I don’t know why, but I felt uneasy – like forces beyond my understanding or control were vying to rip him away from me.
“Well, crap,” Aisha muttered.
I turned to respond, but my eye was caught by a beautiful brunette with short hair and a stunning red dress. She stood about twenty feet away, watching me with a blank expression. As soon as she saw I’d noticed her, she turned and melted into the crowd.
I felt a chill run up and down my spine.
“What’s wrong?” Aisha asked. “Other than your man just ditched us.”
“I don’t know,” I murmured. “I kind of feel like somebody just walked over my grave.”
63
Ian
Vic led the way into a private study. Across the room, in silhouette against a window, stood a powerful figure in a dark suit.
He turned towards us as he heard the door open.
Connor Templeton. One of the richest billionaires in the world.
As soon as we locked eyes, he smiled. Not quite warmly – more like, Ah, time to begin.
It didn’t do much to put me at ease.
“Hi Connor,” I said.
“Ian.”
Vic slapped me on the back. “As promised: signed, sealed, delivered, he’s yours. Now I was thinking – ”
“Vic, why don’t you let me and Ian have a little time alone?” Connor said.
Vic looked like a seven-year-old who’d just found out he wasn’t invited to the popular kid’s birthday party. “What? But – ”
Connor fixed him with a steely gaze.
Vic allowed himself a moment of resentment – “Okay… fine,” before he lapsed back into his cheery bravado. Though it sounded a bit forced.
“Don’t have too much fun without me, guys, y’hear?” he said, and slapped me on the back again before he stalked out of the room.
Connor and I stood in silence for a moment, taking each other’s measure.
Finally he asked with one cocked eyebrow, “What’s with the suit?”
“Haven’t you heard?” I answered drily. “I’m undercover.”
“Vic mentioned something about you whiling away your time surfing in Venice.”
“He did, huh?”
“Yeah. Seriously – Venice?” Connor asked, and I could tell by his tone he was joking. Sort of. “You’re a multi-millionaire. There’s a hell of a lot of better places to surf than Venice.”
What he said was true. But I didn’t want to talk about why I was staying in Venice… and I sure as hell didn’t want to talk about the mansion on the beach I couldn’t bear to spend the night in.
“I have my reasons,” I said brusquely.
“I’m sure you do. What I want to know is – ” Suddenly he shifted to a sharp, acerbic tone. “ – what are your reasons for trying to tank the IPO?”
“Look, despite what you’ve heard, I don’t want to stop it from going forward – ”
“No, you’ll just scuttle it through innuendo and rumors when you don’t show up.” He launched into an imitation of some Wall Street asshole: “‘Well, if the CEO doesn’t believe in the company enough to – ’”
I interrupted him. “I can handle it from afar. I don’t have to be there in person.”
From the way he looked at me, I took it that Connor Templeton was not a man accustomed to being interrupted. “You’re not Howard Hughes. You don’t get to be a recluse and still have people kiss your ass. You’re not famous, and you’re not that rich. Yet.”
“That’s not it.”
“Then what is it?”
I walked over to the window and looked out at the partygoers drinking their champagne by the opulent swimming pool. I didn’t feel a connection to any of them. Nor did I feel anything but weary disgust with my surroundings, no matter how supposedly beautiful they were.
“If I’m going to do it… why would I do it for any of this?” I asked bitterly.
“I don’t follow.”
“I lost my parents a year ago. Car crash.”
There.
I’d said it.
Even speaking the words felt like somebody had knocked the wind out of me – but once they were out, more words kept tumbling after them.
“I dreamed up all the conceptual work with my dad years ago, even before I met Bryce. My mom came up with the name for the company and did all the filing for the patents. It was a family endeavor, something we all shared. Then, when they died… well…” I exhaled sharply. “For nine months after the funeral, I got up every morning and didn’t even know why I was getting out of bed. I’d look in the mirror and see a guy who hated his life and didn’t know how to change it – until I finally figured out I could just walk away.”
Connor was respectfully silent for a moment. Then he said, “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Thanks,” I muttered.
“Did you know that I lost my father recently?” Connor asked.
I shifted uncomfortably. “Yes.”
“And that I got blamed for his death? Accused of his murder?”
I winced. He’d kind of trumped me with his own personal tragedy.
“I heard. That was – ”
“It was a clusterfuck. But I soldiered on.” He walked over and put a hand on my shoulder. “It’s been a year. You have to keep going.”
I looked at him angrily. I didn’t like being told what I had to do. “Is this about the half a billion you invested?”
“Yeah, it is – but it’s about a hell of a lot more than that. It’s about making the world a better place. Your ideas are going to revolutionize space travel. Elon can use it to set up a livable colony on Mars before the first human sets foot on the planet.”
By ‘Elon,’ he meant Elon Musk – one of the co-founders of PayPal, and now the CEO of Tesla Motors and SpaceX, a company dedicated to the colonization of Mars and the spread of humanity throughout the universe.
I guess when you’re a billionaire, you refer to other billionaires on a first-name basis. A very exclusive kind of club.
“We can mine the asteroid belt with your technology,” Connor continued. “Hell, we don’t even have to leave the planet for you to change the world. Just think, no more coal miners dying in cave-ins. Deep sea exploration without any risks. Doctors doing brain surgery in the Amazon from a thousand miles away. This technology is about building a better world, Ian. It doesn’t just belong to you, it belongs to humanity. And you’re fucking it up.”
I looked over at him, angry at what he was saying.
But he was right.
It was important… and I was fucking it up.
64
Katie
Just like the rest of the house, the first-floor bathroom was pretty amazing. There was only one toilet, tucked away in its own spacious room; after all, they hadn’t exactly designed the house to host wedding receptions. Although the Volkswagen bus-sized tub looked like it was installed specifically to swim laps in.
But there were four – count ‘em, four sinks set in a rose-colored marble counter, all in front of a 15-foot-long mirror with a gold-leaf frame. And I think it was real gold.
I’d just popped in to powder my nose, but the décor was so over the top that I couldn’t help but stop and gawk. That’s what I was doing when she walked in.
The short-haired brunette in the red dress.
I watched her out of the corner of my eye as she took the spot next to me and brought out her ruby-red lipstick.
She didn’t look at me, though, or even acknowledge my existence, so I went back to what I was doing.
Then she spoke. “The blond man – he is your date?”
She had a feminine voice with a very slight Russian accent.
Oddly, though, she never once looked at me as she asked the question.
I frowned. Why ignore me and then start talking to me out of nowhere?
“Yes.” I answered even though I didn’t want to – ‘cause my momma raised me right.
“He is very handsome.�
��
“Yes, he is.”
She gave the tiniest of smiles. “Cheap suit, but handsome face.”
Okay, now I was pissed. “I’m sorry, you are…?”
“A friend of the bride. Who are you a friend of?”
“Ian knows them.”
“Your date, Ian… how did you meet him?”
Okay, forget how Momma raised me.
“Is this an FBI interrogation?” I asked in irritation.
She feigned indifference – though she still never looked at me, not once. “No, I am simply curious. You seem like a very happy couple.”
There was something underneath her tone that raised the hair on the back of my neck.
“We are,” I said.
She turned towards me. For the first and only time, she looked me dead in the eyes and smiled. “It would be a shame if anything happened to change that.”
Then she turned on her heels and left.
I was so shocked, I didn’t even think of following her.
Though I wish I had so I could have thrown her into the swimming pool.
65
Ian
Connor continued his onslaught. “You are aware that there are certain parties who are secretly trying to buy up pre-IPO shares of your company from your employees and early stakeholders?”
I glanced over at him in surprise. Actually, I hadn’t known that.
“Do you know why?” Connor asked.
“Well, it’s happened before, with Twitter and Uber – ”
“Except the difference here is the people doing it are trying to depress the value of the shares, so they can pick them up for pennies on the eventual dollar. Once they do that, they can buy enough to have a controlling share of the company, and you’re out as CEO.”
My stomach knotted up.
I hadn’t considered that scenario.
Connor shook his head. “And you’re playing right into their hands with your little extended surfing safari.”
“Who’s doing it?” I asked. “Who’s buying up the shares?”
“I’m not entirely sure – they were smart enough not to approach me directly. They’re conducting business through a couple of shell corporations. But I have a good guess.”
Shit.
I knew exactly who he was talking about.
“She got 2% of your stake in the company, didn’t she?” Connor asked.
I nodded bitterly. “She did.”
“Maybe that’s another reason you don’t want to go public? Don’t want to make her rich, even if it means you don’t hit the jackpot either?”
In addition to being a damn good businessman, he made a fairly decent psychoanalyst.
“That might be part of it,” I admitted.
“What’s the rest?”
I sighed and looked at all the people with their drinks out by the pool. “I just… I question what makes me happy anymore. When I’m back at the company, I wonder, ‘Why bother? For the competition? For the money?’ None of that means anything to me anymore.”
Connor nodded. “I had a lot of those days.”
That piqued my interest. “‘Had’?”
“Yeah, until I met a woman and fell in love.” He smiled, and for the first time I saw genuine warmth on his face. “Now I don’t have those types of days anymore.”
I swallowed, suddenly nervous. “How… how did you know?”
“That I was in love? Or that I wanted to marry her?”
“Both.”
“I knew I was in love when I wanted to be with her more than anything else in the world.”
Actually, that was a feeling I had very recently become acquainted with.
“Unfortunately,” Connor continued, “I was pretty stupid about the marrying part. I didn’t figure that out until I almost died. So take my advice: don’t wait until you get shot to propose. You found somebody?”
“Yeah,” I said, and I felt myself grow lighter as I thought of Katie. But then the storm clouds settled back in. “But with my track record…”
“You’re a little worried.”
“Yeah.”
“What does she think about dating one of the richest guys in Silicon Valley? Or soon to be one of the richest, anyway.”
“She doesn’t know.”
For the first time since I’d met him years ago, I floored Connor Templeton.
“…what?” he asked, a dumbfounded look on his face.
“Given my track record – ”
He pointed at my clothes. “Is that why the suit?”
“…yeah,” I admitted. “She bought it for me.”
He roared with laughter. “Wow. Explain this to me – please.”
“Well… the best way I can think of is this story I read back in high school. The ancient Greeks believed that the gods would come down in human form every so often. Zeus was the patron saint of travelers, so when you’d see some beggar walking down the road in need of a meal, you’d better be nice to him, just in case it was the King of the Gods in human form. That’s what I’m doing – walking the earth, trading in my digs on Mt. Olympus for a bargain suit off the rack.”
“All to find the love of a deserving woman?”
“I hope.”
He chuckled. “Let me give you a little advice, since I actually happen to be acquainted with this particular problem, too.”
He had my attention.
“When I met my future wife, I didn’t tell her how rich I was. Not right away. When I finally did, she flipped out. And I told her the first night. Maybe you should think about breaking the news sooner rather than later.”
“What if she gets blinded by the money?”
“What you really mean is, what if she doesn’t like you for you. What if she ends up using you.”
I winced. “Yeah.”
“Well, you’ll never know until you tell her. But based on all the evidence at hand, my friend, I think the problem isn’t with her. It’s with you.”
Bastard.
I hated it when he was right.
“Go back up to Silicon Valley and put the market at rest,” he suggested. “Help create that better world.”
“And turn your 500 million into a couple of billion?” I asked sarcastically.
“It’ll pale next to the billions you stand to make.”
I scoffed. “On paper.”
“Don’t knock paper. It’s what money’s printed on.” He paused, and his grin turned into something more serious. “If I were you, I’d make sure to shore up your investors at this wedding – and there are a lot of them here, probably more than you’d ever find again in one place. Make sure they’re confident you’re still on board. Otherwise they might sell out to a certain someone… and if she can buy their shares and convince other people to vote with her, she might try to screw you over even worse than before.”
Screw you over even worse than before.
It’s a strange sensation to feel your blood boil and freeze at the same time.
“Parting word of advice?” Connor said.
“What?”
“That woman you’ve found? Tell her who you really are,” he said, his voice kind. “If you want to avoid days where you look in the mirror and wonder what the hell you’re doing it all for, then you need a reason to get out of bed. It needs to be a good one… and there’s only one way to find that out for sure.”
He patted me on the back, then walked out of the room.
66
A few minutes after Connor left, I walked out of the study, lost in my thoughts. Truth be told, most of them weren’t good.
I didn’t notice her until it was too late, when I almost bowled her over at the top of the stairs.
She was wearing a bright red dress, and her hair was uncharacteristically short. I might not have recognized her from behind – but as soon as our eyes met, it felt like somebody had shivved me with an icicle.
“Natasha,” I said. At least I was able to keep my anger in check.
“Hello, Ia
n.”
“What are you doing here?” I asked. As if I don’t know.
“The same reason as you. Attending a wedding reception.”
“If you really are here for the same reason as me, then it’s sure as hell not for the wedding reception.”
She smiled the tiniest bit. “How have you been?”
“Terrible. You?”
“Wonderful.”
“I hope we trade places, then.”
“We need to talk.”
“Have your lawyer contact mine,” I said as I brushed past her and started down the stairs.
I only got about two steps down when she asked, “Are you still upset, after all this time?”
That stopped me in my tracks.
I turned around and let all the venom I was feeling bleed into my voice. “Oh, you mean, like when you took me for tens of millions of dollars?”
She scoffed. “Please. How many tens of millions of dollars do you need?”
“None, really. I just don’t want you to have them.”
“You know I contributed a great deal.”
“Not enough to walk away with as much as you did.”
“I helped you.” She said it almost with a sneer.
“There were a lot of people that helped more who made a lot less.”
“They never slept with you, though, did they?”
I smiled grimly. “The worst mistake I ever made.”
67
Katie
Aisha had found some film industry types to schmooze, so I just walked around sipping champagne, self-conscious and bored out of my mind.
Well, not really bored. More like disturbed.
I couldn’t get that Russian woman’s words out of my mind.
It would be a shame if anything happened to change that.
What the hell did that mean?!
What, was she planning to steal Ian?
Her tone of voice, though, seemed to imply something a lot darker.
Sex On The Beach: Bad Boys Club Romance #1 Page 16
