Chapter 3
THREE
COLSON
Istared at the conference room door that Larry Gordon had just closed behind him and looked at Troy and Jenner. The shock rippled through me so fast that I couldn’t stop rocking my chair. “What the hell just happened?”
Jenner let out a loud whistle. “Sophie Rivers is a fucking shark. That’s what happened.”
“I told you.” Troy’s head dropped.
“You certainly didn’t tell me,” I sneered.
He glanced at me, and I could tell he didn’t want to. “I mentioned to Jenner before you came in that she does not play lightly. She didn’t as a kid, and she definitely doesn’t as an adult.”
Oh, she fucking plays. But she plays with every part of her beautiful body.
I finally pulled at my tie, loosening it several inches from my neck.
“What’s your plan? You need to fix this.
Make it go away—whatever you have to do—but neither option she presented is going to work for my family.
” I slipped my fingers under the collar of my shirt after I unbuttoned the top.
“Twenty million? For a fucking chicken dish? Come on.”
The attorneys looked at one another.
“Here’s the problem, Colson.” Troy moved his chair away from the table and faced me.
“If Sophie has a witness who will testify that the reason your family purchased Horned was because of the menu and that same person—or someone else she’s found—can prove that the Gordons cocreated each recipe on Horned’s menu, she will win the case. ”
“What?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Sophie was a shark, but Troy and Jenner were the fucking dream team. “What do you mean … she’ll win?”
Jenner fisted both hands on the table. “As you pointed out, the recipes weren’t copyrighted. They also weren’t included in the bill of sale. That’s their loophole.”
My chair stilled. “I don’t understand.”
“If you remember, the seller wouldn’t include the recipes or the menu in the purchase agreement,” Troy stated. “She wanted to retain the right to reopen another restaurant after her noncompete expired and to use those recipes in the future.”
My brows rose so fucking high that my forehead burned. “So, you’re saying the owner had no right to sell us the business?”
“She had every right to sell it,” Troy explained, his voice slowing as though he were about to throw a real digger.
“In the agreement, it states you’re allowed to use the recipes even if she’s no longer employed at the restaurant, which is the case now.
What was never factored in was that she hadn’t created the recipes herself. Someone else—the Gordons—helped her.”
“Shouldn’t that have been disclosed?” I wiped my hands on my suit pants before I locked them behind my neck. “Can’t we sue her for this?”
“You weren’t buying the recipes, so she technically didn’t have to disclose it,” Troy said.
“You were buying the right to use the recipes. As for suing her, we already viewed her financials when we purchased the business. She has no assets, no credit. That’s why she originally brought in the Gordons—she didn’t have the funds to start her own business. She has nothing to take, Colson.”
My teeth ground together. “What are you saying to me, Troy?”
“You have two options.”
“Fuck!” My head fell back; the chair did as well, and I resumed the rocking. “Walker can’t re-create an entire menu for Horned. That’s an impossible task at the moment.”
My brother had been going through some personal shit for a while. He was finally on the other side of it, feeling back to his old self. Still, there was no way I could tell him he had forty-eight hours to redesign an entire menu as well as replace the Horned items that appeared on Charred’s menu.
“Then it sounds like a payout is the better route,” Jenner said.
I gradually looked at him. “Twenty fucking million?”
“We’ll get that number down,” Troy said.
I knew my demeanor was the reason I was in attendance and my siblings weren’t, but when something pissed me off, I didn’t hold back. “When I walked into this meeting, I was positive the two of you were going to put out this goddamn fire. Now, you’re letting my family and me fucking burn.”
“You’re not going to burn—” Troy attempted.
“Changing a menu for a thriving restaurant—a restaurant with four locations and more in the works—is an incredibly poor business decision. It’s probably a fatal one.
Besides, do you know how much creation that would take?
How much testing? It’s not as simple as wiping the slate clean and starting fresh.
There are months and months of research that go into something like this—rolling out items one at a time, tweaking, testing again.
” I released the loudest breath. “And to take on an entire menu at once …” My voice trailed off as I thought of Walker’s reaction when I told him this.
“It can’t happen. It won’t happen.” Fuck me.
“Which means I’m staring at a twenty-million-dollar payout.
That’s destruction—not one that’s fatal—but painful as hell. ”
Jenner nodded. “I get it, buddy. I assure you, we’re going to do everything in our power to lower that amount.”
“You should have done everything in your power to make this disaster go away—that’s what you should have done.” I stood. “I’ll talk to my family, and I’ll let you know what we decide. In the meantime, you can think of a way to return the smile to my face because I’m pissed.”
Jenner’s expression softened. “I know, buddy.”
“We’ll somehow make this right,” Troy offered. As I walked to the door, Troy added, “Colson, we need to stay within the forty-eight-hour time frame Sophie set.”
I looked at him from over my shoulder. “What happens if we don’t?”
“Let’s not find out.”
I laughed at his warning and headed down the hallway, stepping toward the elevator as it was closing. I stuck my hand in the opening to stop it, and once it slid back, I went inside. Sophie was in the far-right corner, a look of satisfaction dripping from her gorgeous face.
“Jesus Christ, I can’t escape you.” I went to the left corner, and as I glared at her, I let my gaze slowly fall. A body I knew so well, but everything else—like her name, title, and her impressive performance today—was a goddamn surprise.
Whatever I had felt in that room at Lush and the days that had followed was gone. She was a fucking vulture, just like the Gordons.
“Colson … Colson.” She smiled. “I’d want to escape me, too, considering the situation you’re in. Going against me in court would hurt even more than the options I just stabbed you with.” Her blue gaze gleamed.
My chin lifted. “Did you know?”
She licked the inside of her bottom lip. “You mean, when I asked you to join us for a threesome, did I know who you were?” She folded her arms in front of her. “No.”
“Did you know before you walked in today?”
She shook her head.
The doors shut, and the elevator began to move.
“You’re honestly going to tell me you never typed Weston into Google?”
“The past few days, you’ve probably been my top searched term. And during my research, I came across photos of Walker and Beck. Not you. It seems you’re not the face of the company like they are.”
I pressed my back against the wall. “Tell me, if you had seen a photo of me online, would that have changed anything today?”
I saw the answer before she said, “My job is to represent my clients and get them the compensation they deserve.” She glanced away. “What happened between us was insignificant.”
“You call seven orgasms insignificant?”
She slowly swung her neck toward me. “Yes.”
I let out a half breath. “You really have some nerve.”
“Do you think I’d be easier on you because I had your dick inside me?”
She was goading me. It was working.
“I’m not looking for easy. I’m looking for a sensible agreement. You didn’t present one.” I was doing everything to keep my voice down, but she was really making that difficult.
“Colson, when you steal something, sensibility goes out the window.”
I held the side of the elevator, my fingers clenching against the wall. “Are you calling me a thief?”
“I’m stating the facts.”
“You’re stating bullshit.”
And her bullshit was going to cost my family twenty million dollars.
She sighed. “Please don’t forget, you brought this upon yourself.”
My head shook as I stared at this ferocious stranger. “Do you really believe that? Or are you just trying to fill the pockets of our jealous competition?”
“I fight for justice.”
As the doors opened, I walked out first, my chivalry dying the moment I found out who she was. “You fight for greed. And I don’t know how you sleep at night.”
“Daddy!” Ellie’s voice radiated from the speaker of my cell as it sat on my desk.
My hands were on the keyboard as I attempted to finish this financial report. A report that would prove, after this morning’s meeting at the Daltons’, that today was officially one of the shittiest days of the year.
“Yes, baby?”
“I don’t want to go to gymnastics, and Michelle says I have to call you and tell you myself. So, I’m telling you I dooon’t waaant tooo gooo.”
Michelle, as her nanny, didn’t want to make the executive decision. She was leaving that up to me, even though we knew this was regarding yesterday’s incident at the gym.
“Is this about Abby?”
“Yes,” she groaned. “She’s so mean to me, Daddy. My arm still hurts from her pushing me.” There was emotion in her voice. “And ’member, she pointed at my cheek and said I had a hole.”
Her dimple was perfect. How dare Abby call my daughter’s face anything but?!
“And she called me ugly!”
My blood was boiling. “You didn’t tell me she called you ugly.”
“She did, Daddy. She’s sooo mean!”
No one said those fucking words to my girl; I didn’t care how old Abby was.
I pulled up my calendar, making sure I didn’t have any meetings. “How about this? Michelle will take you to your gymnastics class, and I’ll meet you there. I’ll have a talk with Abby’s mom to make sure nothing like this ever happens again. Does that sound good?”
“Okay.” She wasn’t convinced.
“Ellie, baby, I’m going to fix this.”
“Okay, Daddy.”
“I’ll see you in half an hour. I love you.”
When she ended the call, I grabbed my suit jacket and walked down the hallway. The first door I came to was Eden’s.
She looked up from her computer. “Are you going home?”
“I’m going to pick a fight with a four-year-old.”
She laughed. “Excuse me?”
“Ellie’s getting bullied, and I’m about to fuck some shit up.”
“Go get ’em. No one messes with my girl.”
I held the doorframe and said, “Once I get Ellie home and settled, I’ll finish the report, and we’ll get the rest of the family to jump on a call.” I rubbed my tongue over my front teeth.
“Are you forgetting we have Walker and Alivia’s restaurant opening tonight?”
My brother and his girlfriend had opened a place. It had completely slipped my mind that the entire family was scheduled to be there to celebrate.
“This is bad timing, Eden.”
“We have no choice. We have to go. All of us.”
I nodded. “All right. But I’m still going to work on the report when I get home. Shit, this is going to be a long night.”
She pinched the sides of her upper nose. “It’s going to be a long forty-something hours.”
“I’ll see you later.”
I took the elevator to the garage, where Paul was parked, and I got into the back seat. “We’re off to gymnastics. You know the address, right?”
“Sure do.”
I removed my phone from my pocket and caught up on some emails while Paul expertly navigated the traffic, somehow getting me to Ellie’s gym a few minutes before her class started.
“I’ll be back,” I told him, and I rushed toward the door, heading for the mats, where the parents and kids were congregated.
As I neared the crowd, I scanned the group of four-year-olds, all wearing jackets and bags, most of them standing with some form of guardian. Ellie and Michelle were in the front; neither of them saw me.
My height gave me an advantage, not that Abby was difficult to spot. Her pink backpack had her name printed at the top. And there was a woman with her arm around Abby’s shoulders. I assumed it was her mother, given that they both had bright blonde hair.
Showtime.
Just as I was approaching, the mom raked her fingers through Abby’s long locks in an attempt to put them into a ponytail. The position, the movement—they gave me a peek of the mother’s profile.
The small, sloped, freckled nose.
The pouty lips.
No.
It can’t be.
But, oh fuck, it was. Wasn’t that just my goddamn luck?
The mother must have sensed me because she looked over her shoulder, glancing in my direction.
My feet had halted the moment I recognized her, my mouth still open from when it had dropped. “Sophie …”
Her chest rose and fell. “Colson …”
I nodded toward the pink backpack. “You’re Abby’s mother?”
She whispered something into Abby’s ear, and the little girl ran off. “How do you know my daughter’s name?”
I closed the distance between us. “It’s on her backpack.”
She looked in the direction of where her daughter had gone, as though she were confirming what I’d just said. “What are you doing here?” Her hands went to her hips. “Did you follow me?”
“No.” I chuckled. “My daughter’s in this class.”
“Your daughter …” I could tell she wasn’t pleased with the news. “Okay, but that doesn’t explain why you’re standing in front of me, like you want to talk to me. As far as I’m concerned, there isn’t anything you should be saying to me right now.”
I kept my voice down, but I didn’t try to tame my tone. “That’s where you’re wrong. There’s plenty I need to say to you …”