by Jackie Braun
Guilt nipped again. Jonathon was squirming all the more because his only child was working for the man who’d ruined him. Kate wasn’t only working for him, but she was also spending time with him outside the office. And she was as physically attracted to him as he was to her. Seth had suggested, albeit jokingly, that if Brody really wanted to make Jonathon Douglass squirm, he should seduce his daughter. But Brody was the one starting to feel seduced. And not just sexually.
This line of thinking was dangerous. Wanting Kate was one thing. Sex was simple. Or it could be. But liking her? Enjoying spending time with her? Allowing her into his private life, as he had tonight, albeit at his sisters’ invitation? It would lead to nothing but trouble.
Chapter Nine
“Mr. Flynn?” The young woman he’d hired to replace Loretta stood in his doorway looking aggravated. Angela Bianchi was all of five feet tall and couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred pounds soaking wet, but she had already proved herself a force to be reckoned with. Her desk was outside his newly remodeled office, and no one got to Brody without first getting the green light from her.
“What is it?” he asked.
“There’s a man here to see you, but he doesn’t have an appointment. I’ve explained you’re very busy, but he insists you’ll make time for him.”
“His name?”
“He wouldn’t give it to me.” She cleared her throat. “He said to ask you to show me your Virgo tattoo.”
Seth. Brody broke into a wide grin and told the young woman, “You can let him in. He’s an old friend.”
“Told you.” Seth winked at her as he passed. To Brody, he said, “Well, aren’t you going to show it to her? It’s very tasteful. I was there when he got it done. The tattoo artist was this mysterious and very talented woman. She created some first-class body art. Of course, I was sober, so I was able to resist temptation.”
Angela snorted softly and went back to guard duty at the reception desk.
“What brings you downtown?” Brody asked once they were alone.
“I had a meeting with a client and it ended a little earlier than I expected. I decided to stop by, see if I could tear you away from work to go play a round of golf.”
“You want to go golfing now?”
“Why not? It’s not quite five. Summer may be officially over, but golf lasts until the snow flies. Even with the shorter days, we should be able to get in eighteen before it’s too dark.”
The prospect was tempting. Brody wouldn’t mind taking out a little of his stress on a tiny white ball. But, “My clubs are back at the house. I took them out of my trunk last week figuring I was done for the season.”
Seth shrugged. “Too bad. I shaved another stroke off my handicap. I was looking forward to kicking your ass.”
“How many times do I have to tell you, Seth? Putt-putt doesn’t count.”
“Funny.” Seth walked to where the two walls of floor-to-ceiling windows met and whistled through his teeth. “You’ve come up in the world, my friend. Way up. A corner office and a killer view. Vincent What’s His Name may have been voted most likely to succeed in high school, but it looks like you’ve beat him to it.”
“Jealous?”
“Of the view? Damn straight, I am.” He turned and faced Brody then, his expression growing serious. “But of the long hours you’ve been putting in lately? Not a chance. I prefer to eat dinner at home. Same goes for sleeping, unless it involves a good-looking woman and some heavy breathing at her place.”
Seth’s point was valid. Brody had been putting in sixteen-hour days for the past few weeks. He didn’t know his management team well enough to trust them quite yet. Did that include Kate? He remained undecided. More and more he wanted to believe she was exactly what she claimed to be: hardworking, dedicated, and loyal to the company no matter who sat in the CEO’s seat. But he wasn’t sure if it was his gut telling him to accept that or the part of his anatomy directly below it, because something still wasn’t adding up when it came to her motives. No one was that pure of heart.
“You know how it goes…” Brody shrugged. “Lots of loose ends to tie up.”
“What I know is that when your sisters aren’t around to keep you in check, you become a workaholic. I thought, well, now especially, you’d finally be…happy.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean? I am happy,” Brody argued. “Damned near ecstatic.”
“Don’t,” Seth warned. “Not with me. We go back too far for any bullshit.” He lowered his voice then. “I was right, wasn’t I?”
Brody sighed. “About what?”
“Revenge isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”
This time Brody clenched his jaw to hold back the oath that hovered on the tip of his tongue. He was angry, although not with Seth for what he’d just said. Rather, he resented the biting truth of his friend’s words. Despite the initial letdown he’d felt, Brody had indeed expected revenge to be sweet in the end. Instead, it was growing less palatable by the day.
“It will be.” He forced a careless grin, not sure which one of them he was trying to convince.
Seth nodded. “The trauma center. How’d the meeting with the architect go?”
This time Brody’s smile came easily and some of the tension left his shoulders. “Excellent. The guy you recommended is every bit as good as you said he’d be. He practically read my mind when it came to the facility’s aesthetics. And the hospital’s representative was impressed, too, with the overall space and functionality. It’s early yet, of course, and city hall still has some concerns to iron out, but I think everyone is on the same page or damn close.”
“Hospital administrators must be getting antsy to have a check in hand.”
“They are.” Brody picked up a pen from his desk and worked it through his fingers. “I have another meeting with them this week to discuss my new timeline for funding.”
“How long do you foresee putting off lowering the ax on Douglass”—he waved a hand—“or the auction gavel, as the case may be? It’s been a month since you took over. Your original plan had you out of here and sipping champagne before New Year’s Eve.”
No need to say that was looking less and less probable.
“I’ve agreed to give Kate’s ideas time—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Time to what? Come back and bite you in the ass?” Seth shook his head. “You were supposed to play her, not let her play you, remember?”
“She isn’t playing me,” he insisted before admitting, “Things haven’t worked out the way I expected.”
Hell, nothing had worked out quite like he’d planned. Yes, Jonathon Douglass was out, stripped of his company, his ouster the subject of numerous articles in the country’s most respected business journals. In all of them it was pointed out how upstart Brody Flynn had bested a giant. Meanwhile, the industry continued to speculate on Brody’s next move. While potential buyers had been lined up for nearly all of the company’s divisions and assets, he had yet to pull the trigger on any of them with the exception of the Ohio hub, and then only because some of his investors had needed satisfying. He blamed Kate’s ideas for the fact that everything else was in limbo. She was working on a more detailed report at the moment, but the possibilities in her initial one spoke to him. So much so that he’d spent the past several nights lying awake, thinking. What if he kept the company, at least most of it, intact? What if instead of demolishing it, he polished it, restored it? Made it what it should have been, still could be with savvier leadership and a streamlined budget?
The problem, of course, was that such a long-range goal didn’t align with his current plans for the hospital. They were on polar ends of the spectrum, in fact. Even maintaining a smaller, financially healthier version of the former shipping giant would leave him short on the capital he’d promised the hospital. He could dip into his own pocket, of course. But that that wasn’t the point. The money had to come from Douglass. It had to.
As he contemplated his reply, he hea
rd the elevator doors open and close. Angela leaving, he assumed. The woman was punctual to a fault, seated at her desk by nine o’clock and in the elevator at five on the dot. Kate, who was at a meeting elsewhere in the building, probably would be clearing out soon, too. She’d put in eleven hours already and had skipped lunch.
“Let’s just say it’s a lot more complicated than I expected it to be,” he told his friend honestly.
“It always is when there’s a beautiful woman involved.” Seth shook his head. “Well, if you don’t have time for golf, how about dinner? Since I’m such a nice guy, I’ll even buy.”
Brody snorted. “More like because you still owe me for those Cubs tickets I gave you earlier this month.” But in truth, he liked the idea of dinner with his friend. Maybe he could bounce some things off him, get his perspective.
“Box seats.” Seth flashed his trademark grin. “Too bad the team lost that day—a heartbreaker, too, in extra innings. But at least the beer was cold and… Hello.”
Brody followed his friend’s line of sight to the door, where Kate hovered uncertainly on the other side of the threshold. “Sorry to interrupt. I can come back.”
“That’s all right. Just shooting the breeze with an old friend. Seth, this is Kate.”
“I see your dilemma,” he remarked dryly.
“Smooth,” Brody muttered, while Kate frowned and said, “Excuse me?”
“Sorry. I’m usually a little more charming when I talk to a beautiful woman.” Seth took her hand, gave it a light squeeze, and, to Brody’s consternation, maintained his hold. “It’s nice to meet you. Brody and I go way back. I used to routinely save his butt from playground bullies.”
“That’s not quite how I remember it.”
Seth leaned closer to Kate and, in a mock confidential tone, said, “He took one too many hits to the head. Know what I mean?”
She smiled. “Ah. Well, it’s nice to meet you.” As politely as possible, she extricated her hand from Seth’s and turned to face Brody. “The follow-up on that report is ready. I emailed it to your in-box a few minutes ago. After talking to Charles Highland in the southeast Michigan office, I added some of my thoughts in the margins on the possibility of moving that operation closer to the I-69 and I-75 interchange rather than giving up on it completely. Out of curiosity, I checked industrial real estate listings, and a couple of promising parcels have become available near Flint.”
Aware that Seth was watching him closely, Brody gave a curt nod. “Thank you. I’ll look at it first thing in the morning.”
With a smile that encompassed both men, Kate left.
Seth tilted his head to the side to watch her until she disappeared out of sight. Then he made a humming noise and remarked, “She looks as good going as she does coming.”
Brody agreed. Even so, he still felt an almost overwhelming urge to punch his best friend in the mouth.
“Flynn Logistics, huh?”
Seth took a sip of his beer as the two men sat outside a trendy eatery not far from Navy Pier. The sun hadn’t quite set yet, and despite the red canvas umbrella open over their table, the glow from the west was all but blinding. The food wasn’t as good as it had been at the place where he and Kate had eaten. But nothing had tasted as good since then, leaving him to suspect it had been the company as much as the meal that he’d found so palatable.
“It’s just a thought,” he replied with a nonchalant lift of his shoulders.
“It’s more than a thought if you’ve already decided on a name,” Seth remarked.
His friend was right, of course. “I never planned to make taking over companies my career. It was a means to an end.”
“And this is the end?” Seth’s brows rose. Brody didn’t blame his friend for being skeptical. Running a shipping company had never been on his radar, either. Maybe it shouldn’t be now. All Brody knew for certain was that the hollowness that had plagued him since the takeover continued unabated. And something had begun to nag at him. What if even seeing his parents’ names on a state-of-the-art trauma center didn’t fill that void?
The only time he came close to feeling whole was when he was with Kate.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “And it’s probably not feasible, anyway. I guess I’m just trying to figure out my next career move.”
“Where does Kate fit into all this?” Seth cocked his head to one side and his eyes narrowed. “Is something going on between you two? And by going on, I mean are you sleeping with her?”
“No!” It came out louder than he intended and drew the stares of nearby diners. Brody moderated his tone. “We’re not sleeping together.”
But they had been spending time together. Not outside the office, even though they’d both agreed whatever happened between them would be separate from work. Still, the long hours they’d been putting in made it easy to dine together—albeit in the break room—and get to know one another better without actually dating.
Taking it slow seemed the wisest course, even if it was killing him since the only physical intimacies they’d shared since their gropefest in his SUV were heated kisses in the parking structure at the end of the day before they each got into their respective vehicles and headed to their respective homes.
“Okay, so you’re not sleeping together. Obviously you want to. And I can understand why. Hell, I wouldn’t mind tapping that.”
Brody didn’t think. Seeing red, he acted. His hand flashed out, his fingers curled into the front of his best friend’s shirt, and he yanked Seth halfway out of his seat. The quick move jostled the table, spilling both their beers. His friend’s reaction defused the situation. He started to laugh. Loud.
“Damn, man! She’s gotten to you.”
Embarrassed, Brody released his hold and shifted back in his seat. The other diners sent them questioning looks as a waitress came over to mop up the spilled beer. When they were alone again, he told Seth, “She’s not at all what I expected. From what I’ve seen, she’s more than competent at her job. That report she mentioned earlier, if it’s half as insightful as the initial one, it stands to make the company money. I honestly don’t get why her ideas weren’t implemented a long time ago. If she’s trying to sabotage the company now in order to help her father gain back control, I’ve seen no indication of it.”
Seth, however, wasn’t swayed. “Maybe you’re only seeing what she wants you to see. Besides, deception takes time. It’s only been a little over a month.”
Brody ground his molars together at the reminder. It seemed a hell of a lot longer than that. So long that he was having trouble remembering how his days had started before he’d shared casual banter with Kate over his morning coffee. Or how they’d ended without a few sizzling texts to work him up and make sleep all but impossible. “She’s not at all what I expected. More than beautiful and sexy, she’s smart, funny…likable,” he finished.
“Did you think she wouldn’t be?” Seth raised his brows then added, “Flies and honey, my friend. Flies and honey.”
“I don’t think it’s an act.”
“You’re entering some tricky territory. Assuming she is on the up-and-up, have you thought about how Kate is going to feel when she realizes you purposely set out to destroy her father?”
It was something Brody was trying not to think about.
…
Kate used her fork to arrange the steamed asparagus in a neat pile next to the beef tips that remained untouched on her plate. She was three courses into Sunday dinner with her family and more fed up than full. Today marked the first time she and her father had been in the same room since her birthday, and while he had called a couple times, most likely at Eliza’s urging, the tension in their already strained relationship remained unchanged. He was sure she was being set up for disappointment and heartache, and as always he saw it as his job to step in and prevent that.
It didn’t help her mood that Collin was seated next to her. Had she been privy to his presence ahead of time, she would have begged off.
She figured it was no coincidence that she’d been left in the dark. So her plan now was to bide her time and make a dash for the door before the dessert course.
Between now and then, unfortunately, she would have to deal with the fact that the topic of conversation kept returning to Brody Flynn.
In his first six weeks as the new top executive, he’d implemented or was in the process of implementing numerous changes both large and small, some of them taken right out of the pages of Kate’s report. Such as…
“Flynn’s latest brainchild is to cancel our expense accounts,” Collin complained. “As if there’s any real savings to be had there.”
She hid a smile behind her napkin before returning it to her lap.
“A single drop of water seems harmless, too, but over time it can wear a hole in stone.” Both men stopped and looked at her. She shrugged. “It’s a saying. Chinese, I think. But go on.”
She didn’t add that the only thing to come out of Collin’s long, three-martini lunches at the very upscale, very pricey Timepieces restaurant in the city’s financial district was a wasted afternoon. Literally. If business was discussed at all, it was only in passing to justify the expense. Kate had been with him on one of those lunches, so she knew how he operated. She glanced at the ornate clock on the wall, where the jerky movement of its second hand counted down the minutes until her escape. Another half hour at most and she would be back in her car heading for home.
“Sounds like a micromanager.” Her father shook his head, and it was all Kate could do not to laugh. If that wasn’t the pot calling the kettle black.
“He’s out of his depth,” Collin insisted.
Bide your time and bite your tongue, she reminded herself when the urge to come to Brody’s defense became almost unbearable. The man they were describing, the man they were denigrating, was intelligent and innovative. He could be overly critical at times, which she attributed to his perfectionist nature. One thing he wasn’t was out of his depth.
Jonathon nodded thoughtfully, although he came short of agreeing verbally. Instead, he turned to her. “What is your take on the man, Katherine?”
