The Titan Was Tall (Triple Threat Book 1)
Page 1
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Kristen's Reader's List
About This Book
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
THIRTY-FIVE
THIRTY-SIX
THIRTY-SEVEN
THIRTY-EIGHT
THIRTY-NINE
EPILOGUE
Up Next
Also in This Series
Other Books by Kristen Casey
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Reading Order of Kristen's Books
The Titan Was Tall
A Triple Threat Novel
Copyright ©2019 Kristen Casey
THE TITAN WAS TALL
©2019 Kristen Casey
This book is a work of fiction. All characters, situations, and dialogue are a product of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Actual locations and organizations are used only in a fictitious capacity. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. By purchasing this book, you have been granted non-exclusive and non-transferable permission to access and read it. If you did not purchase this book, please return it and purchase your own copy from a reputable vendor. Book piracy is a violation of copyright law and steals earnings directly from authors.
No part of this novel may be reproduced, stored, shared, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the author and publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
APRIL 2019 ISBN-13: 978-1-949529-05-0 (Kindle Edition)
Cover Design ©2019 Tugboat Design
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About This Book
The Titan Was Tall
Being in charge is a pain in the…
Posterior. Rear end. Junk in the trunk. Those were some of the words that came to mind when the captivating woman walked into Red’s office that day. She had a spectacular, eminently spankable one. Trouble was, his huge conglomerate had just bought out her dinky publisher—and this sexy little author was the key to a smooth transition.
For all intents and purposes, Piper was his new star employee—so Red should not have cleared his schedule to take her dinner. He shouldn’t have flirted like it was his freaking birthday, and he sure as hell shouldn’t have gone and fallen for her. One more thing he shouldn’t have done? Omit the fact that his company owed her a lot of money.
When his dirty little secret gets out, more than Red’s new acquisition is on the line—his hard heart is hanging in the balance, too. Unfortunately, his golden way with a merger might not be enough to save him now.
Can Red convince Piper that her tentative trust in him wasn’t misplaced? Or will their new relationship go the way of her missing royalties?
There’s only one way to find out.
Step into his office and let Padraig “Red” MacLellan show you why he’s the boss.
About the Series
The heroes of Triple Threat are scorching hot and have three big things in common: each one is tall, dark, and handsome. They think they’ve got all the moves, and they’re ready to take the women of New York by storm. There’s just one little problem…
Sometimes you know how to win the girl, and sometimes you don’t.
ONE
IT WAS A bad time to develop a case of the nerves. Not that there was ever a good time, but developing the jitters when you were about to meet the person who could make or break your career did seem to be especially inconvenient.
Perhaps Piper was being dramatic. Her new overlord had merely contacted her lawyer a week ago, suggesting a perfectly civil “meet and greet” between Piper and the fearless leader. Perry had informed her that it wasn’t the kind of suggestion one generally rebuffed, so here she was. She was sure there was nothing to worry about in the least.
PKM Industries—the conglomerate that had acquired her publisher several months earlier—had flown her up to New York for a three-day stay. They’d arranged for a driver to ferry her from the airport, installed her in a swanky hotel, and had even provided a generous meal stipend. They’d emailed an itinerary of who she was meeting with on each of the days, and assured Piper that it was not necessary to have her lawyer present. A good thing, too, since Perry was sharp and astute—but also somewhat…elderly.
Regardless, all the fuss didn’t seem like the kind of thing they’d do if they were about to cut her loose. And why should they? Her books had sold well, almost from the moment she’d begun publishing. She would be a valuable asset to them.
However, Piper was not used to dealing with an enormous company with deep pockets. She’d been an author in Trident’s stable for the entirety of her career, from the moment she’d graduated and submitted her first manuscript to an agent. And little Trident was no juggernaut—just the labor of love of a kindly old couple who simply adored books and authors.
The Dentons weren’t flashy, but they had been committed to the stories they sold. She’d been lucky to land with them. They had graciously helped her learn the industry and ensured that Piper did pretty well for herself. She owed them everything.
PKM was an entirely different kind of entity, though. As far as Piper knew, they rolled out the perks for every person they were about to sack. While it did seem as if the CEO could find someone a bit lower on the totem pole to do his firing for him, maybe he was just sadistic that way. Maybe he enjoyed it.
Piper fiddled with the buckle of her attaché case as the elevator chugged upward, and she tried not to let her worries get the best of her. She wasn’t some green author who didn’t know the ropes. She’d been doing this for eleven years and had the benefit of both a top-notch intellectual property lawyer and a reputable, experienced agent in her corner.
If this Padraig MacLellan guy was going to look at the work she’d done for Trident and decide to get rid of her, Piper would still land on her feet. Someone else would take her on because her fans would settle for nothing less. She would settle for nothing less.
She hoped it didn’t come to that, though. It might be fun to see what she could accomplish with the resources of a larger company in the mix. She could expand her distribution, maybe, or get a few more translations of her backlist done. Maybe she could even work out a signing or two overseas. Who knew what PKM could do?
In the CEO’s suite, she checked in with an extremely efficient young man named Wayne, dapper as a menswear ad in his gray plaid suit and pink dress shirt. He had clearly been waiting for her.
Wayne virtually leaped from his ergonom
ic chair to escort her straight to his boss, the estimable Padraig K. MacLellan. Or, as the tabloids claimed he was known, “Red.” Piper straightened her spine as she stepped over his threshold, ready to do battle.
She was startled to discover that the head of the entire billion-dollar company was not an older, graying man, as she’d anticipated. Okay, fine—she’d searched for him online, but this man wasn’t the one whose picture she’d seen. This was a lion in his prime, preening in his lair.
The man who stood and rounded his large mahogany desk to greet her looked to be about her own age, tall and broad-shouldered, with thick, auburn hair and intense brown eyes. Piper’s step hitched as she got closer. He was, in fact, larger than life—maybe 6’5 or more. He loomed over her. MacLellan was disconcertingly attractive, too, his grip firm but not bruising when they shook hands.
Wayne slipped discreetly out of the office, shutting the door behind him. Piper tried to ignore the way the touch of MacLellan’s hand sent sparks up her arm, her nerve endings firing off a series of electric aftershocks that made her grateful for the large leather armchair he directed her to. She took an extra minute to arrange herself, locking down her composure while she was at it.
MacLellan eased into his own chair and smiled.
“Ms. Corelli,” he began, “I’d like to thank you for coming up to see us. I hope your flight went okay?”
Had that been a royal us? “Yes, absolutely.” Piper almost added, thank you for having me, but given how gorgeous MacLellan was, the phrase suddenly seemed laden with innuendo. She couldn’t make herself utter it with a straight face.
“All the other accommodations to your liking? Hotel, and so forth?”
“Yes, of course. All of the arrangements have been lovely, thank you.”
“That’s a relief. My assistant can occasionally get creative with things like that.”
“I see.” Piper set her bag on the floor and folded her hands in her lap. She kept her knees together and crossed her ankles off to the side, infinitely decorous. She was a professional, but sometimes people got the wrong idea about her when they discovered she wrote erotic romances. Piper liked to do her level best to refute their assumptions.
Well, most of them at least. She wasn’t going to go out of her way to hide her black lace tattoo, curving around her ankle. And she certainly wasn’t going to attend a meeting of this magnitude without wearing her lucky shoes—which happened to be four-inch, leopard-printed calf-hair peep-toes. She was a romance writer. Come on.
“It says here you live in Maryland?”
“That’s right.”
“I’ve never been. What’s it like?”
“Well…I’d say it has a bit of everything. Within a two-hour radius, you can find city and farmland, skiing, sailing—you name it.”
“Sounds fascinating. How could I have missed that?”
“Ah, well. Something for your bucket list,” she tossed off casually. Oh, yeah. She was cool as cool could be. MacLellan would never guess what she was going through.
He laid his hands on his desk, and Piper immediately noticed his long, elegant fingers. He stared absently at her, a slight furrow forming between his eyebrows, and she agonized over what he might be thinking.
She cleared her throat. “Let’s get started.”
“Forgive me,” he muttered. “It’s been one hell of a week.” He shuffled some papers around and refocused on her. “Let’s, uh—let’s start over.”
“I’d be delighted. But I must admit, I’m not entirely clear why I’m here right now.”
A small smile quirked up one corner of his mouth, turning him even more roguishly handsome. “Maybe I can enlighten you.” He reached for a file laying to the side of his desk, centered it in front of him, and flipped it open.
“Ms. Corelli, when we acquired Trident Publishing—”
Piper held up a hand to stop him. “I’m sorry to interrupt. I just wanted to make sure you realized that ‘Antoinette Corelli’ is my pen name. My real name is Piper Fulham.”
MacLellan shuffled a couple of pages around, read one with a frown, and peered back up at her. “Piper Mae Fulham. So it is. I overlooked that. I apologize, Piper Mae.” His mouth twisted slightly.
Piper waved him off. “Happens all the time. And please, just Piper is fine.”
“Excellent.” He waited to make sure she had nothing further to add, then proceeded, “When we acquired Trident and started really combing through the nuts-and-bolts of how to stabilize it, we came across some surprising details. Maybe you already know.”
The former owners of Trident might have loved books, but they weren’t exactly business-savvy sharks. Piper was not at all surprised to hear the company wasn’t up to this man’s standards, so she simply nodded politely.
“I’d already reviewed the industry, and I knew that eBooks were major drivers. But,” the CEO continued, “I was fascinated to discover that the highest grossing segment of this company was its romance division.” He glanced up at her from the papers spread in front of him, allowing that tidbit to settle.
Piper sat patiently and refused to pity him. He ought to have known that, but no matter. She knew what she did for a living, and why it mattered so very much to people. Love truly did make the world go around.
“And who, amidst that whole division,” he asked, “would you guess was earning us more money than any other author?” He consulted his notes, then elaborated, “More than the next four authors combined, to be precise.”
Piper smiled thinly. Oh, she knew all right. The Dentons had made no secret of the fact. “Why don’t you tell me?”
MacLellan ignored her little flash of smugness. “I will. It’s you. Your books alone appear to have kept afloat an entire, wildly-mismanaged publishing house that was hemorrhaging money from nearly every other line of business.”
“I’ve been very fortunate,” Piper agreed.
“It seems so. But…I will admit to having felt some chagrin at never having heard of you before. Not one media profile, not one article, not one book review. Not even a whisper of your name crossed into my purview.”
Well, he didn’t have to be quite so emphatic about it. “You aren’t exactly my target audience,” Piper pointed out wryly. Though he’d make an excellent character study.
MacLellan sat back and regarded her carefully. “I’m not so sure about that.”
“You’re not?” The dissonance between their actual conversation, versus the one transpiring in her head, was throwing her completely off-kilter. She had to pull herself together before she missed something important.
“No. Because once it became clear that I had never heard of my highest-selling author before, I also realized that I’d never cracked open a single romance novel of any kind before. That kind of ignorance does not sit well with me, so naturally, I set about educating myself.”
“You didn’t.” This interview was taking a decidedly unexpected turn, and Piper didn’t have a clue where it was headed next. Was this guy some kind of holy roller, about to tell her all the ways her books were paving the way for the devil’s work? Or was he about to get skeevy on her?
“I most certainly did,” MacLellan assured her. “First, I read the current releases of several chart-topping authors at other publishing houses. Next, I sampled what some of the bigger indie writers had to offer. Laying some groundwork, if you will.”
Piper watched him, trying to get a read on his expression, but it was impossible. “And?” she prompted.
“And,” he said, “then I read yours.”
“I see,” Piper replied, though she didn’t.
He asked, “Do you? Because once I read one, it seemed like maybe I should read another. From there, it definitely snowballed—pretty quickly, too. Took me a month and a half, but I read them.”
“Which, uh…which ones?” Piper’s mind was spinning with scenes from some of her more risqué stuff, mixing in some very unhelpful images of the man before her reacting to them. As one of h
er characters might say, Oh, God.
MacLellan made a show of checking his report once more. “All of them,” he reported.
“In a month and a half?” Piper blurted. That was no small feat.
Her new employer’s mouth twitched up at the corners again. “I found them very compelling.”
“Clearly,” Piper laughed, but it was thin and nervous-sounding.
He waited for a full beat, then two. Watching her. Waiting. She gazed back and tried to school her breathing. There was no hope for her heart rate, though.
“Forgive me,” he said. “I’ve flustered you.”
Crud. Not only was MacLellan smoking hot, but he was perceptive, too. Worse, he appeared to be one of those uncomfortable conversationalists who felt the need to drag awkwardness out into the open and shine a light on it.
For an introvert like her, that made him virtually a monster. If she’d learned anything, though, it was how to be a good faker. Her whole image depended on it.
When she replied, “What makes you say that?” it was blasé. So convincing.
He didn’t respond directly. Instead, MacLellan inquired, “Was it me veering into odd superfan territory that did it, or was it just my unnaturally large size?”
Piper couldn’t help it. Her eyes flicked down toward his lap, hidden behind that colossal, weighty desk, for only an instant before she wrenched them back up to his face in a panic. She blinked rapidly, plum out of snappy comebacks.
MacLellan’s mouth stayed serious, but now his eyes twinkled with laughter. “It’s okay. I like to get out in front of the elephant in the room, so to speak, so we can get past it. I realize that I’m a tad too enormous to be considered normal. I make people uncomfortable. Especially ones of your stature,” he mused.
Piper could feel her face flaming. No way could he read her mind, but did he have any conception of how dirty he sounded? She had to get her mind out of the gutter. Piper decided to feign indignation at the height jab, if only as a deflection.