At the Billionaire’s Wedding (24 page)

“You should try working in a restaurant,” she said lightly. “I’m free between two and four, then again after midnight.”

“So if I ask you out for coffee at three, you’ll be available?”

“Are you asking?” she asked coyly, batting her eyelashes and trying not to blush while she hoped he said
yes
.

“Just checking.” His hands had relocated to her hips, just above where her skirt was bunched up. “Anything else you’d like to know?”

She could ask anything, she realized; he was telling her without asking similar questions in return. He was also enormously aroused, yet hadn’t made a move, even though the thought had crossed her mind—more than once—that if she took off her underwear, they could have sex right here and now on this chair. But he wanted to get to know her. He’d brought her food and flowers, which counted as a proper date. Pippa had said it didn’t matter if he only wanted a wedding hookup, but if it turned out he wanted more … something like a real relationship…

“So you don’t have to work today?” she asked, feeling reckless and a bit wild.

His smile was edged with promise. “Today I am blowing off work. Today we’re going to have fun.”

Archer returned to Brampton House in a buoyant mood.

After breakfast, he and Natalie had walked into the village. They bought sandwiches and a bottle of wine at the tiny gourmet shop and ate a picnic lunch on the grass in a nearby park. He told her about the wedding, including the grouse-hunting bachelor party he had skipped that morning, and she told him about her family’s restaurant, like the time a diner wanted to propose and put the engagement ring in the frosting atop his girlfriend’s cake, but didn’t pop the question before she ate it, ring and all. Natalie had decided to get a cat, based on her time with Oliver, and Archer regaled her with stories of his mother’s various cats until she laughed so hard she cried. She teased him about his love of dessert by describing the cakes she’d baked recently, which were all stored in Primrose Cottage’s walk-in wine cooler. He was entranced. When his phone beeped a reminder of his business call, he was astonished to realize they had talked all day. He walked her home and said good-bye with a kiss so hot, he very nearly forgot that he had to leave.

He jogged up the stairs to his room, finally beginning to wonder what Jack wanted to talk about. His boss had e-mailed the previous night to set it up and had only said it was in regard to funding for Brightball. Archer had almost stopped thinking about that client entirely, between Duke’s tabloid trouble and Natalie. But if Brightball finally had some funding, Jack would probably want him to revise the financing documents. For once Archer planned to defer it. He could work on the plane home, but until then he was going to keep having fun.

After the warm day outside, his hotel room felt lonely and dark. There was no smell of chocolate baking, and he couldn’t see Primrose Cottage. He even missed Oliver the cat jumping up and trying to lie on his keyboard. With no Wi-Fi, he could only review the notes and documents he’d already downloaded to his laptop, catch up on his billing, and wait for Jack.

The call was almost a half hour late. Sunk in thought, watching clouds drift across the twilight sky as he wondered if Natalie would still be awake after this call ended, Archer jumped when the phone on his desk rang, the muted trill loud in the quiet room.

“Archer,” boomed Jack’s voice over the line. “Hope we aren’t keeping you from the bachelor party or anything.”

“I wouldn’t skip that for you,” he said. Just for Natalie.

The other man laughed. “That’s right, you’re on vacation.”

Archer cast a jaundiced eye at the billing worksheet open on his laptop. He’d logged over thirty-five hours since setting foot on English soil. Some vacation—aside from Natalie’s cooking, anyway. “If you say so. Is Bill there?”

“Hi Archer,” piped up Bill, his voice vibrating with suppressed eagerness. “Big day, huh?”

“No, the wedding is this weekend.” But somehow he knew Bill wasn’t asking about the wedding.

Bill just laughed.

“The good news is that we’ve got a funding offer,” said Jack. “A fantastic one. We’ve been working out details with the investors this week. I’ll let them introduce themselves, but I set up this call to hammer out the main terms. Hold on a moment and I’ll get them on the line.”

Archer raised his eyebrows, doodling a string of dollar signs and a large question mark on his notebook. Who was this investor? Brightball had enormous potential, but so far had fallen short on convincing the venture funds to chip in more than a pittance.

“Hey there, I’m Rick Garner,” said a new voice. The name rang a bell, but Archer couldn’t put his finger on it. “Glad to join you all; I’m looking forward to working with everyone. I’ll be the point person on Brightball.”

“Good morning,” said a voice with a faint German accent. “Dietrich Metzer here.”

Well, shit. The bell rang crystal clear this time, even before Rick Garner added, “And our principal will be sitting in on the call today.”

“Good morning, gentlemen. Hello, Archer,” came a rich, genial voice. It was a movie star voice, the kind of voice hired to record commercials for expensive luxury cars. It was a compelling voice, one that could persuade you to pay ten percent above your absolute price ceiling and still make you feel like you got a bargain. It was a voice that could tell a woman with third-stage breast cancer that she was being divorced, and make her think everything was her fault.

Archer flung his pencil at the wall, not caring that it left a black dot on the wallpaper. “Hello, Dad.”

“Nice of you to join us, Mr. Quinn,” said Jack.

“Quinntillion is investing twenty-seven million in the company,” piped up Bill, sounding far too pleased with himself.

Archer smiled grimly. So this was what had got Bill so excited. Too bad he had no idea what he’d gotten himself into. “When did this come about?”

“All in the last week. Jack led the negotiations.” Bill paused. “I thought he would let you know.”

“Archer’s overseas at the moment,” said Jack quickly. “What with the time difference and all, I just hadn’t found time to bring him up to speed.”

“No sweat. Well, as you can imagine we’ve got quite a bit of stuff to talk about…” And Bill plunged into the terms of the new investment. Archer let Jack do most of the talking, just as he intended to let Jack do most of the work. This was obviously Jack’s doing; if he’d wanted Archer’s input, he would have asked for it days ago, before Bill became enamored of the idea of Quinntillion money. Ted Quinn was reputed to have the golden touch, after all, and when he invested, he invested big. That didn’t mean he didn’t get something for his money, though; Ted always demanded what he valued most, which was control. No doubt Bill had barely thought past all the ways he could use Quintillion’s money. The full extent of the devil’s bargain he’d made wouldn’t dawn on him until much later, when he found himself eased out the door of the company that was his entire life.

When the call finally ended, Archer hung up, counted to ten, and dialed Jack’s number. “It must be my birthday,” he said in false delight. “You forgot to jump up and shout, ‘Surprise!’”

Jack’s sigh echoed across the Atlantic. “I wasn’t keeping it from you. You’ve just been hard to reach, and I wanted to tell you myself.”

“On the phone with our client listening? Your presentation skills need work.”

“You’ve been gone almost a week,” retorted Jack.

“That doesn’t mean I haven’t been working, and I don’t just mean socializing with our firm’s other clients, as you strongly encouraged me to do.” They both knew Project-TK meant far more to their bottom line than Brightball, at least for the moment.

“To be honest, Archer, I didn’t think I would be the one to get Quinntillion involved in a deal with any of our clients.”

Archer stretched out his legs. He’d put his feet up on the bed a while ago, about the time he decided he was done working—for the rest of his trip. “And if you’d asked me, I would have advised you against it.”

“Why the hell would you do that? Helping clients connect with venture capitalists is part of our service.”

“Yes, isn’t it?” He laughed, a little mockingly. “Except I know how Quinntillion operates. You’ll see what I mean when you get their term sheet.” During the call, Ted’s attorney, Dietrich Metzer—who looked and sounded like a nerdy Swiss banker but who was in reality a rapacious, soulless vampire—had said almost nothing. Archer knew that was pure deception. He’d worked at Quinntillion when he was a teenager, and had seen in person how coldly Metzer would cut someone out of their life’s work if it led to a bigger payout for Quinntillion.

“They’re going to elevate Brightball from marginal start-up to the leading innovator in optical technology.”

“Yeah, and in the process they’re going to eat away at Bill’s control.” Some inventors were good with that. They started a company, got it running, sold out, and took their payout to start something newer and more exciting. But Bill lived and breathed Brightball. Archer didn’t think he’d want to cede control to Quinntillion or anyone else.

This time Jack’s sigh was exasperated. “But that’s why we have you, Archer, to look out for Bill’s rights. He needs the money, you know how to protect him from Quinntillion’s more outrageous demands, everyone will be happy. Why are you acting like I pissed in your coffee?”

He put back his head and stared out the window. Natalie’s house lay directly on the other side of that hill.
I don’t like lawyers
, echoed her voice in his mind. At the moment, he didn’t like lawyers, either, beginning with Jack Harper.

“Jack, did you bring me on just to get business with Quinntillion?”

His boss chuckled. “It didn’t hurt, being Ted Quinn’s son.”

All right; fair enough. He’d suspected as much, although no one at Harper Millman had ever brought up his father. But saying it out in the open had a strangely freeing effect on Archer’s thoughts. The vague discontent he’d felt for the last few months suddenly crystalized, and what he wanted became clear.

“You should have done more diligence.” Archer sat up and flipped his notebook closed. “If you had, you would have known that this was the first time in six years I’ve spoken to my father, about business or anything else.” If Jack had asked, Archer would also have told him that he’d never try to steer a client toward a deal with Quinntillion, and that he’d regard any such deal as if it had been made by a hostile firm. Not that it mattered now. “I assume you’ve already talked to Bill about this conflict, and he’s still willing to have me working on this?”

“Absolutely!”

“Then do me one favor from here on: no more bullshit surprises, okay?”

“Fine.”

“I also want to form my own tech practice within the firm,” Archer went on. “Duke Austen has some big ideas in the works. I want to take Elle Williams and create a dedicated team to bring them out. Some of these ideas will generate work for years to come, and I need more than spotty time from an ever-changing variety of associates.”

“A tech practice?” Jack sounded doubtful. “I’d have to run it by the other partners…”

“Do that,” said Archer, his gaze moving to the hill outside his window. Natalie was probably getting ready for bed by now. Coming to England had been an awesome idea, even if it led to him working with his father. “But if he doesn’t approve, I’ll be leaving the firm. And Duke Austen will come with me.”

“Whoa,” exclaimed Jack. “That’s blackmail!”

That’s the Quinn way
, Archer thought. “Not really. Just bald facts. Let me know when I get back to Boston.”

“I’m sure we can work out a plan that will suit everyone,” Jack began, but Archer was done.

“I have to go, Jack. Good talking to you.” He hung up the phone and checked his watch. It was too late to go back to Primrose Cottage, so he went to the unofficial hotel bar, the back patio. Piers Prescott walked by, headed to the pool with a towel over his shoulder.

“Making up for missing the drunken shooting party this morning?” Piers nodded at Archer’s glass of scotch.

He took a swallow. “Nope. Celebrating telling off my boss.”

Piers’s eyebrows shot up. “Why?”

“For manipulating me into working with my father.”

“Manipulating?” Piers frowned. “What the hell?”

Archer drank some more scotch, feeling better and better. “You know my father; he’s all his reputation cracks him up to be. I haven’t spoken to him in years. But tonight, my boss admitted he hired me partly to get business from dear old Ted, which he’s just done—and I have to work on the deal. So I told him to go fuck himself.”

“Literally?” There was surprise, but also a tinge of envy in the other man’s voice.

“More figuratively.” Archer imagined Jack Harper’s face during their conversation. “But he got my meaning.”

Piers Prescott stared at him with a very odd expression.

Archer grinned. “If you’re wondering, it feels fantastic.”

“Right,” murmured Piers.

“Archer!” He turned to see Duke striding across the patio. “More trouble with the magazine deal.”

Of course there was. Archer didn’t even care this time. He felt like nailing someone’s hide to the wall, and a sleazy tabloid hack was as good a choice as any. He thunked his glass down on the bar. “Then let’s go crucify the bastard.”