admit that.
In theory, she liked sexy men, at least from a distance. When said sexy man was her boss, it made life a bit more complicated. It didn’t really matter, though. Business was business and she had no intention of crossing any lines with him. She wasn’t his type anyway. He liked party girls. The shallower, and the shorter the skirt, the better. And he definitely wasn’t her type. Of course, she wasn’t entirely certain what her type was as far as practical application went. Judging by her recent string of failed dates she didn’t really have a type.
“How many shots?” he asked, lowering the cup.
“Quad,” she answered, trying to bring her mind back into the present and away, far, far away, from his lips.
“Good. It’s going to be a long day.”
She sat down in the chair by his desk, pulled her notebook out of her briefcase and sat poised with a pen in her hand.
“Why do you do that?” he asked.
“Do what?”
“Take physical notes on paper. You have a million little gadgets for that kind of thing. I know because most of them were purchased with your expense account.”
“This helps me commit it to memory. I always log it electronically later.”
A small smile curved his lips, lips she was staring at again. She looked down at her notebook.
“The England site, how do you feel about the damage control that’s been done there?”
“Great,” she said. “You have a satellite interview scheduled with one of the news outlets very late tonight. Also, the written release is set to run in major newspapers tomorrow, and you spoke to the organizer of the protests personally, right?”
“Yes. Nice woman. Didn’t like me very much. I think she called me a … capitalist pig.”
She looked up and her heart jumped a bit. She looked back down at the lined paper of her notebook. “You kind of are.”
“A rich one.”
“Touché.”
“I was able to explain to her the process by which we’re building the hotel. I also explained, very nicely, how it would help the economy, and that, in addition to the construction workers who have work now, it would provide at least a hundred permanent positions. And the fact that it’s being built on the site of what was essentially a crumbling wreck of an old manor, and not on any farmland, went over well.”
“All very good,” Lily said, scribbling on her notebook before reaching over to grab her coffee cup off of Gage’s desk and taking a sip.
In the beginning it had seemed strange, coming in early when no one else was in the building, sitting in Gage’s luxurious office, watching the sunrise, glinting off the bay, and the hundreds of boats moored in the San Diego harbor. It had almost seemed … intimate in some ways. Half the time he hadn’t shaved yet when she arrived, and he would go into his private bathroom that adjoined his office and take care of it before the other staff arrived, but he didn’t bother for her.
She’d never shared her mornings with a man before, so the insight into the masculine prep-for-the-day routine was an interesting one.
Then at eight his PA would arrive and Gage would brief him on the schedule for the day and Lily would go to her office. Her new office in Gage’s building. She and her small crew had relocated once she’d realized the constant crosstown commute wasn’t conducive to keeping tabs on her account with Forrestation, and they were essentially the only account she handled personally. Gage kept her too busy to do anything else.
“The build in Thailand is going well,” he commented.
“Good.”
“You’ve certainly managed to keep the public, and in turn, the shareholders, placated with that one.”
“You’re providing so many jobs for the area and the wages you pay are more than fair. It’s only going to be good for the economic growth of the region. And you’ve certainly taken great care to keep environmental impact at a minimum. And the fact that you bought several hundred acres and had it set aside as a wildlife preserve is helpful. If you would let me announce it.”
He shrugged his broad shoulders and his shirt pulled tight across his muscular chest, exposing the outline of his pectoral muscles. She looked away. “It doesn’t matter to me what the vocal minority thinks. No matter how many protesters show up at a construction site, the general public still patronizes my hotels and I can still sleep at night. Anything else is an incidental. It wouldn’t matter at all if weren’t for the shareholders. The curse of going public.”
“Why did you choose to go public then? You don’t strike me as the sort of man who likes to be accountable to anyone.”
He leaned back in his chair and pushed his dark hair off of his forehead. “You noticed.”
“Hard not to.”
“I went public because it’s a great way to increase visibility. And at the time I had debts to pay off from the start-up of the company. It helped increase my capital immensely, and enabled me to pay off the business loans I’d taken out.”
Gage was from a fairly affluent family, that was general knowledge. It surprised her that he’d had to take out loans to start up his company. She’d imagined him having full family support, both financially and emotionally. The fact that he started the same as she had, by herself, with nothing and no one standing by to bail her out, made her stomach tighten.
“But now you have to play the diplomacy game,” she said.
“I would anyway. I develop resort and hotel properties, the public has to have a favorable view of me.”
“That’s true.”
For the most part, the public did have a favorable view of him. He was charismatic and charming and dated the most eligible women in Hollywood, which put him on the front cover of a lot of magazines and made him very high-profile for a businessman.
He was also a slave-driving taskmaster, but only his employees knew that. And in fairness, he never expected anything from her that he didn’t expect from himself. In fact, he seemed to expect more from himself. Which was why, even when her phone rang at 3:00 a.m., she managed to resist hurling obscenities at him.
“Anything else on the agenda?” she asked.
“I need a date for an event tomorrow. Fundraiser. Art gala.”
“And you’ve misplaced your little black book?”
“No, it’s in a safe somewhere so that no one can ever get their hands on it and use it for evil.”
“You use it for evil,” she said.
“On occasion. But the real issue is that none of my black book entries are suitable.”
“Well that sounds like an issue of taste to me,” she said. It bothered her sometimes—okay, all the time—that a man with his drive to succeed dated women who were such bubbleheads.
