Owen
The coffee was tepid and bitter. Nothing like the lattes I’d gotten addicted to recently. I sipped it anyway, shuffling the papers in front of me. They were precisely formulated spreadsheets with the last ten years’ worth of sales, harvest, and cost data.
All had been prepared by Lila, and all were perfect in organization and execution. My order-loving perfectionist brain was impressed, but my caveman brain was distracted.
Because I’d almost given in to my baser needs and kissed her in the office. Then, like an idiot, I’d willingly subjected myself to a road trip with her.
We’d spent three hours enclosed in the small space where her scent had wrapped around me and made it hard to focus on anything but what her lips would feel like pressed to mine and how soft her skin might be under my touch.
It took some time, but I got myself under control enough to laugh and joke and talk about movies with her.
I even indulged when she insisted on getting Munchkins in the Dunkin drive-through.
Then I spent a solid ten minutes getting powdered sugar out of my tie.
Even so, it was fun.
She was fun. Being with her was making it increasingly harder to stay focused and angry.
Focused and angry were my default. It was how I got shit done. I’d built my life and career on focused and angry. And now this smiling woman with the body of a goddess and the mind of a professor was making me question every aspect of my life.
And she was testing my sanity.
She was interested. In me. She liked what she saw.
I was a goner.
Now it was business time, but my brain was still in the car, mooning over Lila, listening to her talk about her favorite songs and ’80s teen movies while sneaking flirty glances at me and complimenting my beard.
I scratched my chin. The scruff had been driving me crazy, but now that I knew she liked it? I’d never shave again.
I needed to get my head in the game. Instead of locking in and being present in this dark paneled boardroom at my lawyer’s office where it should be, reviewing the offer paperwork and preparing our response, my brain had suddenly drifted even farther.
Now I wasn’t just reliving every moment of the drive.
No, now I was on a beach, rubbing sunblock into Lila’s shoulders and sneaking peeks down the front of her bikini top while ordering another round of fruity drinks.
I’d traveled a fair amount, usually with a specific goal in mind. To summit a mountain or visit a world-famous museum. I’d even planned trips around running a specific marathon.
I’d never had the desire to lounge on a beach. But every time Lila smiled, all I could think about was bathing in sunshine and looking out at the ocean with her, watching the waves crash and soaking in the salt air.
Spoiling her rotten by renting a cabana at a secluded resort where her every need would be catered to. She deserved that. She worked so damn hard and deserved to be pampered for once. I wanted to take care of her in every possible way.
“Mr. Hebert?”
I blinked back to the present and came face-to-face with a young associate who was frowning at me in concern.
Smoothing out my tie, I gave her a nod, and with that, she led us through the offices toward a large conference room.
Inside, a wall of windows faced the harbor, and most of the chairs around a mahogany desk were occupied.
We were introduced to a team of three lawyers and a representative of the buyers. Each one was the generic corporate type with expensive haircuts and the kind of confidence gained from charging a thousand dollars an hour to sit here.
The Carson Group was a group of investors with timber interests across North America.
We’d done our due diligence and looked into the organization, though there was very little publicly available information.
But if their choice of legal representation was any indicator, they clearly had money to burn.
Our attorney, Tad Pierce, had already arrived.
He was a middle-aged golf enthusiast with blinding veneers and obvious hair plugs.
The law firm my dad had worked with for years was under investigation, quite rightly, so after the life we’d always known had blown up, I’d had to scramble to find someone else.
This firm had come highly recommended and had offices in both Boston and Portland, which made my life infinitely easier.
Our GC, Amara, hadn’t liked Tad. According to her, he was “old school.” It was her polite way of saying he was a privileged blowhard.
Regardless, we had limited options, and he was the best of them.
As we entered, Tad raked his gaze over Lila’s body in a way that made my hackles rise.
As if she were nothing more than a piece of meat, when, in reality, she was brilliant.
There was no way I would have been anywhere near prepared for this meeting without her.
He gave her a slick smile, flashing teeth that were at least two times too big for his mouth, and pulled out her chair for her.
She looked beautiful today. Hell, she looked beautiful every day, but she was dressed modestly and professionally in a dark skirt suit and sensible heels.
Her hair was pulled back and held with a black clip.
All morning, I’d itched to reach over and pull it out, run my fingers through the strands, muss it up a little.
Until the moment she stepped out of her house this morning, I’d had no idea that I had a skirt suit fetish.
But one look at those hips, and a new kink had been unlocked.
Lila had been hiding some serious curves under her casual outfits, and it was impossible not to take notice.
I took my glasses off and pulled a microfiber cloth from my pocket to clean them as the assistant sent in another set of papers to review. This was the worst part of dealmaking—the contractual negotiations. Working line by line through pages and pages until it was done.
When we’d finally made it to the offer stage, I flipped through the portfolio and groaned inwardly.
Their offer was far lower than Tad and I had discussed.
Where the income related to drugs ended and the actual timber began had been a mystery.
The entire Hebert team, including Gus and me, had worked for months to get to a place where we could confidently make projections, and we’d erred on the side of caution and stuck with the low end of those calculations.
I flipped through the pages, annoyed and frustrated, as Tad began to volley with the opposing counsel.
William Huxley was a standard-issue New York shark.
Ageless, likely because he’d been working one-hundred-hour weeks for a decade and prematurely looked 50ish with a spray on tan.
Cocky in an “I went to Harvard and know several senators from my country club” way.
The way he was smiling at Lila made me want to fight him.
And rather than critically examining the proposal, he was speaking as though the deal were already done, as if he had no intention of negotiating. Smug prick.
“Once we get the detailed inventory lists and the first-quarter numbers, we can finalize everything,” he said, idly spinning his Mont Blanc pen in his manicured hands. “You can send your girl down with the signatures.”
I clenched my jaw, and the nerves I’d battled all morning had officially morphed into anger. “My girl?” I said, keeping my tone measured rather than devolving into feral growls like the caveman inside me urged me to do. “I assume you mean Ms. Webster, my associate?”
He nodded, clearly oblivious to my irritation.
“You can send them by mail,” I replied.
He sat back in his chair, lacing his fingers over his abdomen and smirking at the man seated beside him. “Do you even get mail up there?”
“We sure do.” Lila sat primly, as if she’d employed her beauty queen demeanor, though she’d tweaked it so her aura was all badass professional. “And we even have running water too,” she added, her tone dripping sarcasm.
He assessed her for a moment, then his grin spread further.
The urge to climb over this massive table and choke him with his tie was threatening to win out over logic.
“Could we take a short break?” Lila asked, slipping back into a facade full of sweetness. “I think we need to confer with our counsel.”
Tad stood and buttoned his jacket. “Of course. Let’s head to a breakout room.” He turned to the opposing counsel. “We’ll resume in ten.”
Without waiting for permission, we shuffled out of the conference room, and Tad led us down the hall to a space designated for our side to engage in discussions.
“I think it’s going well,” Tad said the moment the door to the small room closed behind us.
I shot him a look, still unsure that I’d leave here today without murdering a man.
Lila was bent over the pages, furiously circling and crossing things out with a pen. “This document is riddled with errors,” she said, looking up at me through her thick, dark lashes. “They didn’t bother to even look at what we’d prepared.”
I sat beside her and scanned the places she’d marked, taking in all the inconsistencies while she pulled out her laptop and tapped furiously, checking details against our recent calculations.
She was absolutely right. The majority of calculations were incorrect. No wonder the offer was so low.
I frowned up at Tad. “You reviewed this?”
He nodded and stuck his hands in his pockets. “Had my best team on it. It all checks out. Don’t get all paranoid because the number is on the low side.”
“But it doesn’t check out,” Lila said, her voice as steely as her expression. “If your team really did look at this, then they did a shitty job.”
I resisted the urge to pump my fist. Good for her.
Lila tended to wear a sweet and polite exterior, but she’d thrown off that facade completely today, and I was here for it.
As impressed as I was, her sass was also turning me on, but I’d deal with that later in the privacy of my cabin.
For now, I’d breathe through it and focus on how damn magnificent she was.
We had asses to kick, and I had every intention of standing beside her and working to do it together.
“What’s the strategy?” she asked me, completely ignoring Tad’s protests.
“Call them out,” I said, angling in closer than necessary. “Let’s force them to own their fuckups. Put them on the defensive.”
She surveyed me, her bottom lip caught between her teeth, as if uncertainty had sunken in.
I wouldn’t have it. She knew what the hell she was doing, and I’d back her up all the way. So I lowered my head, catching her eye, and squeezed her hand. “I couldn’t do this without you.”
With a nod, she pulled her shoulders back, as if garnering that confidence once again.
“We will not consider this offer,” I said, tossing the prospectus on the table as we strode back to the conference table. “It’s inaccurate and doesn’t come close to reflecting the value of the assets in question.”
Every person on the other side of the table blustered. They were all scoffs and nervous tics, like smoothing down ties and shuffling papers. “We employed our best researchers to prepare,” Huxley said. “The investors are timber experts.”
“We’re talking about the largest piece of undeveloped wilderness in Maine.” I folded my hands together on the tabletop, sure to keep my shoulders back and my chin high. “Our family owns more acreage, real estate, and machinery than any other timber operation on the east coast.”
Huxley leaned forward, his shark eyes narrowing. “It’s a good offer.”
“Bill,” Lila said softly, getting the attention of everyone in the room. “It’s a bullshit offer.”
All eyes immediately focused on her, and she shrank back almost imperceptibly. She stopped herself quickly, straightened, and eyed me. I gave her an encouraging nod, and that was all she needed to continue.
“The tables on page eleven are based on faulty data.” She opened the prospectus and pointed. “These are not the numbers we prepared and supplied to you this week. You’ve undervalued the real estate, overestimated the tax burden, and neglected to include any of the federal subsidies.”
I bit the inside of my cheek to hide a smile as every face on the other side of the table fell. It was all the confirmation I needed to know that they’d known what they were doing. Huxley’s face had gone red, making him look positively constipated.
Watching her school them filled me with a joy I wasn’t sure I’d ever experienced. Rather than being dominant or pushy, she calmly flipped through, page by page, and carefully eviscerated them.
They’d been under the impression that they could throw together sloppy numbers and bully us into a deal, and now they were discovering just how wrong they’d been.
“The automation plans and cost-cutting suggestions on page twenty-four are positively delusional. The timber industry is the lifeblood of this region. Most of these jobs cannot be automated. Reducing output is not the answer and will not bring you any closer to profitability.”
Tad sat back, thankfully keeping his mouth shut.
The man was probably grateful that we were doing his job for him.
Though he’d been just as negligent as the rest of the bunch, he was sitting on our side, so though his mouth was fixed in a straight line, his eyes were bright with glee as he watched the opposing counsel angrily argue with us about twenty-first-century technology.
“Have you ever cut down a tree, Bill?” Lila asked, tilting her head sweetly. Damn, she was good at this. Not only had she affected a gentle expression, but she’d tempered her tone, making her sound even more harmless. She was leading him straight into a deadly trap.
“No.” He scoffed. “And it’s William.”
Of course, he hadn’t. This guy had probably never seen a tree up close that hadn’t been maintained by full-time gardeners at his country club.
“Hm.” She tapped her pen on the desk. “Then you should probably leave the ‘innovation’ to the professionals. Now, are you ready to talk about the machinery list? Because it’s woefully incomplete, and the assumptions are flawed.”
With her head cocked slightly, she waved a hand dismissively in their direction. “You should probably take notes.”
When she was finished, every one of them was red-faced and sweating.
She looked as fresh as a daisy and positively serene when she flashed her best pageant queen smile and asked. “Any questions?”
Damn, I’d never been so attracted to a woman in my life. Lila could completely destroy me.
And I would gladly let her.