Unbidden Love (Book Five of the Bidden Series) (18 page)

“Absolutely not.” He tapped her behind with his hand before heading into the bathroom. “Want to save some water and shower together?”

She dropped the clothing items in her hands when the image of her in the shower with both James and Audra came to mind. The dream was so vivid, so realistic, she could practically feel the steam from the hot water on her face.

“Nat?” he called out when she did not reply.

“I need to check in with work,” said in the direction of the bathroom. “I will jump in after you.”

“Suit yourself.”

Natalie slipped into the shirt she wore the previous evening and grabbed for her phone on the dining table. There were two missed calls from Joe and a few text messages from Quinn, but as she went to unlock the screen it was Audra’s incoming call that distracted her.

“Hey!” she answered a little too brightly. “How is your emergency?” She scrunched her eyes at the less-than-stellar choice of words. Audra sighed from the other side of the line, and Natalie knew her emergency was either not going well at all, or a lot worse than she had let on.

“I am on the plane now readying to fly back to McCarran. I need to talk to the both of you when I get there.”

Natalie folded her legs beneath her as she sat on the couch. Audra sounded…
stressed
was the only word she could think of. More stressed than what could be considered normal. Did she know about her and James? Had someone at Serpentine seen them together and called Audra? Would someone actually do that?”

“Is everything okay?” she asked, hoping to keep Audra talking in an effort to assess what she knew, if she knew anything at all.

“I am not sure. I really do need to talk to James. Are you guys at brunch right now?”

“No, actually we were just getting ready to head out. Do you want us to wait for you?”

“No, it’s fine. I grabbed some Starbucks before I boarded the plane. Don’t wait on my account. Just text me where you will be and I will meet you.”

“Okay, well I think we are going to Sugar Factory. It’s at Paris.”

“I know,” Audra said, sounding distracted. “I will see you in about an hour and a half, okay?”

“Yeah, sounds great. Have a safe flight.”

“I love you, Natalie,” Audra said, hanging up before Natalie could even respond. Not that she knew what to say. Then again, she had never truly reciprocated those words to her, so it wasn’t like Audra was expecting it.

“That Audra?” James asked, startling Natalie out of her post-phone call daze.

“Um, yeah. She is going to meet us at brunch in about an hour and a half. She needs to talk to us.” Natalie stood and glanced at James, who was sopping wet and wearing nothing but a towel, feeling a growing sense of both guilt and fear.

If he was worried, he did nothing to show it. “Oh. Well I left the water on for you so you should get to it.” James reached out for her hand as she brushed past him on her way to the shower. He wrapped his arms around her waist after pulling her in close. “Hey. Everything will work itself out,” he said into her ear. He kissed her cheek, the tender moment of affection only punctuating what worried her the most.

Natalie took a deep breath, but instead of nodding, found herself shaking her head. “We were in this room,” she began.

“We were in this room?” he repeated.

“When I found out I had slept with a married man. And now here we are again, only now
I am
the one who cheated.”

“Nat-“

“I am not looking to have a discussion, James,” she interrupted him. “I am just stating a fact.” She peeled herself out of his arms and headed straight for the shower to wash off the night before.

It was difficult for James to eat and relax while Natalie was so obviously disconnected from him and their surroundings. Rather than eat her eggs Benedict, she pushed them around on her plate with her fork, only taking small bites once in a while.

“Frankie is adjusting well to the new lifestyle,” he pointed out, hoping to jumpstart a conversation to take Natalie out of the thoughts that were so obviously bothering her. “All she can talk about every day is going to the beach. I think she has already forgotten about summers in the Hamptons.”

“What are we going to tell her?” Natalie sighed, finally saying something.

“About the Hamptons?” he joked. But the look of confusion on her face told him she was not listening to him, and was talking about another
‘she
’
.
“Audra?”

“Yes, Audra! She is going to be here soon and we are going to have to tell her
something
. She is going to be devastated.”

“Natalie, I think you and I both know that Audra has been expecting this conversation. Maybe not today or this month even, but she has known it would one day come.”

Natalie’s face fell, and it about broke his heart. “Am I really such a foregone conclusion?” she asked, her voice trembling with emotion. “I never,
ever
wanted to hurt her!”

“Hey, nobody thinks of you that way,” he said, grasping for her hand across the table. “Maybe it would help if you and I figured some things out first , before
she
finds out?”

“Figure what out?” she asked sullenly.

“Us. I told you last night that you still loving me changes everything.”

“You just moved your entire family cross-country into that house. What changes? You are not going to abandon your children, James.”

“No, of course I’m not.”

“And it isn’t like one night together fixed all the reasons why we ended our relationship in the first place!” she continued, her voice rising higher and higher.

“All the
reasons,
Natalie? Because I recall just the one.” He hated to bring it up, knowing that it could likely hurt her. But that one reason no longer existed, and in his mind shouldn’t be a factor now.

Natalie slouched back in her seat and dropped her hands in her lap. “It wasn’t just the pregnancy, James. You wanted me to quit my job at Brighton so that I could date you openly.”

“Yet another
reason
that no longer applies, Nat,” he pointed out. “Besides, you didn’t quit.” He tossed his napkin on the table and leaned back in to his seat, coffee in hand.

“No, I was fired
because of
my relationship with you.”

“And you turned around and launched an even better agency,” he contended. “Are you now going to bring up the fact that I offered to support you after you were fired? Because you declined that offer and still went on to do well for yourself. So that reason no longer counts, either. Let’s see, what else was there?” He straightened again and leaned his elbows on the table. “I asked you to move in with me and you declined, citing - if I recall correctly - that you didn’t want to be my ‘
Stepford girlfriend with no personal autonomy’
. From where I sit, Natalie, you didn’t make any sacrifices for us, yet consistently asked me to. You said you wanted our relationship to mean more than just sex, that you could not figure out who you were when you were with me. Do you know who you are now? After all these months?”

“Jesus, are you two still fighting?”

James looked up into the chestnut brown eyes belonging to Audra, who stood over their table with a rather pitying look on her face.

“No. We kissed and made up last night, didn’t we, Natalie?” he grunted. From across the table Natalie’s eyes went wide, but she recovered quickly before smiling up at Audra.

“We are just settling an old matter,” she said. “So what is going on?”

Audra slid into a vacant space beside Natalie, and set her purse down between them in the booth. “Have you heard from Joe at all?”

James rolled his eyes and bit down on his bottom lip to keep from saying anything.

“He has called once or twice but I have not spoken with him yet. Why? What does Joe have to do with anything?”

“You should probably give him a call,” Audra said, an undeniable warning in her tone.

Natalie shot a glance at James before standing up from the table, purse in hand. “Excuse me,” she said before stalking off. James watched her retreating figure, wondering himself what exactly was going on. When he turned to Audra, there was a grave expression in her eyes, like she was dreading the next words to come out of her mouth.

“Audra? What the hell is going on?”

She opened her mouth and inhaled deeply, and he noticed then that her eyes were bloodshot. Had she been crying?

“I wish there was an easier way to tell you this, James,” she began. It was becoming increasingly more difficult for him to maintain any semblance of patience. But whatever it was she was about to tell him, it was obviously difficult, and he could refrain from losing his cool, for her.

“Your father has been acquiring Fitson stock. A
lot
of it.”

She might as well have told him that an alien life was discovered on the moon. "What the hell are you talking about? My father only has five percent.”

“Right, which you gave to him from your own shares when he agreed to come on board when you went on leave. But I am guessing he never mentioned to you that he has been buying every bit of stock he could find not already owned by either you or me.”

What the-
“What are you saying?”

“James, as of last night your father has majority ownership of our company.”

No, it wasn’t true. It
couldn’t
be true. It wasn’t even possible!

From the periphery of his vision he saw more than a few heads turning in the same direction, and when he looked up he found the object of their attention: Natalie, red-faced and charging to their table at a remarkable pace. She slammed her hand on the table, the cell phone once clutched in it taking the brunt of the damage, and looked at both him and Audra with murderous rage.

“Why in God’s name is Fitson trying to acquire and seize control of
my
company?”

Natalie picked her head up from her hands and inhaled deeply, willing her body to relax into the luxurious armchair inside the Garden Suite at Eden. “Explain it to me again, but this time try to remember that I do not have an MBA from an ivy league school like the two of you do.” She looked pointedly at James, then Audra, waiting for one of them to speak first.

“It's really very easy,” Audra spoke up from her seat opposite Natalie. “James and I each split 75 percent, a majority share of Fitson; an even 37 and a half percent for each of us. The other 25 percent is open to anyone, but mostly for employees.”

“If that is true, then how does Jackson own
45 percent
?” Natalie asked. She could barely hold back the frustration in her voice, but even then she knew it paled in comparison to what Audra and James were going through. She was not the only person in the room whose company was being threatened with a hostile takeover.

“Our half of the majority is ours to keep and give to our family,” Audra continued. “The idea was -
is
- to keep the majority interest in the hands of our family. When James married Celine she received five percent. Five percent was likewise given to Frankie and Colin
each
upon birth.”

“And then he gave five percent to his father. I got that part,” Natalie confirmed.

“Celine signed over her proxy,” James interjected from where he stood at the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking The Strip. He had been nursing a crystal glass of whiskey for nearly twenty minutes, and from the looks of it, he was due for a refill.

Natalie looked from James to Audra for clarification. “Celine maintains her five percent," Audra explained patiently, “plus a proxy of the ten percent given to the kids. But as of last night she signed it all over to Jackson, which effectively stole it from James’ portion of the majority.” She quieted for a moment to look up at James, her expression forlorn.

“Jackson has been acquiring the other 25 percent for some time now, using various shell corporations overseas. Between that, plus the five percent James gave him, and now Celine’s 15% proxy, he has majority ownership.”

Even though she had heard the math at least twice now, there was still something she did not understand. “That is not a majority though. Not if together you still own 55 percent?”

“We do not jointly own it, Natalie,” James said as he turned from the windows to face them for the first time in the half hour since they had returned to the suite from the restaurant. “It was set up so that
together
we controlled a majority portion, but could still gift shares to our spouses, our kids. But each half is separate. We don’t own shit together. And I own exactly 17 and a half percent of shit.”

In a sudden fit of rage, James threw the crystal glass clear across the room where it shattered upon impact with the wall. Natalie jumped at the sound of thousands of shards of crystal raining down from the point of impact.

“So just like that he controls the entire company?” Natalie asked, trying to shake off the image of James hurtling the glass across the room.

“It isn’t precisely that black and white, but yes,” Audra confirmed.

“But then why would he try to buy out
my
company? I know about the clause-“ she said, putting her hand up before Audra could offer up any additional explanation. “I am well aware that in our contract it states that Fitson can offer to acquire us should we ever want to be acquired. But why would he? Jackson
likes
me.”

James scoffed as he poured himself a fresh drink. “The only person Jackson likes, is Jackson.”

“And Audra. What was it he said to me? That Audra was the perfect woman for his son? That she was the only one worthy of being at his side, if only she weren’t gay?”

“
What?!
” Audra bellowed.

Natalie nodded. “He said your romance with me was just a passing phase, and once the time came, he would be pleased to see me at James’ side.”

“That son of a bitch!” Audra screeched, finally losing her cool. Natalie caught James’ eye as he glanced over his shoulder in her direction.

“We have to do
something
. If we can find a way to fix the ownership problem, that will automatically prevent my father from a hostile takeover of Gallo Harlow, too.”

“I was up with legal and outside council all night, James. We have options but they are going to take time. God only knows what he could do to our company if given even a
little
bit of that time.”

Natalie exhaled a deep breath and leaned back into her seat.
Fucking Jackson Fitzgerald
, she cursed to herself. What the hell kind of father tried to steal control of his own son’s company? How selfish -
how evil -
did a person have to be to pull off something like that? And he was not just coming after James and Audra, but her and Joe. And Quinn. And Shane, Amelia, the staff and interns. But even their numbers paled in comparison to the
thousands
of Fitson employees around the country who could potentially be at risk in the aftermath of a hostile takeover. Not to mention billions of dollars.

And all for what? What was Jackson’s motive? It couldn’t be that he was actually evil. There had to be more to the story, but if there was she was ignorant of it. She knew the relationship between Jackson and James was not always great, but it certainly never seemed to border on Machiavellian. James would not have asked his father to step in for him otherwise.

Was Celine behind it? No, she was not cunning enough to come up with an idea so elaborate all on her own. And she certainly would not risk her life with James and their kids to such an extent. At least, Natalie did not think she would. Celine had a rather cushy life thanks to James, and a brand new mansion to live that life in, despite the fact that the man footing the bill could barely stand her.

She gave her proxy to Jackson!
Natalie reminded herself. She had to have known what that would do to James. What kind of hateful, spiteful woman would do that to a man she once claimed to love? A man she had children with? Was it jealousy? Did she know how Jackson felt about Audra? Because he certainly wasn’t paying Celine any compliments about her role as James’ wife. And she…

Wait…
Her mind went silent, empty.
No, that could not possibly…
Could that work?

‘
I have always liked Audra Robertson. She is the perfect woman for my son… She is intelligent, fiercely loyal, has a keen business sense, and in my opinion is the only woman suitable enough to be his wife.’

“James?” Natalie called out. But when she looked up, the two were fully engrossed in conversation. “Audra?” she tried again, hoping to catch at least someone’s attention.
“Guys!!” she shouted, finally silencing them.

“What?” James asked, irritated at the interruption, and presumably the entire situation on the whole.

“What if you got married?”

“What?!” This time it was Audra who appeared irritated at the interruption, if not at the entirety of the suggestion itself.

James’ face distorted into utter confusion. “What did you just say?”

“You said your individual portions of the stock were designed for you and family, to keep the company
in
the family. So what if you were husband and wife? Then her 37 and a half percent and your 17 and a half percent would be a combined 55 percent, taking back the majority.”

Natalie watched as James and Audra exchanged astonished looks, then hushed words. She became aware of her heartbeat echoing almost violently in her chest. Did she really just recommend to the woman she cheated on to
marry
the man she cheated on her with?