Dangerous Attraction Romantic Suspense Boxed Set (80 page)

Jack was used to his opponents fearing him and his investors respecting him. Jack never felt weak or anxious when he stepped up to the negotiating table and he normally thrived on stress and pressure. But, on this, possibly the biggest deal of his life, the unique circumstances had him feeling like he had maneuvered and negotiated himself right into a corner.

Jack moved to his mahogany desk and stared down at his reflection in its uncluttered surface. He considered how quickly his plans had fallen apart. He had been so certain that his strategy would work that he’d become overconfident. That wasn’t like him at all. Jack knew it was his late mother’s involvement in his current situation had thrown him off his game. He needed to come up with another plan and execute it quickly if he was going to save his position in the family company.

When Jennie opened the door and ushered Andrew inside, the tight line of his lips told Jack things hadn’t gone as they’d hoped.

Andrew had been in on his plan from the beginning. He was Jack’s closest confidant and supporter but right now it didn’t look like his friend had the news Jack needed.

“Thank you, Jennie. Hold my calls,” Jack directed.

“Yes, sir.” Jennie closed the door behind her, leaving the two men in silence.

* * *

Jennie rushed back to her desk to turn on her intercom. As a temp secretary, she took a lot of liberties she might not take if her job were more secure – and listening in on what promised to be a juicy conversation was one of those liberties.

Early on at Sutton Capital, she discovered the indicator light on the intercom between Jack’s office and her desk didn’t light up when it should. She’d been listening in on conversations ever since.

The one her boss had with his aunt yesterday was the best by far. From what she could gather, when Jack’s mother passed away five years ago, she’d held the largest single chunk of shares in the company, at thiry-five percent. The remaining shares of the privately held company were held in varying amounts by the six members of the board of directors, including Jack. Jack’s mother cared more about her son’s marital status than the state of the family business. She placed her shares in a trust with Jack holding the proxy voting rights to the shares in the trust.

If Jack wasn’t married by the time he was thirty-five, the trust remained – but the proxy rights reverted to his Aunt Mabry. Yesterday, Aunt Mabry threatened to use the strength of those shares to make a bid for Chad to take Jack’s place as CEO.

For some reason that wasn’t clear in the conversation Jennie overheard, his Aunt Mabry wanted to hurt Jack. She apparently didn’t care that Chad had no interest in being CEO or that Jack was the best man to head the company. As Jennie listened to their conversation, one thing had been clear; for whatever reason, Mabry wanted to hurt Jack.

If Jack wanted to save his position as CEO, he either needed to have enough board members on his side to know he could win a vote…or he needed to get married before he turned thirty-five. Next week.

If Jack were married, the shares his mother left in trust would become Jack’s outright. Mabry wouldn’t be able to touch him.

In the two months Jennie had filled in as secretary for Jack Sutton she’d heard no mention of a fiancé or even a serious girlfriend, so she’d almost fallen out of her chair when she heard Jack tell his aunt he planned to marry his fiancé at the end of the week. If you believed the tabloids, Jack Sutton had a different woman on his arm every week and none of the women had any marriage potential, from the looks of them. They were partying debutantes, at best.

When his aunt pressed for details, or a name, he remained vague and told his aunt that she could drop by the next afternoon to meet her.

As she listened in on Jack’s meeting with Andrew, Jennie had a clearer understanding of why he had told his aunt such a flat-out lie.

Chapter Two

“Not good news, huh?” Jack knew from the look on Andrew’s face he didn’t have anything but bad news.

“Sorry, Jack, but John Barton’s death put a real kink in things for us. Our plan to get enough of the share holders on our side to ensure your place as CEO may not work now. John held eight percent of the shares. Mabry holds ten percent of her own. It seems that John’s shares were left to his son, Bryan. I made some calls to try to find out more about the son so we can figure out how he’ll vote, but I can’t be certain yet. It turns out that Bryan Barton went to school with Chad. What I haven’t been able to find out is whether they were friends, enemies, or indifferent,” Andrew reported. “If he votes with Mabry and she has her shares plus control of the proxy shares, they’ll have a small majority.”

Jack leaned back in his chair and let out a frustrated growl. “This is a nightmare. How is it possible that it’s all falling apart at the last minute? If we don’t have Bryan on our side, I’ll be out.” Jack frowned.

“Oh hell, I know it’s wrong to talk about a man’s death like this, but the timing couldn’t be worse. Andrew, you know it’s not the money that matters to me.” Jack was silent for a long time as he stared at the wall and tried to come up with a plan that had this ending well for him.

Andrew nodded. Jack’s family had been wealthy before Jack took over Sutton Capital and Andrew had helped Jack wisely invest his inheritance and the money he had earned over the years. He was well aware of Jack’s financial comfort. Jack had more than enough money to last him ten lifetimes, whether he worked another day in his life or not. This wasn’t about the money.

“My dad started this company from the ground up and I was proud to take over for him. I think I’ve done a damn good job expanding it, too,” Jack said, crossing his arms as if he dared Andrew or anyone else to deny the assertion.

“I know it, Jack. We all do. That’s why any of the existing board members would have voted for you. Your risky decisions pay off as if you had the Midas touch and people trust your judgment. But, Bryan Barton is a wild card. We can’t predict know what he’ll do.” Andrew shook his head. He leaned forward, his forearms resting on his thighs. He looked at his longtime friend. “I guess you’re going to have to get married, bro.”

“I’m not getting married. I happen to like my life the way it is,” Jack said. But, even as he said it, he knew on some level he was lying to himself.

Jack would kill to have what his mom and dad had when they were alive; his parents shared a love so powerful, it lasted until the day they died.

Andrew sat quietly and let Jack vent. The ability to do so was one of Andrew’s strengths – knowing when to be quiet and wait out a storm. Jack knew there really wasn’t anything Andrew could say for the moment but it helped to gripe for a few minutes.

“I’m perfectly happy living as a bachelor. I don’t know why my mom couldn’t understand that. Just because they had a great marriage doesn’t mean that’s the only way I’ll be happy, does it? Well, does it?” Yeah, it does, thought Jack, but forced that thought out of his mind. He had never met anyone that made him feel the way he knew his mother and father felt together, so he was careful not to let those hopes surface anymore.

Andrew remained silent but shook his head.

Jack knew he sounded more like a toddler than the CEO of a multimillion-dollar corporation, but he had come to realize a long time ago he wasn’t cut out to have the kind of love his parents had found. Being forced to marry to save his company sent his mood into a downward spiral.

“No. Marriage isn’t the only way you’ll be happy, but that’s hardly the issue now. What do you want to do? We can gamble that your aunt won’t be able to get the swing votes she needs or we can go to Chad and ask him to step in and stop her. I think it’s time to ask Chad to get involved.” Andrew suggested.

Jack ran his hands through his hair and leaned back in his chair to think. He stayed that way for a few moments and then sat up and turned back toward Andrew before speaking.

“I don’t want to leave things up to chance but I won’t ask Chad to step in and confront his mother over this. I know it’s hard for you to understand, but I remember what my Aunt Mabry was like before her husband walked out on her. You can’t see it now because she’s so filled with hate but she was once so happy and loving. In those days I loved her as much as I loved my own mom. When my uncle left her, she cracked.

“If Chad stands up to her and sides with me, she may think he’s abandoning her too. I can’t do that to her. I know it’s crazy but I can’t.” Jack crossed to the window on the other side of his office and stared at the view of the Yale campus. His commitment to what was left of his family warred with his drive to protect his position as CEO.

“I still don’t understand why she’s focused on hurting you,” Andrew said as he shook his head.

Jack sighed. “She went after my dad, before me. When my uncle left her, she wasn’t able to lash out at him because he just took off. He left her almost all their money and Chad was an adult so custody wasn’t an issue. There was no fight she could throw her anger into. I think she needed to lash out at someone and my parents were happily married. That seemed to make her angry so she began to attack them. Now that they’re gone, she’s moved on to me.” Jack shrugged, knowing his aunt’s anger made no more sense than his need to protect her in the face of it.

“All right, but let’s walk through this. Even if she gets the board to vote you out, Chad will refuse the position of CEO, won’t he? He doesn’t want the job, right?” Andrew reasoned.

“Yes, but at that point the board’s confidence in me may waver. If my own aunt takes me out, they’ll question my ability, so even if Chad refuses the position, the board could go outside of the company for a new CEO instead of coming back to me. If that happens, the business my father built will be lost. And, even if none of that happens, if she has the proxy rights, she can make every decision into a battle. We have a great board right now with really sharp people. We work well together. She’d tear this board apart if she had those voting rights and the company could crumble given enough time.” Jack couldn’t see any way around the mess he was in. And he knew he didn’t want to ask Chad to confront his mother.

“I told Aunt Mabry I was getting married, for God’s sake. She’ll be here at three o’clock to meet my fiancé. Hell, I thought I was just buying time. I planned to tell her there was no fiancé but that she would be powerless to oust me as CEO with the votes we had behind us. Now it doesn’t look like I have those votes. There’s got to be a way to fix this.” Jack laughed at the ridiculous situation he found himself in but there was no humor behind it. Only frustration and disbelief that something like this could have happened without him getting out ahead of it.

“Well, that’s three hours from now. Let me see if I can find out more about Bryan Barton or pull some other solution out of my hat. I tried tracking down Chad earlier so I could casually mention Bryan and see if they were friends, but I haven’t been able to reach him since he left your house this morning.” Andrew said.

“Okay. Let’s work the problem. We can’t exactly call Bryan Barton and ask what his vote would be since he’s burying his father tomorrow. But, let’s try to talk to other alumni we know to see if Barton and Chad were tight in school. And, keep looking for Chad to see what you can get out of him without letting him know what’s going on.”

“Why not tell him what’s going on?”

Jack shrugged. “Why tell him if I don’t want him to solve the problem.”

“Maybe he’ll have an idea. Another way out?”

“Can’t chance that.” Jack turned back to his desk. “He’ll want to go to his mom and I’m not ready for that.”

“I’ll let you know what I come up with. In the meantime, start running through your little black book and figure out which of your booty calls may be looking for something more permanent,” Andrew said as he strode out of the office.

“Oh man, that isn’t funny,” Jack groaned.

* * *

Jennie quickly hit the intercom button as Andrew came walking down the hallway. She ducked down and pretended to rummage for something in a drawer as he walked by. Stunned, she grabbed her purse to head out for lunch. Boy did she have a juicy story for Kelly!

Chapter Three

Kelly Bradley pulled into the parking lot of her condo complex and shut off her car. Grabbing three bags of groceries from the trunk, she headed for the stairs but went right at the top instead of toward her own condo on the left. She raised her fist and pounded. Hard.

“Mr. Anders! Mr. Anders!” Kelly called loudly through the door. “It’s Kelly. From next door.”

Kelly stopped and waited. And waited. She knew it would take Mr. Anders a little while to work his way to the door. His car was in the parking lot and he wasn’t much of a walker, so chances were, he was home.

While she waited, Kelly propped her grocery bags against the wall next to her doorway and pulled out the cookies she’d bought for her neighbor. The door behind her opened. She turned to find the slender white haired man smiling at her with a mouth that was now fairly devoid of teeth.

“Hello, dear!” The old man bellowed, but it came out more like “hewwo deah” due to the lack of teeth.

His hearing had gone long before his teeth had. They compensated by hollering at one another most of the time.

Whenever it snowed, Mr. Anders always managed to beat Kelly downstairs to the parking lot. He’d clean off his car and then do hers. He would have scraped the ice from the windows before she even made it out of bed. Since he wouldn’t stop doing it even though she insisted he didn’t need to, Kelly had taken to bringing him occasional treats as a way of saying thank you. It was summer now, but she kept the treats up year round.

“Hi, Mr. Anders!” Kelly shouted back as she handed him the box of cookies. “I got you cookies since I was at the store.”

“You got me cookies from a whore?” He yelled back with a puzzled look on his face. Kelly felt her cheeks burn red and she sputtered, trying to figure out what to say.

Within seconds, her neighbor cracked a grin. “Gotcha,” he said and slapped his leg as he laughed. “Can you come in for a cookie?”

Kelly laughed but the red spots stayed high on her cheeks as she shook her head at the incorrigible man. “Sorry, Mr. Anders. I’m meeting a friend for lunch so I’ve got to run. I’ll stop by soon, though.”