Chapter12
Jennifer closed the door and walked toward Kyle’s desk. He was focused on his paperwork and looked up absentmindedly until he saw who it was coming toward him. His jaw fell open, and he stared.
“What in the hell are you doing here?” he asked in utter shock. He furrowed his brow at her, and she sauntered up to his desk and leaned over, giving him a seductive smile.
“Well, hello lover, is that any kind of way to greet the woman you love? Now, don’t get all emotional and fighty. I came here to talk business first and pleasure second. Busy?” she asked, looking down at the paperwork on his desk.
He frowned and snapped the file closed that he had been working on to keep it from her prying eyes. “I am.”
She shrugged. “Oh well. We’re going to talk anyway.” She curled her finger at him. “Come on, come over here and sit next to me on the sofa and let’s visit.” She turned then and swayed her hips as she strolled over to his sofa and sat down on it, setting her briefcase beside her.
He vaulted up from his seat and went straight to her, shaking his head. “No, you can’t come in here like this. This isn’t-” he began, but she held her hand up to stop him and interrupted him.
“Yes, I can, darling. Now, come and sit beside me and listen.” She smiled at him and patted the space on the sofa beside her.
He sighed and walked over to the sofa, but he sat in the armchair beside it, and he felt some slight satisfaction when she pouted at him sitting further away from her. “What are you doing here? What business could you possibly have that we need to discuss?” He looked at her crossly.
She leaned forward and smiled a Cheshire Cat smile at him. “Granger Corp,” she purred.
“What?” he gaped, blinking in surprise.
Jennifer shrugged. “I bought Granger Corp this morning. I’m the new CEO.” She reached her hand out toward him and ran her fingers down the front of his knee as she smiled at him.
“That’s not possible,” he spoke in a panic with a shake of his head.
She nodded. “Oh, it’s possible. Here.” She reached into her case and pulled out a file, handing it to him. He snapped it from her and flipped it open to examine the contents. His shoulders slumped, and he groaned when he saw the contents of the folder.
“You bought your way in,” he sighed heavily.
She nodded and shrugged again. “Well, I knew you’d go after it, so I decided that I wanted it. How better to get you into my bed again than to get you into my business bed first?”
He raised his eyes to glare at her. “You did this because of me?”
Jennifer laughed lightly. “Of course, I did it because of you. Granger Corp needs a law firm, and you have just started here. It’s perfect. In fact, it couldn’t be more perfect. I get Granger, I get you in the deal, and I make a huge amount of money, but that’s just frosting, isn’t it, darling?”
Kyle stood up and walked over to his desk and picked up the phone. “Grace,” he said bluntly.
Aleisha had just returned from the bathroom. She spoke in a monotone. “Grace is gone.”
His stomach formed a knot. “Aleisha, I need you to bring in the Granger file now, please.”
“Alright.” She hung up and got the file, steeling herself for what she knew that she was about to walk into. She was going into a room with a man and his fiancé, and she was the other woman. She was the dirty little secret at work, or at least, she had been. She promised herself that she wasn’t ever going to be again, and that gave her some small semblance of dignity.
She saw him standing at his desk and Jennifer seated on his sofa. She wondered why she needed to take the Granger file in to him with Jennifer being there. Surely, they would be talking about anything but his business.
He reached out for it, and she gave it to him without looking at him, and then she turned and walked out of the room, but she hadn’t quite gotten to the door when she heard him and Jennifer speak.
“What else are you here for, Jen?” he asked in irritation.
She stood up from her place on the sofa. “I’m here because it’s time for us to start a family.”
It was the last thing that Aleisha heard before she closed the door and shut her eyes tight, willing herself with every ounce of her strength to block out the pain she felt and focus on her work. She sat at Grace’s desk and tried to read through the file she had been working on, but Jennifer’s words ricocheted around in her head.
“It’s time for us to start a family.” She heard it over and over in her mind. She knew that the nursery in his house was for Jennifer’s babies. She knew that she had made love with him in the bed he shared with Jennifer, and for the first time in her life, she felt dirty and regretful about having been with any man. It was repulsive to her.
“What do you mean it’s time for us to start a family?” he asked in absolute astonishment as he stared at her. She walked toward him and stopped right in front of him. He felt as if he had been gut punched. “We broke up because you didn’t want children.”
She smiled at him and traced her finger over his cheek and down the front of his chest. “I know, baby, but I wasn’t ready then. I’m ready now. I want children now, and I want them with you, just like we were planning. It’s time that we got back together and took our future seriously. It’s time for Granger Corp to come to this firm as a major client, and it’s time for us to get back together and start a family.”
Kyle clenched his jaw and got over his shock. He stepped away from her and put a few feet between them before he turned around again and looked sharply at her. “No. You listen to me. I’ll be glad to be Granger’s attorney. That’s fine, but I haven’t forgotten what you did when you trashed our plans to build a family before. I’ve moved on.”
She laughed at him, cold and clear. “You can’t have moved that far, and if you want Granger, then you’re going to have to have me, too. You see, it’s a package deal. You can’t have one without the other.” She smiled wickedly at him, and he just shook his head.
Aleisha was just getting a grip on herself when the phone rang and she picked it up. “This is Aleisha. May I help you?”
“Aleisha, hello. This is Alexander Charleston. I was hoping to meet with you and Kyle. We need to go over my case. The board is pushing to get me out, and we need to get it taken care of as soon as possible.” The young man’s voice was urgent, and Aleisha felt her heart go out to him. It was horrible to her that he and his father had made amends after so many years estranged from one another, only to have the board of their company come back and state that the elder Mr. Charleston had been senile when he’d adjusted his will.
“Certainly. Actually, I’ve been working on it, and there are some details that I’d like to go over with you that will make our case really strong. Could you come in this afternoon?” she asked hopefully. She would gladly take anything that would get her mind on work and off of Kyle Drake and his fiancé.
“Yes, I can come in this afternoon. I’ll see you at three then.” He sounded hopeful.
“Excellent,” she answered and then ended the call. At least it was something. She would be able to work on his case that day and have it ready for him when he came in that afternoon, and that would keep her mind off of the cheating, lying, no-good, rotten man in the other room. The one who had used her to cheat on the woman who would be his wife and have a family with him.
Aleisha deeply regretted ever feeling anything for him and for ever wanting him the way that she had, but more than anything, she regretted trusting him and giving him her body. There was little else that she could give of herself that meant as much, that had as much personal value as her body and her heart, and to know that a man she cared for so much and had wanted so much had only used it and thrown it away like trash was almost more than she could stomach.
She was grateful for the Charleston case. She prayed that it would keep her mind and her heart too occupied to have to pay any mind to Kyle. She told herself that when they got the Charleston case finished, she was going to see if there was any way that she could transfer to another partner in the firm. Even a junior partner would be fine, just so long as it was anyone but Kyle, and it would be even more ideal if she wouldn’t have to be on the same floor as him. If that were possible, she’d almost never see him again. No matter what happened, though, she had learned her lesson, and there was no escaping that.
She closed her eyes and thought to herself that she might have made a mistake, but she was a strong, independent, professional woman, and she wasn’t going to make any more mistakes with him, and she wasn’t going to let her lack of good judgment stop her from keeping her job or getting ahead in the firm. Until she could transfer to another partner, she made up her mind that she would only have a professional career with him, and nothing more.
His office door opened, and she opened her eyes and looked down at the file before her on Grace’s desk. Jennifer strode past her and kept going without so much as a glance in her direction, and she was grateful for that. She looked up to see Jennifer go and saw that Grace was headed back in.
Aleisha stood up and walked over to Kyle’s door. She poked her head in just far enough to see him. “We have an appointment with Alexander Charleston at three this afternoon.”
He nodded distractedly without even looking up at her as he focused on a file on his desk. She narrowed her eyes at him and turned, leaving him as she went to her own office to work.
She was left alone to work, much to her relief, until it was time for her and Kyle to meet with Alexander. They joined him in a conference room and sat together with him. She barely glanced Kyle’s way and kept all of her attention focused on Alexander.
“What have you got for me?” he asked as he searched both of their faces. She could see that he was desperate to do something to save the company that his father had built and left to him.
She gave him an encouraging smile, though she had no idea where it came from. “Well, I’ve been working on this.” She passed a file to him and one to Kyle as well. He hadn’t seen any of it and had no idea what it was that she had come up with. She was saving them all, and no one was aware yet how she was doing it.
“If you look at the first page, you’ll see a timeline. That’s a list by date of everything that your father has done with and for the company from the time of his death backward six months, to the point when the two of you reconciled.” She smiled a little as she began to explain it to them.
“Alexander, your father not only headed the board, making significant business decisions that were approved by the entire board both before and after the will was changed, but he acquired another company after the will was changed, bringing it into the fold of the companies that the board manages, and the whole board approved it.
“If they accepted the acquisition of the smaller company in unanimous agreement, knowing that he was sane, they can’t come back later and say that he wasn’t sane when he changed his will. It’s one or the other, but not both.” She looked up at Alexander and saw relief all over his face. It made her feel much better about what she was doing.
“Would you be willing to impart to us, and possibly the board, the reason why you and father hadn’t spoken for so long? That could be a big help in determining your intent.” She looked at him in earnest, and he sighed and nodded.
“Yes, I guess I could explain that. You see, we argued over a woman that I had fallen in love with and wanted to marry. My father didn’t approve of her, but I was bent on marrying the woman I loved, so I went against his wishes. I gave up my inheritance and my relationship with my father to have her as my wife. We had a child, and I told my father about the baby.
“When he found out about his grandson, he decided to change his mind and accept my wife and his grandchild. We mended our broken bridges, and because it was a personal family matter, we didn’t discuss it with the board. Perhaps we should have, then maybe they wouldn’t have come after us.” He scowled in frustration.
“Oh, I think they’d have come after you anyway,” Kyle advised. “The good news is that this work that Aleisha has put together is enough to stop them. We will put together an agreement, present it to your board, and make them back off. This isn’t going to be a problem for you anymore, and we’ll be getting your company back to you right away.”
Alexander smiled widely at them as he stood up and reached to shake Aleisha’s hand first. “You’ve been incredible. You’ve saved my father’s company, and I want you to know how much that means to me. He worked hard all of his life to get where he did, and now it won’t be lost. Now, it will stay in the family, and we’ll be able to continue to make it grow. That’s all because of you. Thank you so very much.”
She nodded and shook his hand in return. “It’s absolutely my pleasure. I can’t tell you how happy I am to be able to make this happen for you.”
He reached for Kyle’s hand and gave it a shake. “You have a great lady here. Thank you for your work on this as well, Mr. Drake. I appreciate it.”
Kyle nodded. “Glad to help, and you’re right, she is truly a great lady.”
Aleisha felt her stomach twist into a knot, but she smiled through it, waving as Alexander left them. She gathered up her things and was just about to walk out when Kyle reached his hand out to her to stop her, closing it around her arm.
“Hey, please don’t leave yet,” he began, but she pulled her arm from his grasp and looked over her shoulder at him.
“We made a huge mistake. You and I need to keep this strictly business from here on out. Anything that happened between us before today is gone. It was one of the worst judgment calls I’ve ever made, and I’m not going to continue to make that mistake any worse than it already is. We’re done outside of the office. Otherwise, I’m your associate, and nothing more, and that’s how it’s going to be.” She turned away from him then and walked out of the room, hoping that someday she would forget the heartbroken and horribly pained look on his face at the words she had just said to him.
She hoped that her heart would heal as well, because it was no longer in her chest, and she didn’t know how she was going to move onward, but she wasn’t going to give up until she found a way.