Chapter 15
BECKETT
Laurel Bellamy walks into my office carrying a legal pad, two coffees, and a stack of evidence capable of making Grant Mercer’s next board meeting feel like a colonoscopy on a Monday afternoon, and the first thing she says is, “I need you to make me an offer.”
I look at her over the acquisition memo I’ve been pretending to read since she told me she was coming. “Good morning to you too.”
“It’s twelve.”
“Still qualifies.”
“Please. I’ve had three hours of sleep, a seven-hour drive, and half a biscuit my mama forced into my hand while threatening to castrate my ex-husband with pruning shears. Time has lost its authority.”
Wouldn’t that be best for everyone?
Laurel sets one of the coffees beside my laptop, and my heart gives an embarrassing little kick when I notice the order written on the white sleeve around the cup. Black. No sugar.
I glance at it, then at her. “How do you know how I take this?”
“You drank it that way seven years ago. Or did that change over the years?”
She remembers.
“N-no, I—” Use your words, you idiot. I clear my throat. “It’s still the same.”
She doesn’t seem to notice the effect she has on me, or she notices and has more important shit to do, which I find myself preferring.
Laurel drops into the chair across from me, settles the legal pad on one knee, and crosses one boot over the other.
She’s dressed in blue jeans and a body-hugging white shirt, her brown hair twisted into a ponytail that probably looked intentional when she left Savannah and has surrendered to interstate travel since.
Her blue eyes are the first thing I notice, because they’re impossible not to be drawn to, the color of the Gulf of Mexico on one of those clear summer days when the water looks almost unreal beneath the sun, blue stretching into a depth you can’t quite judge from the shore.
Hers have the same effect on me. I can look at them for a second too long and forget what the hell I was about to say.
My eyes follow the contour of her cheek, dip to the soft curve of her Cupid’s bow, and linger on her glossed pink lips a fraction longer than they should, and I have the distinctly inconvenient thought that she has no business looking this stunning after three hours of sleep and a cross-state drive.
She lifts a hand to tuck a loose tendril of hair into place, and my eyes snag on the diamond glinting from her left finger.
Her wedding ring is back on. It was gone the last time I saw her; today, the gold circles her finger again like someone rewound the film and expected me not to notice the edit.
I dislike the sight with an intensity I have absolutely no claim to.
“You reconciled?” I ask.
Laurel follows my gaze and snorts. “With Grant?”
“Generally, the ring implies optimism.”
“The ring implies Grant knows I’m angry. I’d prefer he keep thinking that’s the whole problem.”
She takes a drink of coffee, completely unbothered by the fact that she has just walked into my office wearing her wedding ring, carrying evidence that could blow up her marriage and half the company attached to it, and asked me to make her an offer.
“He knows I hired counsel. He knows about the audit and Daniel’s payments.
He doesn’t know I have six months of messages between him and Sloane, three voice recordings, hotel receipts, photographs, and one particularly charming audio clip where he explains that I’m too domesticated to fight him for the company. ”
My hand stills around my coffee. “Sloane sent you that?”
“Two days ago.”
“Why?”
Laurel opens the legal pad. “Guilt. Self-preservation. Revenge because Grant told her she meant nothing. Pick a sin.”
I study her for a second. There’s no tremor in her hands, no hesitation, none of the uncertainty I’d expect from a woman with the remains of a fourteen-year marriage spread across a legal pad. She looks almost calm.
“I don’t care why she handed me the knife,” she continues, turning a page. “I care that his fingerprints are already on it.”
“What kind of offer are we talking about?”
Laurel leans back. “A real one. For my pre-marriage catalogue, every unreleased composition I can establish as solely mine, my twenty-one-percent stake in Mercer Records, and any publishing interest forensic accounting determines was transferred without valid authorization.”
My attention sharpens, and I straighten in my seat. “You want to sell me your shares?”
“No. I want you to make an offer.” Her eyes stay on mine. “There’s a difference.”
I understand three seconds later and nearly smile. “You want a valuation.”
“I have valuations. I want disclosure.”
God, that mind of hers is dangerous.
Seven years ago, she dissected my contract over lunch, even with that insufferable bastard Grant interrupting her every six minutes, and I remember thinking she was a spark sitting in a room full of gasoline, just waiting for somebody to give her a reason to burn the whole fucking place down.
Grant spent the following decade proving the point for me.
Laurel flips another page of her notebook.
“A formal third-party offer triggers diligence. If Mercer Records claims an interest in an asset I say belongs to me, they have to identify the instrument creating that interest. If anything has been pledged, cross-collateralized, assigned, licensed, or used to secure financing without me understanding exactly what I signed, it comes out. And if Grant refuses to cooperate, Harlan gets another reason to ask why the CEO is obstructing a transaction that could materially benefit a shareholder.”
I sit back, pride settling warm in my chest. “You spoke to Evelyn.”
“For two hours during my drive.”
“I can tell.”
A playful smirk tugs at the corner of her lips. “The offer has to satisfy your board, and I need to know you’ll actually close if I accept.”
“Laurel.” I set my coffee down. “Put your catalogue and twenty-one percent of Mercer Records on my desk at fair value, and I’ll have the financing lined up before your lawyer finishes the first page. If the numbers hold, the money is there. I don’t make offers I can’t close.”
Her mouth parts by a fraction. “That confident?”
“That greedy.”
She huffs out a laugh, amusement glinting in her eyes, and it—
Christ, focus.
There are beautiful women a man notices because the room improves around them, and there are women who make him resent every man who got to know them first. Laurel falls into the second category, which is an inconvenient place for a married woman to live inside my head.
I pick up her legal pad before inconvenient becomes irresponsible. “There’s a problem.”
Her smile disappears. “What?”
“If I make an offer for the equity, Grant knows you and I are coordinating.”
“He already thinks that.”
“Thinking is cheap. Documentation isn’t.”
I turn the pad around and draw a line beneath 21% EQUITY.
“You want him nervous about Vale House, fine. You do not want him understanding your endgame.”
“Which you think is?”
“You don’t want to sell. You want control.
” Her eyes sharpen with renewed interest. “Grant owns forty-two percent. You own twenty-one. The employee trust owns twelve. Outside investors hold twenty-five.” I write the numbers beside the percentages.
“Your twenty-one plus the outside block puts forty-six percent on your side if they come with you. Add the employee trust, and Grant’s forty-two stops being enough to control the company. ”
Laurel taps one fingernail against the arm of the chair. “The employee trust won’t move against him without cause.”
“Then stop thinking about the affair.”
“I stopped thinking about that somewhere around the second six-figure payment to my manager.”
“Good. Affairs destroy relationships. Breach of fiduciary duty destroys CEOs.”
Her eyes lock on mine. I watch the sentence settle exactly where I intended.
“Daniel’s payments came from corporate accounts,” I say.
“If Grant used company money to induce your representative to reject opportunities that would have benefited you personally, and Grant himself benefited from keeping your writing and labor inside Mercer Records, that’s a very different animal from a husband behaving like a piece of shit. ”
Laurel’s expression goes rigid in a way I’m beginning to recognize. “So I don’t need the employee trust to care that he fucked Sloane.”
“Your employees should never be asked to vote on your marriage.”
“They need to care that he fucked the company.”
“Exactly.”
Laurel gets up and walks toward the windows with her coffee. Midday haze hangs over the city, softening the skyline at the edges. She circles her wedding ring with her thumb.
“My father warned me. Years ago. He told me to make sure helping Grant climb wasn’t the same as agreeing to stay on the ground.
” Her voice stays level, but grief runs underneath every word, dense and immovable.
“I got angry with him. Defended Grant. Daddy died five years ago still thinking I chose this life. But Mama says he died thinking I was happy.” She lets out a quiet sigh.
“I don’t know which version hurts more.”
I leave the desk and stop several feet behind her, keeping my distance.
“Probably both.”
“Helpful.”
“You want a lie?”
“No.” She traces the ring around her finger again. “He knew about you. He hated your first offer.”
The thought of Thomas Bellamy knowing me before he died catches me off guard. “Most intelligent people did.”
“Said you were trying to buy me cheap.”
I tuck my hands into my pants pockets. “Also true.”
Her head turns. “You admit that?”
“The first offer was opportunistic. The second wasn’t.”
“Why?”
“Because by then, I knew what you were worth.”
Something moves through her expression. I could soften the sentence. Ruin it with something professional. Your catalogue. Your marketability. Your songwriting. Your voice. Every one of those things is true. None is what I meant.
Laurel looks at me for another beat, then turns away. “You know, you really are straightforward.”
I shrug. “I’ve been accused of worse.”