Not in Her Wildest Dreams

by Dani Collins

Walter flushed. “Grady and I agreed that a family business doesn’t need to waste profits when we’re here to oversee things every day.”

  “The bank didn’t require better security against the line of credit?” Paige asked.

  “Bill Thacker knows he’s welcome to view our operation anytime.”

  And practice the LFBA secret handshake while he was here, no doubt.

  “Dad,” Sterling rebuked. “Bill must have advised you—”

  “When I want advice, I ask for it, son.”

  Oh, smackdown.

  There was a lengthy silence. Paige barely breathed, not looking at either man as she waited for them to decide who would blink first. The tension was so thick it filled the room like smoke.

  Sterling tossed the statement back onto his father’s desk.

  “And you never do,” he said, slow and low.

  “Don’t worry about the lack of an audit,” Walter said to Paige, ignoring his son.

  “I have to.” It was hard-wired into her, given her profession, but also her upbringing. “Quite frankly, if you were taking my father’s advice on accounting practices, I should be very worried.”

  Walter’s chair squeaked as he leaned forward. “Our procedures are fine. Olinda does our books. You trust her, don’t you?”

  “I do, but without an audit this offer is an educated guess at best. I can’t counsel Dad to sign it.”

  “He’s a grown man. He can sign whatever he wants.”

  “You can pressure him, that’s true.” Paige tried not to reveal how tense this confrontation was making her. “But I have his power of attorney while he’s in the hospital.” She’d insisted on setting one up after his first heart attack. “But you know as well as I do that once he’s released, his salary will be covered by your very excellent health insurance. It will be months before he has to think of coming back to work. He can afford to drag his feet and I’ll tell him it’s in his best interest to do so.”

  He would anyway, happily. Her father was enough of a prick to enjoy sticking it to old Walt. The contempt between the men went both ways.

  “Bitch.”

  “Dad!”

  “Meeting over.” Paige gathered her purse, looking for somewhere to put her feet that wouldn’t tangle with Sterling’s legs.

  “The fee for an audit would come straight off the top of this check.” Walter stood as she did, rapping his knuckle on the desktop near the envelope.

  Sterling stood too and folded his arms, glaring at his father, jaw pulsing.

  “You’re going against our partnership agreement,” Walter accused. “I can buy him out anytime for half the company’s worth.”

  “Do you have a copy of that agreement? Can I see it?” Paige asked.

  Walter scowled, hesitated, then dug out a blue file folder from his bottom left hand drawer and flopped it onto the desktop. He couldn’t even hand it to her nicely. Such a pig.

  Paige picked up the file and started to square it with the folder she still held, but Walter frowned. “That’s my copy. Read it now.”

  She considered asking for a copy, but Sterling moved closer.

  She stiffened in surprise, feeling his body heat radiate into her, practically feeling like she’d stepped under a broiler. “What are you doing?”

  “I’ve never seen it either.” He obviously expected her to read it now.

  She pulled out the pages and dropped the dusty folder onto Walter’s desktop, then put a small arc into the pages to hold them straight, but she could barely make sense of the words, feeling hypersensitive of Sterling, pressure from Walter.... In the back of her mind she was thinking of Olinda, and obligations to Britta and the rest of her family as she skimmed for what she was looking for. They were going to hate her for stalling, but— There.

  She indicated the paragraph with her thumb, glancing at Sterling’s tightening expression as he recognized what it meant, too.

  “It says, ‘fair market value.’ It doesn’t matter what your Year End Statement says the company is worth. You’re supposed to pay fair market value.”

  “What the hell do you think this is?” Walter waved his hand at the papers she’d spurned.

  Paige shrugged. “That tells me what the company would be worth if you were to liquidate today. You’re not in business to liquidate. You’re in business to make money and expect to.” Paige wrapped her purse strap so tightly around her hand it cut off the circulation. “So you need an appraiser and I’ll warn you now, the appraiser will want an audit.”

  Call me Sister Mary Sunshine, she thought, as Walter’s expression darkened to murderous.

  Heart pounding, she pretended calm as she looked for a way around Sterling so she could reach the door.

  Sterling didn’t notice, too busy staring at his father, while Walter said, “See? They’re programmed to go after the dollar and she doesn’t care who she has to screw to do it.”

  “Oh Christ, Dad—”

  “Actually I’m extremely selective about whom I screw,” Paige spun back to say. “So you can stand down from suggesting I’d target you.”

  “You cheap, mouthy—”

  “Dad!” Sterling barked. “Shut the fuck up.”

  “I’m leaving,” she told Sterling with a look that warned injury if he didn’t get the hell out of her way.

  Sterling hissed out a breath and reached to open the door, but someone pushed it in from the other side.

  Lyle. He brought the scent of stale cigarettes with him and appeared hung over, which was pretty much his signature vibe these days. Paige’s heart sank every time she saw him like this, or worse, in the middle of a bender.

  Cleaned up and well-rested, he was the spit of their father, without the tailored suit, diamond pinky ring or precision trimmed hair cut, but he had the same crooked mouth, the same height that put him eye-level with Sterling, and the same love-me-or-leave-me attitude.

  Sadly, they all left him, which was the primary reason she felt like she never could.

  “You sign anything yet?” he asked Paige.

  “No.” She hugged her purse to her chest.

  “Good. ‘cause I’m taking over for Dad. What do you think of that, Golden Boy?” he asked Sterling. “You and me. Partners.”

  He made a gun with his finger and thumb and took a shot.

  Chapter Five

  “Not fucking likely.” Sterling’s drawl was deceptively easy-going.

  “Exactly,” Walter said.

  Paige leaned around Lyle and pushed the door to slam it shut, ticked right off that she was locking herself back into this artificially lit room, with the artificially intelligent, when she’d been so close to escaping.

  “Why would you want to take over Dad’s shares?” She’d just skimmed past the option clause and it looked tricky. She didn’t think he was eligible, but he didn’t look in the mood to hear it.

  “Same reason he wants to.” He was locked in a mental game of chicken with Sterling. “Because I can.”

  Sterling looked rooted like an oak, his arms folded, his hair practically rippling with the hostility radiating off him.

  It came to her that Lyle thought Sterling was taking over the factory and would fire him.

  Did Sterling insist he wasn’t taking over? No. And there was nothing to stop Walter from firing Lyle if their father wasn’t here to advocate for him. Lyle knew he couldn’t be fired if he was a partner, though.

  “Your sister already agreed to sell, so it’s no longer available,” Walter said.

  Lyle turned on her, eyes narrowed.

  She turned her head toward Walter. “I’m fuzzy on when I agreed to do that. Was it before or after you invited me to screw you?”

  “That’s a damned lie!” Walter shouted.

  Her veins stung with a jolt of adrenaline, but she held onto her composure, offering a flat, “You started it.”

  “And see,” Lyle said softly, “that’s not who I would have expected to issue that invitation.”

  Paige choked.r />
  Sterling muttered something about feeding Lyle his teeth, and stepped up.

  Lyle would have met him halfway, but Paige had saved Lyle’s dental work more than once and pushed herself in front of him, facing her brother. Angry. Really freaking furious that he was making this worse.

  “What is wrong with you?” She tried to shove him back a step, forcing him to break eye contact with Sterling and look at her, so he could see how hurt she was.

  His lips tightened into a crooked line. He looked away, saying nothing. Lost. Lost in the way he’d been when their mother had left. Worse. Still trying to process his girlfriend suffering a still birth last year and quitting him and this town the moment she’d been out of hospital.

  He’d been on a tear of self-destruction ever since. Having their father nearly die again hadn’t helped one iota.

  “Do you really want Dad’s job?” she asked, giving him her be serious look.

  “Running a company’s a lot like work,” Sterling drawled behind her.

  “You’d probably be happier with the cash.” Walter said, pulling the check from its envelope.

  Lyle raised brows of interest while Walter set it on the desktop so all those plentiful zeroes were visible.

  Lyle reached, but Paige nabbed it first, backing up against the door to keep it beyond his reach.

  “Pidge,” he warned, using the nickname she hated.

  She tore the check into pieces, letting them scatter.

  All three men stared at her.

  Her heart was going a mile a minute and embarrassment burned even more strongly than the urge to fight and flee. Intense heat climbed from her chest, across her face, into her ears and under her hair as she realized how melodramatic she was behaving.

  But she didn’t know how else to make her point. “I’m not taking a check today.”

  Lyle turned back to Walter, “How much was it?”

  “Half the year end statement.” Walter fanned out the documents on his desktop, looking for the right one.

  “No!” She used her arm to get between Lyle and the desk. “I’m Dad’s proxy. You can’t make any promises to sell or take over or anything. I decide.”

  Lyle caught her arm to tug her out of the way.

  Sterling clamped his hand over Lyle’s thick wrist.

  Lyle stilled.

  Hoarfrost descended, dropping the temperature of this stuffy room to sub-zero.

  “You wanna dance, G.B.?” Lyle said in a deadly voice.

  “This is a business meeting, not the dumpster ring at The Mill,” Sterling returned in exactly the same scary voice, not the least bit intimidated.

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake!” Stomach roiling, Paige physically peeled Sterling’s grip from her brother’s arm, then twisted her arm free from Lyle’s hold. “Go back to work and we’ll talk later.”

  “No,” he said, hard gaze switching to Walter. “Let’s talk now.”

  “Listen to me,” she said in her toughest voice, one hand placed solidly into her brother’s chest. “We can’t sell until there’s been an audit and an appraisal. Do you want to settle for less than what’s legally owed?”

  It was the only way she could get his full attention. Lyle was the kind of guy who owed certain debts for years and failed to collect on others, but woe betide the bastard who tried to screw him over.

  “So you’re going to audit?” he asked her.

  Dear God no.

  Walter made a disparaging noise.

  “It’s up to Walter to hire someone. I’m heading back to Seattle and will check back in a couple of weeks to find out what he decides.”

  “I won’t be here then,” Sterling said.

  “Why do you need to be?” she threw at him.

  He didn’t answer, looked kind of thunderstruck.

  “I’m going to talk to Dad so he knows where this stands. Don’t ask him to sign anything behind my back,” she warned, taking in all three pairs of eyes, including her brother’s as she got her hand on the door knob. “My ex is a lawyer and I took free counsel in lieu of support payments.”

  He’s a real dick, she wanted to add, but she was already mad that she had invoked Anthony at all, as if she couldn’t solve her own problems.

  She spun and retreated, getting the hell out of Dodge.

  ~ * ~

  Sterling swung the door shut behind Paige and Lyle, then rubbed feeling back into his face. “That went well.”

  His father sank into his chair. “If she tells people I suggested we have sex—”

  “For Christ’s sake, Dad. She was mad. And has a right to be.” Sterling leaned on the back of a chair. “You were offside, getting personal like that.”

  “She’s threatening my company. It doesn’t get more personal. You’d know that if you ever did more than babysit someone else’s investment.”

  Sterling tightened his grip on the chair. “Yeah? Well, here’s a pro tip I picked up babysitting. Personal attacks don’t invite cooperation from anyone.” He straightened. “And if you want more advice, you can pay for it, because I make damned good money babysitting.”

  His father’s lips puckered rhythmically, the way they always did when he was getting worked up. He rubbed his palms together, not with glee, but with anxiety, creating a sandpapery sound.

  Behind Sterling, someone knocked on the door.

  He ignored it and so did his father.

  Ask me for help, Dad. He had to know he needed it. Sterling didn’t know how he’d fix this over a weekend, but—

  The door pushed inward. Jesus, what now?

  “I brought cake!” His mother entered with a box as big and white as her smile. She wore a cream suit over a green blouse—company colors—and the chemical scent of fresh hairspray. It wafted under Sterling’s nose with the sickly aroma of buttercream icing as she passed by him to the desk. “We’ll have champagne with dinner tonight. I bought steaks, but I couldn’t wait. Everything went smoothly?”

  Sterling closed the door, not answering.

  His father gave him one dark, warning scowl, and said a gruff, “Fine.”

  Here we go. Sterling looked to the ceiling.

  “Of course it did. I didn’t expect anything different. Grady knew that was the best offer he was likely to get.” His mother wore a hard smile as she ran her fingertip along the bottom edge of the box, then turned it to look for the tape. “But why aren’t you happy? This is a celebration.”

  “We haven’t seen the cake yet,” his father said.

  “I can’t seem to open—here, maybe? We did this your way, Walt. I thought you would be more pleased.” There was a muted snick as she used her fingernail to pop the pieces of tape holding the box closed. “There.”

  She began to work the top off the box, lifting her head, proud.

  She froze with the box top above the cake while her gaze dropped to Sterling’s boots. Her smile faded.

  Sterling looked down, expecting her frown had been prompted by a fleck of mud or a loose shoelace.

  The check Paige had torn up lay in pieces at his feet.

  “Walter.” His mother’s voice cooled. She set aside the box lid with more annoyance than ceremony. “And look. The wrong cake. It was supposed to be black forest, but this is carrot. I can’t seem to count on anyone today.”

  Here. We. Go.

  “What happened?”

  “They’re not ready to sell,” Sterling said.

  “She’s holding out for more money? No.” She shot a look at her husband that made his mouth shrink to the size of a pinhole.

  “Actually—” Sterling began, but his father spoke over him.

  “We could lease the lake house. Or sell some stocks. Maybe sell your mother’s house.” He raised his brows at his wife, a request for her to give serious consideration to the last suggestion. “That’s what we ought to do. Sell that house.”

  Her hand fisted where it rested on the desktop. “You know my feelings on that.”

  “Granny’s house isn’t saleable,
” Sterling said, trying to forestall what he could see was a rising power struggle. “I saw it yesterday. I doubt you’d recover the property taxes you’ve paid to hold onto it. What happened to it?”

  “It’s perfectly sound, but your father refuses to take care of it.”

  “If you’d let me rent it so there’d be some cash—”

  “You find the worst people! Rosalee Bodnar was the last and look how that turned out.”

  “The house isn’t the issue.” Sterling diverted their attention since the house was making things worse. He hated when they fought. Hated it. “Paige asked for an audit. Which is a reasonable request.” He gave his father a pointed look. “Seriously? Seven years since the last one?”

  “That’s an excuse. Lyle showed up. They were scrapping like gulls,” his father said in an aside to his wife.

  Evelyn lifted her pearl necklace off her collarbone. “They didn’t talk about the option clause, did they?” She darted her gaze between them.

  “Not seriously.” Walter glanced at Sterling, silently urging him to back him up. “And it doesn’t matter. The arrangement set up for Sterling—”

  “Well, of course Sterling can step in.” She tucked in her chin so she gazed over her glasses at her son, expectant. “The Fogartys aren’t supposed to be able to take advantage of the option, though.”

  “Actually...” Sterling picked up the partnership agreement Paige had reviewed. “Okay, yeah, this is what I thought it said,” Sterling said as he found what he’d skimmed past the first time, as he’d stood over Paige’s shoulder trying to read through a haze of uncomfortable male awareness. “It allows for transfer of the partnership to a child with the proviso that the candidate be suitably trained and educated. So Lyle can forget it. Paige, however, is a CPA.”

  “Since when?” His father’s cheeks went loose. “I thought she was a bookkeeper.” He glanced at his wife.

  She shrugged. “So did I.”

  “It surprised me, too,” Sterling admitted. He was even more impressed now that he’d stalked her current employer online.

  “Shit, is that why Grady was always yammering at me to let her at the books? That’s why we haven’t had an audit. He wanted her in here and wouldn’t hear of anyone else. Having Lyle on the payroll was enough. It doesn’t matter anyway. Aside from one summer, she’s never worked here. She knows squat about the industry.” His father sat, making his chair squeak.