“I am. Why are you still here?”
“I was hoping to talk to Mason.”
“Is everything okay?”
She shyly shares, “Yes, I like to end my day talking to him.”
It suddenly dawns on me. “Sounds like someone has a crush.”
She nods. “Maybe a small one. I met a girlfriend for drinks, and she encouraged me to come back and talk to him to see if we can go out. But despite my asking him out for drinks and making sure he knows I’m interested and single, he hasn’t done anything about it.”
“Annabel, you do realize that because he’s your boss, he’s probably doing his very best to keep it professional?” Her face falls, and I try to soften the blow. “But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t like you. It just means he can’t do anything about it right now.”
“Oh, I guess I never thought about it that way. He’s cute, and I love the way he cares about each of the employees.”
I smile at her. “I agree. He puts everyone ahead of himself.”
“Well, it doesn’t appear that he’ll be back tonight, so I’m going to head home. Good night.”
“Good night, Annabel. See you in the morning.”
As I prepare to shut down for the night, an e-mail pops up from Catherine.
To: Sara White
From: Catherine Ellington
Subject: Meeting
Sara,
Please resist all contact moving forward. I’m happily married to your biological father, and together we have four children—not five. None of them know you exist, nor will they ever know. You were a mistake of a young couple. If you can’t leave me alone, I’ll be forced to contact my lawyer and get a restraining order. I owe you nothing. Leave my family and me alone.
Catherine
I’m stunned. I have four actual siblings, not half. Devastation doesn’t even begin to describe how I’m feeling.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Trey
My phone is ringing.
“What the hell?” I glance at the bedside clock: after 10:00 a.m. Caller ID shows it’s my mom.
“Hi, Mom.”
“I’m sorry I woke you, sweetheart. I waited until after ten to call.”
“That’s okay. I need to get up anyway. What’s up?”
“Your dad and I were wondering if you were going to be at Sunday night dinner tonight.”
“I don’t know.”
I hear her relay that to my dad, and the next thing I know he says to me over the phone, “Trey, you’re an advisor and they need you, too. We need your input on a few things today. Do you think you can make it?”
“I guess I can try.”
After climbing out of bed, I get on my touring bike, leave my condo in Pacific Heights and ride it the three miles over the Golden Gate Bridge and back again, then through Golden Gate Park. I’m going to be sore tomorrow, but at least it’s a good sore.
I don’t want to seem like I’m trying too hard when I dress for dinner, so I choose a nice pair of dark jeans, a gray sweater that rolls up at the bottom, a pair of Cole Haan black leather boots and a black leather biker jacket. I roll my pants up and tuck my sunglasses into my sweater below my chin. I think I look good.
Sara, you can eat your heart out!
I arrive at my parents’ house the same time as Mason does. He’s a good guy. As I’ve gotten to know him I’ve found that he’s one of the smartest guys I’ve ever met. Really the team at SHN are all incredibly smart. If I were to leave Sandy Systems, I’d rally these guys hard to join them. They want to make money, but they invest with a love of technology and a lot of altruism.
“Hey, man,” he says as he grasps my hand and pulls me in for a half hug. “So glad you could make it.”
“Of course. I’m not sure I have much to contribute, but I’m happy to be here.”
“No, we need your input. It’s very helpful.”
We walk in and I see her sitting with my sister and two of her best friends, and my heart skips a few beats. Sara looks radiant. Her hair has these amazing waves and curls I want to run my fingers through. Her jeans are tight and show off her curves, and her green sweater makes her eyes shine.
“Sara,” I say as I nod at her. Addressing my sister as I’ve done since we were seven, I chide, “Hey, ugly.”
The glare she shoots me would kill most men before she stands and hugs Mason. “Mason! So wonderful to see you,” she gushes.
I lift my hands in mock surrender and walk to the bar cart. “Anyone need a drink? Mason? Greer? Sara?” I ask before muttering to myself, “I sure do.”
During dinner, people share stories of crazy things that happened over the week, switching between stressed-out clients and personal interests. I’m sitting next to Sara once again, and she spends most of dinner talking to CeCe about Emerson and Dillon’s wedding.
Turning to me during a lull in their conversation, Sara gives me a dazzling smile and asks, “How are things going with your acquisition in Seattle?”
“It’s moving. The owner is very religious and has his concerns about how a large company is going to affect their culture.”
Sara nods. “That makes sense. Do they pray at work?”
“Well, yes and no. We understand it to be voluntary, but those who join the company sign waivers because of group prayer.”
“Wow. That’ll be a huge change if they’re purchased.”
“It would be. But we also pride ourselves on trying to maintain our acquisitions culture.”
“I’m curious, why do they want to sell? Money?”
“Their product can’t sustain itself without being purchased by a larger entity.”
“Then the prayer issue would exist for everyone.”
“That’s exactly what we’re saying.”
“What else is keeping you busy?” she asks.
“I got on my tour bike today and got over the Golden Gate. What about you?”
“My to-do list grows. I feel like every time I cross one thing off, I seem to add five more.”
CeCe joins in with “I know what you mean.”
Then the girls are back to their chat, and I turn to Dillon on the other side of me, talking about college basketball and the NFL draft.
As dinner winds down, my dad has everyone move to the study, and my mom and the housekeeper begin the process of cleaning up after dinner.
Greer starts us off. “I was alerted this afternoon by our PR firm that SillySally is being hit with a substantial sexual harassment suit. Apparently, Henry Sinclair and his EVP of Finance, Jennifer Wallace, had an ongoing affair for many years, and she alleges a few big bombs.
“How does this affect us?” Cameron asks.
Dillon grimaces. “We’ll see a drop in their stock prices.”
“Unfortunately it may be worse than that. Rumor has it that Jennifer may be naming SHN in the lawsuit,” Greer says.
“Do you know why?” I ask.
Greer nods. “Apparently, she says we knew about the harassment and permitted it. I don’t have to tell you what this kind of publicity does to companies in this climate.”
The room erupts with everyone talking at once, and my dad lifts his hand to get everyone’s attention. “One at a time, please.” The room quiets, and he turns to Mason. “What do you know about this?”
“Jennifer was always professional and easy to work with. I only knew she quit when Henry told Sara,” Mason replies.
Everyone turns and stares at her, and she says, “Henry, Jennifer, Dillon and I worked closely with the offering. He alerted me last week that she’d quit. I wondered if he was hiding something, but he didn’t say anything else when I pressed.”
We go back to all talking at once, comparing stories of our interactions with Jennifer. I see Sara’s brow crease as she begins to put something together. Glancing around the room, she settles on me and I see tears well up in her eyes. In a shy voice, she tells us, “I think this may be the time to let you all know that I had an affair with Henry.”
Wringing her hands, she quietly shares, “Please let me start with the fact that we dated for nearly six months and I never knew Henry was married. I saw him most days, and we often spent the night together. He had a growing company that he’d founded, and he traveled a lot. Or so I thought. We don’t go out of our way to share our personal lives, so when Cameron, in passing, mentioned Henry’s wife, I was stunned. I asked Henry about it, and he immediately came clean. He kept telling me he loved me and he was leaving her, but she was newly pregnant.”
“Sara, I understand you’re embarrassed, but please tell us the G-rated version of how the affair started, where you may have had intercourse, and when you broke up,” Emerson requests.
Sara looks like she’s going to cry. “We’d been working long hours on the SillySally offering. Often with Jennifer, but it was always on the up and up. We were talking daily, and we started flirting. It was very innocent. He made me feel attractive, and I hadn’t had that in a long time. I don’t have a life outside of the office, and it was nice to have someone make me feel beautiful.” Sara begins weeping, and my heart aches for her. Emerson rubs her back, and she’s eventually able to continue. “Then in February, before the offering, he made a move. We had sex in his office the first time.”
Dillon quietly says, “Sara, please don’t cry.”
“How did he make the move?” Emerson asks.
“As I said, we flirted. He’d tell me he liked something I was wearing, or stare a few minutes too long at my chest, but that happens in the workplace.”
Mason snaps to attention. “It shouldn’t.”
Greer pats his hand. “You’re 100 percent right, but it does happen.”
Emerson turns to Sara, who’s now quietly sobbing, and prods, “Then what happened?”
Cameron hands Sara a tissue, and she wipes her tears. “We were sitting in his office across from each other at his desk. He had a question about one of the spreadsheets, and I got up and was leaning over his desk. He cupped my breast, then leaned in and we began kissing. It was consensual, and I was a willing participant. I had no idea he was married. I had no idea about his relationship with Jennifer. I thought we were exclusive, and when I found out we weren’t, I broke it off with him.”
I’m angry listening to this. This asshole was married and thought he could make Sara feel like less of a woman. What really pisses me off is that he made her cry.
My dad asks, “Did he and Jennifer flirt or ever be inappropriate while you were together?”
Shaking her head, she cries, “No. Never.”
Emerson quietly asks, “Where did your affair happen? Always in his office?”
“He has an apartment in Cow Hollow. We spent nights and weekends there, or in my apartment. I swear, I didn’t know about Claudia.”
“Did you know he was involved with Jennifer?” Mason questions.
Sara’s head snaps up and she definitively exclaims, “No! Absolutely not.”
Emerson holds Sara’s hand as she says, “I don’t see any risk for us.”
“I think we need to distance ourselves from SillySally,” Greer suggests. “We need to talk about how we didn’t know it was going on. Dillon, what percentage of ownership do we have?”
“Thirty percent, which is worth at last count almost two hundred billion dollars,” he responds.
“How much does Henry own?”
“He owns 31 percent.”
“I’m assuming the other 39 percent is owned by various sources.”
Dillon nods. “Roughly 20 percent is held by employees and the board, including Jennifer, and under 20 percent is traded.”
“I reviewed their board, and between Charles and us, we probably have most of the board members’ personal phone numbers,” Greer tells the group.
“I think that’s accurate,” Mason agrees.
I nod. “Okay then, I suggest we go to the board, minus Henry, and see if we can garner the votes to have him step down.”
I interject, “That’s probably the best course of action. Mason or Dillon, if we can get the votes, you’ll need to call Henry and let him know. But you can stress to him that he still owns his shares and voting rights on the board. So he isn’t losing his company—yet—but he will if he doesn’t play nice.”
“Meanwhile, once you get it all wrapped up, I’ll have a press release ready to go across the wires, telling people he’s no longer CEO of SillySally,” Greer adds. “It’ll save the stock price if we can do it mostly tonight and then release the statement before the market opens tomorrow morning.”
We all agree and work our way through the list of board members. Greer sits at her laptop, waiting for the thumbs-up to send her press release across the wires.
It takes less than an hour to track the board down and capture 51 percent of the stock share votes. Then Mason, Dillon, and Charles call Henry. The conversation doesn’t go particularly well, but Henry seems to take it in stride.
We set a plan for the week to deal with this issue as well as our mole, and we’ll follow up next week.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Sara
It’s girls’ night out, a nice dinner in Pacific Heights. Our Saturday nights out are becoming a regular routine, and I’m really enjoying having a group of friends. We get together as a group, but they’ve all reached out to me individually as well. For the first time in many years, I feel like I belong, and it really seems to lift my spirits and put a spring in my step.
Hadlee and I had a spa day at Burke Williams. We started our morning with facials, ordered in a wonderful lunch and then received ninety-minute massages. I’ve really never spoiled myself like this before, and it was glorious.
Greer and I went out into Napa. CeCe wants to play a bit of matchmaker with a vineyard owner, and together we checked him out. We didn’t get to see him, but we did have a fantastic day and a fun dinner at Cindy’s Backstreet Kitchen. It was wildly decadent and full of fun.
Emerson and I made a point of spending a day together doing some wedding planning. It was an exhausting day, though I can definitely see why people go Bridezilla. She wanted red roses in her bouquet, and they made her order two dozen different shades. In the end, most of them seemed alike, and she took me out for a nice dinner after the ordeal, where we gossiped about work and the boys.
CeCe and I spent a Saturday shopping, and I was able to introduce her to Jennifer at Nordstrom, who now has a big client. She put CeCe in an incredible Eileen Fisher for tonight. I love the light green top and matching silk jacket with black silk pants and beautiful Jimmy Choo sandals. She looks truly amazing.
We’ve all been trying to make a point of getting out and meeting men. CeCe had a date last night, mixing up our girls’ night out, which is how it wound up being tonight instead. But she hasn’t mentioned it yet, and I’m curious.
“How was your date with the real estate agent?”
With a heavy sigh, she says, “He knew who I was, and he went into full sales mode. He had actually set up showings at several high-end condos on the market.” We all gasp in horror, and she continues, “At first I thought he took me to my Aunt Millie’s condo as a way to get laid in a fancy house. He was super flirty, and then I realized he was trying to sell me a new place.”
Greer jumps in. “Wait. I’ve been to your Aunt Millie’s. She’s selling?”
Chuckling, CeCe tells us, “Her condo on Embassy Row. She’s keeping her Marin house and moving there.”
“I’m interested in your Aunt Millie’s place. Should I call your new boyfriend?” Greer ribs her.
We’re laughing so hard that people are turning and staring at us.
“Really?” CeCe asks when she’s able to catch a breath.
Greer nods enthusiastically. “Yes!”
CeCe picks up her phone and steps away, and we continue to pick our dates apart. When she retur
ns, she declares, “Tea for all of us at my Aunt Millie’s tomorrow at one. We can go to dinner with my parents afterward. Hadlee, that means you're stuck with us for a bit, but at least the view at dinner will be good.” CeCe leans in conspiratorially and whispers, “Our good friend Hadlee here”—she does her best Vanna White impression—“has a crush on one of your partners.”
Puzzled by this, mostly because I think of all the guys as brothers, I ask, “Which one?”
“Cameron!” Greer answers for her.
I reach across the table and grasp her hand, chuckling. “Honey, I’m so sorry. That boy is trouble with a capital T.”
“I know! But I can’t help but love those broad shoulders, blue eyes and that curly hair. And oh. My. God, those tattoo sleeves are to die for!”
“How can you tell he has curly hair? He’s always wearing a stupid baseball cap,” Greer grumbles.
I sit back in my chair and grin. “He cleans up well, I promise. You’ll see at Emerson and Dillon’s wedding.”
When I return home, I’m too wired to sleep. I sink into my hot bath and smell the vanilla and rose perfume as it rises in the steam from the tub, smiling to myself. I have a good job, I have money in the bank, I own my condo and, most importantly, I have friends.
But then my mood quickly clouds, thinking about the mail I got from Catherine. I understand it must be difficult to know you have a child out in the world, but to know the child is biologically related to all of your other children and yet shun them is confusing at best. These aren’t people who share half my DNA—these are my full-blooded brothers and sisters. I don’t want to ruin her life, but I want to meet my father and my siblings.
After my bath, I pour myself a large glass of wine, and I cry. I cry for the loss of my mother, for the loss of my father, and more importantly for the loss of my siblings I’ve never met.
CeCe calls me first thing in the morning. “I’ll be by to pick you up around noon. We’ll get Emerson, Hadlee, and Greer and make it to my aunt’s by one.”
Promise (Venture Capitalist Book 2) Page 11
