by A. J. Wynter
I walked into the conference room and put my things down at the head of the table. Our conference room was impressive, with a long mahogany table and unparalleled views of the sun-streaked waters of the Seattle harbor. I spotted the tray of pastries that Sabryna had placed at the center of the table. It included bear claws, palmiers, and frankly, some of the largest powdered doughnuts I had ever laid eyes on. It was generally against office etiquette, tragically, to snack on the provided food during such an important meeting, but I figured I could sneak in a doughnut before the rest of the office got here.
I snapped up a large powdered doughnut and quickly bit off half of it, and tried my best to keep it from falling out of my mouth. I looked out over the Seattle skyscrapers and tried to chew as fast as I could.
It was then that I had the unsettling feeling that there was someone standing behind me.
“You wouldn’t happen to know where Johnathan Torver is, would you?”
I jumped back in surprise to see a woman staring at me impatiently. She was half a foot shorter than me, with porcelain skin and dark brown hair coiled into a tight chignon.
“Oh! Um, uh—” I mumbled as bits of doughnut tumbled out of my mouth, the white powder cascading down the front of my suit. “That would be me. Johnathan Torver. CEO of the Torver Group.” I held out my hand to the woman and promptly pulled it back after noticing the white powder covering my fingers.
“The CEO of the Torver Group starts meetings with his hands covered in doughnut powder?” the woman asked, without even so much as a hint of mirth.
“I’m afraid so,” I said with a laugh, trying to settle back into my usual confidence. This woman was making it difficult. Her dark brown eyes never left me for a second, as if she was only waiting for me to make another false move. “And you are?” I asked.
“Samantha Doyle,” she said, and took another shameful look down at my powdered hands. “And I suppose a proper handshake is out of the question.”
“You’re Sam Doyle?”
“Not used to female CEOs?”
“No, I am, I just thought, I was just picturing, you know…”
“It’s fine,” she said. “To my friends, I’m Sam, but in business, I’m Samantha.”
“Yes,” I said. “Um, I—”
I suddenly realized I couldn’t quite get the words out of my mouth. There was something unusual about the way she looked at me. I realized that I had never really had a woman look at me in such a…belligerent way. I was so used to women laughing at all my awful jokes, throwing me compliments, or laying a stray hand on my arm. But this woman…she wanted war.
I realized I was still staring at the floor dumbstruck when the door creaked open and Kirk walked in.
“Morning,” he said, and pretended to look through his briefcase with the bashful look of someone who feels like they just interrupted something.
The rest of the Torver Group filed in on one side of the table, and the people representing Wordsworth took their seats next to Samantha. There was a feeling of tension in the air, and even the way Samantha sat was beginning to intimidate me, and admittedly, intrigue me. It reminded me of old portraits of queens in history books. It was only now that I noticed that she was actually quite an attractive woman. I could imagine her outside of her job, with her hair falling down her shoulders over a sweater and a pair of jeans, and the idea made her feel a little bit less intimidating.
I didn’t like that I kept forgetting that I was the one in charge here. I had the upper hand! This meeting was about me laying down my terms, so why was--
“May we begin?” Samantha said, and I jumped in my seat.
“Long night, huh?” Cassidy said, and winked. Samantha and her colleagues turned to me with a questioning and disappointed look. I was going to kill him.
“Up late preparing,” I said, swiftly taking back my authority, and I could have sworn I heard Kirk hold back a chuckle. “Anyways, Kirk has the documents pertaining to the legal aspects of the acquisition, and I, of course, have my own terms for how both of us will successfully make the transition.” I smiled up at Samantha, who met my eyes with a piercing stare.
“Mr. Torver,” she said. “I hope you’re open to treating this meeting as a negotiation, and not a lecture.”
I shuffled my papers in my hands and looked up at her with amused disbelief. “If you like, but it’s a bit difficult when you don’t have anything to negotiate.” I smiled smugly towards Samantha’s frown. “We saved you from going under, remember? We’re here to tell you how we do things here at the Torver Group.” I smiled at her with a facetious grin. “Unless you want me to take our offer back?”
Samantha and I both suddenly looked up at the whole table staring at us wide-eyed.
“Of course not,” she said. “Let’s continue.”
The meeting rolled on for another hour, another hour of tense stares, sweaty palms, and passive-aggressive comments. It seemed endless. And the real shame of it was, it would have been so easy if it hadn’t been for Samantha and her war-mongering. When all of the necessary topics had been discussed, both groups of employees filed out of the room slowly, leaving only Samantha and I seated at the end of the table. An uncomfortable silence suddenly settled upon the room.
“I’m gonna go to the break room and get some coffee,” I said as quickly as possible, shooting up out of my chair towards the door like a kid desperate to get out of class.
“Hey,” Samantha said sharply, and I froze, removing my hand from the doorknob to find her facing me. “I didn’t appreciate that.”
“Appreciate what?”
“What went down there. You embarrassed me in front of my employees.”
I scoffed. “Embarrassed? Embarrassed you how?”
Samantha shook her head in disbelief. “Oh please, that patronizing attitude of yours, ‘you don’t have anything to negotiate’, I mean, what was that?”
I sighed and tried to reason with her. “Look, Samantha, you know how these acquisitions work. The power is just not in your hands anymore.”
“Your daddy buy you that sanctimonious attitude too, huh?”
“Woah. Hey,” I shouted, gripping the office table with my hands. “I built this company from the ground up. I didn’t start out with money, okay? I made every penny myself.”
Samantha looked down, and I may have even sensed a bit of shame in her. “Look sorry, you just have this, I don’t know, careless rich boy attitude and I guess I made some assumptions. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t forgotten your behavior at the meeting today.”
I sighed. “Look, Sam.”
“Samantha. You call me Samantha.”
“We have to get along if we want this acquisition to work for both of us, okay? And clearly the Wordsworth Company meant a lot to you. I get that.”
“Of course,” Samantha said, and smiled up at me weakly. She walked out of the conference room without so much as a look behind her.
I threw myself back down in a chair and tossed a crumpled ball of paper in the trash can across the room, only to have it bounce off the edge on to the ground. “Careless rich boy attitude. Psh,” I muttered. This would be a long and painful process.
End of Excerpt.
The Billionaires of Torver Corporation, Book 1
The Boardroom: Johnathan
Now Available on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited
Sorority Secrets (Excerpt)
Chapter One
Sarah walked up the front steps of the sorority house and smiled. She thought back to when she had been an idealistic freshman and was very anti-sorority. When she'd first come to college she was dead set against the entire concept. She found sororities to be outdated institutions that separated women, instead of creating bonds between them. Not to mention, there were a lot of horror stories floating around about hazing. She knew for damn sure she wasn’t parading around campus in ridiculous outfits and being demeaned by the seniors. Was it so crazy that she didn't want someone screaming at her and beating her wi
th paddles? Or, forcing her to clean up the house on her hands and knees in her underwear after a kegger? Those were standard procedures over at Alpha Kappa Alpha. Yes, a sorority had seemed like an archaic, misogynistic institution that an academic like herself should stay far, far away from. And then, she met the girls from Pi Omega Tal.
Pi Omega Tal weren't like the other sororities. First of all, there was absolutely no hazing; it was written into their charter. And secondly, they valued academics over partying - requiring all of their members to maintain a minimum of a 2.7 GPA. Which didn't necessarily make them rocket scientists, but it did mean they actually had to try in school.
This is what had given Sarah her ‘in’. She was at the university to get her engineering degree and her grades were top notch. Academia had come easily and effortlessly to her all of her life, getting straight A’s was a cakewalk for her. The more traditional sororities would’ve turned her away as she was a plain girl with brown eyes, fair skin, and a smattering of freckles across her nose. She had average build and she carried the bulk of her excess weight around her thighs. She was totally comfortable with her body. She could look a little nerdy sometimes, with her long brown hair that she always bundled on the top of her head in a loose bun and her grandma’s horn-rimmed glasses (with modern day lenses). She definitely wasn’t a stereotypical sorority bimbo. The selection committee had voted her in on her academic merit, although she had heard through the rumor mill that her breasts (she had been gifted with gorgeous, round, natural D-cups) had tipped the scale in her favor so to speak.
The sorority girls lived in a old big house, one that was listed as a historical landmark. Sure, they had parties and alliances with other sororities, but theirs was a supportive environment. They weren't all about the drama and that was something that meant a lot to Sarah.
Now three years later, Sarah was a junior, and looking back she couldn't be any more pleased with her experience with Pi Omega Tal. To an outside observer, the girls at Pi had it all: beauty, brains, camaraderie, and guys from Sigma Ki, the hottest on campus, after them. If a guy from Sigma could bag a Pi Omega Tal girl, he got serious cred in the frat, making the girls a very hot commodity. Now, commodity is the key word here, because that's how the guys over at Sigma treated the sisters, and it didn't get them very far. In fact, Sarah and the rest of her sisters were sick of the same old guys that were always showing up to all the same parties.
Were these guys chiseled and good looking? Yes. And, the girls from POT were not angels, so there had been relations between members of the two organizations. However, these frat boys were not good enough in the bedroom for a second round. Sure, maybe there were exceptions here and there when it came to certain guys and certain sisters, but as a whole, all of Pi Omega Tal were bored and ready for a change.
The president, Elizabeth, had tasked Sarah with figuring out how they were going to fix the situation. It had reached the point where the lack of guys with any knowledge of how to bang in any style other than ‘jackhammer’ was now deemed a 'situation'.
Sarah had to find a new crop of men that met the following criteria: not evil, smart enough, handsome (this was a non-negotiable), well endowed, and had knowledge of how to use aforementioned endowment (also non-negotiable). She sighed, this wasn’t going to be easy.
Chapter Two
There had been a serious incident a few weeks earlier involving one of the sisters. A scorned jock named Jake got wasted at a party and couldn't get his dick up. Now, he would've gotten major pledge points to have bedded a Pi girl, so he started spreading rumors about their night together all over social media. She called him out over Facebook, so in return he'd blasted her nude photos everywhere he could. Pi Omega Tal had been quick to contact the police and school, and the waste of skin who was (falsely) slut shaming was suspended.
The sorority now had two problems on their hands. The first was that the girl in question broke one of the bylaws of the sorority by allowing herself to be photographed naked. The bylaw specifies that any nude photos are to be taken solely on the phone belonging to the sister and password protected. Subsection 2 further states: any naked photos (breasts included) of any member of Pi Omega Tal will not include that member's face and/or distinguishable marks or characteristics.
Secondly, they needed to stop messing around with these run-of-the mill college boys. However, they needed a replacement for them fast; the girls did not want to go cold turkey while suitable replacements were sourced. Enough of them had decided it was a problem, so it was voted in as priority number one.
Sarah felt like this whole ‘situation’ was ridiculous. She could get by without men, but it turns out that the rest of the girls weren’t as strong as her. She didn’t want to be in charge of finding a solution, but knew that Elizabeth wouldn’t get off her back until she did.
Sarah racked her brain to find a fresh way to come at the problem which didn't involve settling. Some girls had proposed hitting up the nerds at parties. Their hypothesis was that the nerds would be good in bed because they knew that they had to make up for their shortfall in the looks department. Sarah didn't have a problem with nerds at all, and found their particular brand of humor refreshing. At the same time, she knew that the nerds on campus weren't going to be the solution. Most of those guys were virgins and probably wouldn't last a minute inside any woman, let alone a sister from Pi Omega Tal. Furthermore, most of them would rather play video games than have anything to do with a member of the opposite sex. And there was also the small logistical problem, the nerds didn’t go to parties; no, they would never be able to make that happen.
Sarah knew that the majority of the girls would eventually end up appreciating all their nerdy good traits and marrying them, once they had their high paying jobs.
No, the girls didn't need to settle just yet. They needed to take advantage of their youth and hard bodies and be courted by hot men of the same caliber who made them wet with just a glance.
Another suggestion was to get on Tinder or Bumble and try to pull guys from Des Moines, the state capitol, which was a scant thirty-minute drive away. This seemed like a decent solution, but Sarah knew that pulling dudes from another town was risky. They didn't have a vested interest in acting like gentlemen while they visited and it would likely be a case of 'same shit, different pile'. Sarah wanted to discover a sect of men who were available, who were respectful, and who liked to party.
Sarah got up, padded across the hardwood in her slippers and stared out the bay window across the front lawn of the house. Just then a Harley Davidson pulled up to the four way stop in front of the house. From what she could see, its rider was built like a linebacker. He had long, ginger hair in a ponytail and tattoos covering both his arms. He turned and saw Sarah staring at him from her window. He smiled crookedly and raised his hand into a half wave. There was something about the nonchalant action that sent her heart pumping. She swallowed deeply as he revved the engine and the bike growled off down the street. As he pulled away she noticed the patch on the back of his cut off denim vest—Brass Bonds across the top, Des Moines across the bottom.
Sarah wondered about him: what his name was, what color eyes he had, what his life story was. As she watched the unknown biker cruise away, she knew she'd found the answer to the sorority's problem. Here was a completely untapped group of men who had nothing at all to do with the college. If something went bad with one of the Brass Bonds, he wasn't likely to blast photos all over the place like some kind of immature little brat.
Sarah turned her gaze to look up at the summer sky. High above her thin strips of clouds that looked like tissue paper hung suspended, just starting to catch the setting sun's red tinge. Sarah tried to take time to soak in moments like these, when the day was at its most beautiful. She smiled to herself, feeling the sun on her face; it wasn't often that things came together in such a smooth, almost magical manner. Like the girls said, ‘put it out to the Universe, it will give you what you're asking for.’
Chapt
er Three
The POT house had originally been built in the twenties to house the university staff, and it still felt that way. The first floor had a great common room, one might actually call it a parlor, that attached to the kitchen, front entryway, and laundry room. The rest of the bedrooms were all on the second and third floors, but because the house was so old, the only bathroom was on the main floor.
The parlor was an area that everyone shared equally, and everyone knew that anything could happen there. Sarah recalled many occasions when she'd walked downstairs into the commons to find one of her sorority sisters getting busy with someone on one of the couches. There were french doors with sheer curtains at the entryway that could shut the parlor off from the rest of the house, but the sheer curtains still didn't leave much to the imagination.
“Hey, Sarah!” shouted Elizabeth.
Sarah immediately stopped in her tracks and turned to walk over to the nook where Elizabeth was reading. Sarah knew that Elizabeth was going to want an update on ‘the problem.’
“How goes it?” Elizabeth asked. “Any leads?”
Before the nude photos had been sent out, Elizabeth had been a more relaxed leader. But when the photos turned into a scandal she had cracked down and started involving herself in the lives of Pi Omega Tal much more than she had in the past. As the leader of Pi Omega Tal, it was her job to make sure that the girls were all well taken care of, and not only that, that they were taking care of themselves. She had called a mandatory general meeting for the following evening.
She knew that Elizabeth would have her nose in everyone's business like never before. But these meetings and crackdowns on behavior had proved to be helpful in the past, ensuring chores were actually getting done, like the trash being emptied and the recycling being taken out. And now with the upcoming meeting, it meant that Sarah needed to prepare a report.
