His Corporate Claim

by J. D. Fox

  “Lunch,” I said.

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “You’ve eaten lunch.”

  “I know, but this is a perfect time to get your ring appraised.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Sure it is. We just need to stop by the bank and drop the deposit in the box.” Eva grabbed her purse, which was stuffed extra large from the deposit bag from under her desk. She trailed me as I got into the elevator, scooting in after me. The door shut, leaving me alone with her.

  We stepped inside the elevator. “I spent all morning on the changes for those stupid Jimble ads,” she groused, “and now they aren’t even getting sent to the newspaper. I don’t know what Jessica was thinking.”

  “I don’t know where her head is,” I replied. “She didn’t use to be like this.”

  “She has a boyfriend. I heard her giggling on the phone with him like she was fourteen.”

  “That’s nice,” I said dismissively. I had no interest whatsoever in Jessica’s love life. The elevator pinged, and we stepped into the relentless Denver summer heat.

  “Don’t you care?”

  “No. I have enough of my own problems.”

  “What problems? You are wearing a fifty thousand dollar rock on your finger.”

  I scoffed, covering my terror at Lucius entrusting an insanely expensive piece of jewelry to me. “I am not.”

  “Then prove it. Dishes for a month is riding on this.”

  I huffed, but Eva had her phone out and wasn’t paying attention.

  “Here, the jeweler is just three streets over.”

  “Like I’m going to walk in this heat.”

  “Hush and put your dishwashing hands where your mouth is.”

  “That doesn’t even make sense.”

  We walked a block and I waited as Eva stuffed the deposit in the metal maw set in the red brick wall of the bank. She lifted the handle again to make sure the bag had cleared and locked it again.

  “There,” she said. “Thank God that task is done for today; I always hate hauling that thing around. Thanks for being my bodyguard.”

  “No problem. I have to keep you safe. Otherwise who’d pay for half of the rent?”

  “You’re right. No one else would live with you and your Felix Unger ways.”

  We began walking again and Eva turned right at the corner.

  “Here we are.”

  “You told me three blocks.”

  “I lied because you would have bolted at the halfway point.”

  “I would not.”

  “You forget that I know you put too much toothpaste on your toothbrush, you snore after drinking too much, and that you always fart after eating pepperoni.”

  “Now, wait a minute.”

  “Tell me those things are untrue.”

  I stood in front of the jewelry store and had to admit that my best friend knew me too well.

  “Fine,” I said.

  “Good,” she said. Eva pulled open the door and gestured inside. “After you.”

  Appraising a diamond ring was a complicated process. After I declined to leave the ring for evaluation and pay the man’s fee, the jeweler began is his work. He took twenty minutes to stare at the stone through a tiny lens and several other measuring devices before comparing it to a row of diamonds whose color went from clear to yellowish.

  “Very nice, very nice,” muttered the jeweler as he examined the ring. He snapped a few pictures with the ring sitting under a lamp.

  “A fifty thousand dollar ring?” said Eva peering over my shoulder.

  He shook his head. “Oh no, not that much,” he said. “The color is not clear, but then in a large diamond, you don’t necessarily want that. And there are a few inclusions, but again, diamonds this size with perfect color and no inclusions are very rare.”

  “See? I told you,” I said.

  “More like around thirty to thirty-five thousand.”

  My mouth hung open. Thirty thousand dollars? Lucius is insane to spend that amount for a fake engagement.

  “But that’s just an educated guess. I’ll send you an official appraisal within two weeks. I have to perform a little research before I give you the final number.”

  He took a jeweler’s cloth, cleaned the ring and handed it back.

  “But I tell you, you are a very lucky lady. Your fiancé must love you very much.”

  “Oh, you don’t know the half of it,” piped up Eva.

  I glared at her and she winced.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “No, thank you. I rarely get to handle a diamond this beautiful. You did the right thing getting an appraisal. You should get it insured at once.”

  “Again, thanks,” I said. “I’ll do that.”

  Eva was on her phone again before we’d even walked out of the store.

  “Wow,” she said. “At thirty-five thousand it will cost you seven hundred a year to insure it.”

  “What?” The idea shocked me. “That’s as much as my car insurance. I can’t handle both.” All my money, except for what it cost to sustain me, was going toward my mother’s care. I definitely didn’t have seven hundred extra dollars to insure this monstrously big ring.

  “Well, it’s that or take a huge loss if something—”

  I pulled out my phone and looked up the same information Eva was still staring at. I must speak to Lucius. He probably insured the ring, but I sent him a text to be sure.

  Me: Did you insure this monstrosity that a jeweler just told me is worth around thirty-five thousand dollars?

  “Hello, ladies,” said an all-too-familiar voice that stroked my brain like a masseuse wearing silk gloves. “Escaped the office?”

  I looked up into Sam’s warm brown eyes and swallowed hard; damn it, my insides were melting.

  “Lunch,” I croaked.

  “This is past the company mandated lunch hour,” he said.

  “She does this all the time,” said Eva.

  “I do not.” Damn if that woman grated my last nerve.

  “She works through lunch—”

  “Only because the office is quiet and I can do more.”

  “And then pops out for a sandwich.”

  “I see. And what’s your excuse, Miss Roman?”

  “I tag along to make sure she remembers the way back to the office.”

  “Brat,” I declared.

  She smiled wickedly.

  “Well, ladies, your excuses are better than mine. I had to get out of there. And I am hungry. Where is there a good sandwich shop around here?”

  “Talia will show you,” said Eva, winking. “I’ve got to get back to the office.”

  “Eva!”

  “Have fun,” she said. My former best friend walked away, waving her hand as she left me alone with the man I needed to avoid.

  Chapter Six

  Sam

  Wednesday

  I received my username and password from IT Wednesday morning and started my dig into the company books. By lunchtime, I gave up trying to make sense of Lucius’s atrocious bookkeeping system. Lucius wasn’t a trained accountant, but he could have at least followed the basic accounting templates available on Palmer Corp’s servers.

  At first, I tried going over the profit and loss statements. There were strange assignments to different expense categories, and revenue slots I weren’t familiar with. An hour into the work, and though I’d tried my best to pull Lucius’s figures into Palmer Corporations standard accounting templates, I’d gotten ridiculous results. That’s when I realized I knew jack about the advertising business.

  My hand hovered over the interoffice phone, and then I realized that I didn’t know Talia’s extension. I searched my desk to find a list, and grew more exponentially more frustrated because I couldn’t find one in any of the obvious places until I pulled out a random tray. There, I finally found a list of office phone extensions, quickly finding and dialing the one I needed.

  “Talia,” I said into the receiver. “
Please come to my office.”

  I almost choked on the word “come,” which only demonstrates how foolish I couldn’t help being around this woman.

  Get a grip, Palmer. She’s an employee and your brother’s fiancée.

  Talia arrived at my door with consternation written on her face, as if she was expecting to get punished. That sparked another inappropriate thought, this one of her lying across my knee as I laid my hand into her luscious bottom with a firm hand.

  Stop that, I scolded myself.

  “Talia, I’m having a difficult time understanding these books. I hope you can help me.”

  Talia squeezed her hands together, and she looked so damned delicious I wanted to throw her on my desk, open her legs and taste her sweetness on my tongue.

  In a world of bad ideas, calling Talia to your office is absolutely the number one bad idea you’ve had in a long time.

  “I don’t see how I can, Mr. Palmer.”

  “Talia, we’re going to be family. Call me Sam, please.”

  She glared at me as if I’d forced her to climb a bucking stallion. On second thought—

  Snap out of it, Palmer.

  “Sam,” she said with an indignant huff, “it’s Angela who works the books for Lucius.”

  I don’t remember meeting anyone by that name.

  “Who?”

  “Angela McVee. She’s our Creative Director.”

  I raised an eyebrow in disbelief.

  “A Creative Director slash accountant?”

  She shrugged, as if she didn’t find the set-up unusual.

  “You’ll have to ask Lucius about that.”

  “How about if I ask her? What’s her extension?”

  “She’s taking personal time, so she’s not in the office.”

  Good lord. What kind of operation was Lucius running here?

  “Well, take a look at these expense and revenue categories, and see if they make sense to you. Please.”

  Talia pursed her lips, but approached my desk. I stood and pointed to my chair. “Have a seat.”

  She raised her chin as if in defiance, but sat and stared at the screen.

  “What do you need to know?”

  “Everything. This isn’t what I’m used to seeing.”

  She glanced over her shoulder. “You want the crash course in ad agency revenue generation?”

  I blew a long breath in relief. “Please.”

  “Okay then. So, there are two ways to bill revenue in ad agencies. One is a straight up billing on ad buys. The industry consensus is that 15% – 25% operating profit, as a percentage of gross revenue, is “fair agency profitability.” So if you bill the client $1,000, the agency bought the ad for $750 dollars.”

  “Why wouldn’t a client just place the ad themselves and save money?”

  “That’s a good question. The answer is that agencies generally have ins with different outlets, and can get better pricing to begin with because of the volume of their buys. And clients get services they would otherwise have to pay for separately, like ad creation and ad placement. Plus, we do know the best places to put a client’s ad for maximum effect. You could say that’s the biggest part of our job.”

  She looked up at me. Again, her beautiful hazel eyes shone at me like beacons, and I gripped the back of my chair to keep me steady. I swallowed hard and did my best to ignore the tingles in my cock. “Okay; so for comparison, what’s the other method?”

  “Simple pay for play; when an agency charges fees by service.”

  “So a la carte instead of the table d'hôte.” I was standing close to her... too close. Damn, at that range, the scent of her hair was enticing me to kiss the top of her head, and I had to do my damndest to resist. A tremor went through my hands as I gripped the chair.

  “Table d’hote?” She licked her lips, probably involuntarily, which nonetheless added an attractive shine to her lips.

  “Full meal at a single price.”

  “Then yes.”

  I don’t think I can take much more of this. It was a good thing there is a chair between me and Talia. “Which is Palmer Media?”

  “We mix the two.”

  Well, no wonder I couldn’t make heads or tails of this system.

  “Isn’t that unusual?”

  She huffed in annoyance. “Yes, very. But Lucius wants to offer the widest possible options.”

  I couldn’t take this. I swiveled the chair to face me, and her bright eyes went wide as I stared down at her.

  “You don’t sound like you approve.”

  “Look, um, Sam. I just work here, you know.” She swallowed hard, and her nervousness crackled between us.

  Unwittingly my voice came out as a growl.

  “You’re my brother’s fiancée. You can’t tell me you don’t know more about the business than that.” What’s wrong with me? Why did I sound like some cheap noir detective questioning a suspect? Why did it disappoint me so much that Lucius had claimed her before I met her? I was going insane before her and by the look in her eyes, Talia thought so too.

  Talia edged out of the chair.

  “Sam,” Talia said tightly, “how about if I send you a list of clients and mark which ones that are fee-based and which ones pay by commission? I’ll send you a list of fees too, for reference.”

  Talia tried to cover the fear that she was radiating by putting up a brave, no-nonsense front. I had to admire her for doing so; she was the only one who had her head on straight.

  I backed away from the chair.

  “That sounds like an excellent idea.”

  “I’ll get right on it,” she said crisply. Then Talia fled the office as if a monster was on her heels. I didn’t blame her; the unreasonable monster in my pants wanted her badly.

  Almost immediately, my email alert dinged with the promised documents. I tried to dig into them, but an annoyance niggled my brain. I was extremely irritated— not because Lucius couldn’t add one plus one, but because my mind kept wandering. I told myself that my lack of concentration had nothing to do with catching Talia going through Lucius’ desk first thing this morning or sitting in my chair moments ago. I had not noticed the blue sheath that clung to her curves like racing tires on a mountain road. Nor did I pay the slightest bit of attention to her hazel eyes that shone a mysterious bluish gray. How does a woman’s eye color change that often? Yesterday I could have sworn that her eyes were green.

  Oh hell. Talia is a beautiful woman, gorgeous even, but she’s my brother’s fiancée and my soon-to-be sister-in-law.

  It was an act of great fortitude to not cross the floor of my brother’s office and take her in my arms, or to pull her up into my arms when she’d been sitting in my chair. Hell is too good for me.

  These thoughts about my brother’s fiancée are wrong. An unimaginable emotion clamped onto my heart— I envied my brother.

  Lucius is charming, smart and driven, but I outshone him in every department. My brother operated under the assumption that Dad didn’t approve of Lucius because of what his mother did, but no. Lucius lacked the quality of what Dad called “substance,” which my father valued but Lucius thought an inconvenience. Lucius pursued the easy way to obtain a goal, even if it was the wrong way to do it. I had hoped that Lucius grew out of this unfortunate personality flaw, but apparently not. Strange as it might be to say, it seemed wrong that Lucius was with a woman of Talia’s obvious quality. The women he’s usually attracted to and who he attracts are hot, shallow and glib. Talia and Lucius were such an obvious mismatch that I could not imagine my brother winning the heart of such a woman by honest means.

  I needed investigate this relationship between them. It had nothing to do with my inappropriate desire for her. Nothing.

  The clock on my computer told me I’d wasted the morning on idle speculation. I needed to take concrete action to confirm or deny my suspicions that Lucius did not deserve Talia. As a gesture of brotherly goodwill, I’d ask Talia to lunch. That was safe. We’d be in a public place, and sin
ce it would be a business lunch, I would not be drinking.

  I head to the first floor with my shoes clattering on those damn metal steps, but find Talia’s office door closed. But I could knock on that door, right? Go inside, ask if she was busy, shut the door and—

  No! Danger Will Robinson. I could nor should not be alone in any room with Talia Winton. Best to keep it all interactions public.

  “Mr. Palmer!”

  A blonde woman with her hair styled in an updo sailed toward me. Who was this? Oh— Jessica, one of the sales managers.

  “Yes, Jessica.”

  “Lucius isn’t here, and I need upper management authorization for these ad buys.”

  “Which ad buys?”

  “Jimble Mattresses.”

  “I’m sorry. I think I’m missing something here. You’re the sales manager. Why do you need my approval?”

  Her face flushed, which is never good. What was wrong with the client’s account that she needed my approval to do her job?

  “They are ninety days out, but they are always ninety days out, and Lucius always gives his approval.”

  “Ninety days? As in thirty days from one hundred twenty days? Tell the client you’ll take a credit card to clear their past due and we’ll get right on their ads.”

  “But they don’t work that way. They only pay by purchase order and—”

  “Well, we don’t work that way either, Jessica. We’re a business, not a charity.”

  “But—”

  “Don’t you have a phone call to place, Jessica?”

  I used my best “I’m the boss” voice and her face colored again before she turned on her heels and strode to her office.

  My eyes swept the office, and several eyes went from me back to their computer screens in unison. Damn Lucius and his insistence on an open floor plan. There wasn’t a single thing that happens unnoticed. Talia’s office remained shut and from the large window next to the door, I can spot she’s on the phone. I walked back to my office, and I’d just gotten to the stairs when I noticed Jessica flying toward Talia’s door, knocking, and opening it. Suddenly, I remembered that I needed to confirm Friday afternoon’s plans with Talia, just to make sure there are no misunderstandings. I walked over to stand behind Jessica, who was now complaining to Talia about me. Talia’s eyes shot up to mine. She swallowed hard and I’m not sure if I saw panic at getting caught in interoffice mutiny, or if she was having inappropriate thoughts about me. I liked the second idea better, but then I couldn’t be trusted with my brother’s fiancée.