The Billionaire Bargain 3 (8 page)

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.

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 would 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.