father had been adamant about staying away from Thomas Montrose’s grandsons due to the bad blood between their families. She got that, but even before the takeover, she’d had no choice but to deal with Allan when her best friend, Patti, had fallen in love with and married his best friend.
“Not quite. I’m here to make you an offer,” he said, signaling the waitress and ordering a Glenlivet neat.
“Thanks, but I don’t need your kind of help,” she said. She’d probably find herself out of a job quicker with him on her side.
He ran his hand over the top of his short hair, narrowed his eyes and looked at her in a way that made her sit up straighter in her chair. “Do you get off on pushing me to the edge?”
“Sort of,” she said. She did take a certain joy in sparring with him. And she kept score of who won and who lost.
“Why?” he asked, pulling out his iPhone and setting it on the table next to him. He glanced down at the screen and then brought his electric gaze back to her.
“Concentrating on your phone and not on the person you’re with is one reason,” she answered. It irked her when anyone did that, but bothered her even more when the person was Allan. “Besides, I like getting to see the chinks in your perfect facade when you can’t hide the real Allan.”
The waitress delivered his drink. He leaned forward on his elbows. The woman was thin and pretty and wore a pair of large black glasses that were clearly a personality statement and went well with her pixie haircut. Allan smiled at her, and the waitress blushed, which made Jessi roll her eyes.
“What did I do to make you so adversarial toward me?” he asked, turning back to her as the waitress left.
“Why do you care?”
“I’m tired of always arguing with you. In fact, that brings me back to my reason for tracking you down,” he said.
“What reason?”
“I’d like to buy you out. Your shares in Infinity Games are now worth a lot of money, and we both know you don’t want to work for my cousin Kell or me. I’ll make you a fair offer.”
She sat there in shock as his words sank in. Did he think her family heritage meant so little to her? When she thought of how her dad and grandfather had always been so busy at work that they’d never been around...well, hell, no, she wasn’t selling. Especially not to a Montrose heir. “Never. I’d give them away before I sold to you.”
He shrugged. “I just thought I’d save all of us a lot of frustration. You don’t seem to be really interested in working for the merged company.”
“I’m not selling,” she said one more time, just in case he had any illusion that she was going to walk away easily. “I’m planning to keep my job and make you and your cousins eat your words.”
“What words?”
“That Emma and I are expendable. Don’t deny that you believe it.”
She and her older sister still had to prove themselves if they wanted to keep their jobs. Sure, they were shareholders, so they’d always have an ownership stake in the company, but their actual jobs were on the line. Their younger sister, Cari, had already jumped through hoops for the Montrose cousins and had ended up keeping her position and falling in love with one of them.
Declan Montrose was now engaged to her, though three months ago he’d arrived at Infinity Games to manage the merger of the two companies, which meant he was there to fire the Chandler sisters. But Cari had turned the tables on him, revealing that he was the father of her eighteen-month-old son as a result of a brief affair they’d had. This had been a big surprise to everyone on both sides of the merger. It had been an interesting time, to say the least, but in the end she and Dec had fallen in love and Cari had managed to save her job at the newly merged Playtone-Infinity Games.
“I wasn’t going to deny it,” Allan said. “The situation with both you and Emma is different than the one with Cari. When she approached Dec and I with her ideas for saving the staff at Infinity Games she was happy to listen to our ideas, as well.”
His words hurt; Jessi wasn’t going to lie about that. But Cari was known for being the caring sister, and Jessi, well, she’d always been the rebel, the ballbuster. But that didn’t mean she was emotionless. She wanted to see her family’s legacy in video games continue; after all, Gregory Chandler had been a pioneer in the industry in the seventies and eighties. “I have a few ideas that I’ve been working on.”
“Share them with me,” Allan invited, glancing again at his phone.
“Why?” she asked.
“To see if you’re sincere about wanting to keep your position. No more lame ideas like sending out Infinity-Playtone game characters to make appearances at malls. You’re head of marketing and we expect more than that.”
“It wasn’t—” she said, but in her heart she knew it sort of was. She didn’t want Playtone-Infinity to be successful so she’d...shot herself in the foot. “Okay, maybe it was a little lame.”
“What else do you have in mind? You’re too smart not to have something big,” he said, staring at her with that intense gaze of his.
“Was that actually a compliment?”
“Don’t act so surprised. You’re very good at your job and we both know you know it. Talk to me, Jessi.”
She hesitated. She was good, and she wasn’t ever as tentative as she felt right now. It was just that she’d been beaten and felt like it today. “I don’t... What can you do?”
“Decide if it’s worth my time to help you,” he said at last.
“Why?”
“Our best friends are married and we’re their daughter’s godparents. I can’t just let Kell fire you without at least making some sort of effort to help,” he said. “Patti and John would never forgive me.”
“Then why offer to buy me out?”
“It would solve the problem and we’d both be able to walk away from this.”
“It would,” Jessi said. “But that’s not happening.”
She rubbed the back of her neck. She didn’t like anything about this merger but she also didn’t relish the idea of being fired. “I’m one person who wouldn’t be swayed by your bank account.”
He shrugged off her comment and for a moment looked pensive.
“It bothers you that I sent the jet to pick you and Patti up that first time we met, doesn’t it?” he asked, leaning back and glancing at his iPhone, but quickly looking back at Jessi, which earned him a few more points toward being a good guy.
She took a swallow of her gin and tonic. “Yes. It felt like you were trying too hard. I mean, offering your private jet to fly us to Paris...that was showing off.”
“Maybe I just wanted Patti to have a proposal she’d always remember. You and I both know that John doesn’t earn what I earn. I was just helping my friend out.”
