Queen of His Daydreams: Billionaire Breakfast Club #1.5 (Camp Firefly Falls Book 23)

by Lisa Hughey

  She focused on the meeting agenda and tried, hard, to ignore the hot guy hovering over her shoulder.

  “You’re doing this?” She pointed to the Round Table discussion breakouts. Of course, she’d heard of round tables, but not typically at a corporate retreat with a lot of staff in attendance. And she knew from organizing the check-in files that almost fifty people were due in today. And another one hundred coming on Sunday.

  “Yes. We need to brainstorm solutions for how to expand gracefully without overloading the current workforce and have our systems crash on us.”

  “You’re….” Sherry stopped typing. “You’re asking for input.”

  It wasn’t a question.

  “We’ve grown quite a bit in the past year.” RJ explained. “The original app that Peter Nguyen developed needed little inside support at first. But our chief information officer didn’t have a lot of experience with the app implementation and expansion. We’re slowly adding people but now we’ve got to make sure we don’t overburden our existing employees and we onboard the right kind of talent.”

  “You consider your employees talent?”

  “Of course.”

  Huh. She was unfamiliar with a company that worried about overloading its employees. Or even really taking into consideration what the employees thought about the executive decisions. “But then you’ll get in a conference room with the other C-suite people and do whatever you want. Right?”

  She’d sat in on those meetings as Jeffrey’s assistant, taking notes and keeping track of each board member’s opinion and votes. The griping about having to pay for rising health insurance and employee perks was done over French press coffee, delicate pastries, and imported cheese while they tossed in asides about their golf handicap.

  “I definitely have discretionary, decision-making clout, but our company vision has always been to make Ramos CAR a place where people love going to work.”

  She snorted. “Right.”

  She corrected a typo in the agenda. “Anything you need updated or changed while I’m reentering this onto your laptop?”

  RJ bent over Sherry, his distinct masculine scent taunting her with inappropriate memories. Things better left to the dark and the dead of night when she couldn’t make any more mistakes. He skimmed over the agenda and pointed to the last item.

  “Let’s change that up.”

  Sherry hunted around the desk and found a red pen. “Shoot.”

  He dictated the slight change in wording.

  The last item on the agenda was “Incorporation.”

  “You’re thinking about incorporating?”

  He hesitated. A strange look on his face.

  “Never mind. Sorry. None of my business.” She put her head down and concentrated on transcribing the damp agenda.

  RJ placed his palm on her shoulder.

  The contact should have been light, barely there, but her body tingled as if he’d stroked her in all sorts of delicious places. “You’re helping me out of a bind, so I’ll answer,” RJ said. “Yes, we’re considering it. But don’t repeat that to anyone.”

  “I’m sure the chipmunks will be super interested in my insider information,” Sherry joked.

  “It’s something I’ve been mulling over.”

  “I’m surprised you’re still an LLC.”

  “We’ve always done profit sharing—”

  “Seriously?”

  “Uh, yeah,” RJ said earnestly, “Happy employees are productive employees.”

  That was so opposite of her corporate experience. With the exception of the executive officers, even bonuses had been stingy.

  “Um, wow, that’s…really awesome.”

  “The goal is to take care of all the employees.”

  She was done typing the agenda and shoved back in the chair. “While you get super rich,” she finished. Because of course, it had to be about his bottom line.

  “I’m not super rich,” he defended hotly.

  “Right. You drive a $200,000 car but you’re not super rich.”

  “Is that what you measure men by? Their wealth?” he snapped.

  And again, he nailed her. Because she had. Before. But she wasn’t after his money, or him.

  He practically looked down his perfect nose at her. “In my world, character is more important than money.”

  “Spoken by someone who has it.” Sherry hooked his laptop up to the printer.

  “Look—”

  “How many?” she interrupted.

  He crossed his arms defensively. “Fifty.”

  She punched in the numbers and hit Print. The silence was tense with the unspoken criticism.

  The printer started spitting out copies.

  Sherry got up to leave.

  “Wait.” RJ reached for her.

  She narrowed her eyes and he dropped his hands. “Thank you for helping me out.”

  “Anything for a guest,” she said softly.

  “One more thing.” He rubbed his hand through his hair like a little kid. The flop of those curls over his left brow was adorable. The asshole.

  “I need you to sign an NDA.”

  She blinked at him. “Seriously.” A nondisclosure agreement. As if she’d share his company secrets.

  “Yes.” He didn’t apologize. “I should have asked before we started but I…wasn’t thinking clearly.”

  “You’re worried about proprietary information on a camp agenda,” she said flatly.

  She’d signed them before, of course. As the CEO’s assistant she’d been privy to sensitive information. With Jeffrey, she’d probably known more of what was going on with the business than he did.

  But this seemed a bit over the top.

  “I have to protect my company from disclosures that could harm our business.”

  And he thought she would harm his business. Fuck him. “Fine.”

  He found the form on his laptop and hit Print. But now they had to wait until the last agenda printed out before she could sign it. The tense silence was uncomfortable.

  When it was finally done, she scrawled a hasty signature on the line and stomped toward the door.

  “Sherry,” RJ said. “I’m—"

  “Not interested.” She held up her hand. Screw Raul Ramos Jr. and his stupid judgements and assumption that she might screw him over. Ass.

  His opinion hurt. But…she’d survived worse. She’d survive this too.

  Chapter 7

  Sherry hid among the raised beds of the gardens that Penny Hastings had planted last summer. Okay, to say she was hiding was maybe an exaggeration. She was actually harvesting tomatoes for tonight’s picnic by the lake.

  But she needed the peace she’d surprisingly found in the garden.

  The fact that RJ wanted her to sign the NDA had hurt more than it should. When would she learn to accept that people were going to think the worst of her?

  Even after a year of trying, working on herself, he still felt the need to protect his business…from her.

  But since the garden soothed her, she’d volunteered for harvest duty. She needed it after RJ’s slight earlier.

  And if someone had told Sherry last year that she’d be spending time outdoors and digging in the dirt—okay, maybe not quite digging, but actually getting a bit dirty—she’d have thought that someone was on a hallucinogenic substance.

  Suddenly she wasn’t alone. The sound of two people kissing passionately interrupted her musings. A giggle. A seductive groan. Heated murmurs.

  Crap. She recognized those voices. Diego Ramos and Penny Hastings.

  Sherry ducked behind the pyramids of tomato plants. She didn’t want to interrupt an intimate moment, especially between these two. She endured a few more heated minutes, trying hard not to listen to the two people here who probably hated her more than Zinnia.

  Sherry continued to hover behind the plants, not wanting to move and draw their attention.

  “I need to go find RJ,” Diego said.

  “Go. I’ll be along
in a minute. I just want to look over my babies.”

  Another smacking kiss. Then Diego Ramos was gone. But Sherry still had to avoid Penny Hastings.

  “You don’t have to hide. I know you’re there,” Penny said bluntly. But Sherry couldn’t quite intuit her tone.

  She had treated Penny very poorly last year.

  Jeffrey London hated Penny. So weird. Penny’s parents had embezzled money from all their clients and fled the country. But Penny had been a kid. She hadn’t had anything to do with her parents’ crimes. Sherry still didn’t understand why Jeffrey had such a visceral reaction to the farmer and philanthropist, but he had.

  And because Sherry had spent most of the corporate retreat with her boss, keeping him happy and complacent, she’d listened to his lengthy diatribes disparaging everything from Penny’s clothes to her parentage.

  She stepped from behind the cover of the plants. “I’m sorry. I’ll just get out of your way.” The acid in her stomach pitched and rolled.

  Penny studied the basket filled with ripe tomatoes. “Were you…gardening?”

  Sherry couldn’t blame the woman for her absolute shock. “Yeah.” Her mouth quirked. “I like it.”

  Nature had calmed her, had given her some perspective, once she was away from Jeffrey and the toxic atmosphere of her old company.

  “You like gardening?” Clearly she’d shocked the other woman.

  “I was as surprised as you are.”

  Penny laughed. “What made you try it?”

  Sherry hesitated.

  “Sorry, none of my business.” Penny held her hands up, palms forward.

  “No, it’s all good.” Sherry pinched the blossoms from some basil plants. How could she phrase this without being rude? “Umm, my old boss—”

  “Jerky Jeffrey, I’m familiar with him.”

  “Jerky Jeffrey. Huh, that’s accurate.” The dick. “He said some fairly awful things about you. But when I found out that he’d been wrong about the other stuff, I remembered your talk about the gardens and how working in nature could bring you peace and I thought I’d try it.” She blurted it all out in a gush.

  Penny’s smile brightened her whole face. Sherry was surprised Penny was even talking to her. “That’s great.”

  One of the things Sherry had had to come to grips with was apologizing when necessary. She had hurt people. “Um, I should apologize for how I treated you last year.” Just because she’d listened to her boss instead of making up her own mind about Penny didn’t excuse the bad behavior. “So…I’m sorry.”

  Penny waved her hand. “I think you’ve paid for it.”

  The newspapers had not been kind in relating the details of her affair with Jeffrey. No one had sympathy for the other woman. And she’d come to realize she didn’t deserve their sympathy or their kindness…for the affair. But she hadn’t had anything to do with London Automotive’s financial issues.

  Penny continued, “It was hard to miss the details.”

  Jeffrey’s divorce and the disbanding of the company had been all over the news. Apparently London Automotive hadn’t just reneged on the camp bill. They had a pile of bills that were unpaid.

  “Well, thank you for….” Sherry trailed off. She wasn’t even sure what she wanted to say.

  Penny tended to the plants, a small smile on her face, her green eyes bright with happiness. She exuded a calm peace.

  Sherry wanted to burst with the thoughts popping in her brain like fireworks. “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Sure.”

  “How did you handle it?”

  “It?”

  “Strangers judging you. Blaming you for things far beyond your control.” And Sherry would guess she’d given away more than she’d intended when Penny’s regard turned to pity.

  “People are going to believe what they’re going to believe.” Penny shook her head.

  “Everyone just assumes I’m guilty. Like I knew that Jeffrey was skimming.” She’d run into former employees in the grocery store or at Starbucks and they’d cast her as a villain.

  “Being a victim of other people’s criminal activity sucks. People want someone to blame. And you’re around so you’re an easy target.”

  Sherry was just as much a victim as the other employees. “They just assume I knew what was going on. It all came tumbling down after the merger fell apart.” Sherry blew out a breath. “How did you get through it?”

  “I lived my life and ignored the haters.”

  Sherry sighed mentally. What the hell was her life? She’d been trying to figure it out, but she was still floundering with what to do next.

  Sherry confessed, “Being constrained by other people’s opinions has been…a challenge.”

  “I know.” Penny gathered poked at the soil, testing for moisture. “Don’t hold back on moving forward, taking what you want, because all those haters win if you let them stop you.”

  Strangers, people she worked with, even Jeffrey’s family she could deal with but Penny Hastings in her own way had given Sherry the path to discover new things about herself. “Do you…hate me?”

  “Not at all,” Penny said softly. “I forgave you a long time ago.”

  “Thank you.” Sherry lifted the basket of tomatoes and propped it on her hip.

  “Of course.”

  “You ended up okay?” Sherry asked.

  “I’m living my best possible life.” Penny smiled.

  “I’m glad.” And she was. Her heart had expanded in the past year. As she’d worked on herself, she’d found room for others to achieve happiness. It wasn’t a zero sum proposition. Too bad it took her so long to figure that out. Another realization hit Sherry.

  “If Jeffrey hadn’t been a complete asshole, things might have turned out completely different.” The companies would be merged, she would still have a job with London Automotive, and she’d probably be even more miserable. “I sure wouldn’t be working here.”

  “Why are you here?” Penny looked curious.

  Sherry shook her head. “It’s a long story.”

  In the distance, Diego was calling Penny. “Well, I’d best go.”

  “I’ll try to stay out of your way this weekend.”

  “You don’t need to do that.”

  That’s what Penny thought. But the Ramos family wasn’t thrilled with her presence.

  Even, it seemed, RJ.

  The barbecue luncheon was over, and their employees had been separated by groups. Each group was named after a luxury car brand: Jaguar, Benz, BMW, Porsche, Maserati, Bentley, Acura, Audi, Lincoln, and Cadillac. RJ was in the Jaguar group. There were four stations and they were going to rotate through them.

  The day was unseasonably warm and half his male employees had taken off their shirts, RJ included.

  Sherry had disappeared during lunch, but he’d seen her clearing the tented eating area after his employees gathered on the lawn. Then he spotted her near the lake, setting up the tables for tonight’s picnic. He was hyper-aware of her location at all times, like a Sherry divining rod.

  He hated how they had left things this morning.

  He really appreciated her help with the agenda. But he couldn’t shirk his responsibilities as head of the company. And after the issue with Tanya, he needed to be overly cautious about corporate security.

  Zin had the bullhorn and was abusing the privilege of being in charge. “Jaguar, Benz, BMW groups by the climbing wall.” She rattled off the other groups and the various stations: Climbing Wall Race, Water Balloon Toss, Relay Races, and Egg Roll. Michael had designed the team-building competition so it wasn’t all about physical fitness, but working together.

  “Okay, first competition is the climbing event! Each group choose one person to represent you and another to hold the safety ropes. Team with the best time gets five points. We’ll also have a camp employee as backup for the ropes just in case anyone is tempted to drop their boss.” Everyone laughed.

  His group consisted of their lawyer, Gina, who w
as in white linen shorts and lime green halter top that probably looked great while sipping fancy cocktails but wasn’t going to cut it as athletic wear.

  “Not happening.” She held her hands in the air.

  Fredo, the chief engineering officer who oversaw the distribution in the warehouse, shook his head. “I hurt my shoulder playing softball. Can’t climb.”

  “I’m sorry.” Alma, their human resources director, a lovely woman in her late fifties who by her own admission had a few extra pounds, was out as well.

  And their chief information officer, Chad, who wasn’t RJ’s biggest fan. He’d been angling for the CEO spot after the app that expanded their business really took off. But the app had been designed by Diego’s pal, Peter, and the truth was Chad didn’t really have the technical expertise needed for the expansion, so he’d been hoping to parlay his managerial experience into the head job. He’d been less than thrilled when Diego promoted RJ.

  “Sorry, man.” Chad shook his head. “Afraid of heights. I’ll help with the rope though.”

  RJ swallowed and peered up at the portable fake rock wall. “I guess it’s me.” His head spun at the height, and a light sweat sheened his brow. Damn, he hated heights.

  The camp employee, a big buff guy with tattoos curled around both biceps, wrapped the harness around RJ and tested the ropes. “This will be a piece of cake for you.”

  Yeah, as long as he didn’t throw up or pass out.

  But he kept that observation to himself. Gina and Chad helped hold the ropes, while the buff guy held the tension. Alma and Fredo were the cheerleaders.

  Zinnia on the bullhorn yelled gleefully, “On your mark, get set, go!”

  RJ took his time, making sure his handholds were set before moving his feet, and slowly climbed the wall. He filtered out the cheers and calls of encouragement and focused on one move at a time, keeping his gaze solidly on the wall. He listened to his heart rate, the beat too fast, but as long as he took slow steady breaths, he’d be fine.

  The climb seemed to take forever, but finally RJ reached the top. He did it!