Board Approved (4 page)

“Mr. Snow,” he was greeted by the portly security
guard.
 
“Aren’t you a little late getting
back from lunch?”
 
The guard smiled at
him.

“Yes, I am, Sam,” Greg said with a smile.
 
“Had a few extra things to
do today.”
 
Greg walked the short
distance through the atrium to the escalator and took it two steps at a
time.
 
He was a little over an hour late
to the last half of the board meeting.
 
They only met quarterly and he knew he had been running a risk not
getting there on time.
 
But something
about Tessa called out to him and he didn’t regret his decision to be late to
the afternoon session one bit.
 
Shit!
 
He had a date with a gorgeous twenty-seven year old yoga instructor.
 
Life didn’t get much better than that.
 
He walked towards the executive area and
scanned his pass to enter.
 
This place
was like Fort Knox.
 

“Mr. Snow,” Suzie McCormick welcomed him
pleasantly.
 
She was the executive
assistant to Advantage’s CEO, Michael Herron, the only inside director on the
board.
 
“They just started thirty minutes
ago.
 
They held lunch a little longer in
hopes you’d be back in time, but none of the men wanted to be here until six on
a Friday, so they picked things up just a bit ago.”
 
She swept her blonde hair over her shoulder
and smiled at him.
 

Suzie had had an eye for John Dorsey for the last
year, but since John got together with Elizabeth, one of Advantage’s corporate
in-house attorneys, six months ago, Suzie was turning her sights to the other
two single men sitting on the board.
 
What used to be relentless flirtation with John was now apparently
directed at either himself or Mark Olson.
 
Greg and Mark hung out periodically and played the occasional round of
golf on the weekends.
 
They’d spent a few
minutes here or there teasing the hell out of each other as to who should nail
Suzie and just put her out of her misery.
 

But in all honesty, Greg wasn’t interested in
Suzie.
 
Not that she
wasn’t attractive.
 
She was… in a
runway-model-type way.
 
Suzie was tall
and slim with beautiful blonde
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hair
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and
blue eyes.
 
Definitely
more Olson’s type.
 
Greg had
always been attracted to shorter women.
 
His ex-wife had been all of five feet three inches tall and built strong.
 
She’d been crazy beautiful with long blonde
hair and bright green eyes.
 
 
So, Suzie wasn’t really his type.
 
And now that he had a date with Tessa, he
wasn’t even contemplating the alternative.
 
But he knew Mark was not opposed.

He quietly pushed through the large wooden doors to
the boardroom as Elizabeth Wright was standing at the table presenting once
again on the construction defect case that three Advantage insureds were
involved in.
 
All eyes turned in his
direction.
 
Phillip Barker, the chairman
of the board, nodded at him with a smile.
 
Phillip was a great guy and he didn’t run the
type of ship that would get Greg in trouble for being late.
 
A couple of the other members might have been
annoyed, but Phillip would be okay.

“Nice of you to join us, Greg,” Elizabeth said
sweetly.
 
Her long auburn hair was pulled
back at the nape of her neck and her emerald green eyes shined.
 
John Dorsey was a very lucky man to have
landed her and he knew it.

“I apologize,” Greg said, bowing his head at her in
greeting.
 
He quickly moved towards his
seat next to John and sank into the thick leather chair.
 
“Please carry on.”

Elizabeth smiled at him and then winked at John
before she continued on with her presentation.
 
It was clear that John must have mentioned to her that Greg had been
late because of a woman.
 
John and
Elizabeth had been trying to set him up with various women since the two of
them had become inseparable.
 
They were
eager to go on double dates and take trips with another couple.
 
But none of the dates they had set him up on
really panned out.
 
It wasn’t that Greg
was picky.
 
He always had fun on the
dates, but none of them sparked anything more than a pleasant time.
 
He had made the conscious effort to not sleep
with any of them either.
 
The women had
either been friends of Elizabeth’s or women that John knew, so he hadn’t wanted
to ruin his friendship with either of them.

   
After
Elizabeth’s glaring presentation, and a question and answer session involving
the lawsuit and ongoing discovery, Elizabeth and her boss, General Counsel of
Advantage, Corbin Shaw, left the boardroom.
 
She threw a warm smile in John’s direction,
who
smiled and winked at her.
 
Greg had to
admit he had been a little envious of their relationship.
 
John had seen her six months ago when she was
first introduced to the board and something in him clicked. He went after her
full force.
 
He had told Greg he knew the
minute he saw Elizabeth that she would be it for him.
 
Here they were six months later, very much in
love and preparing to move into John’s beach house together.
 

“Let’s take five minutes,” Phil said, clapping his
hands together before pressing them to the mahogany table and pushing
himself
up.
 
“I need
to hit the head.
 
But Greg, please don’t
leave the building.
 
It’s just a five
minute break.”
 
Phil’s face broke out
into a smile as he headed to the large wooden doors.
 
Everyone else in the room laughed, including
Greg.
 

“So, tell me about her,” John said, leaning over the
arm of his chair.
 

“What’s to tell?” Greg responded.
 
However, he couldn’t keep the smile from
spreading across his face at just the thought of Tessa.
 

“You were an hour late coming back to session,” John
said.
 
“And you’re a stickler for
time.
 
Not to mention the fact you moaned
in my ear when I called you.
 
So, she
must be something special.”
 
John twirled
his pen between his fingers, waiting for Greg to spill it.
 

“She is gorgeous,” Greg said, softly.
 
He didn’t really want Mark Olson involved in
their conversation.
 
Since Mark’s
divorce, he’s been on the prowl and looking for “fresh meat” as he called it.
 
Tessa would certainly fall under the category
of what he’d been chasing lately and he didn’t want Mark anywhere near
her.
 
“She’s a yoga instructor.
 
Owns her own studio on
Treasure Island.
 
In fact, she
teaches classes downstairs in the gym a couple days a week.
 
I ran into her in the parking lot.
 
Her car broke down.
 
So, I helped her out.
 
And she agreed to go out with me tomorrow
night.”
 
The idea of seeing Tessa again
made him happier than he’d been in quite some time.
 

“Do you want Elizabeth and
I
to go with you to keep the pressure off?” John asked.
 

“I don’t think so,” Greg said, looking at his
friend.
 
“I don’t think there’ll be any
pressure.
 
Tessa and I are on the same
page.”

“Tessa, eh?”
John
teased.
 
“I like the name.
 
So, when do Elizabeth and I get to meet
her?”
 

“Christ, Dorsey,” Greg said with a laugh.
 
“I just met her.”

“Okay, so next weekend you’ll bring her over to my
place for dinner.
 
Let’s say Saturday at
six,
”
 
John
said, patting Greg on the back.
 

“Do I have a choice?” Greg asked with a chuckle.

“Not really,” John said.
 
“Especially after I tell
Elizabeth.
 
She’s going to be mad
I didn’t set it up for tomorrow.”
 
They
just laughed as several of the other board members returned from the break and
Phil called the last part of the session to order.
 

Chapter
Four

Tessa scurried around her bedroom in her white lace
cheeky underwear and matching strapless bra.
 
Greg was picking her up in fifteen minutes and she had no idea what to
wear.
 
When she called him to get an
update on the status of her car and their plans for Saturday night, he said he
wanted to go somewhere fun because he was restless from sitting in a board
meeting all day and schmoozing at a client dinner on Friday.
 
He suggested hitting Gators Café & Saloon
on John’s Pass.
 
Tessa had been there a
few times with some friends, but it had been awhile.
 
It was casual and right on the Intracoastal
Waterway.
 
She flipped through several
items in her small closet.
 
She was
leaning towards a halter dress.
 
She had
a light blue and indigo paisley dress that she thought suited her.
 

Even though it was early October, the Florida
temperatures still reached into the low nineties during the day.
 
And the evenings only dipped into the low
eighties, so she could get away with a halter dress for another several weeks.
 
She’d bring a shrug just in case.

She pulled the paisley dress off its hanger and
slipped it on.
 
Standing before the full-length
mirror hanging on the back of her bedroom door, she admired herself in the
dress.
 
It was flattering to her figure,
which was short and leanly muscular with a small chest.
 
Of all the things her mother could pass down
to her, she wished it had been to be more fully endowed the way she was.
 
Regardless, the halter dress made it seem
like she had more than she did, as did the push up bra.
 
Tessa smiled at herself.
 
Her curly blonde hair fell past her shoulders
and the light blue and indigo of the dress made her eyes even bluer.
 
To herself, she looked a little older than
her twenty-seven years and that made her happy.
 

The knock on the door startled her.
 
Greg was here.
 
Oh
God!
 
What would he think of her small
place?
 
What would he think of her?
 
Her hands brushed over her dress one last
time before she walked to the door of her apartment.
 
She peered through the peephole to see Greg
standing in the hallway with a bouquet of fresh flowers.
 
Her heart began to race.
 
He looked delectable.
 
A pair of dark jeans with a
snug grey t-shirt that clung to his every muscle.
 
She could feel the dampness in her panties
already.

“Are you going to open the door?” she heard him say.
 
“I can see your eye in the peephole.”
 
Oh
shoot!
 
She unlocked the deadbolt and
opened the door.
 
He froze and his gaze
scanned over her… top to bottom and back to the top.
 
Tessa felt her body flush as he thoroughly
took in every inch of her.
 
“Definitely
worth the wait,” he said, before handing her the flowers.
 

“Thank you,” she said shyly, bringing the flowers to
her nose and inhaling their beautiful scent.
 
“Come in.”
 
She turned in the
doorway and he followed her through, closing the door behind them.
 
Tessa walked the few feet to her small
kitchen.
 
Opening the cabinet under the
sink, she pulled out a clear glass vase and filled it with water while Greg
looked around her apartment.

“So, everything turned out okay with your car?” Greg
asked, watching her in the kitchen.