Mergers & Matrimony

by Leigh, Allison

  “Three months is acceptable,” Mori agreed, cutting off any debate or discussion that might have occurred. He flipped open his leather-bound calendar. “January 30.”

  Everyone except Helen scribbled on their pages. She was busy watching Mori, wondering why he was suddenly being so agreeable.

  “The appointment of board members has been reviewed.” Shiguro moved to the next item. “Based on the list previously provided by Hanson.”

  They had only three seats, but those seats were permanent and as valuable as gold.

  Helen had proffered the names herself, after some deep searching over what was best: Jack, Evan and David. She’d hoped to manage to get Andrew on the board, too, but TAKA had been inflexible about a fourth seat. Fortunately, Andrew hadn’t taken the news too hard. He himself had seen the value of those chosen.

  “The proposed board members are acceptable,” Mori said, once again taking unilateral control.

  “We are happy to hear that,” Richard said.

  Jack looked less satisfied. She knew he considered this just one more sign of his servitude to his father’s company. But he’d had an opportunity to decline, and he hadn’t. Which she considered one more sign of his true commitment to his family’s heritage despite his father.

  “As to the matter of the corporate match.” Shiguro hesitated, looking from his brother to his father. “It is the position of TAKA that sixty percent remains the highest feasible amount.”

  Helen rolled her pen between her fingers. “With the consolidation of our scholastic divisions, as well as the additional seven percent cut in payroll, there is ample budget remaining for an eighty percent match. The additional twenty percent will remain under the control of Hanson Radio, which becomes a separate entity subsequent to the merger of the other divisions with TAKA Incorporated, and as such, is outside the bounds of this agreement.”

  “Silence!”

  Helen nearly jumped out of her skin at the harsh command from Yukio. She looked toward him. “Excuse me?”

  Both Jack and Richard touched their knees to hers beneath cover of the heavy conference table.

  “We do not wish to hear from you, gaijin.”

  Being ignored was one thing. Being chastised like an unwelcome child was another. “I am sorry for your displeasure, Taka-san,” she said calmly, “but I will be part of this discussion.”

  Yukio stood. He folded his knuckles on the table and leaned forward. “Not while I have breath,” he said flatly.

  Helen looked toward Mori. His father may still hold a seat on the board, but Mori was the one in charge. His father had already tried to take control back from him. Surely he would say something that would take the wind from Yukio’s sails.

  He was glaring at his father. “You do not have authority.”

  Yukio spoke sharply to his son in Japanese. By the reaction of the TAKA side of the table, he wasn’t commenting on Mori’s red tie. The two board members by his side looked uneasy, but they were nodding, clearly in agreement with whatever it was that Yukio said.

  Mori’s voice grew colder. “She stays.”

  “My son—” Yukio looked around the table, finally speaking in English “—has been unfortunately influenced by that—” he hesitated “—woman.”

  Helen could feel things spiraling out of control.

  “Oh, come on.” Andrew looked disgusted. “Suck it up, Mr. Taka. We have.”

  Helen went still.

  Andrew grimaced. “That didn’t come out right, Helen. I didn’t mean it the way it sounded.”

  She twisted the pen between her fingers. The pen that had been the only thing she could think of to give the man that she was married to, because he certainly hadn’t been interested by then in anything of a more personal nature from her.

  “Then what did you mean, Andrew?” Her voice was careful.

  “Helen, now is not the time for this,” Jack warned.

  She turned and looked at him. “I don’t know. Maybe this is the perfect time.”

  Even David and Evan looked uncomfortable.

  And Mori…well, Mori wasn’t saying a word, now. He was just watching her. Always watching her with those all-seeing eyes of his.

  Jack tilted his head closer to her, lowering his voice. “None of this would be happening if you could have kept your fingers off of Mori.”

  She looked down her side of the table at Jack’s brothers. “Is that what you all think? That I’m only here for my own gain?”

  “Helen,” Richard cautioned, putting a hand over hers. “Remember where we are.”

  “As if I can forget.” She slowly pushed back her chair and stood.

  She’d given ten years of her life—willingly given them—to the Hansons. Believing in George’s sons even when their own father had neglected them.

  But even now, after everything that had happened since George had died, they couldn’t at least offer the appearance of family unity. Not with her.

  She stepped back from the table. “Helen,” David protested. “What are you doing?”

  “It’s all right, David.”

  It wasn’t, but that was entirely beside the point. It was nobody’s fault but her own for having believed that she could get Hanson Media to this point and somehow gain the family that they’d never before been.

  She pulled out the letter from Judge Henry from her portfolio and set it in front of Jack. “This will give you hope,” she told him quietly. “That there is life again beyond this.”

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  She didn’t answer his furious demand. “Remember what I said. Seventy-five percent. Finish it, now.”

  Then she turned to Mori and bowed. “O-jama shimashita. I am sorry to have disturbed you.” She directed herself toward the opposite side of the table and bowed again. Finally, she faced Yukio Taka.

  And though it galled, she managed to bow a final time.

  Then leaving George’s sons and brother behind, she walked out of the meeting.

  And nobody stopped her.

  Not Jack or Evan. Not Andrew or David.

  Most particularly, not Mori.

  Chapter Twelve

  Silence reigned, thick and heavy, after the door slowly closed behind Helen’s back.

  Mori looked down the table at his brother and attorneys. “You will excuse us.” He included his father’s sidekicks in his request.

  Shiguro looked regretful. He rose and the men silently left the room.

  Yukio continued standing there and Mori had to struggle against his own anger with his father. “I will be speaking with the Hansons privately,” he said.

  Yukio glared.

  Mori stared back. There were a lot of things he disagreed with his father about—in business and in life. But now was not the time for an argument over things that would always exist between them. They were simply too different.

  Yukio finally made a disgusted sound and stomped out of the room.

  A collective sigh seemed to escape Helen’s family.

  Mori studied them all for a moment. He moved around the side of the table and picked up the gold pen that Helen had left behind.

  It sat on her open portfolio. The pad of paper beneath the pen was covered with her handwriting. The notes that she had been forever making to herself during their meetings.

  He slowly closed the portfolio and slid the pen in his pocket.

  “Perhaps it would be best to reschedule this for tomorrow,” Richard suggested sensibly. “Give everyone a chance to cool off a little. Clearly, the stress of all this has gotten to us all.”

  “You heard Helen,” Evan said quietly. “Finish it now.”

  Mori could see the silent debate being waged in the looks the men exchanged among themselves. “There is nothing to finish,” he said, his voice flat.

  Jack stood up like a shot. “Nothing to finish?” He lifted the corner of the merger agreement and let it drop heavily on the table. “I beg to differ, Mr. Taka. You’ve come too far to pull out now.
”

  Mori moved around the table again until he faced them. “The night of your wedding—” he nodded toward Richard “—I observed to Helen that I believed her sons lacked honor. That they treated her with disrespect.”

  “We’re not her sons,” Andrew pointed out, his voice stiff.

  “You are her family, nonetheless.”

  “Damn straight, we are,” Evan said. “And we don’t need you lecturing us about our family.”

  Mori almost smiled. So. There was more to them than he’d observed. “Helen strongly disagreed with me,” he continued. “She insisted that her husband’s sons had done nothing to be ashamed of. She spoke of all the Hansons with pride.”

  Jack tapped the edge of the envelope Helen had left him on the table. “We’re not going to discuss Helen with you, Mr. Taka. Now, if you’d like to discuss the corporate pledge percentage, we can get this over with.”

  There’d been a time when Mori had used the Hansons’ propensity for scandal to put the brakes on the merger. He had no regrets about that, still.

  It was business.

  But eyeing the men across from him, he knew it was no longer only business.

  “Without Helen here, negotiations will not proceed.”

  “That’s not what she wanted,” Richard protested. “You heard her. Finish it.”

  “Are you certain that you know what Helen wants?”

  “I suppose you think that you do?” Jack challenged. “What’s she going to get out of this, Taka? Another decade of life with another guy who doesn’t have time for her?”

  “This is not about Helen and me,” Mori assured. “This is about you and Helen.”

  “What? Unless we start acting like the adoring sons, you’re not going to continue the deal?” Andrew stood. “How we feel about Helen is none of your damn business.”

  “I am making it my business. Do any of you have the first idea of all that she has done for you?”

  “Well, her latest act is evidently putting the skids on the merger,” Andrew said tightly.

  “What do you mean, all she has done?” David asked slowly. “It was her idea to approach TAKA. We know that.”

  “It was her idea to have TAKA approach you,” Mori corrected. “Had we not already become aware of Hanson Media’s struggle and seen the value for ourselves of acquiring the company, we would not be here today.”

  “She manipulated it,” Jack finished abruptly. He angrily tapped the envelope once more, then pushed away from the table and began pacing. “Just like she manipulates a lot of things.”

  “To what purpose does she do this?” Mori watched them all for a moment. When no answer was immediately forthcoming, he walked to the door and opened it. “When you can truthfully answer that and Helen is present for what she has every right to be present for, I will—perhaps—consider resuming our business relationship. Until then, we are finished.” He barely inclined his head, he was so annoyed with the entire lot of them. “Sayonara.”

  Helen heard the knocking on her hotel room door but ignored it and continued fitting her clothes in the two suitcases opened on her bed.

  Eventually, the knocking ceased.

  She closed the first suitcase, zipped it shut and placed it on the floor in the living area. Then she returned to her packing.

  Simple, methodical actions.

  It was all she could concentrate on. If she let herself think of the debacle she’d created, she would simply cease functioning altogether.

  She went into the bathroom to collect her toiletries and caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. “Haggard, Helen,” she murmured. “Don’t much look like George’s sexy trophy wife now, do you?”

  Her small perfume bottle escaped her blind reach and clattered into the sink. It shattered.

  She sighed and grabbed a thick hand towel to scoop up the mess. She dumped the entire bundle in the tiny trash can and went back to the sink to rinse the strong perfume away. A swirl of red made its way down the drain, too. She’d cut her finger. Not badly enough to cause real pain, but enough to let a few drops of blood run.

  She stuck her hand under the faucet and George’s diamond ring winked up at her as water flowed over it.

  She’d only been a Hanson because she’d been George’s wife. And George was gone.

  She turned off the water.

  The ring slid off easily.

  She set it on the sink and slowly dried her hands.

  Her finger had already stopped bleeding.

  She left the ring and went back to finish her packing. She hoped she’d be able to catch a flight back to the States without too much delay.

  Hanging around the airport waiting any longer than necessary held little appeal.

  “What are you doing?”

  She gasped and whirled around, startled out of her wits.

  Mori stood in the bedroom doorway.

  “How did you get in?”

  He held up a key card. “You are packing.”

  “They just gave you a key to my room at the front desk?”

  “So it appears. You are running away?”

  Her jaw tightened. She turned back to her suitcase and dropped her toiletry bag inside. “I prefer to think of it as going home.”

  “To your husband’s house.”

  Her vision blurred. She blinked hard and reached for the suit she’d exchanged for jeans and a sweater when she’d gotten back to her hotel after walking out of the meeting. “Where else?” she asked flippantly. “No reason to hang around here. You men can handle everything most admirably, after all. No need for me to keep getting in the way, making things awkward for everyone. Just assure me that my guys got at least seventy-two percent out of you.”

  “Your guys, as you say, got nothing. I stopped the meeting.”

  She dropped the skirt and turned to face him. “Why would you do that?”

  “You should not have left as you did.”

  “What was the point of staying? To be the cause of more dissension between you and your father? To have everyone on my side of the room blame me for that, as well?”

  “Is that the true reason you left?”

  “Why else?”

  He frowned and shook his head. “Some days I wish I had never heard of Hanson Media Group.”

  “Then you’d be missing out on the best opportunity to gain a market share in North America,” she countered immediately.

  His lips twisted. “You still defend your company like a mama tiger.”

  “It’s not my company. It is my husband’s sons’ company.”

  “Choosing to think of it that way is your prerogative, but that does not make it a fact. There will be no merger unless you are there until the last, Helen. And that is why I stopped the meeting.”

  “Jack and the others were working on my authority. They could have—”

  “No.”

  She pressed her hands together. “You cannot possibly call off the merger at this late stage. It would be a public relations nightmare for TAKA. You’ve invested too much time and too much money.”

  “I could, Helen.” His voice wasn’t grim. It was factual. “Yes. It would create some inconveniences for us to overcome when next I venture into the North American market. But we both know that Hanson Media stands to lose far much more than does TAKA.”

  Her stomach was tipping over. She badly wanted to sit. “What is it that you want, Mori?” The last time she’d asked him that, he’d admitted he’d wanted her.

  “I want two days of your time.”

  She felt like shaking her head to jar loose whatever was stuck inside. “For what?”

  “An…experiment.”

  She finally gave up on appearances and sank down on the foot of the bed before her wobbling knees gave way. “Experiment for what?”

  “To see if we can exist for even that amount of time without TAKA and Hanson Media Group.”

  He was speaking English, but it might as well have been Japanese. “I don’t understand.”
/>   “Two days. You, a woman. Me, a man. No business. Nothing but us.”

  As quickly as it had turned somersaults, now her stomach was tightening. “You can’t be serious. We were ten minutes away from signing the deal.”

  “Until you walked out.”

  “I walked out because it was clear that my presence was a hindrance!”

  “That is a matter of opinion that not everyone shares.”

  “Well, I know you’re not referring to my stepsons. And you didn’t offer a dissenting opinion when your father was giving me a look that could have killed. When he was saying whatever it was that had everyone in the room who understood him looking at me with pity!”

  “You wanted me to defend your presence to my father.”

  She knew it sounded infantile. That it made her sound like her ego was ruling her, that her pride was having a temper tantrum.

  But it wasn’t any of that.

  It was the very basic root of self-esteem that she’d let wither on the vine as George’s wife. It was finally back in bloom again, and to let it die would be to doom herself to a life of knowing that she was exactly what everyone had been saying—a pretty little trophy, of no use other than to decorate the arm of a man.

  “What will two days prove?”

  “That remains to be seen.”

  Which told her exactly nothing. She didn’t need two days with the man to know that she’d done the unforgivable. She’d let him get under her skin where she’d never get rid of him.

  “I could agree to this and you would never know if I was doing it for the sake of the merger.”

  He stepped forward and caught her chin in his, lifting it until their gazes met. “I would know.”

  She swallowed. Yes. He probably would know.

  She shifted, lifting her chin away from his touch, and stood, putting several feet of distance between them. She’d thought alcohol clouded her senses, but Mori clouded her entire ability to think straight. “What did you have in mind? A two-day cooling off period or something?”

  “This is not about the merger.”

  “Everything is about the merger.”

  “Maybe in the next few days you will learn that is not true.”

  “Then what?”

  “I wish to take you to Nesutotaka. We can be alone there.”