Womanizer (A Standalone Novel) (A Steamy Alpha Billionaire Romance)

by Tyler, Nella

  Rebecca smoothly swerved in and out of the cars and I had a new admiration for her ability as a race car driver. It was surely something she should consider if she ever decided she didn’t want to be a stock broker.

  Chapter 13

  By Monday, I had spent my entire weekend with Rebecca and had totally forgotten to think about the ALL Warren IPO. I walked into the office and felt rushed to make my decision. I really didn’t have any firm information about her company; the only thing I knew so far was that there was some dirty stuff going on with the last company she owned.

  The office swirled with women talking about how they wanted in on the IPO for ALL Warren and in a spur of the moment decision I decided to buy up a huge lot of the stock. It was the first time I had ever made an IPO buy and felt so uneasy about my decision. I needed to get more information on the company as soon as possible.

  First of all, not many people could get in on IPO’s. Secondly, I felt like the company was very solid. But I still had a sinking feeling in my stomach that I couldn’t get rid of. I hoped I had made the right decision.

  Alicia obviously loved designing clothes and she seemed very passionate about the company. I just had to hope that whatever her and that Bill guy were hiding wasn’t something that would bankrupt the company. I could lose my job and all my clients if I invested their money frivolously into a company that went belly up so quickly after their IPO offering.

  “Evan, I’ve never seen you look like this after a buy. What’s up?” Natasha asked as she brought me my morning coffee and notes.

  “Just felt a bit rushed on this one, I’m sure it will work all right.”

  “Remember, I’m on vacation for a week. You’ll have a temp, so please don’t fuck her.”

  “What? You act like I have no self control,” I joked with Natasha.

  We both knew that I had fucked every temp secretary I had ever had. There was just no way to say no to those sexy ass women. They were only there for a week, they often came in hot and heavy after me, and I didn’t have the ability to turn them down.

  “Just try to say no. This one is really good and it would be nice to have a temp that we could use again down the road,” Natasha said and she appeared annoyed with me.

  “I’ll do my best, but if she throws herself at me, I can’t be responsible for what happens after that.”

  I smiled at Natasha as she left the room annoyed with me. My boyish charms didn’t work on her and that often left her slamming the door and ignoring me. She didn’t have much patience for my games, but that was probably why we worked well together. I could see it in her eyes when it was time for me to move on and stop joking. Most other women would just let me continue on with my games, but Natasha never had let me do so.

  I sat down and began to go over all the numbers as they came in on the ALL Warren clothing line. Things looked good and as I continued to see the price of the stock go up, I felt better and better throughout the day.

  It was actually a good week for Natasha to be gone. After the buy I made with All Warren, there wouldn’t be much else going on in the week. I’d have some meeting with investors and possibly some other company meetings to attend, but overall the week would likely be filled with me doing research. I enjoyed a slow week of research every once in awhile, it helped me catch up on my life.

  Hopefully I would be able to spend the rest of the week researching Alicia’s company and try and find out what was really going on with her financials. I needed to figure out why everything looked so perfect. I knew there was something going on, I just didn’t know what.

  Over a quarter of a million shares of stock had been issued and everyone seemed extremely excited about the sale. I watched several interviews with Alicia and she even looked more excited about the day. I wanted to call her or text her but I figured it would be best to wait for the business day to be over.

  We had made plans to meet up for drinks later. I decided it would be best to turn of the television and concentrate on my other work for the time being. Since the initial rush of the IPO started to die down I could spend some time analyzing other opportunities the rest of the afternoon.

  In my industry, people expected a constant change in their investments, or if there wasn’t a constant change they at least wanted a high percentage of return. If I didn’t give that to my clients they would have no problem with going to someone else with their investments. I had to stay on top of my game and constantly have new research and investment ideas. It was exhausting, but it kept the clients happy and when they were happy, I was happy.

  “Mr. Gade, are you free?”

  “Yes, Natasha.”

  “Alright, I’m going to bring Darla in to go over some details for the week.”

  Natasha and the new temp walked into my office. I had worked with temporary assistants before, it wasn’t anything new. We would go over the schedule for the next week and the temp would take notes on things that Natasha told her to. The agency we used was top notch and I had never had an issued with any of the temps being subpar. Of course none were as good as Natasha, but they were all very capable.

  I looked up and watched as Natasha and the temp, Darla, made their way to the center of the room.. They both sat down in the chairs across from my desk.

  Darla did not look like any assistant in the financial district that I had ever seen. She was tall, blonde, with her hair shaved on the sides and longer on the top. She had tattoos that peeked out from under her blouse, and even some on her legs. Her outfit was professional—a long pencil shirt and long sleeved silk blouse—but I could tell underneath that exterior she was not a typical financial industry chic.

  “Evan Gade, this is Darla Owens. She will be your assistant for the next week,” Natasha said as she introduced us.

  “Mr. Gade, it’s a pleasure to be here,” Darla said in a soft and eloquent tone.

  It caught me off guard to hear the shyness in her voice. A woman with as many tattoos as her didn’t strike me as the type of person who would be shy. Typically I thought of tattooed women as very confident and outgoing. This Darla woman had already baffled me.

  “Nice to have you on board. Please let me know if you have any questions during our week together.”

  “Thank you, sir, I’m very excited to be here. I’ll make sure you are one hundred percent happy throughout the week.”

  I glanced over at Natasha and winked at her. Oh, I’d be happy to let Darla make me happy all week long. Natasha just shook her head back and forth at me. But she knew I wouldn’t be able to resist. I had always had a thing for chicks with tattoos, there just weren’t many of them in the financial district to play with.

  “I’m sure you will be great. Thanks for filling in,” I said as I stood up to shake hands with Darla. “I need to run, so why don’t you two run the schedule together and Darla can fill me in on it tomorrow?”

  “Sounds good,” Natasha said as I left the room.

  If Natasha said this temp was good, I had to trust her, but she seemed a little out of her element to me. Darla looked like a biker chick all dressed up in business attire. Something didn’t match up at all. But hey, who was I do judge? I hated dressing up in my suits just as much as the next guy. If it was up to me I’d wear jeans and a t-shirt every day. But I liked the status that a custom suit gave me. I enjoyed the way my boss looked at me when I walked in with a suit that was nicer than his.

  I really could have stayed and gone over the schedule for the week but it didn’t really matter to me. I was confident that Natasha would tell Darla all about the events and meetings I needed to be at. There really was no need for me to sit around and babysit them.

  I wasn’t a fan of babysitting anyone. My research techs, assistants and anyone else I worked with knew I expected them to be top notch. There was no need for me to check up on them because it was an ongoing expectation.

  Spending the next week with Darla as my assistant would be a little more distracting than I had hoped for. I had a lot to do
with researching Alicia’s company and I really wanted to keep my focus.

  Instead, I felt I might be caught thinking about Darla and how sexy her body looked without clothes on. I really wanted to see just how many tattoos she had under her clothes. I wanted to let my tongue trace them, my fingers touch them; I knew I was going to have to play with Darla sometime during the week. Perhaps I would be able to hold off until the end of the week so I wouldn’t make things too uncomfortable between us. It wasn’t likely, but I would try.

  I did need to spend most of my time and energy on Alicia and her company. At our date later, I would have to really try and get her to loosen up. It baffled me that she still had not given in to me. I would have to up my game so I could show her just how much I was into her. There was no way I was going to let the night end without her in my bed; or me in hers. It had to happen. I couldn’t let another date go by without closing the deal between the two of us. My body needed to be inside of her and I knew she wanted me as well.

  Alicia’s company may have already went public, but I didn’t have confidence in the financials of the company or Bill Yobi, its Financial Vice President. There was something odd going on and I had to find out if Alicia knew about it already or if there was something much deeper going on. Not only had I invested thousands of my own dollars into the company, I had just invested thousands of dollars for my clients.

  The only way to ensure my money and their money was safe was to get to the bottom of the financial information. ALL Warren clothing was hiding something. Maybe it was Alicia who was hiding it or maybe it was Bill; but either way I needed that information before something went wrong and I lost thousands of dollars.

  My problem was, anyway I could think about getting to the information was illegal. I had already read through all the publicly available information. Now I needed the secret stuff. Now I needed to find the deep dark files that no one wanted to see the light of day. I needed to talk to Michael about it all and see if he could help give me some ideas about what I needed to look for and where it might be.

  Chapter 14

  “Mike,” I said as I barged into his office. “I have some more information on that company but I need your help.”

  “Excuse me, this is Evan Gade, one of our senior brokers,” Mike said to his clients as they both looked over at me.

  “Sorry,” I said as I backed out of the room for a minute.

  Mike didn’t often meet with clients so I hadn’t even thought to check before going into his office. He was just getting started in the individual world and I was happy for him. He had waited a long time to get promoted and deserved it very much.

  “Thank you both for coming, I look forward to working with you.” Mike said as he walked his new clients out of his office.

  I shrugged my shoulders and made my way into his office as they left. Mike knew me well enough to know I wasn’t the type to purposely interrupt someone. Luckily we had been friends long enough to know there were no real apologies needed. Neither of us took thinks too seriously and we were both pretty laid back when it came to stupid things like interruptions.

  “Sorry Mike,” I said.

  “What’s up, Evan?”

  “I had Rebecca do some research on Alicia and her company. There is some pretty crazy shit going down. I need to process with you. I seriously can’t figure out what the hell is going on. The company looks squeaky clean. We ran all the numbers again and again and it looks like a model company. You know, the kind of model company we see right before there is a big federal raid.”

  “Well I have another client in twenty minutes, so that’s all I got for time. Let’s process the shit out of this company.”

  “Really? Another client. Wow, Mike that’s good. Are you building up a good clientele? Why didn’t I know about this?”

  “Well Evan, probably because we spend most of our time talking about you and your women. Not that I mind,” Mike joked with me.

  “Ah, yes we do. Ok, well let’s get back to talking about me.” I smiled as I put my feet up on his desk.

  Michael was used to me and my need to talk about my issues with him. It was just how we did things. I always needed to bounce ideas off of him and he always made himself available to help. We both needed each other and it worked perfectly that way.

  “Yes, let’s get back to that,” Mike said as he made his way around to his desk.

  “So Rebecca says that Alicia had a previous company and two people that worked with her were charged with money laundering.”

  I noticed an immediate change in Mike’s face. He suddenly was much more interested in paying attention to me.

  “That’s serious shit Evan. What happened?”

  “I’m not totally sure. Alicia wasn’t charged with anything and neither was her finance VP, who happens to be her finance VP for this company as well.”

  “Evan, this is sounding pretty shady. Did Rebecca find anything solid on the current company?”

  “Nope.”

  “Well, perhaps they learned from their mistakes with the first company?” Mike said with a raised eyebrow.

  We both knew that it didn’t work that way. People didn’t do illegal things and then suddenly change their ways. It was much more likely that they just go better at hiding the problems.

  “I know what you’re thinking, Mike, but there is nothing in the current public records. Not a single number out of whack.”

  “That’s a problem right there. You know that perfection is not something that a normal company will have in their books. There is always mistakes. Always an area that you can tell is not funded properly or a part of the company that is struggling. Are you telling me there is no weak area in ALL Warren Clothing?”

  I could tell Mike had the same suspicions as I did. There was always a problem. Either the company did good at selling, but not good at customer service. They had a great production line, but horrible delivery. Good sales, but bad asset management. There was always something. Even the best run companies you could see what areas the needed to work on. It was freaky that Alicia’s company seemed totally stable without any areas which needed extra work. It was more than freaky, it was wrong. Something was being hidden.

  “If there is a weak area, I haven’t found it.”

  “Just don’t invest in it. You know there’s something going on,” Mike said as he looked at the numbers from the day of trading. “Oh, shit. They are climbing high today.”

  “I already invested. Personally and professionally.”

  “Shit, Evan. You need to get out. Now.”

  A glimpse of fear flashed across Mike’s face and I knew that I had made a mistake. I shouldn’t have bought the stock. I should have just let this one go by without investing in it. My heart sank as I thought about the thousands of dollars that I had in the company. It was too much to back out now. I was in too deep. Plus, I was making money; why would I back out now?

  “Mike, there is no way. The stock has climbed over twenty percent today. It’s a solid investment. At least right now. But I need to find out what they are hiding before something illegal comes out.”

  “Well, how the hell do you plan to do that? It’s not like you’re going to be able to just ask this Alicia. She’s not going to tell you.”

  I had to agree with Mike. There wasn’t a possibility of just asking Alicia and quite frankly I wasn’t sure she really knew what was going on. I had a sneaky suspicion that her finance VP was the real one causing the issue and I certainly didn’t know how to prove any of that.

  Alicia didn’t seem like the kind of person who would purposely deceive people. I knew people and Alicia just wasn’t that kind of person. I admittedly didn’t know her all that well yet, but she didn’t strike me as the embezzling type of woman. Her eyes were too honest.

  Everything about Alicia was honest. The way she looked at me, the way she dressed, even the way she talked; all so honest. I really couldn’t believe that she had even been involved in the first company that Re
becca had told me about. It didn’t seem like something that the Alicia I knew would do. Well at least the Alicia that I had met over the last couple days wouldn’t do something like that. I needed to get to know her more. I needed to get some alone time with her.

  “I know. I have a date with her tonight.”

  “Of course you do. What do you think you’re going to do, fuck the financials out of her?”

  We both laughed, but Mike wasn’t too far off from what I was thinking. I did want to build the trust between Alicia and I so I could try and figure out what was going on. I wanted to be able to trust her, she was delicious to look at and I just couldn’t imagine she was in on whatever deceit was going on.

  “Maybe,” I winked.

  “Seriously Evan, you can’t just fuck her and think she will give away all her company secrets. It’s not that easy. She will see right through you and then you’ll have nothing.”

  “I know. But I actually like her. I’d like to get to know her a little and maybe I’ll get some clues to what is going on. I’m taking her out tonight because I like her, not because I want to get financial information about her company.”

  As I said the words, even I couldn’t believe them. How was I going to convince Alicia to trust me if I couldn’t even trust the words that I said? I needed to decide if I wanted to take Alicia out on a date or if I wanted to get her to give me the financial information on her company. I couldn’t have it both ways and I knew it.

  Mike shook his head back and forth. I could tell he wasn’t very happy with my plan at all.

  “No, no, no Evan. This girl is trouble. More so than your typical flings. You need to just sell off your stock at the end of the day, take your profit and be done with it.”