Billionaire's Best Woman - A Standalone Novel (A Billionaire Wedding Romance Love Story) (Billionaires - Book #5)

by Claire Adams

  “Was there something you needed, sir?” I was surprised at the amount of relief that came with placing myself beneath someone else on the pecking order again. It’s where I thought I belonged, not just at work, but in general.

  “Your brother’s been trying to get you and I in the same room since you got here. It looks like you’re going to be sitting in on our Monday, Wednesday, Friday one o’clock planning meetings. Is that going to be a problem?”

  “This is the first I’m hearing of it, sir.”

  Dean eyed me like he was trying to crack the code of my synapses and read my thoughts. “Just because we work together doesn’t mean something’s going to happen again. I never date anyone at the company. I’m sure you can understand.”

  “Sure,” I answered. I tried to think of something else to say, but nothing came to mind, so we just stood there quietly, watching the digital numbers counting down. When we got to the ground floor, the doors opened and a new group of people got onto the elevator.

  “Could someone press the button for fourteen?” Dean asked, startling everyone in the elevator. I couldn’t help but wonder what it must be like to have that kind of power. I’d tasted the tiniest bit of it with the interns, but most of my authority came from standing next to the boss. Almost none of it was my own.

  The elevator got back up to my floor, and Dean and I parted without saying anything further to one another. I checked my phone to see if Luke had bothered to call and say he’d volunteered me to sit with him while briefing the boss on the project’s development. He hadn’t called, texted, or emailed. I started to put the phone back in my pocket when it started to ring in my hand.

  “Marcy Blair,” I answered.

  “Yeah, Marce, I’m going to need you to come back upstairs in about an hour. I just got a call from the boss, saying he wants you in on the briefings and the first one’s today. See what happens when you listen to me?”

  “What do you mean he wants me in on the briefings?”

  “I don’t know how you could misunderstand that, Marce. Just be up here in an hour.”

  “Am I fired if I’m not?”

  “Yeah, I guess I have been overplaying that particular card today, haven’t I? Also, yes. This is an important part of the project’s development and the big guy asked for you, specifically. Threats aside, I would have to fire you if you bailed on me.”

  “Can’t you just have someone else do it? I don’t want people thinking I’m only here because you are, too. Isn’t that exactly what you were trying to warn me about earlier?”

  “Just do it,” Luke said and hung up the phone.

  People say that women are the mysterious gender—that everyone knows what men want, but that women operate on a different level. As I was putting the phone back in my pocket, I realized as much as I may have liked to think I understood men, I didn’t understand the first thing about Dean Carrick. He said my brother put me up for the position, and he even started to chastise me for it. Either he was lying or my brother was. The worst part was I had no idea why.

  Luke hadn’t told me to prepare anything for the upcoming meeting. I hoped that meant everything was already taken care of, but knowing my brother, chances were just as good that he was trying to throw the whole thing together in the hour he’d given me. He hadn’t told me what function I was supposed to serve or even if I was supposed to say anything in the meeting.

  The hour passed in what felt like a minute-and-a-half, and I was on the elevator again, this time alone. I could feel each of the stainless steel walls creeping in every second. I was in over my head and I knew it. Luke probably knew it, too. The difference was he didn’t care I was in over my head. I was just another opportunity for him to look good. He was grooming me for management, and I had forgotten to mention I didn’t want it.

  A few more floors, the walls had stopped closing in, but it felt like all the air was being sucked out of the elevator car. It wasn’t that I didn’t think I could handle the responsibility of being a manager; I’d just never been the type to assert myself the way managers have to do. I was more comfortable being the underling who occasionally has a great idea someone higher on the food chain could steal. That was my place. Maybe I was born to be more than an intern, but what Luke was asking of me was just too much.

  The elevator doors finally opened, and I made my way to Luke’s office, just in time to meet him coming out the door.

  “Come on,” he said, “we’re already late.”

  “What exactly do you want me to do in there?”

  “We’ll find out in a minute, I guess, won’t we?”

  “You weren’t joking earlier, right? When you said Dean asked for me to assist you, personally, that wasn’t just you covering for the fact you slipped me in on your own, was it?”

  “Think whatever you want, but you’re going to have to walk faster. Mr. Carrick doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”

  We arrived at a conference room on the executive level, and Luke paused a moment so I could straighten his tie.

  “Speak when spoken to,” he said. “I know I told you to stand out, but this isn’t where you want to do it. You’re standing out just being in there, so don’t get too ahead of yourself. You’re not upper management yet.”

  “You always know how to make a girl feel good about herself,” I scoffed.

  “Yeah, I get that all the time,” he said and opened the door.

  I followed my brother into the conference room and found an empty chair next to him. Over the course of the next hour, a lot of people talked about a lot of things I didn’t really comprehend. From the moment the meeting started, I didn’t know what I was supposed to do, what function I was expected to fulfill by being there, so I just sat there, taking notes and hoping instruction would come eventually.

  The project, which most of the people in the room seemed to think was a pipe dream while they were laying out plans to make it work, fascinated me, at least as far as I could understand it. For most of the meeting, though, I just sat quietly and tried to not look too anxious about being there. What I needed was a single piece of unadulterated instruction, but everyone else had bigger things to do.

  They’d just finished going over possible market caps, adjusted for estimates based off of speculative figures, when Dean interrupted, saying, “There are a few things I’d like to work out with Mr. Blair before we take this any further. If you’ll all excuse us, we can pick this up at our next scheduled meeting. Luke, if you’d like to stick around a minute, we can see if we can make these figures add up right.”

  Dean must have noticed me looking back and forth between my brother and the door to the conference room, because, as an afterthought, he added, “Miss Blair, if you want to stick around, too, we may need you to run and get a few things.”

  “Of course,” I answered, hardly above a whisper, and kept my seat while six people worth about $330 million in combined annual salaries got up from their chairs and made their way to the door. Then it was just the three of us: the CEO, the deputy CFO, and me, the lowly intern with a relatively powerful brother.

  “Now, Luke,” Dean started, “do you have the estimates ready, assuming a successful first quarter with figures related to possible public fallout over the program?”

  “Fallout, sir?”

  “Everyone has a lobbyist. I have three or four, myself, and those are just the ones I send to The Hill. If you think there won’t be public backlash, you’re kidding yourself.”

  “Sir,” Luke said, shaking his head, “I can get some numbers together for you, but they’d be entirely speculation. There’s simply no way to project that sort of thing in concrete numbers. The most I could tell you at this point.”

  “I could swear there was something about it in that memo I sent out this morning; did you not get that?” Dean asked.

  “A memo, sir?”

  Dean rolled his eyes. “Why don’t you head back over to your office, get on your email, and print out the memo. I sent it myself,
so you might need Marika to help you find it.”

  “I’m not sure I understand,” Luke said, looking very confused and even looking to me for some kind of help. I didn’t get the memo, and the big guy didn’t ask me to retrieve it, so I wasn’t sure what he wanted me to do about it.

  “It’s all in the memo,” Dean said. “Don’t worry, we can wait for you, right Miss Blair?”

  I could feel real heat coming off of the proverbial spotlight. I turned to Luke, saying, “If you want, I could—”

  Dean interrupted me. “Thanks, Luke. We’ll be here waiting for you when you get back.”

  My brother slowly stood, looking back and forth between Dean and me. “Right away, sir,” he said. He made it all the way to the door before turning around again to ask, “Now, this was from this morning? I’m sure I didn’t receive anything from you today.”

  “It was either this morning or yesterday. Now that I think about it, it might have been a few days ago. I don’t remember. I’m sure you’ll find it in no time, though,” Dean responded.

  Luke left the room looking just as bewildered as I felt throughout the meeting. With the door now closed, Dean and I looked at each other from across the long, walnut table.

  “How do you like it here so far?” he asked.

  “Just fine, sir, thank you,” I answered.

  “You look a little lost.”

  “I am.”

  “Is there anything I can clarify for you specifically?”

  “I think I’d need an explanation for the explanation, if I’m honest, sir.”

  He got up from his seat and slowly walked around the table toward me, talking as he went. “On the most fundamental level, what we’re trying to do is put money people would have paid in taxes or other financial necessities back in the pockets of consumers so we can then take that money for ourselves. It’s simple business, really. Any time a company goes out of their way to save you money, it’s so you can reapply the money you saved back in their own direction. I’ve always thought of it as a gratitude response. When people think you’ve done them a favor, they’re much likelier to do you a favor in return.”

  “Okay, I followed that, but isn’t—I’m sorry, never mind.”

  “No,” he said. “Please, I want to hear what you have to say.”

  “I don’t know, it just seems a bit shady, that’s all.”

  “We are genuinely providing people with better value for their money.”

  “I get that, but you’re not exactly doing it because you’re Robin Hood or something, Dean.”

  He stopped walking about three chairs down from me. “On second thought, maybe it’d be better if, while we’re at work, at least, you refer to me as Mr. Carrick.”

  “Of course, sir—Mr. Carrick. I’m—”

  “And don’t apologize. I’m going to let you in on a little secret: if you don’t apologize, people will be less inclined to think you’ve wronged them. If you don’t acknowledge it, usually, they won’t, either.

  “On the other hand, you say sorry for something that wasn’t your fault, and people are going to start blaming you for all kinds of things. I’ve got a bit of an issue, and I was hoping maybe you could help me with it.”

  “Why would you—”

  “The problem is you’re always here. Maybe not in this room or even on this floor, but every day when I come to work, it crosses my mind that we might run into each other. Now that your brother has taken it upon himself to force us together, I don’t think it’s something I can ignore.”

  “So he lied.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Luke. He said that you were the one who insisted I be here, personally. He was obviously lying to cover the fact he’s trying to—”

  “Trying to groom you for something more than unpaid intern?” Dean started walking again, stopping directly behind me.

  “Yes.”

  “That’s good. He should. You’re obviously meant for bigger things, but I wonder if you’d be surprised to find out I did ask for you to accompany him.”

  “Just more confused, Mr. Carrick. You said—”

  “I said Luke has been trying to put us in the same room since you got here,” he interrupted. “I asked for you to be here today, but he’s your de facto agent. Seriously, I bet the guy could get you on the board of directors one day, the way he’s been pushing for you.”

  I smiled. Dean was standing directly behind me, resting his hands on the back of my chair.

  He asked, “What are we going to do? It seems no matter what I do, so long as you and your brother are employed at this company, you and I are going to be seeing more of each other than we’d agreed.”

  “I’m not telling him to do any of—”

  “It’s fine,” he interrupted. “I am nothing if not professional, and I’m certain you can do your part to keep what interaction we do have here at the office professional, as well.”

  “You keep saying ‘here at the office’ like we’re going to be seeing each other outside of it.”

  “Would that be a problem?”

  “I don’t know what you’re asking.”

  His mouth was next to my ear as he whispered, “If we were to see each other outside the office from time to time, would that be a problem for you?”

  “In what context, Mr. Carrick?”

  “Who knows?” he answered, standing back up straight and starting the walk back to his seat. “I’ve tried to escape you, but that’s not going to work unless I fire you or your brother, and I’m not going to do that. Your brother is too important to the company and you’re too important to him.”

  “So the only reason I still have a job is because you don’t want to upset Luke? If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather quit than work like that.”

  “That’s not what I’m saying, though I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t a reality. No, the truth is that I wanted to avoid you because…well, the why doesn’t really matter. What matters is that in the short period of time you’ve been working here, you’ve made quite an impact. Even Johnstone sings your praises, and that crotchety bastard hates everyone, myself included.

  “What I need from you is your continued professionalism. No matter what happens, while we’re in the office, you are to refer to me as Mr. Carrick, and any personal history you and I may have or develop stays outside the building. Is that clear?”

  Not even a little bit. “Yes, Mr. Carrick.”

  “Good,” he said. “Now, why don’t I give your brother a call and let him know I never sent the memo he’s looking for?”

  Chapter Four

  Intermezzo

  “Are you about done in there?” Luke shouted through the bathroom door. This was particularly amusing because I was in the kitchen at the time.

  “Just give me a minute!” I called out, fully expecting him to realize my voice came from a different room. He didn’t.

  “Well, hurry up, will ya? I’ve really got to go!”

  Things had been a little tense around the house. The initial planning of the software was mostly finished, but there was a lot more involved, even in the preliminary stages of a project like that, than I ever realized. Luke got to take some of his frustration out on me at the office, but at home, I didn’t have to worry about what my other bosses might say. As his sister, I retained the right to mock and belittle him on my own time.

  “You might have to hold it; I think I’ll be in here awhile!” I called out, still mystified that he hadn’t noticed my voice wasn’t coming from inside the bathroom.

  “Wait.” And there it was. Luke walked out into the kitchen, saying, “Why didn’t you tell me you weren’t in there? I have to pee like a retired racehorse with prostate issues.”

  “And that’s disgusting,” I answered, crinkling my nose. “By the way, I’ve been thinking about doing pasta tonight. What do you think?”

  “That sounds fine, but I’ve really got to—”

  “I forget, do you like primavera or was that one of th
e dishes you said made you feel like you were eating dirty socks?”

  “Primavera is fine,” he said and turned to leave the room to unburden his bladder.

  “Hold on there, champ. I’m going to need to run to the store, and it’s been awhile since I cooked for you, so I’m going to need to run over a few things in case I forgot something. It’ll just take a second.”

  “Can’t it wait?” His patience was up and he was on his way out of the room. I wasn’t done torturing him yet, though.

  “Now, I was thinking of going with broccoli for a side, does that work for you?”

  He stopped in his tracks. “I hate broccoli. You know I hate broccoli. The smell of broccoli makes me sick to my stomach. Even thinking about it now, I’m feeling a little nauseated.”

  “Okay, cauliflower then?” I ask as he turned again, trying to ditch the conversation and get to the bathroom.

  “Cauliflower is a lie!” he called. A few seconds later, I could hear the bathroom door closing. I could still hear him quite clearly when he added, “Cauliflower is broccoli with just enough of a change that it doesn’t get sued under piracy laws!”

  He was still ranting and raving about how cauliflower is the Judas of vegetables and how broccoli is Satan himself as I started leafing through the ads for pizza places. I had no intention of cooking for him. I just wanted to see that look of desperation on his face.

  Maybe it sounds cruel, but anyone with siblings will understand. Cruelty towards siblings is on the same level as accidentally patting them too hard on the back. The most you ever need to do to make amends is apologize and make an underhanded comment about how weak they must be for that to have hurt so much. It’s standard familial operating procedure.

  Luke was out of the bathroom a few minutes later. He came back to the kitchen, in the middle of his discourse about how broccoli was once fed to torture victims during the Spanish Inquisition to break their spirit. I just sat there reading an advert for Di Farra Pizza, waiting to see if he’d notice.