Just Business

by Julie Cannon

  Synopsis

  What should be just business becomes much more when two women agree to a deal that changes their lives.

  Real estate tycoon Dillon Matthews, in the middle of negotiating the deal of her life, is stunned when the owner of the small parcel of land she desperately needs to complete her latest project presents the final condition she must meet to close the deal. Callie Sheffield is struggling to pay the attorney she has hired to appeal her brother’s conviction for a crime he didn’t commit. When Dillon and Callie meet by chance, they realize each has what the other needs. A simple business transaction will give them both what they need—until love threatens to derail the negotiations.

  Just Business

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  eBooks from Bold Strokes Books, Inc.

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  Just Business

  © 2009 By Julie Cannon. All Rights Reserved.

  ISBN 13: 978-1-60282-337-2

  This Aeros Ebook is published by

  Bold Strokes Books, Inc.,

  New York, USA

  First Edition: March 2009

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  Credits

  Editors: Shelley Thrasher and Stacia Seaman

  Production Design: Stacia Seaman

  Cover Design By Sheri(graphicartist2020@hotmail.com)

  By the Author

  Come and Get Me

  Heart 2 Heart

  Heartland

  Uncharted Passage

  Just Business

  Power Play

  Descent

  Acknowledgments

  My thanks go out to all the women at BSB who work in front of and behind the pages. Without you, all of this would not be possible. My special thanks to Shelley Thrasher, who was great to work with, and Sheri, whose cover took my breath away (again).

  Dedication

  For my family

  Prologue

  “I now pronounce you married in the eyes of the Lord, your friends, and family. You may kiss the bride.”

  Dillon turned from the elderly gentleman wearing a white collar to the woman in the pale blue dress who stood beside her. Callie Sheffield was arguably the most beautiful woman Dillon had ever seen. Crystal-clear blue eyes looked at her expectantly. A shy smile she had come to know over these past few months held her attention, while a warm hand cupped her face.

  “You’re supposed to kiss me now.”

  The voice was soft and melodious, teasing in its inflection. Callie—insightful, intuitive, and always right—was one of the few people Dillon Matthews allowed to actually tell her what to do. She knew how to listen to those around her, especially when they knew more about something than she did.

  She bent her head and kissed the red lips as instructed, and a wave of heat practically welded her feet to the floor. The taste of Callie’s lips made her forget where she was and how long she stood there.

  Finally, she released them and faced the crowd of people who sat in the church’s hard-backed pews. Some were friends, others were business associates, and dozens were people she had never seen before.

  She took a deep, shaky breath. By all accounts this should have been the happiest day of her life, but as she gazed at the sixty faces that stared back at her, all she could think was, “How in the hell did I get here?”

  Chapter One

  “He what?” Dillon Matthews was dumbfounded.

  “You heard me. He’s not sure he wants you to have his property. Bill Franklin is a crotchety old man, Dillon. It’s his land, and he can sell it to whomever he wants for whatever reason.”

  “Does he know who I am? How much money I’m offering him? For God’s sake. I’m one of the richest women in America. His land holdings are nothing, compared to mine.”

  “Yes, he does, and that’s why he’s digging in his heels. Price isn’t the sticking point.”

  “Then what is? I’m offering more than three times what that land is worth, which is more than anyone else will give him for it.” Dillon paced the large conference room located on the fiftieth floor of the Matthews Building. The plush carpet muffled her footsteps, and the triple-pane glass kept the cold spring day outside.

  She turned her back on the ragged skyline of Chicago and walked across her spacious office to the three-dimensional scale replica of her largest land-development project yet. Gateway was to be built on twelve acres of lakefront property running parallel to Lake Michigan along Lake Shore Drive. It consisted of four hundred thousand feet of retail and office space, flanked by two high-end residential towers.

  “Greg, I need this parcel of land. Bill Franklin is the last thing standing between me and Gateway. I can’t build without his measly four acres. Well, I can, but a much smaller version that will end up looking choppy and like every other commercial-use property in the country. We have a reputation to maintain, and boring buildings are not part of it.”

  Properties designed and built by Matthews Holdings were anything but conventional and boring. They were splashes of color projected over aggressive designs that mirrored their architect/owner. Dillon’s thumbprint was easily recognizable around the world. The bold, daring design of her buildings usually stretched the bounds of engineering capability with a mixture of glass, steel, light, shadow, and texture, all intricately woven together in a well-choreographed dance. Often her designs formed the cornerstone of major redevelopment projects, and recently she not only owned the buildings she designed but the land on which they stood. Nothing stood in the way of her creativity or her desire to make a name for herself in the land-development community. Nothing until seventy-eight-year-old Bill Franklin blocked her path.

  “He’s invited you to his house for dinner two weeks from Saturday.”

  “Dinner? This is a business deal, not a social event.”

  In the early years of her career, Dillon was the deal maker, the one who set the terms, negotiated every detail. Now she had people to take care of that chore. As a matter of fact, she had people to take care of almost everything. She rarely became involved in the negotiations other than to sign the contract and the check.

  She shook her head at the idiosyncrasies of an old man. “All right, I’ll do whatever it takes to convince him to sell to me.”

  Dillon had to have this property. Gateway would be the culmination of everything she had dreamed of. And she had worked hard to get it. After putting herself through college, she had traveled to France and graduated at the top of her class from Le Solamonde, the world’s most prestigious architectural school. She could have worked at any firm she chose, but she decided to venture out on her own, knowing that any boss other than herself would squelch her style and creativity.

  In the past ten years she had made a name for herself, and the architectural community anticipated Gateway. But most important, she expected herself to stun everyone. She needed this project to make her father finally look at her with something other than disappointment.

  “Oh, and Dillon.” Greg hesitated.

  Dillon was already moving on to the pile of papers on her desk but looked up at the pause.

  “It is a social call. Bring a date.”

  Dillon cocked her head. “I don’t date.” She was perplexed by Greg’s last statement. He knew very well that she preferred the women in her life
to be gorgeous and temporary.

  “Then you’d better hire someone. Franklin is expecting you and a date at his house for dinner. This is not a business meeting, Dillon. I get the impression that a healthy balance between work and life is important to him. I think he wants to see that there’s more to you than your business persona.”

  Dillon dropped the folder she was examining onto her desk. “Oh, for God’s sake, Greg. It’s a piece of land, not my ticket to heaven. The only thing he should care about is how fast my check clears the bank.”

  “That’s the way you and I think, Dillon. Evidently that’s not how Franklin sees things.”

  “Does he know I’m a lesbian? I’ll do a lot of things for a deal, but pretending I’m straight isn’t one of them. I’m way past that crap.”

  In the early years of Dillon’s career she had not openly discussed the fact that she was a lesbian, preferring to attend social functions alone rather than draw attention to herself by taking a woman as her date. She wasn’t hiding anything. She simply didn’t want to be judged by who she brought with her. At least she didn’t try to pretend to be someone she wasn’t by arriving with a man. But this evening was different. She had practically been told to invite someone, and she didn’t like being told what to do. As important as this dinner was with Franklin, she was just maverick enough to choose who she wanted.

  “As a matter of fact, he said something about looking forward to being surrounded by intelligent, beautiful women at the dinner table.” Dillon slumped back in her chair. “Look, Dillon, for some reason he considers this more than just a business deal. If you want this piece of land, you’d better show up with June Cleaver on your arm.”

  Greg closed the door behind him, leaving Dillon alone. The image of the 1960s television sitcom Leave it to Beaver flashed into her mind. Interestingly, she had stumbled across the old show last week on a business trip while flipping through the channels on the hotel television in search of CNN. June Cleaver was every man’s dream of a wife—always perfectly coiffed, performing her domestic duties in high heels and a dress. Dillon wondered if June wore her pearls when she performed her other wifely duties.

  Shaking that image away, Dillon reached for her Rolodex, but stopped. She knew dozens of women more than willing to accompany her for the evening. The women she went out with were poised, smart, sophisticated, and refined. In other words, everything she needed for an audition dinner with Franklin, but for some reason none of them felt right.

  Her phone rang, drawing her attention back to the pile of work on her desk. She finished the call in minutes and spun her chair around to face the window, lifting her feet to the top of the credenza that ran the length of the desk behind her. This was her favorite position—hands locked behind her head, gazing at the sky as if it were her canvas to sculpt and create. Each season provided different inspiration, the changing weather guiding her pencil strokes on the thick pad she always kept nearby. Summer brought blue sky and an openness to her designs that often captured the essence of light. Winter, with its drab days and cold, bitter wind, transformed itself into structures full of oversized columns, archways, and deep corridors. Days like today, early spring with just enough chill in the air to remind her that winter was not yet ready to give up but enough warmth to give her hope, often gave birth to her most creative, cutting-edge designs. Gateway was born two years ago in the very position she was in now.

  She shifted her gaze to the ground below, watching the people in the city carry on their everyday lives fifty stories below. They probably passed the same familiar faces on the street every day but never stopped to say hello or exchange anything other than a polite, cursory greeting.

  Dillon could relate—she worked hard, played hard, but, with the exception of her sister, she didn’t really connect to people. Early on in her career she often wondered if something was wrong with her, if she was missing the connection gene, the DNA that drove people to link up with others. She wasn’t a social person, didn’t need to be around people, but preferred to concentrate on her work. At times she felt more related to her buildings, structures, and designs than to humanity.

  However, Greg was an exception. He was more than her assistant. He was her friend, and they usually had dinner together a couple of times a month. She could easily count her other friends on the same hand with a finger or two missing. Her sister Laura probably knew her best, her parents often distant and aloof.

  Dillon shook her head as she pictured her father’s face years ago when she told him she wanted to be an architect and not crawl up the corporate ladder as he had at Chicago’s most conservative law firm. She didn’t know which he considered worse—coming out of the closet or not wanting her name in gold-embossed letters on the front door. He had never looked at her the same, and Dillon had never looked back.

  Swinging her feet to the floor, she turned her attention to the current task, however distasteful. A date? She began to outline her plan of attack to find Ms. Right. Certainly within two weeks she could find the perfect woman, couldn’t she?

  Chapter Two

  Callie Sheffield nursed her second beer as the music that surrounded her pulsed with the incessant beat of a scratched record. The same three notes played over and over and over as the sound pounded into her brain. No wonder nonstop loud music was used as a form of torture and brainwashing. She would do almost anything to get it to stop.

  The door of the Incognito Lounge opened again and she glanced at it, hoping Audrey had finally arrived. She had been waiting for her best friend for over an hour, and if she didn’t show in the next ten minutes, she was leaving. She had agreed to meet Audrey here at nine thirty, knowing from long experience that she was habitually late.

  Callie was beginning to simmer. She had already repelled several women who obviously thought she was an easy pickup because she was sitting alone at the end of the bar. Ten or fifteen years ago she probably was, but at thirty-six, Callie had more important things in her life than meaningless, if sexually satisfying, one-night stands. But then the Incognito was known as a pickup bar both in reputation and ambience.

  Twenty-odd years ago when it opened, the Incog, as the regulars called it, was the place to be. The newest women’s club in town, it boasted the latest sound system, the hottest disc jockeys, and the stiffest drinks. Now, almost two decades older and several owners later, it had fallen into being just another tired lesbian bar with worn carpet and a bar chipped and stained from one too many sweating glasses and forgotten cigarettes. The twelve-inch-square mirrors that covered the walls reflected little more than the twinkling, long-forgotten Christmas lights that hung from the ceiling. Even though Chicago had enacted a no-smoking ordinance in bars several years earlier, the smell of stale cigarettes had permeated every fixture, beam, and pool table.

  Callie’s thoughts shifted to the one subject that had consumed her for the past three years: Michael. Every time she thought of her baby brother, she envisioned a small boy with black hair sticking out in all directions riding his skateboard up and down the driveway of their home. That little boy had grown into a tall, handsome man with a constant smile and a great sense of humor. Even though she was ten years older, Michael always looked after her. He told her it was his responsibility as her brother to take care of her regardless of their reverse birth order.

  Callie swallowed a mouthful of now-warm beer, trying to dislodge the familiar lump in her throat. When she saw Michael last week, a flat, hollow look had replaced the sparkle in his eyes. She wanted to gather him in her arms and hold him until that light returned. But she couldn’t. It would be thirty-five years, ten months, and twenty-two days until she could touch him again. Her little brother would be over sixty years old when he was released from Lompak Maximum Correctional Facility for killing the man who had beaten and tried to rape her.

  *

  The beat of the music assaulted Dillon as soon as she stepped out of her car. She could barely hear the chirping of the car alarm above the bass, and she had
to turn around to see the lights blink on her BMW to convince herself the car was secure. One of her cars had been stolen from this parking lot, and she didn’t want it to happen again. The money didn’t bother her. She had more than enough to cover what the insurance didn’t. The paperwork was the pain in the ass. She slipped a fifty to the security guard and thanked him for letting her park in one of the coveted places near the front of the building. When she opened the door, the decibels of the music almost knocked her down.

  Nodding to the bouncer and paying the ten-dollar cover charge, Dillon practically fell over a couple locked in an embrace that, if done anywhere other than inside a lesbian bar, would be cause for arrest. She looked again and revised her opinion. They very easily could be arrested for what they were doing. The tingle of arousal that accompanied the scene reminded her that she hadn’t had sex in far too long, and a sweeping glance around the room told her she could most probably rectify that problem soon.

  She weaved through the throng of women and signaled to the bartender for her usual drink. Dillon had frequented this bar since before she was legally old enough. While on a high-school class trip to Mexico, she and her friends bought fake IDs that added four years to their age, granting them access to any bar in the city. The Incognito was the first lesbian bar she had ever entered, and she would always remember the way she felt when she walked in. The sight of women dancing together, kissing each other, holding hands, and laughing was the most affirming she had ever seen. No matter how young the crowd or how old the posters on the wall, the Incog would always be special to her.