last!
Even her father turned his head to watch him enter. Tall. Perfectly proportioned and elegant in a dark business suit, Jay moved with easy grace.
Georgia flashed him a wide smile. With his arrival, her over-stretched nerves eased a little. But instead of his customary taunting grin, Jay didn’t spare her a glance; his dark head remained bent, his attention fixed on the sheaf of papers in his hand.
“You all know that I am not getting any younger,” her father was saying, “but I’ve always been determined to give Methuselah a run for his money.”
A ripple of laughter echoed around the table.
What was this? Georgia went still. Did her father also plan to announce his own retirement today? It was her dream to follow in her father’s footsteps, her plan to one day be President and Chief Executive Officer of Kingdom International. But she’d never expected the opportunity to come so soon.
Too soon.
Even she knew that. He couldn’t retire. Not today. She’d never be appointed...
She rapidly speculated about who he’d lined up to take his place.
Jay had seated himself in the empty chair to her father’s left. She shot him a questioning look across the expanse of polished cherry wood. As the luxury fashion house’s financial analyst, Jay was in prime position to have the best insight into her father’s convoluted thought process—something that constantly raised disquieting emotions in her.
But Jay’s attention was fixed on the stack of papers he’d set down on the table in front of him. Somewhere in that pile were documents that were about to transform her life forever. Yet, suddenly Georgia couldn’t stop wondering what else might be in there.
One of her father’s infamous surprises?
Did Roberta know something she didn’t?
Meeting Georgia’s questioning gaze across the boardroom table, Roberta rolled her green eyes—glamorously defined with black-eyeliner—toward the ceiling while her perfectly manicured nails toyed with a pink cell phone. Clearly Roberta thought the comment nothing more than Kingston’s idea of a joke.
“I have no plans to retire yet.” Her father smiled, and Georgia’s pulse steadied a little. “The corner office is far more comfortable than any in my home. My daughters will have to someday carry me out in a box.”
There was more laughter. This time, Georgia joined in, the sound high-pitched to her own ears. Of course, her father had been joking. He wouldn’t give up his position so easily...
Georgia’s attention switched back to Jay, but from this angle, all she could see was the top of his head.
A rapid glance along the length of the boardroom table revealed the mood amongst the other members of the Managing Committee. Since the start of the rumors, Georgia had quietly set up one-on-one meetings with each of them to smooth the coming transition. She was satisfied she had them all on her side. Yet, right now, they all appeared mesmerized by her father.
With one exception...
At the foot of the table, her youngest sister doodled in a sketchbook, locked in a secret world of Kingdom’s nascent designs. Charis didn’t look like she’d registered a single one of their father’s jokes. No surprise there. Meetings were her idea of hell.
Georgia knew her youngest sister would not be interested in an appointment to the board...or whether their father planned to retire. As long as Charis had a pencil and paper, she was in her element.
Again, Georgia tried—in vain—to catch Jay’s attention. She willed him to look up so she could figure out what was going on inside that maddening, quicksilver mind.
But he remained stubbornly hunched over the documents in front of him, his espresso-dark hair falling over his forehead.
A wild thought swept into her head.
Was it possible...?
Had her father lined Jay up for her job?
Old insecurities swamped her. But she weighed the evidence. Only minutes ago, she and Jay had been engaged in a teasing exchange by the copier. Jay had even joked about buying her a cup of coffee when she got the appointment—
No, not when, but if—
Her breath caught.
He’d definitely said if she got the appointment...
Had Jay been trying to warn her?
She replayed that silly exchange. Despite the teasing, he’d seemed a little terse. She’d attributed it to his battle with the monstrous machine. But had it been guilt?
He’d said there was something he had to talk to her about. He must’ve already known he was getting the appointment she craved.
She stared blindly at the pen between her damp fingers as her thoughts whirled chaotically. She was the ideal candidate to replace Norman. She knew it, and so did her father. She’d proven she could do the job over and over in the past couple of years.
The pen slipped under the pressure of her fingertips. Her father couldn’t possibly have decided to give her job to Jay.
Could he?
* * *
The faster Jay read, the more the words on the page in front of him blurred together. He shook his head, fighting to make sense of the cumbersome legalese.
What kind of prick had drafted this nonsense?
He speared one hand into his hair to push it off his brow. It needed a cut. But he hadn’t had time. The past two weeks had flashed past as he’d fought to clear his desk of never-ending fires. And he still hadn’t gotten to the bottom of the quiet niggling rumors about Kingdom on Wall Street.
He suppressed a groan as his focus on the black print sharpened. Kingston Kinnear had lost his damned mind. And he couldn’t have picked a worse time to go nuts.
In three days’ time, Jay was going on leave—his first visit home in years. And he’d made a vow to come clean with Georgia before he left. If he weren’t such a goddamned coward he would’ve done it a long time ago.
Today was already too late...
He hadn’t expected his orderly work existence to rapidly turn to crap.
Kingston’s retention of a new firm of attorneys to handle “a special project” had seemed harmless enough. If Jay hadn’t been so focused on fixing every last crisis before going on leave he might have suspected something clandestine was happening. And maybe talked Kingston out of this insane course of action.
Too late now.
He shuffled the papers back together into an orderly pile, then linked his hands together on top of it as though holding them down would stop the mayhem from escaping. Then he looked up—straight into the pair of Colorado-sky blue eyes he’d been avoiding.
Georgia
