About the Author
Jennifer Griffith is the author of over a dozen books of romantic comedy. She and her husband live in rural Arizona where he’s a judge and they’re raising their five brilliant kids through their own version of romantic comedy that they call life.
Contact her via her website at .
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Even Further Reading
, Book 4 in the Legally in Love Collection, Jillian & Aero’s story— battling for a priceless painting, and love. Releasing August 2017.
Preview of Mergers & Acquisitions
CHAPTER ONE
“Oh, my stars.” All the breath suctioned out of my body into the warm California air. I stepped closer to see whether my eyes were playing a trick on me, if it was just the morning sun, or whether the signature on this painting leaning up against a table covered with old glass ashtrays and broken cookie jars from the 1950s could actually be a Mars Yuber.
“You like it? It’s priced to sell.” A guy strolled over. His ratty Iron Maiden concert t-shirt didn’t quite cover his beer belly. “One hundred percent of this stuff has got to go.”
I bent down and inspected the canvas. Sure, the subject matter didn’t match the topics Yuber was best known for, stark trees against snowscapes, but it was arresting, this intense energy coming from the portrait of— I bent to inspect the placard on the ornate wooden frame— Woman Draped in Red.
“How much?” I didn’t look up.
“My wife says it’s obscene and thinks I should pay someone to take it.”
“Obscene?” I finally dragged my eyes away from the eyes on the face to notice the rest of the portrait— ebony hair piled high on the head, the swanlike neck on creamy skin, the oddly shaped red mark, maybe a birthmark, just at her collarbone. Sure, the drape didn’t cover everything it should, but obscene? Hardly.
Unless you counted her gaze. The focus of the painting led the eyes to meet the woman’s level gaze, frank and like she knew your secret. It reminded me of the Mona Lisa in that way. No question this was done by a master’s hand. Perhaps if you worried she knew something unsavory about you, then it was obscene.
“You ever hear of the artist?” I kept my tone nonchalant. Maybe the owner was going to hit me with a huge price tag after all that lead-up. Chances were, he knew he had me like a marlin on his hook. Probably saw me drive up in the firm’s company car, a Mercedes, since I was on my way to meet with a client, and planned to milk me for all I was worth for these swaths of oil and pigment I couldn’t tear my eyes from.
Frankly, the longer I looked at this painting, the more likely I was to be a pawn in Iron Maiden Fan’s hands.
“Never even looked who painted it.” He snorted. “Don’t really care. Who wants a woman with a paint splotch on her neck?”
Seriously?
My purse got heavier, alerting me I had both cash and check inside.
Woman Draped in Red, though. Be real. For one, I’d never seen myself the type to buy a painting, let alone one entitled Woman Draped in Red. Did the title sound sordid? Possibly. But this— I gazed, unable to tear myself from it.
I walked to the right, to the left, examining its lines. I leaned in. Looking closer, I knew that paint splotch was no mistaken brushstroke. It was careful, precise, and intricate. Undoubtedly copied from reality, it had the unmistakable shape of that Egyptian symbol on the dollar bill— the Eye of Horus.
Yeah, entertainment law was my specialty and a lot of the firm’s clients were Hollywood actors who dabbled in other art on the side. Some of them had talked art with me, and a few had even shown me their stuff; once they found out about my undergrad studies, they offered me fire sale prices until I couldn’t refuse. But realistically, until about three months ago when I finally got one big paycheck and closed out my law school loans, I never dreamed of buying anything more than macaroni and cheese or Diet Coke to keep me awake at my grindstone.
Make that serious grindstone. As in, so many hours at the office I forgot how green trees and blue sky looked, or a sunset or an ocean wave. And this was California, for heaven’s sake.
Being a young female lawyer in a firm as intense as BGG took its toll. Hard core.
If there were any way out at this point, I’d make a break for it. Run for the Beverly Hills.
I stared at Woman Draped in Red, and she gazed back at me like she knew my flight instinct was dialed to high— and as if she held the solution. I leaned closer, as if she could whisper to me from her frozen silence. Nothing. But she knew…and now that I’d seen her, I had to have her, so she’d tell me. No matter the cost. A Mars Yuber could run thousands, tens of thousands, more.
I’d sleep on the beach and take the bus in to work for six months, forage for nuts and berries. This painting held my answer, and—
“How’s forty bucks?” Iron Maiden Fan Man coughed up a number.
“Forty!”
“Fine, make it thirty-five. But I only take cash.”
If there were a world speed record for opening a purse and finding thirty-five dollars in exact change, I would have won it.
If there were another world speed record for racing with a possibly valuable painting and escaping a yard sale before the seller could change his mind, I would have won that too.
Within a couple of minutes, I’d torn through Old Town Pasadena and was back on the freeway, and hands-free dialing Tyanne.
“You know anybody who does art authentication?”
“Sure.” She sounded like she was on the treadmill. BGG had a workout room and a shower so their attorneys almost never had to leave the office in Hollywood. “Grady Ingliss. Why? Aren’t you supposed to be meeting with Ryker right now? It’s almost ten. Your meeting at Thrillsville is in thirty seconds.”
Ryker loved amusement parks and only met with his lawyers there. I tried to be patient, even though I got motion sickness. But former kid-stars had quirks, since no one had ever told them they were wrong, ever, and according to BGG I wasn’t allowed to be the first one to break the news of Ryker’s lack of infallibility.
“I was early, so I was killing time at a yard sale in Pasadena and came across something. Shoot me Grady’s number.”
“Okay, but don’t make Ryker wait. He’s liable to bolt, and BGG needs him, even if he’s bent on destroying his waning career.” That had been evident the last six months. Oh, Ryker wasn’t taking the usual drugs-alcohol-roadie-abuse route to shame. Instead, he was picking up chintzy endorsement deals. Stuff his talent agent— not a BGG employee— should have been protecting him from. Like hemorrhoid cream. The kid was fifteen. What the heck, right?
That agent, I could smack her. She was a friend of his aunt’s and she had too many other clients in advertising, and she was cross-pollinating with Ryker and one or two other celebs she repped. It was tanking all her businesses.
Ryker needed new representation. But not me. I was ready to get away from this squirrel cage— and quit driving on these insane freeways every stupid day.
Six minutes late, I pulled into Thrillsville, wheeled the Mercedes into a too narrow parking spot, prayed that the twelve-passenger van beside me had a family that planned to stay all day in the park and not come out and door-ding Myrtle here’s red sparkly paint job.
But before grabbing my briefcase and my Dramamine patch, I checked the number from Tyanne and shot Grady Ingliss a message. He got back to me instantly—
Bring it by. Can you be here by one?
— and provided an address in the San Fernando Valley. Great. More freeways.
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“Ryker. How are you?” I reached to shake his hand, but he gave me a fist bump instead. His other hand was balancing both a caramel apple and a wand of cotton candy. Wasn’t it a little early in the day for that much sugar?
“Jilly! You’re here. I got you this.” He handed me the cotton candy. Marvelous. “Glad you finally showed up because, besides the surprise I have for you, the lines for the rides are going to get really long as soon as the park officially opens, and I don’t want to miss Screaming Scare Train. I hate waiting in the lines.”
“Saturdays in SoCal are all about lines.”
His shoulders fell. “I know, right? Back when I was a kid in Montana, the only lines we had were on the Fourth of July for the barbecue. This old rancher would slaughter one of his herd and cook a whole side of beef in this big old smoker cooker in the park, and we’d all line up for a plate of meat and coleslaw, and there was a greased pig, and I caught it one year, and the local paper put the video of it on their website, and it went viral, and next thing I knew, I was in line for everything every day. In California.”
Wow. I’d never known how Ryker got his start— or expected a fifteen-year-old to wax nostalgic for the good old days before fame. Maybe I should give him a little more credit.
I took a puff of cotton candy and tasted it. “Not bad.”
“It’s blue raspberry.” Ryker reached over and took a puff of it himself. “No such thing in reality. Red, black, purple, pink, yeah. All those colors. But no blue. Why do you think it ever started? It would be like having artificial peach flavor and having it be green or whatever.”
We were walking toward a plaza where a lone man stood, wearing a business suit and talking on a cell phone. He belonged at Thrillsville about as much as I did in my skirt and silk blouse.
“Here’s my surprise, Jilly.” He pointed at the man. “My new agent.”
I walked closer, and as I approached, he hung up and turned to greet me. Holy whammo. His eyes met mine and the blue depths of them hit me like a wave at Huntington Beach when the wind was high. Could’ve knocked me down and sucked me away with the undertow.
“I’m Aero Jantzen. Good to be working with you, teaming up to protect Ryker.” He extended a hand to shake, and shake mine did— trembling. He had this casual, amazing European flair that extended from his great, short haircut to his narrow necktie to the tips of his two-tone wingtip shoes. “Ryker knew I was out of my depth in the legalese department for all his contracts, so he wants us to work together.”
“You’ll manage all his business, and I’ll read the contracts?” I couldn’t believe my mouth and brain were forming coherent words, considering the complete lack of connection after the incredible electrical surge caused the breakers of my system to overload. “Protect Ryker?”
“From himself,” Aero leaned in and said so the kid crunching the caramel apple couldn’t hear. “He’s looking at dumping some old deals and picking up some new ones. We need you to iron out all the wrinkles in getting him out of some of the—”
I held up a hand. “No need to explain. Gotcha.” Pent-up worry for Ryker’s future drained from me. This Aero Jantzen had it handled.
“Okay! Now— we’re all going on my favorite ride.”
Oh, dear. I hadn’t taken any of my emergency Dramamine. I mean, I knew this was a possibility, which was why I’d stuffed it in my purse. But I’d stupidly hoped Ryker wouldn’t insist on my joining in the mayhem of Screaming Scare Train. The last thing I wanted was to show all of Thrillsville that I’d eaten three Pop Tarts for breakfast.
Okay, truth will out. Who was I to criticize Ryker for his mid-morning snack choice?
“What’s your favorite ride?” Ryker asked as the three of us started across the park toward the screams and rattles of the roller coasters. “And don’t say The Barcelona Bomber. It’s out of service this week.”
I’d rather be publicly flogged than have to die of shame for throwing up on The Barcelona Bomber in front of our biggest client and the most gorgeous guy I’d seen in months. Years.
“Ferris wheel?” Aero shot me a look and shrugged a single shoulder. I shrugged back, a conspiracy forming between us.
“Sure. Ferris wheel.” It only gave my stomach gymnastics on its first downward sweep.
“Swept Away’s my favorite.” Ryker grinned and started jogging. I’d never heard of it, but a title like that, it figured. Teenage boys and their scary rides went together like Los Angeles and traffic.
I must have grimaced. Ryker caught it. “No— you’ll see.” And then he walked us straight to Swept Away.
Which wasn’t a roller coaster, unless you counted the acrobatics the sight of it did to my stomach.
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