I was no good at winning over a woman, least of all Cassandra.
But there was no one better than me at winning a room.
Maybe it was cocky, but it wasn’t unearned.
This was how we’d gone from ambitious college students to the most in-demand consultants on the East Coast. This was business, and I’d studied business like it was a science and I was after the Nobel Prize.
When I was a kid, I’d read business books like my life depended on them, which maybe they did, considering how my father had hammered into me that success in business was the only kind of success that mattered.
It was never about the money for me—though that helped.
It was about doing the best. Being the best. Knocking it out of the goddamned park.
Getting to 100.
And I was doing it now. I knew, if my father could see me, he might offer me a begrudging frown—his version of a smile. Maybe. Or maybe he’d shoot me a text like the one he had this morning, when he heard Goldman had poached another of our clients lined up for this fall.
Goldman had appeared out of nowhere, and suddenly people had another place to turn when their businesses were failing.
His record, though shorter, was almost as stellar as ours.
There were others, too, who were climbing up the ranks, but he was the only one close to catching up.
With Goldman nipping at our heels, we’d had to pull out all the stops.
Big splashy ads and cushy meetings to attract new business to backfill the ones flocking to him.
We weren’t going under, but he was becoming a serious pain in the ass.
The only edge we still had was our reputation and the fact that people liked that we were a married couple.
My father tracked my business like it was his own special side hustle. Always the bridesmaid, Blake. Never quite pretty enough to be the bride.
I shoved that aside fast, telling one of my home-run quips, which sent the room into peals of laughter, which gave me a quick moment to take a sip of water and a breath.
Thinking about my dad was the only thing that could throw me off my game right now—he’d poke holes in a gold-medal win, if I was on the podium.
The only reason I didn’t cut off communication altogether—the only reason—was because I wanted to tell him personally when I hit it.
But that wasn’t true anymore, was it? It wasn’t just Dad who could throw me right now. Cassandra could too.
I’d never been so rattled by a woman. Even when I paused, I didn’t look at her. I looked each of the other Kelly siblings in the eye, but I knew if I looked at her before I was finished, I’d falter.
I was nearing the end of my presentation, and the entire room was hanging on my every word. Even Cassandra was rapt—I could feel her eyes on me.
“In closing,” I said, “The Rolling Hills resort is going to undergo the most phenomenal transformation any of us have ever seen, and we’ve seen a ton of transformations with our work.
The Rolling Hills will have name-brand recognition that will perk the ears of travelers worldwide.
We guarantee it.” With that, I lowered the pointer down on the table.
My temples were damp with sweat and across the room there was a murmur of excited, bubbling conversation.
Jude stood up. The tennis star had come in just after I’d begun, looking slightly wobbly.
He wore dark sunglasses, and his blond hair was tied back in a man bun, which I realized I remembered from the sports pages.
I never did follow tennis, but Brynn practically had stars in her eyes—she was a sports nut, and her enthusiasm at getting to work with Jude Kelly was probably one of the reasons Lila had finally warmed up to the job.
I held my breath as he opened his mouth, even though I was pretty sure he was now my most enthusiastic fan. Then he slapped his hand on the table. “Sold!”
Jude had practically whooped when I got to the best parts of the presentation.
“Shit, if even half the things you say are true—”
“They are.”
“That was really incredible,” Chelsea said. She looked almost awestruck.
“Yeah man,” Eli said. “I’m impressed.”
Even Grumpy Lumberjack Griffin frowned, but it didn’t look like an unhappy frown.
But while all the Kelly siblings’ opinions were important—critical—to the decision making, there was only one person whose opinion mattered to me right now. Cassandra. The woman I’d nearly kissed this morning. Finally, I allowed myself to look at her.
Cassandra’s eyes were on me, her expression somehow still murderous. But layered overtop of it was something like… admiration.
Relief washed over me in a wave. Elation, too. I’d just saved this project. And only she and I knew it. I wanted to whoop like Jude had done. Instead, I gave a nod and straightened my tie, unrolling my sleeves to reattach my cufflinks.
While everyone at the table chatted excitedly—except Cassandra, who spoke quietly to Eli—I sat down, sliding the remote over to Lila, who’d give an outline of the technicalities of the six-week review.
I willed myself to focus on Lila and the numbers. Cassandra and I needed to talk, more now than before. I tried my best not to look at her, telling myself I’d catch her the minute the meeting was over. That looking at her would only make things worse.
But it was impossible. Now that I wasn’t in action, my eyes went to Cassandra like they were magnetically drawn to her.
I knew that if she interrupted the meeting and asked me right there and then what the hell had happened this morning—why I’d looked at her the way a supposedly married man should never look at another woman—I would have told her the truth.
It was you, Cassandra. You did something—made me feel something.
Also, I’m not fucking married. That would probably be number one.
But I couldn’t say that, not now that we had her business.
I was going to have to tread carefully. Be impeccable with my actions and words. Somehow forget about this morning.
I’d been attracted to women before, sure.
I’d wanted to be with them. I’d even occasionally wished I could tell them my marriage wasn’t real.
But I’d never been tempted to do that. I’d always been able to push those feelings aside.
The company was more important. Our business was more important. Lila’s life was more important.
I’d just have to try harder. But my eyes kept going back to her.
Why was I so interested in Cassandra, anyway?
I was attracted to her, absolutely. Painfully, almost. But there was something else.
Something about the way that she held herself—confident but like her shoulders were holding something up.
Or like her confidence was an exoskeleton too shiny and perfect to be real.
She held deep pain underneath. I could see it in the way her eyes had darted away when I told her she was attractive this morning.
Someone hurt her.
Some men, I knew, went after damaged women because they knew they could control them. They were despicable assholes. But the pain I saw in her—I wanted to find it, to excise it like removing a bullet lodged in flesh. To throw it away and make her see how perfect she was, scars and all.
For a few moments, I focused intently on Lila’s words.
She was talking about the order of the review.
When we’d be with each department. What kind of interaction we’d have with the staff.
But as Lila went on, Cassandra tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, and I found my eyes going back to her.
Her hair, dry and loose now, fell in those Kelly McGillis waves around her face.
God, she was sexy. When she’d walked into the room earlier, I couldn’t get over how even her walk was sexy. Determined. Sure. Purposeful. She probably destroyed in Manhattan boardrooms when she worked there.