BECKHAM

“There you are, you naughty minx.” I lean back in my chair and face the window, watching the blonde in the office across the way saunter around her office and pretend like she doesn’t know I’m watching. We play this game all the time. She bends, fusses with her hair, unbuttons her blouse and nibbles on her finger before crossing and uncrossing her legs. It’s a win-win exchange: she enjoys the attention and I enjoy the view.

After a good six or seven minutes, the blonde leaves her office. The show is over. Back to work.

My inbox is what I like to call organized chaos. I should have Julie do something about it, but she’s already swamped doing all the other things I don’t have time to do.

An hour from now, I’m supposed to report to Peterson Corporation to discuss a partnership with one of the country’s largest fast-food franchisees. David Peterson wants to make his four-hundred plus burger joints run on solar panel energy over the next ten years. He could be a huge client of ours, our biggest yet, and Dane would murder me if I screw it up.

Lucky for him, I’ve got this.

I spent most of this week researching Peterson Corporation and assembling reports and estimates and timelines. I’ve spoken to vendors and ensured supplies are stocked and ready to go should David want to pull the trigger on this today.

I keep an eye on the time as I glance over my notes one last time. A text comes through fifteen minutes later from my driver downstairs. Within the hour, I’m sitting at the head of a fifty-foot conference table on the forty-fourth floor of some downtown high rise. David sits to my left along with three of his associates. They’re all cut from the same cloth: silver hair, black and gray suits, blue and red ties. Frown lines. Pot bellies. They reek of new money and excess, not giving a damn about the fact that their wealth was built on the backs of eight dollar-an-hour burger flippers.

But I’m not here to judge. I’m here to sell the hell out of solar panels.

“Beckham, I’m not sure if you’ve met my partners.” David clears his throat. “Mark Whitaker is our CFO. Daniel Davis is our COO. And Harris Cleveland is our Vice President of Marketing.”

“Good to meet you, gentlemen.” I nod, smoothing my tie flat across my chest, ensuring it’s straight as an arrow. Nothing worse than talking business while looking like a slob. “Shall we start?”

I remove a stack of handouts from my briefcase and pass them down.

“Now, just a minute, son. We’re still waiting on our Chief Administrative Officer.” David chuckles. “She was caught on a phone call a bit ago. Should be waltzing in here any second.”

“Of course.” I sit back in my seat and offer a professional smile to the three crusty bastards with permanent frown lines. Clock ticks fill the silent conference room until the coffee machine in the corner begins to percolate. Mark wastes little time rising to top off his mug, and Harris scrolls through his phone while Daniel stares out the window.

“Here she comes,” David announces.

I rotate my chair, turning to greet the late CAO and try to force some color back into my face when I realize whom she is.

Son of a—

“Beckham King, I’d like you to meet my daughter, Abigail Peterson,” Daniel says.

Too bad I already have.

“Nice to meet you, Abigail,” I say, extending my hand. We shake, our palms gliding together professionally, a stark contrast to the way they explored each other’s bodies three or four weeks ago.

A raucous Saturday night between the sheets with a drunken Abigail led to breakfast in bed the following morning and the proverbial exchanging of numbers. She texted me four days after that, likely when her impatience got the best of her, but I never replied.

Abigail doesn’t flush or fidget or fling herself into her chair. She’s poised. A picture of grace. But what I’m sure her father doesn’t see from his end of the table is the fire in her hazel eyes, the one that says she’s going to eat me alive while the suited bastards watch.

I tap my fingers against the polished table and smile, refusing to let her shake me. This could get messy, but it’s nothing I can’t handle.

“Here you are, Abigail.” I slide a handout toward her and begin my presentation, speaking for a solid fifteen minutes before Abigail interrupts me.

“Mr. King, I’m looking at your estimate here.” She sits up, but the sharp pitch of her voice tells me she’s aimed at me, seconds away from firing. “It feels a little high. Is this the best you can do?”

David gives his daughter a reassuring nod. He’s proud of her. And he should be. Four gruff, middle-aged men hadn’t had the balls to question me yet, and she’s wasting no time.

“I can assure you, we’re the most reasonable in the industry,” I say. “My brother, Dane, and I have worked tirelessly in reducing manufacturing costs and lead times. We have an exclusive contract with a manufacturer based out of Iowa. Their central location allows them to reduce shipping costs, thus reducing the final cost of the product. We pass that savings along to our clients.”

“So you wouldn’t mind if I did a little shopping around before we sign anything?” Abigail bats her lashes.

“By all means.” I call her bluff. “If you can find someone lower than us with the same superior product, please let me know. We’ll match their price and give you an additional five percent discount.”

“What makes your product superior?” Harris asks.

“Workmanship. Warranty. Rigorous testing,” I fire back. “And at the customer service level, you’ll be working closely with myself and my brother. We’re always a phone call away. A client contract this size ensures you won’t be working with any lower level employees who have to play phone tag to get answers for you when you need them. Our biggest competitors can’t offer that, and with a project this size, ten years is a long time to be communicating via middlemen.”

The four of them scan the handouts again, flipping pages and nodding and pursing their lips.

“If you turn to the last page,” I say, “You’ll see where I’ve broken down the ROI. Per my calculations, your project will pay for itself within the first ten to twelve years. And I’m sure we can all agree that it’s a sound investment, especially when we figure that fast-food is an evolutionary business model that won’t be going away anytime soon.”

“That’s exactly what I said the other day, didn’t I, Abigail?” David says to his daughter. “Almost word for word.”

“Great minds.” Her voice is flat, she looks my way.

“This is rather convincing,” David says. “I hope you don’t mind if I have my daughter put together a few more estimates? And then we’ll meet again with our board and take a vote.”

“By all means.” I rise. “Gentlemen. Abigail. Thank you for your time today.”

“I’ll walk you out.” Abigail gathers her things and follows me to the door.

She says nothing as we amble out of the conference room and head down the hall toward the elevators.

“You’re going to give us one hell of a deal.” There’s sugar in her tone but poison in her words.

“If this is an attempt to extort my company because I didn’t call you back the other week then…”

“This isn’t extortion, Beckham. This is karma.”

“Resentment isn’t a good look on you.” Dane would kill me for speaking this way to a prospective client, but I’ve got this. “You’re a beautiful woman, Abigail. You have no business wasting your time with someone like me.”

Her face softens for a second, her eyes dragging from my eyes to my mouth before she sighs and stares at the gray wall behind me.

“I don’t commit. I have fun. I thought I made myself clear when we met?”

The thought of settling down and becoming a family man makes my cock shrivel and wilt. It’s not going to happen. In fact, I’m so sure it’s not going to happen that I’ve taken permanent measures to ensure it.

I wouldn’t know the first thing about being a cookie-cutter husband and soccer-coaching father. I may have entertained the idea once.

Like an imbecile.

But never since and never again.

Her hazel eyes roll, and she tucks a strand of her sandy blonde hair behind her ear. “You did, but I just thought we had fun. I thought–”

“I would love to have a professional relationship with you,” I say. “You’re clearly a successful woman who knows how to handle herself in the boardroom. I admire that about you.”

My words are scripted and my fingers crossed that she doesn’t notice.

“It’s rude not to text someone back.” She won’t give up.

“You can’t take that personally. It had nothing to do with you and everything to do with me. I’m not sure how I can make myself more clear here?”

Her mouth hardens.

“I’m sorry.” I say, running my hand along the side of her arm. “I would be a lousy boyfriend. I don’t deserve someone like you.”

It’s the truth. No self-respecting woman deserves me as a boyfriend, but that’s something I’m absolutely okay with.

Her breath suspends until my hand falls. The elevator behind me dings, and I step on. She clutches the handouts across her chest, watching until the doors slam shut.

A week from now, she’ll be calling to finalize the deal on behalf of her impossibly busy father.

And…

That’s how it’s done.