After my date with Reid Maxwell, I might be on a job hunt sooner than I might have been, but at least I leave on my terms, and after showing that man he was human. I will not go down a slave to Reid Maxwell and his investors.
I shower and dress in my lucky pale pink dress with a perfect pencil skirt, right along with the black Jimmy Choos my father bought me when I graduated Yale law school and then claimed my own office in his company. I was to be legal counsel for the company, overseeing the brokering of some of the biggest real estate investments our company booked. In the past ten years, I became so much more; he checked out on day-to-day operations. I ran this place, I brokered deals. I became, I am, the face of the company, when my father often was not.
I leave my apartment, which is mine, all mine, thanks to a huge real estate deal I brokered for a downtown Denver complex halfway across the country. It’s not big, only two thousand square feet, but it has a gorgeous city view, and the right payments for me on my own. Now, nothing is certain, and the payment feels large, so very large. I step onto the street, only a few blocks from the office, which was another reason I chose my apartment. There was never going to be a time that I wasn’t living my work at West Enterprises. Until today.
Overtaken by emotions I rarely allow myself to feel, I stop at a coffee shop just to slow down the day. I order two of my favorite hazelnut lattes and skip any food. I don’t know if I can even drink the coffee, let alone eat. The second latte is for my assistant, Sallie, who not only loves this drink as well, but who I adore. We aren’t really friends—work and friends don’t work—but maybe we will be now. I won’t be her boss.
I enter the offices and wave to the receptionist before walking down a long hallway to cut left and then right to the executive offices. Once I’m on the other side of the glass doors, Sallie, who is a beautiful blonde with an equally beautiful personality, gives me a beaming smile. “Good morning.”
“Good morning,” I say, setting her cup on her desk. “Thank you for everything you do.”
“I love what I do,” she assures me. “Thank you.”
I head to my office door, but I pause just before entering to stare at my father’s dark office and the empty desk in front of it. Jessie, his assistant, is on a two-week vacation he granted her. I’m going to have to call her tonight. I enter my office and scan the photos on my desk; me with my father, me with the staff, me at Yale graduation when I felt this journey started. Me with Kiki, my dog, my best friend, who is gone now, and that’s still really raw. I want to scoop them all into the box next to my desk, but as I round it and set the box on top, I resist. I don’t want to scare the staff, but what is going to happen when I leave?
I need to do something, so I stuff my stapler into the box on my desk, preparing to be walked out any minute, and yeah, it’s a stapler, but Reid Maxwell doesn’t get my office supplies. He’s getting everything else and then some. I have a flashback of my dress hiked to my waist, that man on his knee, his hands on my hips, and his mouth—well, everywhere. I swallow hard with the memory as I’ve had too many times in the last few days. I never planned to actually have sex with the man, which technically I didn’t, but Lord help me, I might as well have. And the truth is, had he not given me the opportunity to cuff him when I did, I would have. I don’t know how I could want a man the way I wanted him when I hate him the way I do. He’s just so—
That thought is cut off by a commotion in the hallway. “Sir!” I hear my assistant Sallie shout. “Sir!”
I stand up, certain this is where I get escorted out. I thought I was ready. I thought I could handle this, but my hands are shaking and my heart is in my throat and—Reid walks into my office, and I can barely breathe. He’s here, not some random person he sent to get rid of me. That’s how pissed off he is about those cuffs. He stops just inside the door and scans the space, taking in my conference table and sitting area before refocusing those ice blue eyes on me, and just that easily he consumes the room, power radiating off him. Tall, broad, and devastatingly, arrogantly male in a perfectly fitted gray pinstripe suit, his long legs eat up the space between the doorway and my desk, those damn eyes of his pinning me in a stare.
“Hello, Samantha,” he says.
I lift my chin, not about to cower. “I’m surprised you came,” I say, “but then that’s the point, right? To take me off guard?”
“Actually, you came,” he points out. “I didn’t have that pleasure.”
Heat rushes over me and before I can form a reply, Sallie appears at the endcap of my desk between us. “I’m sorry, Carrie. He just charged in and—”
Reid looks at her. “You need to leave myself and Ms. West alone now.”
She gives me a desperate look. I nod. “It’s okay, Sallie. Mr. Maxwell and I have company business.”
She doesn’t look convinced, but she slowly backs up and heads for the door. “Shut it behind you,” Reid orders, his eyes focused on me, sharp, hard, and somehow intimate, like he’s thinking about where his mouth has been and wants me to do the same.
I am.
Lord help me, I am.
The door shuts, and he flicks a look at the box on my desk. “Going somewhere?”
“Isn’t that why you’re here? To personally fire me, maybe even walk me out of the door?”
He leans forward, his hands on my desk, his eyes, those ice blue eyes, fierce, while his woodsy male scent reminds me of how much I smelled like him when I left that hotel room. “I’m not the kind of man that sends someone else to do a job I can do better. And I can do this one better.”
Anger flares in my belly. “Bring it on,” I say, leaning on the desk toward him, my intent to square off with him, but it’s a mistake I can’t back away from. He’s close, so damn close. “Whatever you have planned,” I add fiercely, “no matter how bad it is, will be worth leaving you in that room in those cuffs.”
“And every second I was in that hotel room, I tasted you on my lips, Samantha. You left a lasting impression.”
We stare at each other and Lord help me yet again, my nipples are tight and I’m wet. Ridiculously wet by way of a man that has destroyed my life. “Do what you’re going to do,” I breathe out.
His lips twitch again. “Oh, I will and I am.” He pushes off the desk and only then do I even realize he’s brought a briefcase that he apparently sat in the chair next to him. I quickly straighten while he grabs a folder and tosses it on the desk. “You have six months to buy back the business. The conditions are outlined in that contract. I’ll summarize. You will produce a certain level of revenue in that timeframe which allows my family and the panel of investors I used for this transaction to leave feeling adequately compensated. They’ve all agreed, for one reason and one reason only. I’ve agreed to take control. I’ll be here on-site.”
“Why would you even take your time to do this?”
“I have my reasons that I don’t intend to share. Study the document. You have one hour to decide. If you don’t sign the deal, it’s over and you’re done here.”
I flip open the folder and start reading. He’s made it to the door when I read the ridiculously large figure I have to earn in six months. “This is just a game to you,” I say. “A way to taunt me or fuck over one of the investors, or whatever it is. I’m not playing.”
He turns to face me. “You based that assessment on what?”
“The profit you want me to produce. I can’t do this. It can’t be done.”
He walks back to me and leans on the desk again. “The woman that not only seduced me into following her to her room, who managed to get me to give her an orgasm, and then cuffed me and left me to think about her, wouldn’t say can’t. You even paid for that orgasm with a company check.” He straightens again. “Be Samantha or fail. She doesn’t think the number is too much. Your father made you feel that number was impossible. It’s not. If it were, I wouldn’t have put my name on this deal with my investors. You have one hour to get from ‘can’t’ to ‘can’. I’ll be in y
our father’s office, which is now mine.” He turns and walks to the door again, and this time he doesn’t stop. He leaves.
Chapter Five
Carrie
I stare at the doorway where Reid has just exited, in disbelief. His office? My father’s office. Furious, I grab the folder and stand up, rounding my desk with the intent of telling him where to stick this contract, but right when I’m about to exit my office, Sallie appears in front of me. “He just went into your father’s office. Am I supposed to let him?”
I open my mouth to say about ten things I can’t say. Reid Maxwell is her new boss and it cuts so damn deep I might bleed out right here and now. “Yes,” I say. “You are. I’ll explain later. I need a few minutes.” I present those words as calmly as I delivered the news that the Waterbrook project had crashed and burned only three weeks ago, but just like then, I’m melting down inside. “I’ll get with you in a bit.”
“Okay.” She backs up and I charge forward, toward my father’s office, where that man is now sitting with the door shut, which he clearly did to push my buttons. I pass the empty secretarial desk, and when I reach the office, I don’t bother knocking. I open the door and enter, shutting it behind me and sure enough, Reid’s sitting behind my father’s massive mahogany desk, in the office where I’d played with Barbies as a child, when all I wanted was to grow up to be just like my father. Worse, he looks good behind it, which only pisses me off more.
He arches a brow in that arrogant way he does everything and then leans back in his chair. I move toward him, and he, of course, watches my every step with apt attention. I stop directly in front of him, between the visitor’s chair, and repeat his earlier actions. I toss the folder on the desk, and then lean on it, hands flat on the wood. “I’m not going to play your games with you and your loads of money and time to kill taunting me.”
He leans forward, and now we’re close, damn—really close, those blue eyes so ridiculously blue. “People with loads of money,” he says, “don’t have it because they waste time playing games.”
“And yet, here you are.”
“I don’t do anything that wastes my time,” he repeats. “And I’m going to say this one more time and never again. If the numbers weren’t doable, I wouldn’t be here.”
“You won’t say it again?” I demand incredulously. “Like I’m a child you’re reprimanding?”
“You do like to play with toys,” he comments dryly. “And not very nicely. You reeled me in and left me in that room wholly unsatisfied.”
“You have a hand,” I snap, shoving off the desk.
“But I’d rather use yours,” he says, never so much as blinking, his voice now a warm, silky taunt, “but that won’t happen. I don’t fuck where I work. I don’t mix business with pleasure. This is business.”
I laugh in disbelief. “Because you won’t let it happen? Like I would.”
“Do you really want to challenge me on that?”
“Apparently I couldn’t if I wanted to.”
His lips twitch but he changes the topic. “The investors behind this stock leverage want a return. I promised them that this,” he lifts the contract, “doubles what I predicted previously.” He drops the contract again. “Can or can’t,” he says. “Sign or don’t sign, but decide now.”
“You gave me an hour.”
“I changed my mind. Now or never.”
“I need to read it.”
“Read it now, here, with me. You’re an attorney and a good one from what I’ve studied. You’ll find it simple, precise, and clear. It guarantees your salary for six months which isn’t a small salary. Losing that would hurt.”
“You’re such an asshole.”
“One who hands out orgasms and paychecks.”
My lips purse but I grab the folder and walk to the black leather couch to my left and sit down, setting the folder in my lap to begin reading. Reid thankfully stays where he’s at, opening his MacBook to actually do his own work. I’m a few pages into the document, and I reluctantly admit that he’s right. I need my paycheck. I gave my savings to my father to start a new firm he’s off chasing. And everything in the contract is as Reid claimed; simple, precise, and clear, at least to someone used to reading the language, which I am. I buy back my father’s stock by way of that profit figure. That huge profit that sets me off again.
I shut the folder and walk back to the desk, setting it back in front of him. “Lower the number.”
“No,” he says simply. “Sign or don’t sign. Time’s up.” He sharpens his stare. “Your salary remains the same. Your bonuses remain the same, and we both know you cleaned out your savings to help your father leverage one of his side deals. You need this deal.”
I don’t blink despite the fact that he jolts me with his knowledge of my personal business that he shouldn’t know, but he’s right. I did write a check to my father. I was all in, even when my gut said to pull back.
“Knowing this,” he adds, “makes your move Friday night all the more gutsy. You were walking away from a paycheck.”
“I’d already heard I was one foot out the door.”
“The only two people that can walk you out of the door are me and you. Can or can’t,” he repeats.
My lips tighten, and I lean in to reach for a pen on the desk and suddenly his hand is on mine, the spark of electricity up my arm rocketing my eyes to his. “Can or can’t?” he demands softly, his eyes somehow hot and cold at the same time.
“Can,” I bite out.
“What changed your mind?”
“You.”
“Explain.”
“I have let this become emotional, which is always a mistake,” I admit, the truth of those words cutting like so many things right now. “I let myself believe that meant you had as well, but that’s not you. This is about money to you, not me and a pair of handcuffs.”
He studies me a few beats, and then releases me, sliding the folder closer to me. I sign the document. “Now what?”
“Sit.”
“I don’t want to sit.”
“Sit, Carrie,” he orders and while his voice is soft, it’s absolute.
“Carrie?” I challenge. “Not Samantha?”
“I’ll save Samantha for when we’re alone.”
“I’ll save asshole for you when we’re alone.”
“I can live with that,” he says. “Sit.”
I sit and he gets right to the point. “Tomorrow morning, the board will name me the new acting CEO. I don’t want or need this job, but it’s mine for now. I’ll name you second in charge with the understanding that I’m evaluating you to replace me when I step aside.”
Evaluating me to take the job that was always supposed to be mine, but I don’t say that. “Which will be when?” I ask instead.
“As far as the board is concerned, I represent the majority stockholders. When I decide it’s safe to step aside and hand you the keys, they’ll accept that decision.”
“They have to agree.”
“They’ll push back tomorrow because you’re your father’s daughter. They’ll stop pushing back when the numbers say they should.”
“They’ll think it’s all you.”
“If I let them, but I won’t. I have a company to run and it’s not this one.”
“In other words, I have to trust you, a man I cuffed and left in a hotel room for being a bastard.” I don’t give him time to reply. “Will I attend this meeting?”
“No,” he says. “They want a closed-door management discussion, but it’ll be recorded. You can listen to it, but so can others. In other words, we have to deal with this here, in this office, today.”
I cut my gaze and swallow the knot in my throat before looking at him. “What are you going to say?”
“I’m going to tell them your father retired and I stepped in to help take the company to a new level, something you support and endorse. My role is temporary.”
“They will figure out what really happened.”
�
��That is what really happened. Ultimately, your father voluntarily retired. You are the future of the company.”
“Why would your investors accept this option?”
“I told you—”
“You promised them double returns.”
“Yes.” He studies me. “I need to know you see the real picture. Where did it all go wrong?”
I want to shout at him that he’s what went wrong, but that’s me getting emotional again. “The Summerton and Waterbrook projects,” I say. “But Waterbrook sealed our death.”
“What was your role in those projects?”
“Advisor to my father.”
“Then you told him to go on them?” he challenges.
My lips thin. “He made the calls.”
“Did you tell him they were good moves?”
“I told him to walk away from both.”
“Why?”
“As you know, I’m sure, Summerton was a resort project in another country. The financial instability of the group investing, legal ramifications to a variety of terms, and location challenges were among my list of concerns. There were others.”
“And it ended up half-built without funding.”
“Yes.”
“And Waterbrook. Tell me about Waterbrook.”
“Waterbrook was an early development project in Casper, Wyoming, where an oil and gas boom has started, and the city is just taking shape. On paper it made sense.”
“But?”
“I disliked Max Waterbrook, the key investor in the project. It was a gut feeling. I couldn’t find the facts to support it, but I knew he was trouble. And now our project is dirt, quite literally, and he’s disappeared with the money.”
“If there’s a snake in the grass, you make sure he’s your snake.”
“Like you?” I dare.
“If you believe that, you shouldn’t have signed the papers. I don’t lie or cheat, Carrie. I’m here because there were people on that board losing big money over your father’s decisions. They sold off stock to allow the takeover. They wanted him out. They want the money he lost back, and if I were them, I’d damn sure want the same. My investors, however, just want money as fast as they can get it. None of them sought out West Enterprises on a personal mission.”
Dirty Rich Obsession Page 3
