The Billionaire Bargain 3

by Monroe, Lila

  “No appointment,” Grant murmured, his voice low and intimate. “But lately I’ve been taking a rather…personal…interest in these matters.”

  The secretary blushed so hard I was amazed that there was any blood left for the rest of her body.

  Grant ran his hand along her sleeve. “I like the way this feels,” he said. “So soft.” His hand lingered right on the collar, just where the fabric met her skin. “Your hair looks soft too.”

  “I—I—I—” Emily the secretary stuttered like a faulty tape recorder.

  Grant slid his arm around her shoulder, one finger playing with a ringlet of her hair. “It’s a pity Portia isn’t here, but it does give us some time alone—to discuss business, of course.”

  “Of course,” Emily echoed, dazed.

  Grant began to lead her down the hallway. “Perhaps we could discuss the matter over wine…I know a nice intimate restaurant not too far away…you can take a break, can’t you?”

  “Intimate,” she whispered, gazing up into his eyes as though someone had written a winning lottery number there.

  “Tell me, Emily,” Grant’s voice carried to me as they disappeared from sight, “do you believe in mixing business with pleasure?”

  Meanwhile, around the corner, I was rolling my eyes so hard I almost sprained them. He was going to give that poor girl a heart attack. And if her choice of employment was any indication, she already had enough trouble in her life.

  But there’d be time later for pitying those caught in the crosshairs of Grant’s charm.

  Right now, it was time for a little good old-fashioned breaking and entering.

  Sending up a little mental thank-you to my bad-influence high school boyfriend for teaching me how to pick locks—I should definitely send him a fruit basket or something, did they let you send fruit baskets to prison?—I pulled a bobby clip from my hair and had the lock jimmied in less than thirty seconds. That’s what you get for refusing to upgrade to the passcard system, Portia.

  I began to rifle through the papers on her desk. There wasn’t much—a dry-cleaning bill, a routine memo from accounting, and projections for quarterly growth. I had to rifle very carefully, taking note of exactly which spot on the desk I lifted each paper from; Portia’s office was a fascist’s dream, neat to the point of insanity. Papers were crisp, mahogany and steel were polished, and personal effects were nonexistent.

  I found her datebook in the second drawer on the left, and quickly took several photos of its contents for the next week with my phone. A moment’s thought, and I copied her call sheet too. I couldn’t tell now whether or not they held any useful information, but give me a little more time, Google, and all of Grant’s passwords to the company database, and there was a good chance that they would paint me a distinctly un-pretty picture of what Portia Smith was up to.

  The computer was the only thing in the office that looked in less than pristine condition; my guess was that Portia didn’t relish showing her age by having to ask for help with an upgrade. I quickly logged in using the password Portia had helpfully jotted down on her memo pad, and my eyes were immediately drawn to a file on the desktop labeled ‘Accounts Payable.’

  Now, what was such a boring and out-of-her-job-description sounding file doing right there on her desktop, where she could immediately access it? I clicked it, and whistled under my breath.

  It was an entire presentation on the takeover. Undeniable proof in black and white.

  I almost clicked on the Google Chrome icon, but stopped myself just in time. Tempting as it was to send myself the file in a few seconds, the fewer digital tracks I left on Portia’s computer, the better.

  Time to do this old school.

  I hit Print instead, and then almost had a panic attack as Portia’s ancient printer started up, wheezing and groaning like an asthmatic with a face full of pepper spray as it struggled to heave and jerk and finally wheeze out the ten-page document, at a nail-biting rate of one minute per page.

  I held my breath. What if someone else was working nearby and came to investigate the noise? What if Grant was on his way back with the secretary and this alerted her that someone had broken in? Maybe I should have e-mailed it after all?

  But either no one was around, people were around but were also deaf, or everyone in Portia’s workspace vicinity had grown accustomed to the sound of a dying elephant every time she wanted a hard copy of something, because no one came knocking.

  When the printer finally surrendered all the pages to me, I grabbed them and made a quick circuit of the room, doing my best to put everything back exactly as I found it. I locked the door behind me, smirked at my good fortune, and ran around the corner right into Grant Devlin’s broad chest.

  “Well, hello, young lady,” he said with a smirk. “Shouldn’t you be in school?”

  “We’re totally about to school Portia’s ass,” I said, breathless from both the impact and his smile. I narrowed my eyes in a mock-glare. “How’d the ‘intimacy’ go?”

  “It was quite fun! I had to let her down gently after awhile, of course, but I’ve set her up with a nice accountant from NYU.” He slid an arm around my shoulder. “You know, you’ve quite corrupted me. I could get used to you being my partner in crime.”

  • • •

  The mood was tense in Grant’s office where we pored over the documents I had pilfered. Earlier had been fun, and our budding relationship do-over was still giving me butterflies, but we couldn’t afford to focus on things like that now. We had to be all business.

  I was just sitting in his lap to save space, that was all.

  It was a very solid business decision. It definitely felt solid.

  “It looks like she’s planning to do this at the shareholder’s meeting,” I said, trying to ignore how good Grant’s neck smelled, only inches from my lips. I could just reach out and lick—no, BUSINESS. “She wants them to vote on a takeover from Pinker Inc.”

  “She’s stabbing us all in the back,” Grant said grimly. His hands were at odds with his angry words, gently massaging my shoulders. “She’s going to bait the shareholders with all these cost-saving measures—”

  “By which she means, firing everybody who isn’t nailed down,” I put in.

  “And the shareholders just might go for it,” Grant said with a grim nod. “The payoff is certainly big enough. But the national employees are in for a royal screwing.” A frown creased his brow. “And in this economy, it won’t be easy for them to bounce back.”

  “What are we going to do?” I asked. “How can we fight this?”

  Grant’s face set in an expression as determined as it was sexy. It was really difficult to decide whether to get out of his way or jump his bones that very second.

  “No way is she stealing our company out from under my nose,” he growled, his eyes hard and resolute. “I’m going to fight for what’s mine.”

  And I realized, looking at him, that so was I.

  NINE

  We spent the rest of the week working around the clock to shore up votes ahead of the shareholder meeting. We held emergency personal meetings with every shareholder we could track down who we thought could be swayed to our view of things. And beforehand we researched their business histories for common interests, potential weak points, and anything else we thought might prove handy, down to their favorite color for socks and how much sugar they took in their coffee.

  And of course, we had to hide all this from Portia by not only carrying on with our usual business, but distracting her at all the crucial moments when our clandestine meetings were being held.

  Mostly this meant burying her in special projects and outdated financial paperwork, but I’m not going to lie, one of my fondest exploits during this whole endeavor was the morning when I kept her from catching Grant with a shareholder by replacing her dry-cleaning instructions for her personal assistant, resulting in Portia making increasingly furious and incoherent stops at every cheap dry-cleaning place within fifty miles in a quest
for her vintage mink stole.

  A vital ally in our crusade turned out to be Jennings, who was invested in the fate of the company not just because of the shares he got during the buyout of Librio, or even his private ideals, but because for some inexplicable reason, he had taken a shine to Grant and me.

  “A lot of those ‘good old boys’ and I go way back,” he boomed when we first approached him asking for help. “I might be able to loosen their tongues in a way that a pretty young lady and a pretty young man—no offense, young fella—might not be able to. Just give me some beer money to get me in the door with them, and I’m in solid.”

  And he was, channeling information to us from Portia’s inner circle of shareholders one day, and then turning around and flooding a shareholder on the fence with all his powers of cajoling and charm the next.

  We began to build a strong case against the takeover, and every day saw Grant, me, and Jennings start to win more allies over to our cause, shareholders who’d been persuaded that what we said made more moral and practical business sense: Tomasina Brown, Stephen Baker, Emma Hundred. People who other people listened to, and followed. Our ranks began to swell, and though we couldn’t be sure of exactly how many people were on Portia’s side, the numbers on our own were starting to look encouraging.

  I began to think that we just might have a chance.

  • • •

  It was another secretive late night at Grant’s office, the lights turned way down low as we pored over documents, our hands touching as we passed papers back and forth.

  We’d agreed to keep our reconciliation a secret from Portia, the better to throw her off-balance when we launched our counter-attack in earnest, and so I’d had to dress up in a slutty disguise just in case Portia had us under surveillance. If she or any of her minions were keeping tabs, it would just look like Grant sneaking another party girl into the office for a little naughty after-hours fun; business as usual.

  A low-cut red shirt and plunging neckline had distracted from the overlarge sunglasses, red wig, and floppy hat I’d worn to hide my face, and though I’d planned to change into something more modest before we got down to work, Grant had taken one look at me in this ensemble and declared that that would happen over his dead body.

  The breeze through the window was cool against my skin and somehow Grant and I kept finding reasons to accidentally brush against each other as we reached for the same file, or to put out a hand to steady ourselves against the other as we walked past for another glass of wine—it’s important to keep up morale during the long hard slog through paperwork—or to sit extremely close together as we studied the same documents, fighting to keep our concentration on the written words even as we could feel the heat coming off each other’s bodies.

  Maybe it was wrong of me, but I couldn’t help but feel that the secrecy and urgency of what we were doing only heightened the excitement, tension, and lust keeping my body coiled tight as a spring, anticipation tickling along my skin.

  “Can you pass that file?” I asked, and Grant did, taking a long moment to brush his fingers along my arm as he did so.

  We had been so busy the past week that we hadn’t done more than feel each other through our pajamas and wrap our arms around each other every night before falling asleep; in the morning we shared a few kisses and caresses for rising to meet the day. I ached for him, but I had asked for him to wait until all this company-saving business was done before we addressed what was between us. We had to focus.

  Truthfully, though, I didn’t know how much longer I could wait. With all these late nights, and sleeping next to each other, waking up every day with that hot body tucked around mine…if we didn’t do it soon, the sexual tension was going to drive me insane. Just looking at him now, with his brow furrowed in concentration, a lock of hair falling over one eye, that loosened tie, his intense gaze…I could feel myself—

  “Aha!” Grant said, slapping a sheet of paper and breaking my reverie. “I’ve got her now!”

  And he was on his feet, hunting determinedly through the stack of paper he had already laid aside for the other piece of the puzzle he had just found, simultaneously calling up a number on his phone, ready to make the call the second he had the evidence he could use to swing one more vote over to our side.

  I watched him, momentarily sidetracked from my own secret side mission, aka Do it to me Grant, by the fire in his eyes. This was how I loved him best, hair mussed and sleeves rolled up to his elbows, passionate and invested and no longer posing for anyone, completely oblivious to the world around him, to anything except that which he was determined to track down. Tireless in the face of bureaucracy and complacency and corruption, unable to stop until he had done all he could to protect what was his, to keep it safe.

  I loved him like this, and I loved working with him like this. I felt it like a low warmth settling in my chest, the embers of a fire that I knew could blaze into an inferno of passion with the slightest breath of encouraging wind. It comforted and frightened me by turns, the way I felt about this man.

  Because what if he couldn’t forgive me? What if, in the end, he had to walk away from me and the hurt I had caused when I cut him off and left him behind?

  “Yes!” Grant punched the air in victory as he found what he was searching for, and turned to me, eyes shining in delight. “Look at this, Lacey. Look at these figures. There’s no way Kelly Ormstrom can argue that Portia truly has the company’s best interests at heart, not after she reviews these five-year strategic outcomes—”

  I let his words wash over me, and his smile, and I knew that it didn’t really matter what was coming. I loved this man. I could never walk away from him again.

  I would just have to pray that he felt the same way.

  • • •

  The ballroom glittered like a snowstorm made of crystal and marble, the sounds of polite laughter and intense debate melding and echoing across the brightly lit space, the lush carpet barely absorbing any of the din.

  Hundreds of people filled the space; I recognized representatives of seven different big investment funds in the thirty seconds it took to scan the room, and I wasn’t even looking hard. A screen that looked like it belonged in an IMAX theatre wrapped around the stage, cutting from one view of the room to another; later it would stream the proceedings to investors all around the world.

  Waiters dodged nimbly through the crowds, offering bottled water, glasses of champagne, chocolate-dipped strawberries, and cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off. I wistfully watched the trays pass by; I was too shot with nerves to even think about eating, and alcohol wasn’t going to help me help Grant, either.

  Half of the guests seemed to have gotten the memo that this was a ballroom and dressed like they were expecting their fairy godmother to pull around with the pumpkin at midnight, while the other half were dressed much more like it was a normal day at work. Here and there, a few reclusive investors darted about in jeans and T-shirts, probably hotshots who’d made big money in the dot-com boom in the nineties and gotten out quickly, before they would have lost anything or had to conform to a dress code.

  “Really?” I asked Grant skeptically as he ushered me through the doors and down the split staircase. I wore a filmy white dress, and he wore a tuxedo so beautiful it could have made a Renaissance painter cry. I gestured at the grand ballroom, the chandeliers, the guests. “Really-really?”

  “Due to the unprecedented level of interest, Devlin Media Corp was forced to rent out a space for the shareholders’ meeting,” Grant said smoothly, sliding my arm through his. “It is entirely a coincidence that we rented out the ballroom from the climactic scene of the spin-off of your favorite spy film.”

  “If you get any smoother, scientists are going to kidnap you and run experiments to try to figure out how you transmogrified into a frictionless substance,” I informed him.

  “It’s a good thing I have someone to rescue me,” Grant said lightly, giving my side an affectionate squeeze. “I wo
uld hate to live out the rest of my days in a lab. My tan would suffer terribly.”

  “And yet I somehow have the feeling that you would find a way to get your hands on hair gel,” I returned with equal affection, reaching up to ruffle his hair and watch him make that adorably scowly face he made whenever I undid all his primping. “Did you bankrupt a small country to get it to curl like that, babe?”

  “Only a small one,” he promised, and laughing, we made our way into the fray, stepping apart as we crossed the room.

  There was still an hour until the meeting itself, and with Portia around, it wouldn’t pay to let down our guard.

  • • •

  It was time. I gripped Grant’s hand tightly as we waited in the wings, the lights dimming in the ballroom except for the ones over the stage. Butterflies performed complicated aerial maneuvers in my stomach. This was it. No more preparation, no more hedging of bets. This was when it was all going to go down.

  A rustle of silk, and Portia came around the corner in ivory heels and a sleek dress that looked as though it had traveled here through time from the 1920s. I tried to pull my hand back, but Grant held on to it tightly. He wasn’t interested in covering: we were in this together now, and he didn’t care if Portia—or anyone else—knew it.

  She gave a barely perceptible start as she surveyed the way Grant and I were standing so close together, but she recovered almost instantly, favoring the pair of us with an icy smile.

  “Well, isn’t this a fairytale ending for you both,” she said through tight lips. “Cinderella has won the heart of the prince after all. Well, they do say you can’t teach good taste.”

  Grant squeezed my hand gently. “We have nothing to say you, Portia,” he told her. “We don’t speak to traitors.”

  “So melodramatic,” she said with a sniff. “I do hope for your sake that’s not the line you’re taking in your speech tonight. Investors respond so poorly to theatrics.”