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Mostly this meant burying her in special projects and outdated financial paperwork, but I’m not going to lie, one of my fondest exploits during this whole endeavor was the morning when I kept her from catching Grant with a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.

* * *

It was time. I gripped Grant’s hand tightly as we waited in the wings, the lights dimming in the ballroom except for the ones over the stage. Butterflies performed complicated aerial maneuvers in my stomach. This was it. No more preparation, no more hedging of bets. This was when it was all going to go down.

A rustle of silk, and Portia came around the corner in ivory heels and a sleek dress that looked as though it had traveled here through time from the 1920s. I tried to pull my hand back, but Grant held on to it tightly. He wasn’t interested in covering: we were in this together now, and he didn’t care if Portia—or anyone else—knew it.

She gave a barely perceptible start as she surveyed the way Grant and I were standing so close together, but she recovered almost instantly, favoring the pair of us with an icy smile.

“Well, isn’t this a fairytale ending for you both,” she said through tight lips. “Cinderella has won the heart of the prince after all. Well, they do say you can’t teach good taste.”

Grant squeezed my hand gently. “We have nothing to say you, Portia,” he told her. “We don’t speak to traitors.”

“So melodramatic,” she said with a sniff. “I do hope for your sake that’s not the line you’re taking in your speech tonight. Investors respond so poorly to theatrics.”

“Whereas you are totally one hundred percent honest and authentic,” I butted in sarcastically.

“Oh dear, you two are meant for each other,” Portia said, surveying us with cool disdain. “It’s simply business, children. Nothing personal.”

She breezed past us and swept onstage like a super-villain taking her place before the cowed and subjugated masses, and the crowd fell silent.

“Well, that went well,” Grant muttered.

“Don’t worry,” I said. I kissed his cheek. “There’s still her whole speech. She has plenty of time to alienate everybody. Hell, she can usually do that in thirty seconds without even trying.”

Grant tried to smile, but it looked a little pained. I wrapped my arm around him, willing us both to make each other strong.

Onstage, Portia favored the audience with a brittle smile as though she were a dentist trying to assure them that this wouldn’t hurt, not one little bit. The first few rows flinched back slightly.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Portia said, “my case is plain.”

Behind her, the screen flickered to life, showing a picture of Grant’s grandfather. I could feel Grant’s pulse spike as his hold on my hand suddenly became a death grip.

“The founder of this company was a true original. With a firm grasp of economic theory, the marketplace, and the importance of hard work, he took raw materials and transformed them into something beautiful: Devlin Media Corp.”

The screen transitioned to the next slide, another grainy black and white picture, this time of the Devlin Media Corp headquarters when they had originally been constructed in the early 20^th century—not as tall as they were today, but imposing and impressive with their engraved columns and Art Deco stained glass windows nonetheless.

“Perhaps it sounds strange to you that I should call a company beautiful,” Portia said. “After all, it is not a word one usually associates with strength. But consider the great white shark: a graceful, merciless, ruthless engine intent on seeking out its prize. It does precisely what it was engineered to do, with speed and efficiency, with no apology to those too slow or unworthy to avoid it or get out of its way. Is it not beautiful? Is there no poetry in it, no art?”

“What the hell kind of strategy is this?” I hissed in a strangled whisper to Grant. “Does she think this is a poetry open mic at a coffee shop?”

“She’s playing on their emotions,” he muttered back through gritted teeth. “Building them up to make them feel like apex predators, then serving them up a nice plump bit of prey they can rip apart until it bleeds to death.”

I cast my eyes over the audience, and I was disheartened to see that he was right. Many of them were sitting straighter as they took in her words, their eyes starting to shine. If she persuaded too many people, swayed too many of our supporters back over to her side…

“Yes, Devlin Media Corp was once a thing of great beauty,” Portia said. “But we failed in our responsibilities. We grew bloated and complacent.”

The picture behind her changed, showing the company headquarters, but through a dark filter that made the building look dirty, and shot at a bad angle, so that the towers were slightly obscured by the smoke from a fast food restaurant. I silently cursed the Photoshop gods.

“We began to think like a charity instead of a business,” she went on.

The picture changed to show an overweight family of six sitting on a couch, watching a television. I recognized the woman; she was one of the most friendly cafeteria workers we’d ever had. I’d missed her when she’d had to go on leave due to a broken leg, but thanks to her health insurance package, she’d been able to come back to work within a few months. How the hell had Portia gotten a picture of her family? That was slimy as hell.

“We began to throw money at spongers, wastrels, programs that were inessential to the core of our mission, of our purpose.”

Charts went up along the screen, blaring fire engine red lines showing steadily nose-diving profits. Until you looked at the scale, of course, and realized that Portia had manipulated the graph to give an inaccurate impression, but most of the audience was sitting too far away to see how she had labeled the x and y axes, and she rapidly clicked past it anyway, before even the people close to her could have given it much scrutiny.

Especially if their eyes were on her face, which she had now set in an expression of noble determination, her shoulders squared as if she were an Amazon warrior given one final mission for the good of all.

“But Devlin Media Corp can become a thing of beauty again,” Portia said, her voice ringing across the room like a call to battle. “We can once again honor the vision of our founder. We can once again compete in the global marketplace!”

“We never stopped,” I muttered.

“Portia doesn’t want competition,” Grant muttered back. “She just wants to crush everyone else and make a throne out of their skulls. I can’t believe I was so blind!”

I brought his hand to my lips and pressed a kiss to it. “You wanted to believe the best of her. That’s not a crime, or a weakness. That’s just you being a good man.”

“And thanks to my goodness, thousands of people may be about to lose their livelihoods,” Grant said tightly.

Onstage, Portia was in full stride now. “This isn’t a takeover from Pinker Inc. This is a chance to reclaim our company’s birthright! This is a chance to enter into this century, onto this world stage, as a power to be reckoned with!”

She raised her fist as if she were planning to smash all that stood in her way.

“Once we’ve shed the detritus accumulated over the years, our profit margins will soar. Our business will operate at peak efficiency, delivering results that no one can argue with. We will become faster, brighter, better. With the help of Pinker Inc., we will become a giant in this economy, and no one will be able to stop us!”

Thunderous applause greeted this pronouncement, and my stomach dropped down to my shoes. I tried to tune out Portia’s final words as she wrapped things up with more misleading statistics and an analysis that would have gotten thrown out of an Econ 101 course—but that I was still afraid the shareholders would listen to, motivated by her rhetoric and her promise of future profit.

Grant was looking nervous too, and I knew that I had to help him. I took his other hand and pulled him so that he was facing me, not the lying hell-beast onstage.

“Babe.” I tugged at his arms until he looked me in the eye. “Okay, she got a head start. But I know you can turn it around.”

He shook his head, defeat creeping into his posture. “I wish I shared your faith.”

“Hey!” I said. “Listen to me. You are Grant Fucking Devlin. You’ve got a smile that could sell every brand of toothpaste in America, a head of hair that could let a politician get away with slapping a baby, an ass that could make an entire convent of nuns reconsider their life choices—”

Grant was trying not to laugh. “I’m not sure those are the qualities the shareholders are looking for, Lacey.”

“You’re likeable and persuasive, was the point I was making,” I said with a little glare to make the ‘Lacey is giving you a motivational speech, so shut up’ subtext more apparent.

“More importantly, you have two other qualities: a head and a heart. All this research we’ve been doing, you know this company backwards and forwards, not just the flashy surface stuff like Portia does. And you love this company—which is something Portia the Robot From Planet Cut-Throat will never understand. And that’s why she’ll lose, because she’s fighting for money, but you…you’re fighting what you believe in. And that makes you stronger than she could ever dream of.”

Grant reached out and gently stroked a strand of hair over my ear. My breath caught in my throat.

“Thank you, Lacey,” he said quietly. “I don’t know what I would do without you.”

For a second, time seemed to stand still. There was only him, and me, and the look that passed between us.

Then I couldn’t resist making one more point.

“Plus, you have an accent,” I added. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Americans? We go crazy for accents. Especially if they’re vaguely British.”

Grant got a pained look on his face. “I’m Australian, it’s entirely different—”

“I know, I know, you’re a former penal colony, you’re all descended from convicts, it’s very sexy, now go! They’re calling your name!” I gave him a little push towards the stage where the moderator was announcing the next presentation.

Grant leaned forward and pressed a kiss to my lips, passionate and full of the promise of more to come.

And then he was striding onstage, all nervousness shed like an ill-fitting coat, and my heart began to beat so rapidly I could have been mistaken for a hummingbird.

This was it. Everything that happened from here on out would be riding on this moment.

The crowd knew it too, and a hush greeted his arrival.

Grant looked out over the soaring crowd that controlled his destiny, and that of his company, tonight—and gave a sheepish grin.

“Hey, guys?” he called up to the tech booth. “Can you kill the feed to the screens? I’ve changed my mind about what I want to say.”

Wait, what? We had been working on this speech up to the last minute—if he just chucked it and—

Breathe, Lacey. You love this man. Now, you have to trust him too.

The screen behind Grant went dark, and the only light was the spotlight shining down on him. It should have made him look small. But somehow, Grant seemed to absorb the light and radiate it out from himself even stronger, as if an angel had descended from the heavens to walk among mere mortals.

Grant strolled to the edge of the stage. All eyes were on him, wondering what his next move would be. He spoke conversationally, barely raising his voice, and yet it rang clearly through the complete silence as his audience listened, rapt.

“Ms. Smith’s done some pretty fancy talking just now about the numbers. And you know, I originally planned to come out here and explain to you just how misleading and wrong her numbers are. But the plain fact is, well, I’ve already explained to most of you about the different equations Ms. Smith and I are using, and if you aren’t convinced that she’s feeding you a pack of lies yet, well, I’m not sure you’ll ever be.

“So instead, let me tell you a story.”

Grant flashed a winning smile at the crowd, and though they were in darkness, I was pretty sure a goodly portion of them were melting into their seats in response.

“This story begins with a young, spoiled prince, set loose by his parents to wander about his kingdom in search of adventures. Picture, if you will, a towheaded boy of six, wearing a sailor suit two sizes too big for him and an ego it would take him the rest of his life to grow into.”

Polite chuckles followed his description. Mine was one of them.

“His kingdom? The headquarters of Devlin Media Corp. Now, when I said that his parents set him loose in search of adventure, I should have mentioned that he wasn’t supposed to venture beyond the floor where his parents’ offices were. Soon enough, however, the foolhardy and arrogant prince discovered the stairwell, and before you could say ‘once upon a time,’ he was irrevocably lost.

“But just when the young prince was about to give up all hope and start blubbering like a faulty fire hose, he came upon that staple and savior of all fairy tales: a wise and wonderful wizard.” Grant’s eyes misted over with nostalgia, and I swear I could hear the audience sigh along with him. “His name was Louis.

“Like all kindly wizards, Louis wiped my tears and became my guide. He showed me the magic of his work, the secret potions he used to wipe out stains, the secret passageways he took from place to place so as to appear from nowhere as if by magic, in the halls of the great and powerful. That day, I saw the countless ways in which his housekeeping work, though silent and unsung, benefitted the company enormously. That day, I learned the value that each member of Devlin Media Corp holds.

“Because Louis wasn’t the only remarkable person I met that day. I met Beth, a mother of four—three of them with special needs—who not only looked after her family but brought the finest accounting mind the world had ever seen to Devlin Media Corp. There are computers who still make more mistakes than Beth ever did. I met Luke, a war veteran who kept the building safe during the week and volunteered teaching kids to read on the weekend. And countless others.”

I glanced around the room and saw heads nodding, people whispering to each other.

“And Louis explained to me that that was what made the company so great: all these people, all working their hardest to the best of their ability. And they did it for us because we were the embodiment of a dream, of an ideal, of the future they all hoped for. They did it for us because they knew that this was a company that rewarded imagination and innovation and loyalty, a company that saw the value of their contributions and used their work to sculpt a better future for the whole world. They did it for us because they knew they could trust us, because we had trusted them first.

“Ms. Portia Smith would tell you that the glory days of Devlin Media Corp are far behind us. But I tell you that today, we have employees who shine just as brightly, if not more so. Mikayla, our development intern who brings brightness and enthusiasm with the morning coffee. Carl, our IT genius, who gives us not only an award-winning website but has saved us millions of dollars in prevented security breaches.” He smiled, his eyes flicking briefly my way. “And Lacey, without whom, quite simply, nothing at all would be possible.”

I felt my heart melt into my boots. But I still wasn’t entirely sure where he was going with this.

“So you see, this company can’t be reduced to just numbers,” Grant went on, still conversationally, as if he and the audience were having an intimate fireside chat. “This company is about people. The hard work of a Louis, the imagination of a Lacey—they can’t be reduced to a balance sheet. And we can’t sell them out for a quick buck without shooting ourselves in the foot.

“My grandfather built something great, it is true. We may never know how he would have guided it today. We can never know how my parents—” Grant paused to wipe away a tear, and there were audible gasps from the audience—“would have shaped it. We can only know what we want to have today, and tomorrow, and go forth to effect that to the best of our abilities.”

Grant stepped forward, his hands raised in entreaty. Yet the position somehow looked not vulnerable, but noble. Commanding. “Ms. Smith wants you to dream of the past. Ladies and gentleman, I think you should set your sights higher. I think you should invest in our employees and in our dreams.

“I think that together, we should build a future!”

Applause erupted, deafening. The first several rows leapt to their feet, and then like a wave, the rest followed. My heart soared, and I could see Grant grinning in hope and delight.

And yet…there were gaps in those rows. It was hard to see in the darkness, but there were people still sitting down. People who were just naturally undemonstrative, or people who remained unconvinced? How many? Too many?

Grant came jogging backstage, where he enveloped me in a bone-crushing hug. He was grinning still, but he was also shaking, coming down from the adrenaline high. He was sweating, too, and I didn’t think it was entirely from the heat of the spotlight.

I hugged him back. “You were amazing, Grant. I didn’t understand at first, but now I do. She told a story—so you told a better one.”

“I just hope it was better,” he whispered into my ear. “I tried to make them see—I tried to make them understand—”

And this was the man who’d once been so determined to act as though he didn’t care. This was a man who once would’ve crashed a speedboat before talking about his emotions. He really had changed.

“I’m so proud of you,” I said, my voice cracking.

“Not half as proud as I am of you,” he replied, his voice muffled in my hair.

I stroked his back, wanting to hold him safe from whatever the future brought, and be held safe from whatever future was brought to me by him. “Now what do we do?”

He sighed, and I heard all my combined anxiety, exhaustion, relief, and trepidation echoed in that sigh.

“Now they vote. And we wait.”