His unwavering loyalty made her smile, but Cassie was too proud for that. She was going to fend for herself. “Thanks, but I don’t think it’ll change anything, and I don’t need anyone going to bat for me.”
“I know you don’t. But the offer still stands.” He lifted his mug in a salute. “Give the new dipshit my apologies.”
Squaring her shoulders, Cassie dropped off her things, then powered down the hallway to the conference room. A blond guy with a ponytail lounged in one of the chairs.
Cassie strode into the room.
“If you’re looking for a place to nap, I hear there’s a great hotel up the street.”
His grin was all teeth. “Is that an invitation?”
Ew. No wonder Piper had warned her. What was it with these guys? Except unlike Mr. Muscles from yesterday, Ponytail Man was the pompous, moneyed type, a fact that rolled off him from the shine of his shoes to the shape of his smirk.
“It’s an invitation to get the hell out of this firm.”
“Words spoken like someone who has some clout here. Or did I get that wrong? Aren’t you just an associate?”
Just an associate? Oh, she was done here. Crossing her arms, Cassie geared up for the fight.
“Last I heard, being an associate at one of the biggest, most successful firms in Boston wasn’t something to sneeze at. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have about two hundred other clients’ work to attend to.”
She turned on her heel and started out.
“Wait, Ms. Allbright. Please.”
Cassie paused and glared over her shoulder. “I don’t see why I should.”
“I apologize for the way I came off,” he said, his grin vaguely less smug. “I needed to make sure you could take a little heat. You’re obviously all you’re cracked up to be.”
That was better. “And what exactly do you know about me, Mister…”
“Grant. Hudson Grant. And I know you graduated summa cum laude from Brown, clerked for the state Supreme Court, and are a qualified and highly recommended lawyer who has played a major role in some of the most complex bankruptcy cases this firm has taken on.”
All things he’d obviously found in her bio on the company website, but the words qualified and highly recommended softened her slightly. It was the ego-stroking she needed after Friday’s massacre.
“All true,” she replied, turning back around.
“I work with the best, Ms. Allbright. So I’d appreciate it if you’d consider my case.”
“And what case is that?”
His hands fell to the armrests, and he gripped them, a little tell of stress. “Bankruptcy, it would seem. Unless you can magically fix my company.”
He looked away. Not wanting her to see his weaknesses, Cassie guessed. But if she was going to represent this guy, she’d rather see him lay his cards out on the table.
“I’ll need more information, Mr. Grant, if I’m going to perform magic.”
He met her eyes and folded his hands, a move more calculating than docile. “I’m Ivy League myself. Princeton. And I’m the President and Editor in Chief of Grant Books. It’s a boutique, digital-only publishing house, with elite authors and subject matter. I’ve put everything I have into it.”
“What are the stakes?”
“I have a reputation to uphold, investors to answer to, as well as an ex-wife who’d like nothing better than to see me fail. I need this taken care of quickly, and quietly. Out of the papers, with as little exposure as possible.”
She eyed him. Clearly Hudson wanted to keep his catastrophe on the DL, but if he was so high profile, he’d want a well-established attorney attached to his case. Someone who was known. “Why come to me instead of one of the partners?”
“I need someone passionate. Someone ruthless, who believes in what she’s doing and is invested in my success.”
Passionate. Ruthless. Words she liked when it came to her career. Among other things.
“And what makes you think I’ll be invested in you?”
She certainly wasn’t interested. Not in a guy like him, especially given the way his gaze crept toward her cleavage before snapping back up to her face.
“My company is worth approximately five-point-two million dollars. And you’ve been an associate for a long time. A win for me could be a win for you too.”
Her heart began to pound. She didn’t like him, but this could be big. The case she’d been waiting on, the game changer that would finally advance her career. His behavior didn’t matter. She was a damn good lawyer, and could advocate for even the slimiest Princeton asshole.
Cassie walked slowly back to the table and settled into a seat, not missing the way Hudson’s gaze chased up her legs as she crossed them. Whatever. He could look all he wanted. He wasn’t getting any.
“Okay, Mr. Grant. You have my attention. Talk.”
* * *
Patrick reared his arm back and hit the ball with a satisfying thwack. It sailed over the net and out of Jack’s reach.
“Deuce,” Patrick cheered. “Did you know Wednesday is one of my favorite days?”
“Oh?” Jack scooped the ball from the ground with his racquet. “Is that because you leave work early, come to campus and hit on my students?”
Patrick grinned. Their weekly matches at Harvard’s indoor tennis court did have their perks.
“I’ll always be grateful you became a law professor for the abundance of lovely female scholars surrounding you, but that’s not why.” Patrick got ready for Jack’s next serve, lunging backward as the ball soared to the far left corner. “It’s because every Wednesday I get to kick—your—ass!”
Patrick’s backhand was his best move. Which was why he was sure he’d been wronged when Jack easily smashed the ball back at him, a slice Patrick couldn’t have reached even if he’d been seventeen again and they’d been playing in his backyard court. Jack served again, this time an ace down the middle. The ball bounced against the mesh wall.
“What was that about you kicking my ass?” Jack asked.
“Fuck you.”
Jack snorted and walked to the bench to retrieve his water. “You must be tired. All those late nights are getting to be too much for a man your age.”
“We’re the same age, asshole. And you’re the one with the twenty-eight-year-old girlfriend.”
Jack took a long sip. “That I am.”
His smiles were still something to get used to. Less than a year ago, Jack had been mired in depression, unable to get over the loss of his late wife, Eve. Patrick had spent months trying to get his friend back out there, with no success. The guy had one foot following Eve into the grave, but then he’d met Lilly. Now Jack smiled like he was getting it regularly, from someone he truly loved.
“I always told you sex gives you energy,” Patrick said. “Glad you finally followed my example.”
“I did. So what’s your excuse for being such a pathetic opponent today?”
What was his excuse? “Work sucked. For starters.”
“You always say that.”
“I always mean it. By the way, Brady never called me about that book idea for Samantha.”
“Something’s going on there, but I haven’t asked about it yet. I’m waiting to see if he’ll come to me.” Jack pointed his water bottle in Patrick’s direction. “And we were talking about you and your lack of ass kicking.”
Patrick went for his own drink. “What? I’m having an off day.”
An off week was more like it. Maybe an off month?
Come to think of it, he’d been off since January, when Cassie Allbright walked into his life and pissed him the fuck off.
“Last night’s conquest didn’t do it for you?”
“Nah.” He was bluffing. There hadn’t been a conquest last night to do anything for him at all.
They both sat on the bench. Patrick could feel his friend eyeing him.
“You didn’t go out last night,” Jack said.
Stupid twenty years of friendship.
The guy could see right through him. “What makes you say that?”
“Because if you had, you’d be bragging about it.”
“I did on Friday.”
“For you, going without from Friday to Wednesday is a dry spell.”
Patrick shrugged and threw Jack his best I-don’t-give-a-shit grin. “I’m being choosy with my options. When you’re this good looking, you can afford to be picky.”
It wasn’t entirely the truth. The truth was he’d been itching to clash with a certain bitchy brunette attorney, to see how much Hudson Grant had gotten on her nerves.
“Don’t worry,” Patrick added. “I’ll be back in fighting form by the weekend. You’re going to the pub again, right?”
Their habitual nights at Barrel ’n’ Flask had made Friday Patrick’s other favorite day.
“Not this weekend. I’m planning something special for Lilly.”
Jack’s smile widened. Patrick rolled his eyes.
“Be careful she doesn’t tire you out too much. I don’t want to have to visit you in the hospital. Or see you on an episode of ‘BDSM Sent Me to the E.R.’”
“I’ll try not to. But, seriously. Don’t you ever…”
“Don’t I ever what?”
Jack sighed. “Want more than empty, casual hookups?”
“This again?” Patrick lolled his head on the back of the bench. “We’ve had this discussion before. I’m not like you.”
Opening up came easy to Jack. Patrick? Not so much.
“I know you think you can’t be like me, but—”
“—but it’s true.”
“But you could be. And this fear that you’ll never find someone who’ll love you—”
“—isn’t something we need to talk about.”
Patrick dumped his water bottle in his bag. Fucking hell, he wished he’d never told Jack that. A moment of idiotic honesty a few months back when he’d admitted he envied his friend’s capacity to love and be loved in return.
Envy and desire weren’t the same things. Love wasn’t something Patrick needed. At all.
“Fine,” Jack said. “I’ll drop it.” But this conversation wasn’t over. Patrick knew they’d be having it again. “What’s going on with work?”
“What’s always going on with work? It’s my job.”
“It’s not a job. It’s your damn company, for fuck’s sake. If you’re so miserable, change something.”
“You read the paperwork. There’s nothing else to be done.”
His voice sounded so dead and distant, he wasn’t sure it was his own. And there wasn’t anything he could do. The proof was right there in the edict that kept Patrick trapped at Dunham and Strauss, his father’s stranglehold revenge from beyond the grave.
“The language is vague. We could’ve contested it. Wills are challenged all the time.” When Patrick didn’t reply, Jack added, “But it was a shitty thing, what your father did.”
“He was a vindictive asshole. You know that.”
Jack knew better than anyone what life was like for Patrick growing up in the extravagant and cold Dunham household. “He wasn’t the nicest guy. But what he did to you and your mother was harsh.”
“Yeah well, she’s not such a peach either.”
Patrick stood, picked up a ball and started slamming it against the ground. Being the wife of Reid Dunham, CEO and billionaire, was a good gig. One Patrick’s mother was so dependent on she ignored the women Reid kept on the side and buried her unhappiness in bottles of wine and vodka. For years they fought one another in silence and ignored Patrick in the process. And for the most part, Patrick had kept that shit to himself. He knew other people had it much worse, and he never wanted anyone calling him a poor little rich boy. But tutors and tennis coaches were no substitute for parents, and by the time Patrick was eighteen, all he’d wanted was to escape.
His acceptance into Princeton was his emancipation, although he’d been expected to follow in his father’s footsteps and get a degree in economics. Majoring in English had been Patrick’s first rebellion, followed by the double minor of Spanish language and Hispanic studies. The latter choices had been less to bother Reid and more because Patrick had wanted to, which led to his last act of mutiny: instead of coming home after graduation and going to work for his father, he went abroad, wanting to see the sights he’d read about. He spent a year in Spain, falling in love with the language, the music and the food.
He’d fallen for more than that, a fact he’d never shared with anyone.
“It just proves you’re capable of love,” Jack said.
Patrick tensed, his fist around the ball. “How’s that?”
“Taking care of your mother the way you do.”
He relaxed a bit, bouncing the ball again as he walked in circles. Movement was necessary when his past started crawling its way out of his skin. He’d never told Jack what had happened in Spain, why his desire to immerse himself in literature, or anything other than sex, had become obliterated after his trip. All Jack knew was that Patrick had returned home to discover that Reid had died, and he was now at the helm of the family business.
He’d refused the job. He had no clue how to be a CEO, and wasn’t so shallow as to take a job he had no experience in because of his last name. And being connected to books in any way had been the last thing he’d wanted.
But Reid had figured on that, and found a way to screw his son even after his own funeral. If Patrick wanted his inheritance, he needed to take a role at Dunham and Strauss. If he didn’t, he would lose all his monetary support, and so would his lush of a mother.
So he’d offered the job to Leroy Strauss, Reid’s business partner with a lesser share of the company’s holdings, and taken on the role of National Sales Director instead. Not that Patrick knew anything about sales either, but it was the lowest position on the totem pole, one the board of directors could easily nurse him through.
He’d watched his mother nurse herself through with alcoholism too. It was a disease; he knew that, one she wasn’t in control of. But he wasn’t going to be stuck there watching her drink herself to death. So he’d removed all the liquor from her home, and threatened to do whatever it took to cut off the funds he now controlled. She’d finally stopped drinking, but their relationship was strained at best.
“Different kind of love, my friend,” Patrick said. “I look after her because I have to.”
“I thought you two were getting along better?”
Patrick shrugged. “As well as we ever did. But she’s sober, so at least there’s that.”
He was proud of her for that accomplishment. And he knew he shouldn’t resent her. After all, she’d loved a man who cared so little about her, he’d have been content to leave both her and their son homeless.
If only she’d learned early on what Patrick had: that love was an illusion—nothing more than a lie.
His body itched. He needed to move. Patrick grabbed his racquet and twirled it around. “I’ve had enough of today’s therapy session. One more game? Or should I go off to hit on your students?”
“You’re such a pain in the ass.”
“That’s what she said.”
Patrick grinned, happy to go back to his routine. Wednesday afternoon tennis. Friday night conquests. They were the only things that stopped him from feeling completely trapped.
Because even though he was now the Executive Vice President of Global Sales at Dunham and Strauss Books, he was doing the same thing he’d begun doing when he got home from Spain. Weekdays with the board hovering over him. Lunches with his emotionally distant mother. Sex on the weekends. And always walking out women’s doors first, because he’d be damned if he’d let history repeat itself again.
6
By Friday afternoon, Cassie had learned everything she could about Grant Books.
Hudson had retained her for an in-depth analysis after their meeting, and Cassie had gone straight to Schaeffer afterward, informing him of her chance to possibly restructure a t
anking multimillion-dollar business. He’d said this could be a great opportunity but reminded her to be careful, to vigilantly review everything and double-check her work.
I.e., don’t screw up your last chance to make partner.
She wasn’t planning on it.
She’d dropped everything, shuffling around other clients and handing off some work she was supposed to help Gabe with to Lilly. And every day this week, she’d been at Grant Books headquarters, a renovated building in Boston’s Back Bay area, in an attempt to inventory what the fuck Hudson had done to his company. She’d opened all his books, interviewed his staff and researched his investors. And in between, she’d looked over the earnings of every author he’d published, and examined each piece of art and furniture he owned.
Hudson liked to surround himself with some lavish shit. His space only housed him, his assistant, his rights coordinator and book formatter, and yet he’d furnished it with high-end brands and suppliers. In Hudson’s office alone, there was a writing desk worth fifteen grand. He’d also given himself a hefty bonus every year for no reason whatsoever.
Seeing so much reckless spending made her teeth grind, especially after the way her family had struggled with money. But her personal feelings didn’t matter here. She’d analyzed everything and now was back to deliver the news.
“Okay, Mr. Grant. You have two options.”
His eyes passed appreciatively over her, but she’d gotten accustomed to that. Hudson liked pretty things, and Cassie used it to her advantage. She’d put on her best power outfit—pencil skirt, a short-sleeved, fitted, black button-down that showed a bit of cleavage, and her favorite pair of Manolo Blahniks—bought heavily discounted of course. She’d even spritzed on her favorite perfume. It did the trick, making her commanding but sexy as hell at the same time.
She needed his attention and respect, but it didn’t hurt to keep him a little distracted.
“And what are they?” He settled himself behind his desk and put his feet on it. Like the thing he was resting his shoes on couldn’t pay someone’s college tuition for a year. Seriously, the cojones on this guy.
Her Claim: Legally Bound Book 2 Page 5