looked toward the head of the table where the cause of all the trouble sat. Kingston placed his palms on the armrests of the chair and pushed himself slowly and deliberately to his feet. It was the only chair with armrests, giving it the appearance of a throne, which, no doubt, was exactly the impression he intended to convey. Finally, he straightened the lapels of his hand-tailored suit jacket with a dramatic touch of showmanship.
The boardroom went so silent that Jay could hear the whir of the state-of-the-art air-conditioning. At last, Kingston spoke. “While public stockholders own forty-nine percent of Kingdom, I have always enjoyed the comfort of holding a majority interest and I have been considering the future of the company for a while now.”
Georgia sat straighter. Jay knew she was expecting an appointment to the board today...
On top of the tower of documents, his hands curled into fists.
A frisson of electricity zapped around the boardroom. Even Charis had stopped her frenetic sketching and was watching her father intently.
For the first time, Jay wondered whether Kingston had already secretly begun selling off his private stock—it would explain the recent, unexpected movements in the stock market.
The old bastard was stringing them all along...
Or did the youngest Kinnear daughter have any idea of what her father planned? Charis was, after all, the apple of her father’s eye. Jay still hadn’t worked out what Kingston had planned for his youngest daughter. So far, nothing in the documents he’d speed-read had dealt with her fate. But Jay had no doubt that Kingston had control of his youngest daughter’s life finely outlined. He rather suspected that this time even Charis had been kept in the dark.
The tension in the boardroom had become palpable.
Georgia chose that moment to speak. “Roberta, Charis and I have always been deeply involved in every facet of the company—we are all heavily invested in Kingdom’s future.”
What a miserable understatement! Kingston expected his daughters to live and breathe the company. And Georgia, even more than her sisters, had made Kingdom her life. There had been moments when her blinkered commitment to Kingdom had caused Jay to despair.
It was Charis who put what everyone was thinking into words. “The obvious thing, Daddy, would be to divide your fifty-one percent share equally among the three of us.”
“That would be the obvious solution,” drawled Roberta.
Jay braced himself for the firestorm to come.
Finally, Kingston spoke into the silence. “To do so would fragment the company. If I transferred seventeen percent to each of you, it would leave Kingdom extremely vulnerable to takeover.”
So Kingston had heard the same rumors he’d been hearing—and hadn’t mentioned a word. The first rumblings had surfaced a couple of months ago, but Jay’s own investigations hadn’t turned anything up. The market had settled down. Then this past week, the stocks had fluctuated, and yesterday the share price had been especially erratic.
“Not if we stood together—we’d still hold the controlling interest.” Georgia’s knuckles were white as she clutched the pen like a lifeline. Jay discovered that his own hands were clenched just as tightly.
“When have the three of you ever stood together?” scoffed her father.
At the other end of the table, Charis dropped her pencil, and the sound was loud in the large boardroom. “Daddy—”
“So what do you intend to do?” Roberta challenged the old tyrant, talking straight over her sister. “Give everything to Charis?”
“I have three daughters—I must take care of each,” Kingston said with breathtaking sanctimony. Jay knew the wily old codger had never done anything that didn’t serve Kingdom—and himself—best. “But naturally, I will reward my most loyal daughter.”
“Don’t you mean your favorite daughter?” The edge to Roberta’s voice was diamond-hard.
Across the table, the gold pen fell from Georgia’s fingers with a thud. “My loyalty to you is beyond doubt.” The glitter of hurt in her eyes caused Jay to freeze. “I put in eighty-hour work weeks—heck, I don’t have a life outside of these walls. I haven’t had a vacation in over two years.”
“That’s your choice.” Kingston shrugged away her plea.
Georgia’s lips parted, but she must’ve thought better of what she’d intended to say. Eyes downcast, she picked up the pen and capped it, and then set it down on the legal pad in front of her.
“You have been unusually silent, Charis. What do you have to say, honey?” Kingston’s chilly eyes defrosted as they rested on his youngest daughter.
Charis raised her chin and faced her father down across the length of the table. “Nothing.”
“Nothing?” A freeze returned to the blue eyes so disconcertingly like Georgia’s in color. “You will be more enthusiastic shortly, my daughter.”
Jay felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle as, taking his time, Kingston’s gaze rested on each of his three daughters in turn. “The incentive will be straightforward,” he announced. “Whoever proves their loyalty to me first will receive twenty-six percent of the total Kingdom stock—over half my share—and that should be a big enough block to give real power. The other two of you will split the remaining twenty-five percent.”
Murmurs broke out around the table. But the three sisters sat like stone.
Jay couldn’t bring himself to confront the bruised hurt in Georgia’s eyes. And he knew Kingston had barely gotten started...
Kingston should not have been permitted to torment his daughters in such a cat-and-mouse fashion. Jay forced his hands to relax, smoothing over the stack of papers that contained untold chaos.
“Before you ask, your father has devised a way for each of you to prove your loyalty.” He spoke without inflection, not allowing his fury to boil over. “He has a plan.”
Georgia’s throat closed. Murmurs of surprise swept through the boardroom and then subsided. Across the boardroom table, Jay watched her father through narrowed eyes.
“Jay is correct—but then I always have a plan.” Satisfaction oozed from her father’s measured tone. “That’s how I grew Kingdom from the business my great-grandfather started in a back room into the billion-dollar brand it is today.”
“What kind of plan?” Georgia finally found her voice.
Her father didn’t even glance her way. “I’m concerned my daughters will be taken advantage of by the unscrupulous money-grubbing sharks that hunt the fashion waters. So I have prepared a shortlist of men able to protect—”
Georgia’s breath caught. “A list of men?”
“Protect? Who? Us? Why?”
Their father ignored Georgia’s and Roberta’s
