Miranda came around the table and put her arms around him. He’d never told anyone that story, and he probably shouldn’t have told her, but it felt good not to have it inside him any longer.
“All my life, I wanted to be someone else. I thought if I were a boy, my father would take me seriously. I thought if I could get better grades, or if I could be a complete stranger to him, he would see me differently.” She sat on his lap and leaned her head against his chest. “I realized today, when he was on his tirade that I don’t want to be anyone else. I’m a damn good VP. I like my work and the people that I work with, and if I’d been his son or a stranger instead of his daughter, I might never have gotten here.”
“That’s pretty philosophical for a Wednesday afternoon.” But he liked the thought. Maybe if Caleb had loved Helena less or if she had loved gambling less, he would be a different person. The person he was, though, knew how to hold on to the things that mattered. His business. His family. The woman in his arms. He wouldn’t change that for anything.
Miranda wove her fingers through his. “It’s been a rough few days. Philosophy is what I have.”
“For what it’s worth, I like the person you are.”
She kissed his jaw. “For what it’s worth, I like the person you are, too.”
He had to tell her. He wouldn’t exclude her, not the way her father had done all her life.
“We’re going after him.”
She stiffened in his arms. “My father?”
Connor nodded. “I started a buy of Clayton stock this morning. Jase and Gage are on board. It’ll be a slow buy, but we’re going to take Clayton Holdings for all we can.”
“Don’t. Don’t play his games. Reeves Pub is solid, he can’t get to you.”
Connor snorted a laugh. “He won’t stop, and you know it. The only way to protect the business is to take him out of it. He may not be able to buy out Reeves Pub, but we can buy him out.”
Miranda stood. “This is a bad idea.”
Connor went into the bedroom, grabbed the flash drive from his pocket, and took it back to the terrace. “This is filled with fake information about contracts and ad prices. It even lays out a plan to turn Vegas Nightly into a—”
“He’ll never believe it. Not after I talked to him this morning. Connor, you can’t.”
And here was where things were going to get sticky. Connor held out the flash drive. “He would if it came from his returning-to-the-fold daughter.”
She sucked in a breath, and the color leached from her face, making the freckles over the bridge of her nose stand out like magic marker dots.
“If it came from you, he would jump all over the plans inside.” Connor held the drive out. “Take it.”
Hands shaking, Miranda held the small, gray drive for a long moment. Then she pushed by him. Inside the apartment, she stripped off his T-shirt and threw it toward his bed, but she kept the flash drive tight in her hand. She picked up her skirt and pulled it over her hips, and then pulled the camisole over her head.
“You’re a fool,” she said as she pulled her jacket over her shoulders.
Connor frowned. “I’m protecting my company.”
“You have no idea what you’re doing,” she said. She ran a comb through her hair and then grabbed an elastic from one of the vanity drawers to pull it into a tail.
“I know exactly what I’m doing.” He might not have known his girlfriend was putting her hair dealies in his home, but he knew how to protect his business. “What happens to the workers if he runs us out of business?”
Miranda shook her head, and her hair bounced from side to side. “You’re no better than he is. You’ll do anything to get what you want, and you hide behind all that bullshit about making your employees’ lives better. Maybe you’re worse than him, because at least William Clayton is honest about his greed. I won’t do it, Connor, and I can’t believe you would ask it of me.” She dropped the flash drive to the floor and stomped on it with her heel. “I may not agree with the way my father runs his business, but I’m not going to be the tool you use to take him down.”
“Miranda,” he said, grabbing her elbow. Miranda jerked her arm away from him.
“Was this all about getting at him? Did you think sleeping with me would make him change his mind? If it was, you don’t know how off you are.”
Connor waved his hand between them. “This has nothing to do with your father or my business or anything other than me wanting to be with you.”
“If you wanted to be with me, if I was your only objective,” she bent and picked up the ruined flash drive, “then you wouldn’t have given me this.”
“Come on, Miranda. Tell me your father wouldn’t have done the same thing given the chance.”
Miranda closed her eyes and sighed. “My father tried exactly the same thing. He implied Clayton Holdings would be mine if I were to use my position to influence you. Or advertisers. Or whoever else might present themselves. The difference is I expected that from him. It still hurt, but I expected it. You’re so wrapped up in Reeves Pub, in proving you’re not the wounded little boy left behind by his addict mother, that you can’t even see it. People in the community respect you. Businesses and advertisers want to work with you, and your employees are loyal to a fault.”
“Except the ones who are bought off,” he interrupted, but Miranda kept talking.
“Reeves Pub is a privately held business. There’s nothing my father can do to you unless you let him.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Oh, but it is. He can’t buy you out if you don’t want to sell. There are no stocks to buy, and there are no lenders to leverage, because you invest your own money into the business instead of relying on banks.”
She didn’t understand. How could she? She’d been born with a silver spoon in her mouth, and as awful as her parents were, they’d never abandoned her. Never been so overcome with the need to play a hand of cards that they’d leave small children alone on a ranch in the middle of the desert.
But it wasn’t just that. Connor was the one who held things together. He kept Gage and Jase from killing each other after Caleb died. He did all the talking when the neighbors asked how the boys would get by now that their father was gone. He’d come up with Reeves Brothers Entertainment—not the actual arms of the business, but how the three of them could make it work. And it was working. If he didn’t get Clayton off his back, it could all come crashing down.
“Then don’t do it. I’ll find another way.”
“You’re not listening to me. You don’t need another way. All you have to do is keep Reeves Pub solvent. The revenue lines are already ticking up, and there’s the launch of the new magazine. Focus on keeping the business growing, Connor, that’s all you have to do to beat him.”
He clenched his jaw. How did she not see the danger her father’s company posed? She, of all people, should be able to see it. “I can’t take that risk, Miranda. I’m the one who looks at the angles, who comes up with the solution. We need to take Clayton Holdings out of the equation, and the best way to do that is through a buyout. We have to keep him distracted for that to work.” He took the broken flash drive from her fingers. “This would have been a good distraction.”
She shook her head. “No, it wouldn’t. I don’t want to argue with you.” At the front door, she picked up her purse and slid her feet into her shoes. “Find yourself another vice president who can’t make coffee, Connor. I have more self-respect than to be involved with a man who would try to use me as a pawn. I’m done.”
Chapter Eleven
It wasn’t the same. Connor paced his office, keeping an eye on the doorway across the hall. The doorway that had been empty for more than a month. Miranda had held true to her word. She’d walked out of the penthouse the day he asked her to be loyal to him rather than her father, and she hadn’t looked back. She’d emailed a letter of resignation to Lila and hired a courier to deliver her office keys and clean out her office. He’d
called five times, and all five calls had gone straight to voicemail.
She could still be in town, or she could have moved back to Denver, or she could have moved anywhere else in the world. It wasn’t as if she didn’t have options.
Connor sat at his desk to read over the new advertising contracts that had come in. Ten national brands had signed on for the eco-magazine, and the launch was set for June. Perfect timing, since most of the places they planned to feature were warm weather destinations. June would give readers plenty of time to research and book.
And he didn’t give a damn about it.
Lila knocked once and then walked into his office. “I’ve got five possibilities for the new VP. Two with solid resumes, two fresh out of college but with the right credentials, and one who doesn’t have anything going for him except the will to do a good job.” She put the files on his desk.
Connor pushed them to the corner. “Any from a Denver debutante?” It was an irrational hope, but he couldn’t stop thinking that if he gave her enough time to cool off, Miranda would walk back into the office.
Maybe he should swallow his pride and go after her.
“No Denver debs.” Lila flicked her thumb against the corner of the files. “She still won’t tell me what happened between the two of you.”
Connor wasn’t about to tell her, either. After all their planning, the night of the pool party, their personal relationship had become public, but being so close to the revelation about the spy, none of the other employees seemed to care. Then, Miranda walked out of the business. And his life.
As if neither mattered to her. Now her best friend was asking him what had happened.
Connor didn’t need his human resources representative trying to figure out his personal life, and he furrowed his brow.
“You brought her up.”
True.
“I’ll take a look at the files this afternoon,” he said, not bothering to answer the question Lila had hinted at. She left the office.
Connor sat behind his desk for ten, long minutes, staring at the file folders. He didn’t want a new vice president; he wanted his old one. He couldn’t have her, but he wanted her. Wasn’t that a kick in the balls? Frustrated, he grabbed his suit jacket from the back of his chair, picked up his keys, and walked out of the office.
He jaywalked across the busy street, ignoring the honking of the cars passing him. In a couple of minutes, he opened the door to the Stratosphere and strode into the casino. Connor considered slots and the Keno machines but then sat at an empty roulette table.
“Are you playing?” the dealer asked as the little white ball circling the wheel began bouncing over the numbers. It settled on thirteen.
“Yeah,” Connor said, and handed the dealer a fifty-dollar bill. The dealer, a tall, balding man with a slight paunch to his stomach, slid a stack of chips across the table. Connor considered trying thirteen, just to see if it would hit twice in a row, but when the dealer said, “last call for bets,” he slid a twenty dollar chip onto the line between the green numbers, splitting them.
Idiot.
Playing Miranda’s numbers was ridiculous. It wasn’t as if she would sense he’d played her zeros and come running back to him.
The dealer set the ball, and then sent it circling around the wheel. Connor watched it slide down the side. It hit the green double zero, rimmed out, and bounced its way to thirteen. Again. The dealer collected his chips.
“Place your bets, please,” he said.
Connor flagged the waitress and asked for a beer. He set another chip on the greens and waited. This time the ball landed on twenty. He had ten dollars left. Connor glanced at the board. More black numbers had won than red, so he played the odds and put his last chip on the word Red. If the ball landed on any red number he would win.
“No more bets,” the dealer said and set the ball in motion again. It slid across the wheel, popping in and out of numbers.
“Shit,” Connor said, when it finally stopped moving.
“Zero is the winner, the winner is zero,” the dealer said, as he collected Connor’s last chip. “Are you still playing?”
He shook his head and handed the dealer a five-dollar tip. He might not have won anything, but that didn’t mean the dealer needed to suffer, too. Connor wandered the casino, watching as old timers played the slots without seeming to notice whether they won anything. A group of college guys played craps, yelling as their dice hit six three times in a row. At least someone was a winner.
He passed by the newsstand and saw the latest edition of Vegas Nightly was sold out. Maybe he wasn’t a complete loser. His business was on solid ground. He now owned ten percent of Clayton Holdings, and William Clayton didn’t know it.
A woman with red hair sat at the blackjack table, and Connor’s heart stilled in his chest. She wore a black dress adorned in rhinestones, and had silver, strappy sandals on her feet. A little overdressed for an afternoon at the tables, but not all that out of character. He crossed the room and touched her un-freckled shoulder.
The woman turned. It wasn’t Miranda.
“Sorry, I thought you were someone else,” he said.
“I can be anyone you want me to be, honey,” Not Miranda said, chuckling. She split the eights the dealer dealt her.
Connor shook his head. “Good luck.”
He was wrong.
He was a complete loser. He’d bet on his business, and in the process, he’d lost the woman he loved.
• • •
That night, after most of the staff left, Connor returned to the office. He dutifully read through the files Lila left on his desk, and made positive notations on two. He’d talk about the candidates with Lila tomorrow, but he didn’t want to hire either of them. He wanted his Miranda back, and not just in his office.
God, did he know how to mess up a life or what?
Connor booted up his computer and logged into his trading account. He shut off the buy for Clayton Holdings, noting that he now owned fifteen percent of the company. Not that he ever planned to do anything about it. He printed off the page and then opened a fresh document, typing in a few words. He printed off that page, too, put both into an envelope, and logged in to the human resources section.
Connor scrolled until he saw Miranda’s name. Her address was the same, so she hadn’t left town.
Maybe there was still time to turn his luck around.
• • •
Miranda waited in the marbled vestibule of the private offices in one of the largest casino chains in Las Vegas. The clock on the wall ticked past ten o’clock. Maybe she should have left Las Vegas. She’d considered San Diego, and nearly convinced herself to try New York because she had heard spring in New York was extraordinary.
Somehow, though, she couldn’t force herself to pack her bags, load up her car, and leave.
Las Vegas had a hold on her.
Or, maybe more to the point, Connor Reeves had a hold on her. She’d found herself wandering past his condo on several occasions, and once had climbed the replica of the Eiffel Tower hoping she might catch a glimpse of him inside his building. That was a patently ridiculous thought because she knew his penthouse was covered in one-way glass. Still, she’d stayed on the observation deck until they’d announced it was closing time.
It was crazy, being this caught up in a man who had used her to get to her father. Connor may have liked making love to her, but he didn’t love her. If he did, he would never have asked her to betray her family that way. She shook herself. Connor Reeves was the last thing she needed to be thinking about right now.
She thumbed through her resume, mentally went through the talking points of her job with Connor and her internships with Clayton Holdings, and reminded herself not to say anything about fundraising or volunteer work. She wanted a job in the marketing department of the casino; she didn’t want to be their next fundraiser.
“Ms. Clayton? Mr. Anderson will see you now.” A slim receptionist motioned her across the l
arge waiting area. She wore an A-line skirt with a twin-set in lilac, and had flat sandals on her feet.
Miranda wore her favorite black pencil pants and cami with a gray wrap sweater and gray suede booties. She would have felt more confident in the navy pinstriped suit, but after her confrontation with her father and that argument with Connor, she couldn’t bear to look at it and had thrown it out.
The receptionist opened a large oak door and motioned Miranda inside. Miranda took the seat opposite Anderson’s desk. He had a shock of nearly white hair and wore a polo shirt. Not what she had been expecting.
He glanced up from reading what she assumed was her file. “Not quite a year at Reeves Pub. Why the short stay?” he asked, getting right to the point.
Miranda considered a flip, “I was sleeping with my boss who was using me to get to my father,” but instead said, “I realized I wanted a bigger challenge. The research and development that went into the new media property that will launch later this year pointed me back to where I wanted to be: straight marketing.”
“Launching a new magazine is much more challenging than writing press releases and designing advertising campaigns for a casino, Ms. Clayton.”
What the Heiress Wants Page 16