one week to change my mind.”
Her throat bobbed as she swallowed and pushed curls back from her brow. “Oh. Right.”
“My condition is that we are civil toward each other.”
She muttered, “Figures that would be your idea of civil.”
It wasn’t the time to mention that she had kissed him right back.
“Do we have an agreement?” Jack hesitated and then ribbed her anyway. “Or are you afraid you might find my dark charm irresistible?”
Her slim nostrils flared. “I’d sooner sell my soul to the devil.”
“Be careful what you wish for.” Jack pulled open the door and noise from the ballroom seeped out. “I’ll collect you from your office Monday, ten a.m. sharp.”
“I’ll arrange my own transport. I’ll meet you—”
“Uh-uh. I make the rules. The challenge for you now is to change the game.”
“Using any means available?”
Jack smiled into her spirited green gaze. “What an appealing thought.”
Early Monday, as Jack finished up his first call of the working week, the vice president of Reed Incorporated crossed over to his desk. A financial dynamo with a killer background in trading, Sylvia Morse set her hands on her hips.
“What exactly are you doing?”
Sylvia had been standing inside his office door for the past few minutes, so, trick question?
“What do you mean what am I doing?” Jack asked.
“I want the lowdown. No B.S. Not to me. You just got off the phone from Angelica Lassiter—again. You’ve moved mountains to acquire every Lassiter Media share you can lay your hands on. You’d do anything to get a hold of hers.”
Sylvia’s brunette razor-cut looked somehow spikier today, and her normally light gray gaze was definitely darker. He almost asked whether her caffeine addiction had escalated to substances that caused memory loss or confusion, but then Jack remembered her brother was in rehab again and went with the direct approach instead.
He set down his pen. “What the hell is up with you this morning?”
“You’re in bed with Angelica Lassiter,” Sylvia went on, “to help her regain control of J.D.’s company.”
“Metaphorically speaking, absolutely.”
“And?”
“Sylvia, you’ve been my right hand here for five years. Nothing’s changed.”
“So, you intend to buy up, buy in and then put into play the most efficient, financially rewarding way to sell off the various pieces of Lassiter Media. Except that isn’t Angelica Lassiter’s plan.”
Jack slumped. Et tu, Sylvia? “I thought our moral compasses were in sync.”
“This is different.”
“It’s never different.” He picked up the pen, put his head down. “Trust me.”
“God knows I want to, but something’s missing. Unless you’re more ruthless than even I thought, and I know you pretty well.”
“Better than anyone.”
“I’m on your side, Jackie-boy. Always. But, while you’d never admit it publicly, even you must have limits. J. D. Lassiter was a friend. You’d call in on each other’s homes in Cheyenne. I thought that kind of relationship would put a spin on things.”
“You thought wrong.”
“So, feelings never get in the way of business.”
Jack got to his feet. “Feelings don’t get in the way of anything. Period.”
He moved to a nearby credenza. Last week, he’d been sorting through a spread of figures on a boat company he was keen to acquire. Easy money—or it would be in a few months after he’d taken over and maximized the various resources.
“I value your work,” Jack told Sylvia, thumbing through the top pages of Baldwin Boats’ annual financials. “I value you. But if ever you decide you want to, you know—move on—I’d only ever wish you well.”
“Where in blazes would you ever find another me?”
Jack returned her mocking grin. “Wouldn’t be easy.” Then it clicked. “Oh, okay. Sure. I get what this is about.”
Her face opened up. “You do?”
“You’ve been working day and night on the Lassiter deal. Crazy hours. Follows you want a bigger cut when the demolition ball starts swinging.”
The intensity in her gaze deepened again before her expression eased and a crooked smile appeared. “Guess you are as big a hard-ass as they say.” She crossed over, scanned a spreadsheet. “Baldwin Boats.”
Pushing the prickly issue of Lassiter Media aside, Jack nodded. “I’m ready to move on it.”
“I spoke with David Baldwin late Friday. He wants you to meet with him. He asked if you’d like a tour of the factory.”
Jack had already seen the factory. Damn it, he knew all he needed to know.
He hung his head and winced. “I hate this part.”
“You mean the part where a struggling businessman who’s put his entire life into a company thinks there might be a chance of talking you into injecting some much-needed capital and becoming partners?”
“Yeah, Sylvia. That part. I’ve told him we’ll put together a good offer. The best he’ll get before his company is forced into bankruptcy. I’m not interested in having a beer with the boys out back.”
David Baldwin had recently made an appointment to discuss his situation. His company, while not huge, had ongoing contracts and sizeable assets. Baldwin Boats was also in financial strife with no easy way out. Same story. Bad economy, rising costs and taxes. Jack had said he thought they could do business. His kind of business, not Baldwin’s. On that, he’d been clear.
Baldwin made beautiful boats but Jack wasn’t in the manufacturing trade. To his way of thinking, Baldwin could either come out of this with something via Reed Incorporated’s offer, or he could walk away with nothing due to bankruptcy. Despite popular opinion, Jack wasn’t completely heartless, even where Lassiter Media was concerned. He hoped David Baldwin grabbed the buoy he had tossed rather than clinging to blind hope and going under.
“Just let him know,” Jack said, “that we’ll have a firm offer to him by end of the month.”
When Sylvia turned to leave, he called after her.
“Just
