The Meeting
Lucy
Dante Saint James had the most beautiful penmanship. I stood at his side, looking over his shoulder as he struck at the contract, marking things out, adding words, slashing whole paragraphs of legalese that surely took the lawyers and MBAs sitting at the conference room table weeks to draft. I watched as his pen slaughtered sentences, circled numbers, and added question marks.
He stopped; his pen poised over a line of text, and shook his head.
As he continued to write he said, “And whoever typed up paragraph eight, section seven—” Slash. “You need to brush up on your grammar.”
A thin, bookish type at the other end of the table turned a lovely shade of crimson. Mr. Worley: the owner of the company Dante is in the process of taking over.
Do they still call them hostile takeovers?
Dante does them so often, and so quietly, the only thing hostile about them is his pen… and, of course him.
He looked absolutely enraged as he slashed at the document.
I felt myself fall into a mesmerized state, watching his long, strong fingers grip the pen, and hold down the contract.
Oh, those hands… I couldn’t imagine what those hands could do to me…
I mean…
What they could do to someone.
Stop it!
Stop it now!
I’m working!
I can’t be drooling over my goddamn boss!
No matter how freaking sexy he is…
Or how kissable his full, curvaceous lips look…
Or how broad his muscular shoulders are, especially in that dark blue Burberry suit…
Or how thick and black and silky looking his hair is…
Oh no…
Last page!
He was on the last page. Two more slashes, and then his initials, and he gave the thing a disgusted growl.
I backed up two steps, giving him room.
He still had work to do.
He stood, buttoned that gorgeous Burberry suit, picked up the contract and then threw it across the table, where it landed with a clap like thunder before the bookish looking owner of Worley Technologies.
He waited for Mr. Worley to pry his eyes from the contract and to look him in the eye.
“There are a hundred and fifteen language errors, fifty-seven numerical errors, a plethora of ambiguous passages, one typo…” Dante paused, glaring at the man. “And some ridiculous clauses that will need to be redacted to my liking by opening of business tomorrow, or I will terminate this takeover.”
He glowered at the still sitting, and rather shocked looking, CEO.
“Am I understood?” Dante said, acid in his voice.
Mr. Worley stood and nodded emphatically. He was visibly shaking.
“Yes, Mr. Saint James. I will make sure every change you have… that you have asked for, is carried out.”
Dante smiled.
It was his great white shark smile.
A baring of perfectly straight, white teeth—with cold, dead eyes glinting at you from under his wickedly sculpted eyebrows.
It was terrifying.
I was glad he had business to work out the urges and hostilities of his dark side on… otherwise he’d probably be a serial killer, or an assassin.
“Good,” he said, “I look forward to it.”
And with that he turned, strode like—well, like the kind of man that always got exactly what he wanted, whenever he wanted it—to the front of the conference room and into his personal elevator.
I moved with him, so used to the velocity at which he moved that speed walking in three inch heels was second nature.
He was silent until the elevator door slid shut, and then he said, “Are the people from Sola here yet?”
“Waiting in conference room twelve,” I said, flicking through my iPad mini. “As are Mr. Foster from Henderson International—conference room three—and the co-CEOs of Shore House Incorporated—conference room nine.”
That’s four takeovers set up, proposed, or closed, and all before lunch.
I had no idea how he did it. I needed my iPad, caffeine, and Monster Rojo Tea just to keep his schedule straight.
“Lunch?” he inquired.
“Harding from PR wants to talk to you—”
He sighed. “He wants to talk to me about the interview slated for this evening.”
I nodded. “He thinks it’s a mis—”
He looked at me with those fathomless blue eyes. When he was angry, like now, they were light as frost.
I liked the warmer blue they had when he was happy. Like a summer sky at dawn.
Ugh!
I was thinking in flowery prose: I so needed to pound out some chapters on my lunch hour.
I gulped and took a breath.
Say it!
It’s not just what Harding thinks… it’s what you think!
“He thinks the woman interviewing you is biased, that her track record is riddled with sensational exposés, and that she’s trying to get you to…”
Dante closed his eyes and I could see his lips twitch.
Damn it!
“He thinks she’s trying to fuck you.” There, I said it. I can say the f-word. “In bed and in her editorial.”
The breath he let out through his nose could have been a laugh.
“If she plays her cards right, she very well may get to fuck me…” He turned and smiled at me. “In my bed… and in her editorial.”
I took a breath, ready to try and get him to change his mind.
“It’s not my first time being interviewed, Lucy,” he cut me off, softer than he usually spoke—to anyone. “Or for being seduced by a reporter.”
“But—”
“No matter what Ms. Rampling has planned, she will not get anything out of me that I don’t want her to.”
Charlotte Rampling was a columnist for Commons Magazine. She was sneaky, vicious and—from the many photos I’d found online—a knockout. Long, silky blonde hair, even longer legs, a model level face, a stunning smile, and breasts that were not only huge, but seemed to defy gravity.
I hated her, and I hadn’t even met her.
Part of that may have been because she was—most assuredly—going to get to… to sleep with my boss. But more than anything, I just had this feeling—call it intuition—that somehow this woman was going to cause Dante a hell of a lot of trouble.
I took another breath, ready to plead with Dante not to go to dinner—or fuck… jeez, where did that come from?—that woman. But just then the elevator chimed its soft, melodic chord, and the elevator doors opened to conference room twelve: the Sola people.