Love in Numbers: An Enemies to Lovers Romance (Love Distilled Book 1)
Page 20
She thought of Connor, the way he’d enjoyed her gin on Friday night, the way it had loosened his reserve. She remembered the words he’d spoken to her and grinned.
“You’ve been smiling like that all day,” Olivia said. “What’s got you in such a great mood?”
Connor.
They’d spent the most amazing weekend together, but Friday night, after they’d returned from dinner… Gah, just thinking about it now made her want to clench her thighs together. He’d taken her just the way he’d promised. He’d been ruthless, pounding into her.
And it hadn’t been enough. In the morning, they’d had sex in his shower with her back against the wall and her legs wrapped around him. On Sunday morning, she’d been as sore as if she’d played six straight sets of tennis. Sex had become her new exercise.
And their relationship had evolved almost overnight. They had been closer, more tactile, more open and honest.
“Em,” Liv called out. “Earth to Emerson.”
“Sorry,” Emerson said, taking a sip of coffee to clear her head. “It’s Connor. He’s the reason I’m in a good mood.”
Olivia squealed. “Yay. I’m so glad. He’s a really nice guy. And seems to get what you do. You complement each other.”
“Which is why somebody needs to pinch me. I’ve fallen for a guy in, like, five seconds.”
“Sometimes when you know, you just know. And perhaps it’s genetics. Mom and Dad always said they fell in love with each other on the day they met.”
Emerson remembered the way her mother had once explained it. “She said it was like a thunderbolt.” The word suited her own situation perfectly.
“I’m happy for you, Em. Honestly. You needed something good after the last little while. You deserve it.”
Emerson patted her sister’s leg. “Thanks.”
“So, is it serious?” Olivia asked.
“Certainly on my part, and I’m pretty sure it is on his.” She knew it was. In the early hours of Sunday morning, he’d told her so. As she’d hovered on the edge of waking. He’d told her how he saw what they had as something long-term, not just for now.
Em, it’s hard to believe that only two months ago you weren’t in my life, but now I can’t imagine you out of it.
“Well, I’m glad he can see just how special you are…like the rest of us do.” Olivia checked her watch. “Should we head back in?”
When they arrived back at the mezzanine, Olivia disappeared into her office.
Liv’s words boosted Emerson as she sat down at the round table in her office and began to tackle the mail from the weekend. She separated it into piles. Bills to be paid, things to do, circulars to be tossed. A large brown manila envelope caught her eye. Her name and address were printed on a label. Emerson ripped it open.
A copy of a presentation dropped out. It had notes scribbled on it in what looked like Connor’s writing. Finch Liquor Distribution Potential Acquisitions.
It seemed odd that Connor would send her something in the mail, seeing as they’d woken with each other that morning. He’d not even mentioned he would be sending her anything. But she began to flick through it anyway.
The first few pages were interesting. Details of how the marketplace was changing in favor of higher-end, artisanal products. Perhaps that’s why he’d wanted her to see it. It was certainly reassuring to know that her segment continued to grow. What had once been called mother’s ruin was now a highly profitable product.
There was a doodle in the corner, a circle that had been repeatedly drawn over and over, and the thought of Connor sitting bored in a boardroom somewhere made her smile. From what she knew of the man, he much preferred to be outside.
The next few pages were the criteria for an acquisition strategy. The type of company that would be a good fit for Finch, what the parameters for success would be, what the anticipated costs would be…before and post-acquisition. Connor had built quite the framework and she wondered how he’d gotten some of the information.
After that were pages that looked to be describing potential acquisition targets all over the country. Perhaps that was why he’d sent it to her, to review the list. She’d heard of the first few companies.
Wow, some of her peers were worth a considerable fortune.
She turned the page, and there, in the title, was Dyer’s Gin Distillery.
Loan foreclosed.
Minimum deal. Wait until after loan foreclosure.
The words began to blur. Emerson’s head began to spin. She felt sick.
She reached for the envelope and peered inside to see if there was a note of any kind. But there was nothing. Just the presentation.
The next page continued under the heading Assessment of Assets.
Jake Dyer is behind Medallion’s success…
Emerson Dyer, new but competent CEO. Lacks experience…
She did. She couldn’t deny it. Never in a million years had she thought she’d be put in charge. And she’d rather her father still be here than be holding any important title. But to see it in 12-point Helvetica font was like a slap to the face. Harsh and instant.
Old assets in need of renovation…
Turn events hall into expanded distillery. Move into other white spirits? Tequila?
Tears stung as her anger began to boil.
Had he been using her to get information? She studied some of the numbers. A couple were wrong. More than a couple. They all looked low.
She reached for her phone and dialed Connor’s number. Wherever he was, he better have an answer as to why she’d been sent this. Or, more importantly, why he’d even written it in the first place.
She dialed his number, only for it to ring and go to voicemail.
She’d been a fool to trust him. Perhaps she should have done more due diligence about him before diving headfirst into a relationship with a man that she barely knew.
No.
Before she jumped to conclusions, she owed it to Connor to let him attempt to explain.
And she did know him…she knew him as intimately as a woman could. He couldn’t have been pretending to have a relationship with her for information, could he? Friday night couldn’t have been faked, could it?
She dialed the phone again and got his voicemail for a second time. His phone was never out of his reach.
What if he were ignoring her?
She turned to the third page. A simple pros and cons.
Under pros: Was initially a Finch asset before being taken over by Dyer.
She placed her phone down on the table and picked up the presentation.
…initially a Finch asset?
What? It had never belonged to anyone other than her father and mother. Why on Earth would Connor think it had ever been anything other than her family’s?
Oh my god. That night. When he’d come over, he’d picked her brain about the distillery. She’d told him everything she knew. She’d even shown him photographs. And he’d pushed back then, asking if there had ever been another partner. He’d wanted to get her to admit to something she couldn’t, that there had once been another partner. Had he been trying to catch her out or garner a confession of sorts?
But which Finch thought they had owned it? His father?
Yes, she’d definitely been a fool.
Emerson picked up the phone again, letting it ring again. This time when she got voicemail, she was ready.
“I don’t know what game you’re playing, Connor. But finding out I’m an acquisition target for you by mail is a shitty way to draw a line under things. And to think I let myself fall in love with you.”
When she was done, she steeled herself. For the first time in months, she was going home early. Somewhere she didn’t need to explain how the bottom had just fallen out of her world. She felt like the tail of the gin. Lost, unfocused.
She just needed to get home before she fell apart.
“You heard me, Connor. Is it true that you’re in a relationship with that Dyer woman?”
When his father’s assistant had called to ask him to come upstairs urgently, he’d assumed there was a business emergency. A supply chain screwup, an unexplainable profit and loss gap, perhaps a negative press complaint. Emerson’s number had popped up on his phone as he’d jogged up the stairs, but he’d sent it to voicemail, knowing she’d understand that he had work to attend to.
When he walked into his father’s office two minutes later, his father had greeted him with a simple statement. What is your relationship with the Dyer woman?
His father wouldn’t be this incendiary about a rumor.
Connor wrestled with what to say next.
His phone rang again. Emerson. If his father saw who it was, he might just have a heart attack.
“What is it you think you know, Dad?” he asked as calmly as he could muster.
“I have it on good authority that you’re in an intimate relationship with the Dyer woman, and I want to know why my son would do that?” His father slammed the desk as he spoke.
Connor looked to the vent system that he knew filtered through to Cameron’s office. “Unless you want the whole office to hear this conversation, I suggest you take the volume down a notch.”
His father’s eyes narrowed, and Connor could feel the invisible daggers. Perhaps antagonizing his father wasn’t the best idea.
“Do you think if I actually gave a shit what the people here thought, I’d still be doing this job long after I said I’d retire? Wait, is that why you did this? To get back at me because I didn’t retire?”
Connor huffed. “Of course not. I’m not a fucking twelve-year-old pissed that his allowance got cut. Am I mad you dropped your decision on me in front of people who work for us? Yes, I am. But did I go and build a relationship with a woman just to piss you off? No.”
His father sat down. “So, you are admitting that you’re in a relationship with the Dyer woman.”
“Her name is Emerson. Stop calling her the Dyer woman just because you had a beef with her father a million years ago.”
“A beef? A beef? Need I remind you, Connor, that he took everything that was important to me?” His father stood again and began to pace back and forth in front of the window. “You have no idea how hard it was to come back from that. Everything I did after was five times harder.”
Connor took a deep breath. He was so done having this conversation over and over with his dad. “I do, Dad,” he said calmly. “You’ve told me repeatedly. I know it’s been your goal to smash him to the ground, to beat him using some metric you’ve never shared, but the man is dead. It’s time to let go.”
“How dare you—”
“How did you find out?” Connor’s temper simmered beneath his cool veneer. He had no idea where the conversation was going to end up, but now he was fully in it and determined to walk away with all his questions answered.
His father pivoted suddenly, his pacing coming to an abrupt halt. “Why does it matter how I found out? It’s true, so why should you care?”
Connor shrugged. “Fair point. The truth is, now that you know, I don’t care. But it would be good for you to confirm it’s the snake I think it is who came running to you to wipe his nose for him like a five-year-old, kind of like he’s been doing for years.”
His father glanced briefly towards Cameron’s office. “Discussing that would get us nowhere.”
“You know what, Dad? It would actually get us somewhere. The fact you looked straight toward Cameron’s office tells me everything I need to know. He’s desperate to discredit me, to position himself as your only reliable replacement.” The only question remaining was how did Cameron find out?
This time his father studied the adjoining wall between their offices. “At least Cameron knows what it means to be loyal after all these years.”
Connor huffed and shook his head. “You’ve always confused his self-serving actions with loyalty because he’s always been able to spin them in a way that appealed to you. He knows I would fire him in a heartbeat and replace him with a capable CFO. And he would do anything to make sure his paycheck was safe.”
“And I come back to the point you’re just pissed off that I decided to stay on for another five years.”
Connor stood. “Am I pissed that yet again, Cameron influenced you to make a move that protects him? Yes. Am I pissed off that he talked you into staying on for another five years? Yes. We’ve had this conversation already. This is old news.”
Donovan walked toward him. “And what have you done, Connor?”
“Done?” Connor asked. “I studied hard to meet your expectations of me. I went to the school you wanted me to go to, even though you reminded me a million times a semester that the tuition was so high. When I told you I’d pay, you balked at what your friends might say. I came to work for you because that was what you expected as repayment, and thanks to my input, there’s been a meaningful change on every single business metric.”
“And yet still you found the time to fuck the daughter of an enemy whose company we wanted to purchase at a knockdown price. Were you screwing her or screwing me? Or was it both?”
Connor’s fists clenched, his jaw flexed. He was a heartbeat away from laying out his old man on company property. “Don’t,” he hissed. “Don’t ever talk about Emerson like that. Like she means nothing.”
“SHE IS NOTHING!” Donovan yelled. “Any which way I look at this, you acted unscrupulously at best, unprofessionally at worst. Did you start this relationship to get information for us? Or did you start the relationship to spite me? Neither shows you in a good light.”
He thought back to his first meetings with Emerson. He’d been curious about the Dyer family and the woman, about why they held such sway over his father. And yes, there had been a time, a small window when he’d considered owning the distillery as much as he’d been interested in Emerson. But something shifted the night he’d visited her at the distillery, and suddenly she was the only thing that really mattered.
Connor shook his head. “I need to get out of here before I say something unrecoverable. I’m going to work from home tomorrow, and I’ll be back on Wednesday. We’ll talk then when we’ve both had time to calm down.”
“I need your pass,” his father said, holding out his hand.
“Are you firing me?” Connor said, aghast his father would take it that far.
“Not firing…reviewing. I’m putting you on notice that your behavior is unacceptable to the business, putting our longer-term strategy at risk, and we’ll both need a period to review. In the short term, you need to break things off with the Dyer woman.”
The years he’d put in waiting for the chance to lead this company, to sit at the very desk his father was now leaning against flashed before his eyes.
Was Emerson worth giving up everything he’d worked for?
Fuck.
It was the easiest yes in the world. Connor unclipped his pass from his suit trousers. He’d need to go back to his office to collect his jacket, laptop, and car keys, but he could exit the building without it.
“I can’t believe it’s come to this, Connor.”
“I can’t believe you’re going to let a decades-long grudge against a dead man come between you and me. And for the record, Dyer’s is never going to sell to you, whether I’m here or not. I’ve gotten to know a thing or two about them, and I’ll tell you this, I envy them. I envy their relationship with each other. They’re builders, not buyers, and that distillery brings the three Dyer siblings together in a way that I couldn’t imagine until I met them.”
Regret seemed to flood his father’s features, and for a moment, there was a waver of doubt. Whether it was for him or the loss of a potential asset, Connor wasn’t sure.
The door swung open, and Cameron popped his head inside. “We’re ready to take you through the projected year-end performance and Christmas s
ales expectations,” he said.
Connor bit down on his tongue. Hard. There was so much he wanted to say, but with his father already against him, adding Cameron to the fire would be like adding accelerant.
“Will you be joining us, Connor?” Cameron said, his voice thick with disdain.
“I’m pretty certain you already know the answer to that.” Connor headed toward the door.
“I’ll get Cameron to send you a copy,” his father said. “You can look at the numbers at home and let me know—”
Connor brushed past Cameron. “Don’t bother. Seeing as you trust Cameron’s advice so much, let him make the decisions.”
He jogged back down to his office, and while he wanted to slam his laptop shut and leave, there were several people waiting on things from him and his team. And if he’d learned one thing from Emerson, it was that the people who worked for him deserved better than the treatment his father handed out.
His father and Cameron would be in the financial performance review for hours, so he had time to finish what he needed before they were out of there. He called each of his team leads to inform them he was taking a couple of days of personal leave, ensuring they were okay with taking on some actions in his stead. And he took the time to respond to some time-sensitive emails that needed moving along.
Two hours later, he collected his things and took the stairs out of the building, savoring the burn in his legs and thankful his car was parked out front.
Once inside, he remembered that Emerson had been trying to call him earlier. As he pulled away from the curb, he checked his voicemail.
I don’t know what game you’re playing, Connor. But finding out I’m an acquisition target for you by mail is a shitty way to draw a line under things. And to think I let myself fall in love with you.
Connor pressed replay, his heart pounding. He couldn’t have understood that right.
And to think I let myself fall in love with you.
Fuck…What had Cameron done?
Chapter Fourteen
Emerson pulled into the driveway of her father’s home. If there was anywhere she would be able to find out what had happened when Dyer’s Gin Distillery was built, it was in her father’s office.