CHAPTER 5
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Since his father's death, the only idea he had in his mind was to become the CEO of Harlock Investment Group. A position he felt he more than deserved.
Although he had been to the office a couple of times before this return, to set up some business with William Sanders.
Today was the day Liam Van Dyke officially returned to the office as senior partner with a voice and vote, after an enforced two-month leave of absence due to Mariah his former assistant reporting him for sexual harassment.
Although the matter was resolved, with a favorable outcome for him, because the allegation was false, the matter came to fold into his record which many were happy to question and more so in his race to become the CEO of the company founded by his father.
That morning he got up early, got on the treadmill and as he listened to music he caught up with the Stock Exchanges.
He drank his usual black coffee without sugar and a juice. Then he rummaged through the huge walk-in closet of his elegant apartment in a building on Fifth Avenue. He chose a dark suit, a Rolex from his revolving rack and took one last look in the mirror to finish feeding that particular ego of his.
That mirror reflected a very tall, elegant and extremely attractive man with dark skin crowned by very large blue eyes that sparkled according to the mood of the owner.
Satisfied with the sight, Liam looked at the keys to his Aston Martin. He didn't want to drive today, so he ordered Paul, his personal driver, to pick him up.
A smile spread across his face as he took in the incredible cityscape of the streets of Manhattan, a city he dreamed of completely owning when he became the youngest CEO of such an important and influential company. He had already been considered the Prince of Manhattan by the tabloids that followed his glittering career.
He had been working hard on the executive position he wanted to take in the company, until that Mariah jumped in with that false accusation that set him back two months.
Because of that stupid complaint, he withdrew his candidacy, since the partners would not vote for him. In itself, the prejudices pursued him and he could not blame them.
Every week he was the protagonist of some small scandal in the magazines for his outings with supermodels and his tantrums with the photographers who chased them to get a snapshot of the heir of Harlock Investment Group with a new conquest.
They also blamed him for his father's death. Old Harlock Van Dyke, the stern, conservative, Republican tycoon, died of a heart attack a year ago. Everyone claimed it was due to the nerves his son was causing him with his wanderings.
Liam snorted.
It wasn't true.
His father died while fucking an actress. It turned out that his strict father wasn't as puritanical as everyone made him out to be.
Maybe that fact just added to Liam's troubled history.
But now with the help of William Sanders, his friend and one of the company's in-house lawyers, they were working on a plan to become CEO.
Although Liam owned 49% of the company, the other major majority was the vice chairman, the great Michael Foreman, a contemporary of his father's, a guy Liam could never figure out because of his pragmatism.
The only thing Liam could think of to win Michael's votes was to seduce his daughter Anna, a girl as beautiful as she was tiresome. A typical New York heiress with a bad temper.
Sacrificing his bachelorhood for a woman he didn't want was a high price to pay in exchange for the vows of Michael with whom he was now allied. It was better that than being antagonized by another powerful man.
Added to that, he had an elaborate predatory business plan as his calling card, to show Wall Street that there was a new gunslinger in the field and they should watch out for him.
The rest of the vote depended on rehabilitating his image.
William Sanders took it upon himself to hire him a new secretary, one totally removed from the type of women who worked at the company.
And that's where Liam blinked quizzically.
The day before when he went to pick up some papers before his triumphant return, William introduced him to his secretary and it was there that he was reunited with someone unexpected.
She was much the same, except for a different hairstyle and wearing grown-up clothes.
Emma “ Dorothy ” Darby, a direct witness to the shameful time when his father exiled him to Cheyenne, that lost town just to teach him a lesson.
Of course he remembered her, since that little girl with plus size curves was the one who got him through the school year, who took all his notes and who never looked at him with the eyes of a slayer, she was always in a corner, afraid and dying of shyness.
So seeing her again was a surprise, although she recovered immediately to bring out her natural haughtiness.
She also rebuked William for hiring her.
“I wasn't going to hire a girl who looked like a supermodel,” the lawyer hissed at him. “Mariah may have made a false claim, but you did hook up with all of them before and what did they have in common? They looked like they came out of a fashion magazine. That's why I hired the common-looking girl with a lot of secretarial experience”
Liam didn't like her.
That Dorothy knew about his past and Liam was embarrassed to remember that this girl would be part of the group that saw him as a jerk, because of their common past, when he used her and made fun of her for being a country bumpkin.
He didn't dislike the girl, that was the worst of it, and he used the mechanism of mockery to protect himself from that rare attraction? He was a guy who surrounded himself with the prettiest cheerleaders , why feel nervous with a girl who wasn't like them?
So he was unfriendly to Emma.
Still, while he was struggling with those inconvenient ideas, there was that strange event at a party two weeks before graduation that would take him away from that place.
He drank a little too much and asked for the keys to the roommate who was lending the house, to go to his room, he wanted to lie down a little and try to get over the hangover to avoid making a fool of himself.
It was there that the strangest thing in the world happened, and even now he was not sure if it was a dream. A very real one.
A young woman, because that's what her skin felt like, the most divine that had ever passed through his arms lay down next to him and gave herself to him in the dark.
He didn't know who she was and didn't want to break the spell, turning on the lamp. It was the best night of his life, although when he was now a very experienced man and would have had the most beautiful women in the world, he always kept the secret of that night as something priceless of which he never spoke to anyone.
The curious identity of his stealthy lover was a mystery he would probably never know.
He laughed as he remembered that after he left Cheyenne, he spent a few days in New York and while enjoying the break before college, he fantasized that perhaps the mystery girl of that night might have been Emma Darby, which was stupid.
And this foolishness he thought because of the very rare attraction he felt for that plump country girl.
Those inconvenient feelings disappeared in Liam when he moved to the campus of the University of Pennsylvania, to study at the exclusive Wharton School of Business.
The competitive college years made him forget all those innocent ideas and start becoming the business shark he wanted to be.
An investment banker and a place in his father's company, who remained incredulous at his own son's rise.
It was all so far away now.
The old Van Dyke was dead and it was his turn.
As the car stopped in front of the Stidwell building, he was reminded again of his particular new secretary and what he had overheard the day before.
That Dorothy seemed to want to quit and more so knowing that her new boss was him.
That bothered him because it struck a chord.
He thought Emma was prejudiced about him, like everyone else.
He didn't plan to be cowed by anyone and he planned to prove it.