Deacon: A BWWM Billionaire Romance

by Notaro, Paige

  I liked being close to water. Watching the ripples helped me think. And it soothed me, which I certainly needed now.

  “I don't accept that answer,” I said, gazing out at the moon’s reflection in them.

  “Then don't accept it, ya dumbass,” Trey said behind me. “Give up the entire deal. See if I care.”

  I turned to Trey. His suit jacket was already off on the chair. His brown arms were damp past his rolled sleeves.

  “You're not giving me enough money to work with, you penny-pinching bastard. I can't buy a controlling stake in Habibi solar with ten million. We give more to charity than that.”

  “Blame your old man. Or his lawyers. These rules are ironclad.”

  “Fuck,”

  I slammed a palm into the glass wall. I had control of a goddamn aircraft carrier, but my father had jammed the rudder before he departed the world. I couldn't maneuver out of this mess.

  “Well, Jesse's on board,” I said. “That's got to amount to something.”

  “Not according to this charter.”

  “Two thirds of the company wants to do something and they can’t?” I said. “Two thirds is enough to pass a goddamn law without the president.”

  “Your family has a very unique take on checks and balances.”

  I fogged the glass with exhausted breath. This thing had sucked up my entire week, and I had nothing to show for it. Winning was supposed to prove something to Kiara. Instead, I had wasted time that could have gone to her. It'd been days since I'd seen her last.

  Friday night and I was here. We were even dry on alcohol. Trey and I were drinking Swiss water that tasted worse than what came out of a tap. I had tried sending Demetri to get something useful to drink, but he said he was in the middle of a thing with his girlfriend. Either I was getting sentimental, or that kid was learning how to play me.

  I sat next to Trey. He looked like weathered wood, with sweat running down his face. Guy had bled for this deal, no question in that.

  Maybe he could do more.

  “Any chance you would be willing to-”

  He cut me off with a knowing dip of the head. “Man, I know you're not asking me to cook numbers for you. I know Deacon Stone would never be so dumb.”

  I slapped my forehead and collapsed hard into the chair back. “Oh, fine, yeah, that was dumb. I'm just out of my mind here.”

  “Take it easy.” He patted my shoulder. “You still got time to make this work. Maybe you can bring your mother around.”

  I laughed harsh. “Hilarious. My mother's loving every moment of this. You go try to change that old girl's tune.”

  “I'll take a hard pass on that.”

  Bring her around. I'd been trying that my whole life. Ok, well, not very hard. But I'd done my best to explain my motives. What pissed me off most wasn't her rejecting the deal, but the idea that the sight of Kiara might have been the tipping point - the idea that it was the color of Kiara’s skin that had infuriated her to the point where she would mess up a good deal to spite me.

  None of my girlfriends had ever made her quite so mad before. The political shit probably factored in, but that had been around for a while.

  If my mother couldn't see how Kiara's brain and beauty trumped the blonde ditzes she liked, or how her work ethic let her put up with my busy life -

  Wait.

  “You're a genius,” I muttered, reaching for my phone.

  “Yeah?” Trey sat up straighter. “Well, sure, but which genius thing are you talking about now?”

  “Having Kiara come over. It's fine right?”

  “Kiara? Here?” He shrugged. “Yeah, if she's willing to waste a night in this little cube. Let her know the fridge is empty though.”

  Kiara was out with her friends. She protested at first, but she clearly wanted any excuse to see me. A promise of smart company with alcohol and numbers to play with apparently did the trick. Half an hour later she stood knocking at the office door with a security guard.

  “Thanks, Tom.” I waved to the guard as Kiara came in lugging a carton of beer.

  She dropped it, rushed over and pecked my lips. She even gave Trey a hug. Poor guy was too shocked by her energy to reciprocate.

  What can I say? My girl loved her numbers.

  “So what's the deal?” she said, sitting across from us. She had on a gorgeous orange and yellow summer dress that could have brightened the night around us, but her eyes were all business.

  “Read this and find your boy half a billion somewhere,” Trey said, sipping a beer as he handed over the financial charter my father had written. “Or let him know that I was right when I said it's impossible.”

  She bugged out at the thick sheath of papers. “Isn't that more a lawyer's job?”

  “Deacon here, he doesn't really understand corporate structure.”

  I threw up my hands. “What can I say? I love my accountants.”

  She began poring through the papers at a rapid rate. Trey and I chugged cans of beer. He tried to get me caught up with chitchat on the Astros and the Rockets, and I humored him, thought it wasn't really my deal.

  Just watching Kiara was inspirational. The tight look on her cute brow made me just want to clutch her to me and forget about the money. Probably best that Trey was around for restraint.

  Kiara looked up after half an hour. She carefully opened a beer can and took a long draw.

  “Yeah, you're not going to be able to get Stone Holdings to buy Habibi Solar outright,” she said. “I'm really sorry.”

  “Fuck.” I chugged the rest of my beer, but it wouldn't be enough. The rest of the box wouldn't be enough.

  “Sorry man.” Trey looked as dejected as me. “I won't even say I told you so.”

  “Awful kind of you.”

  Kiara leaned in and stared at me, her brown eyes bright as lit coal. I just wanted to go somewhere nice and drift off with her, doing nothing.

  “You done being sad?” she said.

  “Any reason I should be?”

  “Depends on how much you want this deal.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “You know how much.”

  “Ok.” Kiara slid the papers back. “Then forget all this. Buy the company yourself.”

  The room lay very still. The LED lights shone their crisp light on us, and the waters moved silently outside the glass window.

  “Buy it?” I said.

  “You can, right? You have half a billion not tied up in this company.”

  “I...do.” I glanced at Trey, who nodded slowly.

  Kiara reached over and grabbed my hands. Her beautiful arms looked as firm as the dark wooden table.

  “You want to be your own man. You want to go hard for what you believe in. That's awesome,” she said. “That's half the reason I love you.”

  “What's the other half?”

  “Your billions.” She rolled her eyes convincingly. “Obviously.”

  I grinned. “Knew it.”

  Her mouth lay flat though. “What's the use of all those billions if you can’t do what you want? Use the money. Start your own company.”

  From the edge of my eyes, I caught Trey frowning.

  “As your accountant and your friend,” he said. “Seeing you invest a third of your liquid assets in a high risk play is...well, fuck it, it's nuts.”

  “And as your other accountant and listener to you dreams both literal and figurative,” Kiara said “I strongly advise that you go for it.”

  “I must have missed the 'follow you dreams' class in business school,” Trey grumbled.

  “Oh come on,” Kiara said to him. “How bad off will he be if he loses every single penny he puts into this thing? Will it change his lifestyle?”

  Trey shrugged. “Probably not. On that count, it certainly wouldn't hold a candle to you.”

  “It's just money.” Kiara leaned in to me so deep she was almost on the table. “Someone once said that the only freedom they had was to decide what to chain themselves to. And I think you’d rather chai
n yourself to this solar company than a somewhat larger bank account.”

  It was nuts. It made no strategic sense, but that wasn’t what held me back.

  For some reason reason, legacy suddenly made a lot of sense.

  “I'm still a Stone,” I said. “I may have been born chained to that name, but it also gave me everything I had. I'm still CEO of Stone Holdings. I can't just split off and abandon ship.”

  “You don't have to. Call your new company Stone Solar. Run both companies. No one's going to stop you.”

  She was so eager. Her mouth lay open to counter every doubt that left mine. She wanted so much for me to seize the freedom I had once offered her. But walking away from my dream of growing Stone Holdings my way still felt like a surrender. It wasn’t who I was.

  “Isn't there any way to tie this solar company to Stone Holdings in more than name?”

  Kiara ticked her head from side to side. “Well, there is a way you could invest in it with the company. Stone Holdings could invest a lot more than ten million. You just wouldn't be able to buy enough share to control Habibi Solar.”

  “She's right,” Trey said, sitting up. “I thought you wanted to run the place, not just buy stock in them, but yeah, you could do that.”

  “What?” I nearly leapt across the table and seized her. “Why didn't you say so?”

  “It's just an investment. It wouldn't be your company. That’s one thing.”

  “And what's the other thing?”

  “You'll need your brother to agree to it.”

  ****

  “I'm not doing that.”

  Jesse stalked over to the window of his office. He had a nice high view of the parking lot. Right now, I had a mind to kick him out into it.

  “You said you were greenlighting my deal,” I joined him at the other end of the window. “This is just where the deal's landed.”

  He crossed his arms and leaned on the glass. His eyes fell on me, but they were still distant.

  “This is a very new deal you're asking me to agree to. It doesn't give us final say in decision making. It doesn't limit our risk. It simply allows us to hand over money to a foreign company.”

  “Which they'll be thrilled to have.” I rapped the glass. “Yeah, we can't reach over and make them do what we want, but we can provide guidance. They're doing great on their own. A little tip here or there is all they need.”

  Jesse shook his head. “I'd have to get another report for this. It still makes us look like a solar player, but we don't get any of their technology. We lose all the benefits that Kiara mentioned.”

  “I'll have her write a new report,” I said. “She'd be thrilled. Hell, she was the one who dug up the clause that allows us to do this.”

  That flared his eyebrows. “She helped you on this?”

  “That she did.”

  He sighed broadly. “Well, no wonder you're pressing so hard. Deacon, this isn't even what you want. You wanted to buy a company, not just invest in one. Don't do this to impress her.“

  “What? I'm not trying to impress her. She told me not to do this. She called it a half-assed move.”

  My brother threw up his hands, and sat back at his desk. “Then, this is just foolishness. I don't see any purpose in your proposal.”

  I walked around and sat across. My purpose was not to scuttle the whole damn deal, the thing I'd worked so hard to accomplish. What more reason did I need?

  Well, other than not wanting to risk my own money. Other than avoiding risking my name on something my family hadn’t built up for me. Other than accepting that I’d lose Stone Holdings eventually.

  You know, all the things I'd been saying I wanted this whole time.

  “If I get a new report from our old data, will you look at it?” I asked.

  Jesse gave me a long and thoughtful glance, his eyes paler than usual.

  “No, Deacon,” he said with a sigh. “If there's no real purpose, I'd rather not go against mother on this.”

  “Ah.” I clicked my tongue. “So there it is.”

  “It just doesn't seem prudent by any measure.”

  And of course Jesse was always prudent, always careful. Our mother would still hand him the company. But he didn't want to risk it. Just investing in the solar company could still make the company a lot of money. That might make it harder to knock me from the CEO seat when the time came.

  I stood, clapped down my jacket from the familial ash that seemed to cloud the whole company.

  “Thanks for your time,” I said. “I'll find some other way.”

  “Good luck,” Jesse said, as I walked out. “I really mean it. Let me know if you need anything else.”

  I snorted as I left. He wouldn't give me a damn thing. What I wanted, I'd have to take myself.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Kiara

  It didn't hit me until I was sitting at a shaded mesh patio table, holding my frigid coffee, listening to bland indie rock and smelling burnt beans: my mother was really going to meet me here. It'd be the first time seeing her in six years - which was about sixty less than I planned.

  What insanity had possessed me to agree to this?

  A bit of chilled chai tea washed down my nervous energy. It was ok. This was a public place. If I got too keyed up, I could just leave. I had that right. And I had my entourage.

  Antoine sat a couple tables away watching over me extremely conspicuously. He had a paper copy of the Houston Chronicle spread open in front of him. Great cover for a 1960s era spy, not so much these days. But it was enough to hide from my mom.

  Mira popped back out. She had been dropping by every five minutes now. At this rate, she was going to get fired.

  “You should really-” I started.

  “I think she's here,” she said, wringing her green apron. The loose strands of hair from her bun were trembling.

  “Where?” I stared back behind her at the side entrance. Had she snuck in there?

  “It looks like that's her at the counter.”

  I looked in the same direction as Mira. A familiar, timid face hovered right over the pastry display.

  “That's her,” I said breathlessly.

  She hadn't aged at all. Her hair was grey, of course, her cardboard-brown temples wrung with wrinkles, but they had always been that way. She had grown old one day, and stayed in that state. She wore a pale blue dress that covered her to her knees. It barely kept from being Amish thanks to a thin black belt.

  I clenched the arms of my chair tight. My legs felt like they might run me away if I didn't.

  “What should I do?” Mira asked. “Should I tell her you're out here?”

  “Let her see me. Get back inside.”

  I watched my mom look around inside. Figures that's where she'd search. The day was beautiful. A storm had just blown through and left Houston cooler and breezy. Yet, she still thought I'd be stuck in there.

  At least she could come out of the house by herself, now. My dad hadn't completely forbidden that for her, but she rarely left when I was young.

  My mom placed her order and waited by the pickup. I stared at her hard enough that the glass in between might have started to melt, but she didn't notice. Her lips looked like they were moving.

  A prayer and a tall coffee; that was how she was preparing for me. Maybe she was hoping to dash me with her hot drink to cleanse me of spirits and bring me back around.

  No, that was silly. Time apart had made my parents cartoonish in my head. Deacon hadn't been wrong about the horrors my father had inflicted on me, but he based them off a strict code. My mom wasn't here to punish me, even if she had the strength.

  Finally, she spotted me. Her lips wobbled for a smile, but never quite reached it. Good.

  She came out. Traffic rushed by on the highway kicking up wind and grind. It sounded like some raging battlefield.

  My mom stopped by the table and looked me over carefully.

  I had rifled through my closet to find a skirt that didn't go below the knees
. For my top I had on a cherry red shirt that clung to my curves. What I'd bought these for, I couldn't remember. I'd never once worn them, but she should see that I could if I wanted.

  “You look nice,” she said.

  Nice...? “You look well, too.”

  “May I sit?”

  “That's why I'm here.”

  She dropped into the chair, gripping her hot cup between her hands like a bible. She looked over my face as if it was a monument. Maybe she was marking places where time had chipped me into someone else.

  “A mother shouldn't go so long without seeing her daughter,” she said.

  The softness of her voice kept my rage from kicking up, but the words still annoyed me. “A mother shouldn't do a lot of things when it comes to her daughter.”

  She dimmed toward her cup, and took a long, sad sip. The stone fist around my heart cracked. Why was I the one being so emotional here?

  “I did many things wrong,” she said. “The good lord has shown me that in the time you were away. But I'm not here for myself. I'm here for your father.”

  “I am most certainly not,” I said. “If that's your impression of what we’re here to talk about, then let's sort that out right away.”

  “Kiara,” she said, more urgently. “This is serious. He's dying.”

  Her face tightened with worry, as if eternal justice lay on the line. And it did, perhaps, if he really was dying.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Cancer of the pancreas. It's Lucifer's disease, truly. The speed at which it moves...” She clasped her hands tighter. “He has only a few months left.”

  I dug for feeling at that. I really did try. It wasn't that there were no unkind memories of him, but they were almost always little treats or a stray kind word – the sort of thing you use to house train a dog.

  My father lived by his beliefs. Obey and be rewarded. Fall short and feel his wrath. That was the best that could be said for him.

  “I'm sorry to hear that,” I said. “But I can't forgive him, Mom. Not for what he did to me, or what he did to you.”

  “To me?” Her head flinched back. “What in the lord's name are you talking about?”

  I steadied my breath. She still couldn't see how well he'd trained her. It wasn't her fault. She had just lived under his roof too long.