Saving the CEO

by Jenny Holiday

  He was about to tell her that he was going to develop luxury condos on the shoreline, when she got a distinctly dreamy look on her face and said, “I bet you can see a lot of stars from this island.”

  “Uh, yeah, I bet you can.”

  “You could have stargazing parties.”

  The idea of the wealthy guests he planned to woo signing up for stargazing parties was a little comical but, hey, at least she was getting into the idea. “I could. Anyway, the point is, I’ve been cultivating Wexler forever. We have a weekend of meetings coming up—I think he’s close to deciding—and I have no CFO.”

  “And you want me to pose as your CFO!” She let loose a great big peal of laughter, throwing her head back and exposing her throat. For some reason the sight of her like that went straight to his dick. He crossed his legs. When she got control of herself and took in his non-answer, she jerked upright, “Holy ravioli, you do want me to pose as your CFO!”

  “No, but I need someone to come. Someone with a head for the financials. Wexler is going to want to talk details.”

  “Surely, if you’ve been working on this deal for so long, you can handle it without your in-house white collar criminal by your side?”

  Jack’s skin began to prickle. He downed the rest of his drink in one gulp.

  “You want another?”

  He nodded, then waited until her back was turned and she was pouring the drink to say, “The thing is, I can’t handle it by myself. I have dyscalculia.” She froze, immobilized with one hand holding the water bottle and the other unscrewing the lid. “It’s a learning disability,” he added. “Like dyslexia for numbers.”

  She resumed her task, and when she came back bearing his drink, she didn’t look disgusted. She didn’t look any different than she ever did. “I see the problem.”

  “So will you do it?”

  “I can’t just impersonate a CFO.”

  “First of all, it’s not like it’s a job that comes with a regulatory stamp—it’s not like impersonating a cop. If I say you’re my CFO, you’re my CFO.” When she started to argue, he held up his hand. “But anyway, we won’t use that title. Wexler knows Carl—the betraying asshole is named Carl, by the way—so he’ll expect to see him. I’ll concoct an excuse for Carl and call you my senior director of finance or something. I just need someone to pinch hit on the financial side of things. But just as important, Wexler can’t know there’s anything untoward happening at my company or he’ll never sell to me. So I can’t just have no one on the finance side there, or he’ll get suspicious.”

  “So this explains why you haven’t called the cops on him yet. CFO swindling Winter Enterprises. That would be big news, right?”

  That was certainly part of it—he wasn’t going to do anything to jeopardize the Wexler deal, even if it meant letting Carl rip him off a little longer than was strictly necessary. “In part. But also, I’ve been trying to figure out exactly what he did before I call in the cavalry. I don’t want a swarm of accountants and cops descending and asking me all this stuff that I…”

  “That you have trouble understanding.”

  He nodded. Not sure how he was going to solve that. He probably wasn’t—more likely that he was just going to have to call the cops and admit that he had no idea what kind of damage Carl had done. But one problem at a time. First, the Wexler deal.

  She looked thoughtful. “Why would I do this? It seems kind of dishonest somehow.”

  “It’s not! I’m free to hire whomever I want to do whatever tasks I want them to do. I want to hire you to do this. And you would do this because I will pay you—well.”

  “How much?”

  “Well, I figure I’d pay a consultant, say, five hundred bucks an hour. The trip will take seventy-two hours, so that’s roughly thirty-six grand.” She choked in the middle of a sip, and he grinned. “You can either invoice based on that hourly rate, or we can agree on a flat thirty-six.”

  “If I’m going to do this, I have to know what I’m talking about. I’ll want to look at your financials. I’ll want to know what you know about Wexler. I’ll need to learn everything I can about both companies to get up to speed.”

  Ha! Smart girl. “Fifty grand.”

  She did a poor job masking her shock. “You are going to pay me fifty thousand dollars to pose as your director of finance, or whatever, and try to get this guy Wexler to sell you his company? That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “This is how capitalism works. I have money. I want to buy something—in this case, it’s a set of skills that I don’t possess. I pay what the seller and I agree it’s worth. It’s no different than someone buying a drink at Edward’s.” He refrained from telling her that it wasn’t a lot of money to him. “And I’ll tell you what, if we get the deal done, there will be a bonus.” She waved off the idea, which annoyed him. “This deal is worth a lot of money, Cassie. Don’t sell yourself short.”

  “Does your CFO know about your dyscalculia?”

  He blinked, taking a moment to catch up to the unexpected question. He wasn’t sure why it mattered, but given how intensely she was studying his face, she seemed to really care about the answer. “Yes,” he said, swallowing the bitter saliva that flooded his mouth. “We were friends from university. I was a literature major, if you can believe it. Carl was a friend of my roommate. He was always playing the stock market, but he never did very well. I gave him some advice one day, and we figured out pretty quickly that we made a good team. I could pick the companies, and he was good with the logistics of the money. Things kind of snowballed from there. He always covered for me—or so I thought. He and my VP are the only ones at the company who know about me.”

  “Right.” Cassie nodded, and her eyes narrowed. “And this is all happening in Muskoka. Up north. On an island.”

  Another abrupt change of topic that made him a beat late in answering. “Yeah. Next Thursday through Saturday—too close to Christmas?” They’d be back in Toronto just under a week before the holiday. He hoped she didn’t have travel plans. Normal people spent holidays with people they loved. It was the one thing he didn’t really have an argument for.

  She ignored the question. “So there will be stars.”

  “I guess—assuming it’s clear.”

  She stuck her hand out. “It’s a deal.”

  Chapter Five

  Fifty thousand dollars. Holy…shit. Fifty grand was enough to justify a non-pasta curse. Cassie couldn’t stop replaying that evening as she prepared garnishes the next night at Edward’s. The trip, his bombshell revelation of dyscalculia, the fact that she was going to help him. But mostly the crazy surge of electricity between them when they shook hands on the deal. He’d been in her apartment for nearly thirty minutes before that handshake, enough time for her body to tune in to his every move. It started in earnest when she was mixing his second drink. When he’d told her about the dyscalculia, it felt like she was getting her first glimpse of something real about him—something about who he was, not just what he did or how much money he had. She’d had to stop in her tracks and take a sustaining breath, because in a split second she’d gone from wary over having a near stranger in her apartment to desperately wanting that near stranger to throw her down on the bed and have his way with her. So by the time they’d finally touched, even a simple handshake had the power to set off a five-alarm fire inside her.

  A fire that had been doused when the handshake was followed by a speech about how they had to keep things professional. How he didn’t screw around with employees. He didn’t do relationships at all, actually, he’d said. And he was right. It wasn’t a good idea to spend their working relationship sneaking off into alleys—or forests, or whatever the Muskoka equivalent was. Still, she’d be lying if she didn’t cop to a tiny bit of disappointment. He didn’t screw around with employees. Yet she got the feeling that Jack Winter did whatever the heck he wanted to do.

  And if he “didn’t screw around with employees,” it meant he was done with her.
Her cheeks heated. Had he not liked what he…encountered last time? Ugh. It didn’t bear thinking about because all that would happen is she would die from embarrassment. Meanwhile, there were limes to zest. And fifty thousand dollars to earn.

  The ping of an incoming text drew her attention, and she leaned over to eyeball her phone.

  Getting you business cards. Don’t know your last name.

  Ha! Just went to show how foolhardy this whole venture was. She dried her hands on a towel before picking up her phone.

  James.

  The return text pinged back immediately.

  You want to be “Cassie?” Is it short for anything?

  Cassidy.

  As in Butch and the Sundance Kid?

  As in David Cassidy.

  ???

  She paused. Well, it’s not like it was a secret. As if anything about Laura could ever be kept discreet anyway, even if she’d wanted to.

  Partridge Family. That’s what happens when you’re the spawn of a woman who was a tween in the 70s.

  OK, Cassidy James, senior director of finance, I’ll stop by the bar tonight so we can begin plotting.

  Well, it’s not like she could tell him not to come. He was sort of her boss now, right?

  Great, but my best friend is going to be here too.

  She paused, trying to think what to say about Danny. It was almost as bad as trying to explain Laura. Well, he’d find out soon enough anyway.

  But only early on—he’ll want to go out later.

  He?

  Gay.

  Gah! She’d pressed send before she could think better of it. How stupid was she? It’s not like Jack was jealous, so why was she rushing to assure him that Danny was gay?

  Limes! Zesting! And if there was time before the bar got busy, she’d brought along some of her old accounting textbooks—before she’d settled on the actuary thing, she’d thought maybe accounting was the way to go, so she’d taken a few classes. To Jack it might be all numbers, but just because she was good at trigonometry didn’t mean she knew the first thing about his world of corporate balance sheets and high finance.

  …

  It was funny to think of Cassie as a person with friends. A stupid sentiment, Jack realized, but in his encounters with her she’d seemed so…self-contained. Whether she was standing in the center of the large bar at Edward’s or in the middle of her tiny apartment—or against a brick wall while he put his hands all over her—she seemed like a universe unto herself.

  But of course she had friends. Normal people did. And Cassie was a nice, normal person. She had a family, too. A dead father and a mother who was expensive—whatever that meant. Okay, so maybe what Cassie really had in the family category was more of a mystery.

  But her friend—the one she’d dubbed her best friend—had to be the tall skinny guy openly staring at him. Dark hair, earrings in both ears, he had a vaguely Goth look. And definitely gay, he thought with a small ping of satisfaction—just like when he’d gotten her one word text.

  As Jack approached, the guy nodded at the empty stool next to him. “You must be Jack.” He wasn’t smiling, wasn’t holding out a hand to shake—nothing. Right. Normal people told stuff to their best friends. An open-hearted girl like Cassie probably told her best friend everything.

  Cassie caught sight of him and came over. “Jack! This is Danny, my—”

  “Ex-boyfriend,” Danny supplied, ignoring Jack’s outstretched hand.

  “Pardon?” Jack shot Cassie a questioning look.

  “Gotta go.” Danny hopped off his stool. He pursed his lips and looked Jack up and down before grudgingly adding, “Nice to meet you.”

  “You’re leaving already?” Cassie asked. Jack didn’t quite like the way her face fell.

  “It’s almost ten. I’m meeting some people.” He leaned over the bar and planted a kiss directly on Cassie’s lips before taking off.

  “I thought you said he was gay.” Jack cleared his throat, trying to rid his voice of the growl that had crept in.

  “He is.”

  “But he said he was your ex-boyfriend.”

  “He’s that, too.” She quirked a little smile. “Things didn’t really work out between us.”

  “Why not?” He tried to keep his tone casual.

  “Um, the part where he’s gay?”

  He barked a relieved laugh.

  “Quiet! It’s embarrassing.”

  “Why? This must have been a long time ago.”

  “High school. But no girl wants to be the one who turns a man against heterosexuality.”

  “Sweetheart, you are capable of getting a man to do many things, but I assure you, turning him gay is not one of them.”

  Well, that was inappropriate. But Cassie just stared at him, mouth ajar. So he whipped out a small silver case and opened it. She picked up one of the cards inside.

  “Oh, so now I’m senior executive director of finance?”

  He shrugged. “It sounded better. Consider it a promotion.”

  She leaned forward, absently running the pad of her thumb back and forth over the edge of the card. “You know, I’ve been thinking.”

  Uh oh.

  “I’m sure you could get someone legitimate to do this for you. Someone qualified.”

  “I want you,” he said, mustering a decisive tone he hoped would shut down this line of conversation.

  “There must be, like, consultants who do this sort of thing.”

  He pressed his lips together. “Oh, and I would hire one to do what? Place the fate of my company in his hands and say, ‘I can’t do math? Please don’t take advantage of me?’”

  “Not everybody’s a crook.” Then she held up a finger as if a rogue thought had just entered her mind. “But on the other hand, I might be a crook. How do you know I’m not?”

  “I trust you.”

  “Why?”

  He didn’t know how to articulate the answer. He was good at reading people. It’s how he’d built the company. This thing with Carl had shaken him to his core, but one mistake out of thousands wasn’t bad. He’d brokered hundreds of deals that had made him millions because he trusted his gut. And his gut told him that Cassidy James, who helped teenagers with their math homework, was a good person.

  “It doesn’t make any sense,” she persisted, drawing him out of his thoughts. “Why me?”

  Because I’ve seen what you look like when you come. Of course, he couldn’t say that, so he settled for, “Let’s just say I feel pretty confident that I know you.” He couldn’t resist a little wink. “If you know what I mean.”

  She turned red to the tips of her ears. Good. End of discussion.

  “Okay, then.” She busied herself wiping up a nonexistent spill. “I need to do some serious prep work, not just sitting in bars talking. I need to learn everything there is to know about Winter Enterprises. When do we leave for the trip?”

  “Thursday morning—a week from yesterday. Early. Back Saturday afternoon. Can you get the time off?”

  “Yep. I’ll need to get someone to cover Thursday and Friday, but I never take vacation, so it shouldn’t be a problem. A lot of people owe me.”

  “What about Saturday? I can’t guarantee what time we’ll be back.”

  “I don’t work weekends. Weekends are for homework, usually.”

  “But your semester is over? You were taking a final exam a few days ago.”

  “Yes, so it’s perfect, really. But what about you? What about Carl? I assume he can’t know about any of this.”

  “That’s right. Carl can’t know.” Jack heard the menace in his tone, which was uncalled for because it’s not like Cassie would ever cross paths with Carl. Still, he’d been delinquent. He should probably make her sign a nondisclosure agreement. Instead he settled for, “Sorry. It’s just that no one can know about this. The office closes for two weeks at Christmas, so no one at the company will know I’m on a trip. And Cassie—” He laid his hand on her forearm and had to hold himself back from ti
ghtening it like a vise— “You have to promise you’ll keep everything you know—and everything you’re going to learn—to yourself.”

  She nodded. “I promise.”

  It was enough for him. Maybe it shouldn’t have been, but it was. He shoved back from the bar. “Meet me at the office tomorrow at two.”

  “Which is where?” she called after him.

  He grinned. For the first time in a long time, he felt like the Wexler deal might be salvageable. “Check your business card.”

  Chapter Six

  Winter Enterprises was located on the forty-ninth floor of the Lakefront Centre in Toronto’s high-rise studded financial district. A few floors shy of the top, but high enough that Cassie was pretty darn impressed. The security guard only glanced at her as she strode purposefully toward the bank of elevators. With any luck the outfit she’d bought this morning—fake it till you make it—would not only help convince bystanders she could do this, it would also help convince herself.

  Her heart pounded as she made the long, silent ride up. This was going to make everything feel a lot more real. This was going to be Jack Winter, bazillionaire, in his natural habitat. As at ease as he’d seemed in her apartment—or with his head between her thighs, for goodness’ sake—this was where he came from.

  She hadn’t texted him that she was on her way, but as the doors opened into a dark reception area, she wondered if maybe she should have. The elevator was well lit—a little too well lit, she thought as she stared at her reflection on the endless ride up, ruthlessly scrutinizing her face. Sometimes she thought the freckles were cute, sometimes they were way too Little Orphan Annie.

  Her new three-inch black patent leather pumps—pretty hot if she did say so herself—clicked on the marble floor as she walked past an astonishing collection of what seemed to be original art. Just as she approached the reception desk, a head popped out from behind a corner that must lead back to the offices. She grinned. Then, as she realized the head did not belong to Jack, she reared back, almost tripping in the unfamiliar heels.

  “May I help you?”