“What the fuck do you mean, morals clause?” Ian demanded.
“Calm down. Apparently, Phillips found out about the three of us, and he told the cops that he was going to have Olivia thrown out as head of AHC on a morals clause or some such bullshit, because he had heard about the three of us,” Joshua explained. “That’s what he’s saying he meant by ‘taking care of Olivia.’”
“I don’t care if he planned to kill her, or planned to have her thrown off the board of directors. Either way, I now plan to kill him.” Ian’s voice was low and threatening.
“Get in line,” Joshua snarled back at his friend.
“So are the cops buying that? Do they believe that’s what he meant, instead of trying to have her killed?”
“Rantel doesn’t think he has the stomach for killing,” Joshua explained.
“Obviously, neither of them does. That’s why they hired it done,” Ian said, clearly exasperated.
“Hey, you don’t have to explain it to me. Look, Ian, I’m getting into the elevator. Can you please just check on those things I asked for, and I’ll meet you back at the condo, okay?”
“See you soon.”
* * * *
By the time Joshua got back to Olivia’s condominium, there was a teleconference going on with Chance. He, Olivia, Ian, Caleb, and Leif were waiting for him. Chance was holding Lissa.
“Sounds like you guys accomplished a lot in Boston,” Chance said.
“Everything but figuring out who’s trying to kill Olivia. That’s still up in the air,” Ian said glumly.
“Well, you can take Brotze off your list. He was telling the truth. The AHC business isn’t worth killing over. As a matter of fact, I think that even with the overcharges he’s done on the last two installations, he’s still lost money if he has to pay Richard,” Chance said.
“That doesn’t make sense,” Olivia said. “If he’s overcharging, why would he be losing money?”
“It’s the cost of the IT personnel. The original contract that was negotiated five years ago only allowed for a certain billing percentage increase per year, yet the cost of personnel went up significantly more than that contract allowed. So while they overcharged at an exorbitant rate originally, the rise in labor cost has well exceeded that,” Chance explained.
“Why hasn’t Richard just made that case to the board?” Olivia asked. “We would have been fair in looking at an increase for InfoDyne.” Then, before he could answer, she answered her own question. “Because we would have asked for proposals from other vendors,” she realized.
“There you go,” Chance said with a smile.
“Okay, that takes Brotze out of the equation. We only had Barry Hudson on the list because he knew about the Atlanta project on the day of Olivia’s attack. He turned out to be merely incompetent, not a suspect. So, that leaves us with Richard,” Ian stated.
“Olivia, do you want to explain whether you can be booted as head of AHC?” Chance asked.
She looked over the room of assembled men and smiled. “The only way either Chance or I can be ousted is for criminal misconduct. I wrote up the charter for this charity, and there was no way I was going to allow people to get rid of us for either political or personal reasons,” she said vehemently.
“So, I don’t care if you guys want to bring four more men and a couple of ladies into your relationship, Olivia will remain as head of American Humanity Connections,” Chance said.
“I think we’ll just keep it to the three of us,” Joshua replied dryly.
“So, at tomorrow morning’s board meeting, will Richard try anything?” Chance asked, looking at the assembled team of men.
“We’re actually going to hire a couple more folks to watch the AHC building for any signs of Burt and Shelton, since they’re still on the loose. We don’t anticipate having any trouble with Richard at the actual board meeting. But Joshua and Ian will be in the board room, armed, during the meeting.”
“Is that really necessary?” Olivia asked.
“Yes!” Ian and Joshua exclaimed at the same time. Olivia held up her hands in surrender as Chance chuckled on the screen, causing Lissa to kick her legs and wave her arms.
“We will walk up from the parking garage with you, and we’ll remain in the lobby area of AHC in case anybody who doesn’t belong tries to get by,” Leif explained. Olivia shook her head, not even bothering to try to argue.
“Well, gentlemen, it seems to me that you have Olivia covered. I’ll see the two of you and Olivia tomorrow when I join the meeting via teleconference.”
“Will Lissa be joining?” Olivia asked with a smile.
“I think she’s a little young to hear Aunt Olivia sounding so mean.” He grinned as he signed off.
Olivia turned to her masculine entourage. “I don’t suppose I can talk any of you into letting me leave the condo tonight?” she asked hopefully. At their stony looks she resigned herself to another night of takeout food.
* * * *
Everything went smoothly as they made their way up to the forty-first floor of the Boston high-rise. They arrived four hours earlier than the 10:00 a.m. start time of the board meeting, which was an hour earlier than her normal 7:00 a.m. start time. Leif and Caleb explained that two additional body guards had been watching the building and parking garage since late the previous evening, so they were pretty confident nobody was lying in wait for Olivia.
Caleb and Leif positioned themselves in the lobby, not caring that they looked conspicuous. As they had explained, that was the point. Their job was to prevent people from trying to make an attempt on her life.
Joshua and Ian lounged in her office as she worked on her notes for the meeting, which wasn’t all that helpful for her peace of mind. Unfortunately, with Caleb and Leif staying in the two extra guestrooms the previous evening, Olivia hadn’t felt comfortable getting “spirited” with her men. She was feeling a little needy and having them so close was not helping her concentration! When Adam came into the office, she suggested they follow him out and bug him for a little bit.
At nine thirty, the board members began to gather. Adam brought in the refreshments, and Helen Styles knocked on her door to come and see how she was doing. They hadn’t had a chance to visit since she had been shot.
“So tell me about those two gorgeous men who are making Adam so twitchy,” Helen demanded with a polished smile.
“Only if you tell me how lunch with Henry went!” Olivia countered.
“Lunch progressed to a few dinners, which has continued to progress nicely from there.” Olivia was delighted to see a soft blush stain the older woman’s cheeks.
“Okay, since you told, I’ll tell. I’ve fallen in love with two men, and I intend to move to Washington and live happily ever after with them.” Olivia thought her smile might cause her face to split in half. Helen gave her a hug.
“Oh, Olivia, if anyone deserves a happily ever after, it’s you.”
“The same could be said for you,” Olivia said seriously.
Helen gave her a serious look. “It’s different for me. I’ve had a great life and three wonderful children with my first husband, before he died. This will be my second time around. I want you to have your first time at the wheel. I didn’t realize you’d go all out and grab two men”—she raised one eyebrow and chuckled—“but I should have known that when you made up your mind to do it, you’d go for broke!”
“Helen, I’ll miss you.” Olivia hugged her again.
“I think Henry and I will have to come out to visit you and Chance. There is definitely something special about Fate Harbor, if all these threesomes are accepted.”
“Oh, it is a special place! You’re right about that,” Olivia assured her.
“Well, I better go take my seat. Are you ready to go in?” Helen asked her.
“I just have to make a couple of more notes. Why don’t you have Joshua and Ian escort you into the boardroom? Also, when Adam’s done passing out all the paperwork, can you ask him to come
back and see me?”
“I’ll send him in when he’s done. As for having your two young men escort me, that sounds superb. I would love to get to know them better,” Helen said as she left Olivia’s office. Olivia sat down at her computer and typed up just a couple more items and hit print. As she turned around to get the pages she needed from her printer, she heard the door open.
“Helen, did you forget something?” she asked, and then saw it was Barry Hudson.
“Hello, Olivia. I wanted to talk to you before the meeting.”
“Well, I don’t want to talk to you. I told Adam to tell you we would talk during the meeting,” she said in a very cool voice. She really didn’t want to have to go through this twice, but apparently she was going to have to.
“So you found out about the annual reports,” he said in a resigned voice as he stepped up to her desk.
“Yes, I did. Jesus, Barry, that was worse than incompetence. That was malfeasance.”
“It was a mistake, Olivia,” the man said quietly.
“Do you know the kind of scrutiny we’ll be under? Do you know what this will do to our reputation? How could you make the same damn mistake three years in a row?” Olivia knew her voice was rising. But that was the reason she hadn’t wanted to talk to him in her office in the first place. She needed the buffer of others in the room, to force herself to handle this in a professional manner.
“Barry, let’s just go to the boardroom. We can discuss it in there.” She picked up her papers, and walked around her desk so that he could follow her out the door.
“Stop right there, Olivia. We’re not done talking,” he ordered.
“Yes, we are. We’re going to save this for the board meeting. I refuse to discuss this any longer here in my office,” she said firmly as she grabbed the doorknob.
“I agree.” Then Olivia felt the muzzle of a gun pushed into her side.
“What the—?”
“We’re leaving. We’re not going to the boardroom. I’m going to put this gun back into my pocket, but you’ll know it’s there, and you’ll go with me to the parking garage. I can’t have people knowing about my mistake. It’ll ruin my professional reputation of the last thirty years. Do you know how many clients I will lose? I’ll be a laughingstock. As soon as Adam asked me to come in and evaluate how the Atlanta project would look on the annual statement, I realized my mistake. I had to find out more about the Atlanta project and figure out a way to put a stop to it. I couldn’t afford any witnesses.”
“So, you hired those thugs who almost killed me?” Olivia breathed.
“What a glorious coincidence that the homeless witness they almost killed was the person I needed dead. It was almost like a miracle! That’s when I realized that what really needed to happen wasn’t to stop the Atlanta project, but was to make sure you never found out about my errors. What better way to ensure that than to have you killed?”
“Barry, did you falsify the annual reports on purpose?” Olivia asked. She just had to know.
“The first year I let an intern do it, and I didn’t proofread it. It was just the AHC report, and I didn’t see the need to panic over it. I always proofread the IRS reporting, that was right. Then the next year, I just proofread against the previous year and it looked good, so it snowballed. Now, you have no choice but to send out a revised annual report, and to basically say that I have over-reported our charitable contributions by one hundred percent. I’ll go out of business.” For just a moment, Olivia truly felt sorry for the man. If he had only explained this earlier, maybe she would have taken the blame for the misreporting, she wouldn’t have to go out of business, the charity could have recovered, and she wouldn’t have lost her job.
Olivia, concentrate, this man has tried to kill you, and he’s holding a gun on you!
“So, what now, Barry?” she asked.
“I have a plan. Now that Linus is dead, and with you dead, I’m going to tell Chance that the two of you arranged for Linus to write those reports and just had me sign them. Nobody will be the wiser. So you need to come with me. We’ll just walk out, now that your bodyguards have gone into the boardroom with Helen.”
God, he wasn’t thinking straight. He had to realize that if she knew about the annual reports, Chance knew. He wasn’t just incompetent, he was stupid!
She had to stay calm. Any second, Adam would be coming through the door.
“Okay, Barry, you’re right. I have no choice but to do what you say.” Olivia carefully watched as he started to put his gun into his suit jacket pocket, and as soon as he had the muzzle of the gun pointed downward, she thrust upward with the heel of her hand, and kicked outward, twisting away from the potential line of fire. The gun exploded with sound, and Barry crumpled to the floor.
She was standing over his unconscious form when her office door burst open. Joshua and Ian both had their guns drawn. They immediately took in the situation.
“Livvy, are you hurt?” Ian yelled as his hands ran down her body.
She smiled and shook her head. Joshua looked up anxiously from where he was examining Barry, so she said, “I’m fine, not a scratch on me.”
“So, who got shot?” Ian asked.
“I think the wall,” she answered, waving over at the wall. People were gathering, but Caleb and Leif held them back as they peered into the office.
“So it was the lawyer,” Leif said.
“Looks like,” Jacob agreed.
“Oh, it was,” Olivia confirmed. “He confessed everything, before I knocked him out.”
“It looks like our girl was able to take care of herself.” Ian grinned at Joshua as he swooped in for a lingering kiss. Olivia didn’t know if it was due to the stress of the situation, or just the normal potency of Ian, but by the time he came up for air she felt lightheaded. Then Joshua turned her into his arms and began to seduce her with teasing brushes of his lips, before finally capturing her and thrusting his tongue deep, taking her deep into a swirling mist of passion.
She looked up and saw that behind Leif and Caleb, all of her board members were watching avidly. She pushed past Caleb and Leif and cleared her throat. “We seem to have a bit of a situation. The police should be arriving shortly, so I think this morning’s board meeting will need to be rescheduled. Is there anyone who can’t be here tomorrow at 10:00 a.m.?” She looked over at everyone, and nobody raised their hands. Several of them were muttering about clearing their calendars just to see what would happen at tomorrow’s meeting.
“Great, I’ll see you then. I’m kind of anxious to get this sorted out. I’m going to be leaving Boston and moving to Washington State permanently. I hope you’ll be happy for me.” She felt Ian and Joshua move up on either side of her, each putting an arm around her.
“Oh, honey, we’re ecstatic! I’m just glad you’re finally going to be safe,” Henry said. “I’ve always worried about you.”
“Henry, I’d like to point out that Olivia ended up keeping herself safe,” Helen said, pointing to the man who was still unconscious on the floor.
“Hmmph,” said Henry. “It never hurts to have a couple of men around as an extra precaution,”
Henry came up and kissed Olivia on the cheek and shook hands with the two men beside her, as Helen gave her a naughty wink.
THE END
WWW.CAITLYNOLEARY.COM
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Caitlyn O’Leary was raised in a small town in the Pacific Northwest. She has been an avid reader. Her earliest creative writing endeavors consisted of “ghost writing” exercises in which she pretended to be her younger brothers and sisters when she did their homework assignments before they turned them in as their own.
Years in corporate America honed her ability to manipulate words by day, and at night she read everything she could get her hands on, including many, many steamy romances!
Now happily married to her long, tall Texan and living in Southern California, Caitlyn has finally found the time to write erotic happily ever afters for Sire
n. She enjoys swimming, traveling, babysitting her nieces and nephews, spending time with friends and family, and doing lots of “research” for upcoming novels with her husband.
Website: Caitlynoleary.com
E-Mail: [email protected]
Twitter: CaitlynOlearyNA
Facebook: Facebook.com/Caitlyn.Oleary.35
Blog: Caitlynolearyauthor.blogspot.com
For all titles by Caitlyn O’Leary, please visit
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Protecting Olivia [Fate Harbor 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) Page 28