Chapter Twenty-Two
Reed caught the whites of Sasha’s eyes as they walked into the lobby of the hotel. She slipped into the hotel bar while he and Carl, Trina’s bodyguard, walked the women up to Trina’s suite.
Lori had made it clear she needed to talk with Trina alone before the meeting with the board. Once the three of them were in the room, he made his excuses and made his way to the hotel bar.
“Here to buy me a drink?” Sasha asked, tipping her amber-filled glass in his direction.
Reed waited until the bartender moved away to get him his beer. Watered down liquor was a better idea than anything hard he might be tempted to slam. “You work for Petrov.” It wasn’t a question.
Her sigh might be seductive to a man who didn’t already feel the need to protect another one.
“I work for the highest bidder, just like you.”
“I’m not like you.”
“Which is why you’re down here talking to me instead of watching over your woman.”
His back teeth started to strain under the pressure he placed on them. “The man hiring you is a murderer.” Or so his research pointed to.
“You assume too much. And even if the man you believe I’m working for is in fact a person who reduces the population by one or two, remember, politicians start wars. So please, leave your self-righteousness at the door.”
He hated that she might be right about that. Hated even more that this woman knew who had hired him. “Why are you here?”
“Same reason you are.”
He doubted that.
She leaned in. “The difference is, I have what I need.” Sasha lifted her glass. “Cheers.” After finishing her drink, she offered a half smile, placed money on the counter, and walked out of the bar.
He finished his drink and reached into his pocket.
The electronic skimmer captured her credit card. “Gotcha.”
Lori leaned over him, fully dressed.
Reed lay under the sheets, completely naked, and grabbed a handful of her butt as she kissed him good-bye. “You sure you don’t need me to go with you?” he asked.
“Carl is driving, and there is plenty of security in the Everson offices.”
If he didn’t have a goal for when she was gone, he wouldn’t allow her to blow him off. “Is Avery going with you?”
“Yeah. She is going to try her hand at a little spying.”
He stiffened. “Oh?”
Lori gave him a quick kiss as she lifted her blanketing frame from his. “She’s going to try and score a tour of the offices and talk to some of the employees to gauge morale.”
He had a hard time seeing Avery doing anything other than flirting with the sexier members of the male staff. “Is there a question about morale?”
“Anytime management shifts in any way, people worry.”
He wanted to ask if Lori thought Trina would take a role in the company but decided to wait for that information. “I suppose that’s true.” He shifted up in bed. Lori’s gaze traveled to where the sheet rested against his hips.
His cock twitched.
She turned on a heel with a groan.
Someone knocked on the door.
“Saved by the bell,” she said, laughing.
“I can wait right here, like this, until you get back.”
Two steps and she was back over him, her lips on his, her hand resting quite comfortably in his lap.
The knock sounded again, with Carl calling her name.
Reed bit her tongue before breaking off their kiss. “Go to work, woman.”
She wiped her smiling lips before walking out of the room.
The second the door closed, he tossed back the sheets, pulled on his shorts, and went to work.
Okay you Russian spy, where did you hide the bug?
In silence, he started at the window and systematically searched. A tiny set of tools helped him open up vents, disassemble lamps, the back of the TV.
Nothing.
Leaving the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door, he took his tools, crossed the hall, and picked the lock of Trina’s room.
Without saying a word, he started his search again. Only this time he started with where he’d place a bug and worked out. He was putting a lamp back together when his eyes landed on the sculptured art on the wall. Texans loved their cowboys, and the art in Trina’s room had a three-dimensional scene with a cowboy roping cattle on the wall across from the bed.
Reed ran his hand along the back of the metal art, and then found it.
The tiny little device with a mic shoved between the neck of one artsy cow and a rope.
Instead of destroying the device, Reed took his time and searched the rest of the room, and then moved into Avery’s and started again. It was close to noon before he slipped out of Avery’s room and back into his own.
If there was one thing Trina felt she deserved an A in over the past year, it was in her ability to pretend she belonged where she knew damn well she didn’t.
Andrea walked them around the executive offices, introducing her to a few people as they passed by.
Several offered their condolences on Fedor as well as Alice. Both of which infused a level of guilt in Trina’s gut. It didn’t feel right to have people feeling sorry for her when she and Fedor were never destined for a long and happy marriage.
Instead of dwelling on the facts, Trina accepted the sympathy and channeled it toward the genuine heartbreak she did feel about the entire situation. The reality was, the life she’d been leading before Fedor’s death was now completely gone. While she might be able to start her own company to help out her fellow flight attendants like she’d planned, the chances of her ever waiting on anyone, in the air or on the ground, weren’t likely.
“How active was Alice in the company?” Trina asked as they settled into the boardroom an hour before the meeting’s scheduled time.
“She was here several times a month before she became ill.”
Diane had joined them and sat across from Trina and Lori. They’d dropped Avery off with an executive secretary who didn’t seem to mind babysitting her. It helped that the secretary was six two and looked like he could bench-press her.
“What did she do?” Lori asked.
“A little of everything. She spent time in meetings with the engineers, marketing, public relations, you name it. She wanted to know a little about everything.”
“And she did,” Diane finished for her sister.
“Do either of you have a role in the day-to-day operations here?” Trina asked.
“We don’t sit at desks and crunch numbers or decide where we should be selling the oil, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“So what is your role? I know I’m probably sounding naive.”
“The company belongs to us. Collectively, we are the CEOs of Everson Oil. And now you hold one-third of that. The three of us make the final decisions in the hiring or firing of the executives. We only need a majority, so two out of the three of us can make the decisions, which is probably why Alice felt it wasn’t a bad company decision to leave this to you.”
“So you could stop me from becoming a part of this if you wanted to?” Trina asked.
Andrea and Diane looked at each other. “Voting out the third CEO is not possible,” Diane told her.
“This keeps the company moving forward if in fact one of us had a different goal.”
“That makes perfect sense,” Lori chimed in. She turned toward Trina. “Companies that have been in existence as long as Everson Oil have many contingencies to keep any one person from destroying it.”
“Everson Oil is responsible for the livelihood of thousands of families, both here in Texas and scattered throughout the States. Our father understood that and took the responsibility for our employees to heart.” Andrea tapped her chest. “I spend my time here talking with the different department heads and our staff from all levels. I will often know of a problem brewing before it’s brought up in a board meeting.”
“And I have spent the last few years working with the lobbyists and politicians about pipelines and alternative fuel.”
“Like solar?” Trina asked.
“Solar, wind, methane . . . we have so many renewable resources to tap into in the United States that go underutilized, it’s staggering,” Diane said.
“Foreign oil isn’t needed in our country, but there is so much political pull tugging on all ends we may never see a day when we’re completely independent.”
“Is that the goal of Everson Oil?” Trina asked.
“The goal of every company is to make money and increase shareholder value.”
“And who are the shareholders?”
Lori grinned. “You three.”
“Oh.”
“It’s not a public company,” Diane said. “But some of the companies we’ve spun off are partially.”
Trina’s head was going to explode. “You have spin-off companies?”
“Everson Solar, Everson Turbines. The three of us hold controlling interest, but we’ve made the companies partially public to offer incentives to our employees.”
“Which keeps our employees invested in the greater good of the overall operations.”
Trina blinked a few times. “I’m not afraid of saying I’m overwhelmed.”
Andrea reached out and patted her hand. “It’s a lot to fall into.”
“Like a rabbit hole,” Trina sighed.
“Which is why you can do as much, or as little, as you want to do with the company. Andrea and I can make decisions without you. We don’t expect that you have any idea about what we do here.”
Trina leaned back and looked around the room. “For the first time in weeks, I’ve been able to talk about Fedor and Alice without feeling like my stomach was going to drop through my feet.”
Diane had Alice’s smile. “Concentrating on what you can control, and not the things you can’t, has a way of keeping us focused and moving forward.”
“That sounds like something Alice would have said,” Trina told her.
“She stole that line from me,” Diane confessed with a wink. Her eyes glossed over with an unshed tear.
It was time for Trina to reach out and comfort the sisters.
“Truth is,” Andrea started, “teaching you the ropes might be exactly what we need to move forward, too.”
“You can stay in Alice’s house, check things out . . . see if this is something you want to do,” Diane suggested.
Trina cocked her head to the side, looked at Lori. “Is there a house in Texas?”
“If you want to call it a house. I seem to remember something about twenty-five acres and several horses.”
“Holy cow.”
“No cows,” Andrea teased.
“Our sister didn’t care for New York. She only went there in the end to be close to Fedor.”
Andrea lightened the mood. “The weather here sucks, not gonna lie. But hey, we have air conditioning.”
“And when the power goes out,” Diane continued, “we have all the resources needed to power it back up.” She spread her arms wide, as if the company singlehandedly took care of all the coolness they’d need to survive the heat.
Suddenly the world didn’t feel so dim. “I need to close up the house in New York.”
Andrea and Diane chuckled.
“So you’re in?”
Trina glanced at Lori. “I don’t see any reason for you to walk the dark halls of Fedor’s estate if you don’t.”
And just like that, Trina changed her life once again. “I’m in.”
Diane stood. “Great. Let me invite the rest of the board in.”
“Oh, God.”
Andrea patted her on the back. “Most of them are Texans. Treating women with respect is way high on their priority list.”
Trina’s stomach rolled. “You better not be lying to me.”
Diane opened the door, and the room flooded with boots, hats, and a whole lot of testosterone.