Total pages in book: 224
Estimated words: 215705 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1079(@200wpm)___ 863(@250wpm)___ 719(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 215705 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1079(@200wpm)___ 863(@250wpm)___ 719(@300wpm)
His lips quirk. “Have you now?”
“Yes,” I say, and of course, we’re once again talking about him between my legs. “I noticed.”
“That was the idea,” he replies, his voice now a silky taunt. “I do want more. Are you going to give it to me?”
I’m spared this verbal sparring when his phone rings and he pulls it from his pocket, grimacing as he does. “I said no,” he says, without preamble. “No means no.” He hangs up and sets his phone down next to him.
“Was that a client?”
“That was my pain-in-the-ass brother, who you’d probably like a whole lot more than me, and perhaps more than your own brother. He’s in Japan, correct?”
“You had me investigated,” I say flatly.
“Weeks ago,” he says. “When I was being asked my opinion on the next CEO of this company. I even had a photo, but you were blonde, and—different. I like you better brunette.”
“I’m brunette because I like me better brunette and that photo is ten years old. Back to you investigating me. Obviously, something in that investigation led you to believe that I need you as a babysitter.”
“No,” he says. “I’d decided to leave you in place without me taking over, right up until the night I met you at that charity event. And no. That has nothing to do with you cuffing me and forgetting to fuck me properly.”
“I thought I did it quite properly. I assume that’s the problem.”
“Fucked properly would have been a) me naked, you naked, lots of moans and pleasure, or b) what I was about to do to you before that night. I’d all but finalized a deal to have Smith Mitchell Investments swallow you whole.”
I blanch. “You what? Is that what this is? You’re selling us off?”
“Not anymore,” he says. “I told you. I convinced those I had to convince that we could come out ahead, going another direction. We get a big payout, you get your father’s stock back and my position on the board, while everyone ends up with a winning investment.”
“You changed your mind because I cuffed you to a bed? I’m expected to believe that?”
“Because all this company is missing is a good driver.”
“And that’s you.”
“That’s you,” he says, “but thanks to your father, you need assistance to get back up the hill or perhaps to the top on your own for the first time. Back to your brother.”
“What about Anthony?”
“When was the last time you spoke to him?”
My brow furrows. “Why does my brother in Japan matter? What game is this?”
He stands up and walks to his desk, grabbing a folder and then returning before he sits down, and slides it in my direction. “The week your father made that final kiss-of-death deal that put us in this room together, he spoke to your brother every day, at least three times. How many times did he talk to you?”
He didn’t, I think. He shut me out. I open the folder, finding proof of the conversations between my father and brother. My call logs are included. I spoke to my father twice, and they were each sixty seconds. Of course, my call logs mean nothing. I was right here with my father, and he was behind a closed door, with me on the other side. I shut the folder and glance up at him. “My brother must have needed advice,” I say, but deep down I know that’s not what happened.
Reid fixes me in an ice blue stare. “Make sure your brother doesn’t need advice from you.”
“I like you slightly better than I like him,” I say. “We don’t speak. Since you know everything there is to know about me, I’m certain you know that, too.”
“Why don’t you speak?”
“There’s really nothing complex about this,” I say. “We don’t like each other.”
“Why?” he presses. “Answer, Carrie.”
“You already know the answer.”
“Tell me yourself.”
“He wanted us to invest in a shopping development in Japan. I was against it, and he said I thought I knew it all because I was an Ivy League attorney fresh out of school and he’s not an attorney at all.”
“Why isn’t he Ivy League?”
“He didn’t do the work. I did, but it didn’t matter in this case. In the end, I convinced my father to pull out.”
“And?”
“And it turned into a great investment,” I admit. “I was wrong.”
“No,” he says. “The only wrong move is one where you lose money.”
“We could have made a lot of money. We lost money.”
“If you beat yourself up for every time you missed out on money,” he says, “then you will be afraid to say no to anything. Were you afraid after that? Are you still?”
“That was seven years ago,” I say. “I was twenty-five, fresh out of law school.”
“How hard did you push your father to say no to the duet of failures that got us here?”