Seduced by the Billionaire: The Complete Collection
Page 100
Ella greeted Meredith with a wide smile. “Good morning! I wasn’t sure what you’d like for breakfast, so I asked the chef to whip up a simple buffet.”
Meredith blinked at the spread—scrambled eggs, bacon, various cubed cheeses, fruit salad, muesli, pancakes and syrup, and yogurt plus a tray full of bagels, croissants and danishes. Definitely not “simple” and much too much of an effort for only three people. Her mom had never prepared anything this elaborate unless she was hosting a holiday brunch.
The pancakes reminded Meredith of Eric, who had made them for Mother’s Day that year, and she helped herself to a couple in addition to fruit and cheese.
Not saying a word to anybody, Daniel was using a finger to navigate his tablet. Probably reading the Wall Street Journal or something like Kerri usually did, although Meredith had never seen her sister-in-law do that at the table.
“I hope you slept well,” Ella said.
“I did,” Merry responded. “Thank you.”
“I’ll have my driver take you two to the hotel site. I was told you wanted to check on the progress.”
“That’d be great.”
“I’d love to know what’s going on there,” Ella said, tittering lightly, “but I don’t know anything about construction.”
While Ella continued to chat away, Meredith stole a quick glance at Daniel. He might not even have been there for all the attention he paid the women.
She frowned, but decided to tuck in and devoured everything on her plate. She hadn’t had much to eat the night before, and she was hungry. Daniel finally looked up as she was finishing and said, “Are you ready?”
Meredith arched an eyebrow. “Why, yes. By the way, how are you? Did you sleep well? Did you enjoy your breakfast? Ella’s gone to quite a bit of trouble, hasn’t she?”
A beat of silence. Daniel’s gaze narrowed, and Ella looked back and forth between them.
Finally, he bit out, “Fine. Yes. Yes. Yes. Satisfied, Ms. Manners?”
“Not really, but I suppose that’ll do for now.” Meredith smiled warmly at Ella. “Thanks again.”
Ella blinked. “Yes. Um. My pleasure.”
Daniel and Meredith left the mansion together. Daniel didn’t touch her, but she was keenly aware of his large, masculine presence next to her. The height fairies had been skimpy with her, and men usually towered over her. But Daniel didn’t just make her aware of the difference in their size. His presence also wrapped around her like a blanket, making her warm all over—actually too warm.
“There’s no reason to try so hard to ingratiate yourself with Ella,” Daniel said after they had climbed into a waiting Rolls-Royce.
“Excuse me?”
“I know what you’re trying to do. You think if you can get Ella to like you, it’s going to be harder to get fired—no matter how incompetent you are—because Ella won’t want to put the project out of its misery.”
“Is she on the board?”
“No, but she has a ten percent stake in the company.”
“But don’t you have more?”
He nodded once. “Twenty-two point five.”
“So technically you can overrule her.”
“Yes. That’s why I’m telling you to stop. It’s disingenuous.”
Meredith laughed.
Daniel’s face turned colder. “What’s funny?”
“You, equating good manners with sucking up.” Meredith sobered. “Your mother—”
“Stepmother.”
“—is obviously trying very hard to make our stay pleasant, and on almost zero advance notice. It’s okay to be polite to the host. And it’s okay to be polite to your business associates, even if you’re looking for a reason to fire them.” Meredith shrugged. “I know you really want to have Sterling & Wilson build your resort, but things are sort of complicated now between our families. If you don’t think TLD can fix it, then you can certainly go to a company you’re more comfortable with, but I’m here and I’m doing my best to help with the situation. So you can stop being so petulant.”
“Petulant?”
She nodded. “You’re sulking.”
“What I’m doing is observing and making connections. It’s easier if you can keep quiet and watch, especially when the other person’s completely unaware.”
“You mean like I did last night.”
A short pause. “Yes. Did you glean anything useful?”
“I thought you looked really…” She stopped to consider what she should say. She couldn’t decide if he was trying to teach her a lesson—whatever that might be—or just being himself.
“What?”
“Alone.”
He laughed. “I was by myself.”
“No. Not like that. It’s like you’re always alone, no matter where you are or who you’re with.”
* * *
Merry’s observation stunned Daniel into silence. She couldn’t possibly have gotten that just from watching him from the balcony. “Very funny,” he said dryly, trying to recover. “Do you often trot out that line to show off your insight?”
Her face scrunched. She looked cute when she did that, her mouth slightly pursed. He felt an overwhelming urge to brush her nose with his and kiss her, which made him sit even more stiffly, making sure there was sufficient distance between them. “It’s not a line,” she said. “The fact that you can say stuff like that about people so easily is sad. How can you be so cynical?”
“How can I not? People are never consistent. Never loyal.” Nobody gives a shit about you, even when you’re dead.
“How we see others reflects our own nature.”
He smirked. Typical of a woman to turn the argument around. “Are you telling me I’m not consistent or loyal?”
“You’re the one who said it, not me.”
The car stopped.
“Here we are,” she said and jumped out of the car before the chauffeur had a chance to open the door.
Daniel watched her. He hated the way she talked to him directly, her eyes unwavering with her own conviction of the truth of her words. Unless she was a psychopath, she couldn’t lie like that, and he knew she wasn’t. There are a lot of things I could say about her, he thought, but that isn’t one of them.
He wanted to take Merry at face value. Except that doing so would be a disaster. He hadn’t said what he’d said about people to shock her; it was one of his core beliefs. There was absolutely no loyalty or constancy in society. People changed for the worse all the time. And then they deluded themselves into thinking that they had changed for more altruistic reasons.
For my child…
For my family…
For my business…
For your own good.
Merry was no different. She was nice now, seemingly honest and upfront. That would change when it became convenient for her. He was sure of it.
* * *
Meredith gasped with shock at the site. She’d assumed they had finished getting the skeleton of the building up at least. It looked like there was barely a foundation.
She’d been to a few construction sites while she was growing up, but she had no idea how to build something like the resort Daniel wanted. Her oldest brother Jacob was the one who’d received all the training and education to lead the company. And he’d done so until his marriage scandal had erupted and he’d decided to run off.
She herself knew just enough to be dangerous.
How could she untangle this mess?
She pulled out her phone and snapped a few photos. A bearish man in a dusty yellow polo shirt and khakis hustled toward her. His salt-and-pepper hair stuck to his skull, beads of sweat on his red face. A big black mole on his cheek glistened like a watermelon seed. He carried his hardhat in a large, paw-like hand. “What are you doing?” he asked in a booming voice.
“Taking photos.”
“You can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because!” He jumped over a big pile of sand and reached for her phone.
“If you touch her, I’ll make your life hell on this island,” Daniel said, blocking the other man.
“Who are you people?”
“I’m Meredith Lloyd, CEO of The Lloyds Development. You should’ve heard that I was coming here with Mr. Daniel Aylster, the CEO of Aylster Resorts, to look at the progress.”
The other man’s bushy eyebrows snapped into a dark scowl. “Yeah, I heard something about that. Rob Benson, construction manager.” He eyed her phone. “You really shouldn’t take photos.”
“I’ll take as many photos as I want. If you don’t like it, you can resign. It won’t bother me,” she said with more bravado than she felt. She wasn’t sure if she could replace him fast enough to make up for the lost time. “So walk us through the progress so far. My understanding is that you’ve been working on the resort for close to four months.”
“That’s right.”
“Well, then. Go on.”
Rob gave her a cold stare, then spun around to stalk toward the heart of the construction site. Steel beams, mounds of sand and cement bags lay about, while large industrial machinery and vehicles sat around, dusty and unused.
Rob talked, using lots of jargon that Meredith didn’t completely understand. She had a feeling he was doing it on purpose to hide how bad the situation was. Since she was recording the tour on her phone, she tuned him out. All she needed to see how the project was progressing was the rank-and-file workers.
The crew looked listless and irritated. They moved slowly, and knots of two or three were standing around with their thumbs hooked in their tool-belts. She’d worked at enough poorly-run NPOs to recognize the signs of mismanagement. Well-run crews knew their jobs and attended to them at a steady pace. Here, though, she saw one man actually leaning against a pile of I-beams, hardhat off and laughing while he talked on his phone. She doubted the conversation had anything to do with construction.
If she could speak to them, maybe she could find a way to fix this. But they were blue-collar workers and she was an unfamiliar woman intruding on a male world. They wouldn’t talk to her.
Meanwhile Daniel hadn’t said a word, not even “I told you so.” If it was possible, he was even colder and stonier. No help would be coming from that end.
She rested a hand on her churning stomach. This was starting to feel like a one-way trip to a spectacularly public failure.
Chapter Seven
Two hours later, Meredith was back in the car with Daniel, whose expression was still as stony as the foundation slab at the site. Her head pounded. Despite how Rob had reassured her everything was on schedule, she knew the project was anything but okay. And given how blustery and hostile he had been, she wasn’t going to be able to work with him very well.
She sent the photos and videos to her team in Houston for analysis, while her mind went through possibilities. Could the resort be completed by the end of February, the deadline in the original bid? TLD might lose money by hiring more crew and paying overtime, but she wanted to complete the project as originally contracted. That was the least she could do to ensure her family business’s reputation stayed intact. Even though her family had endured the scandal of Jacob’s bigamy, the company itself was still highly regarded. She couldn’t let it fail.
“I think I’ve seen enough,” Meredith said. “I want to return to the States and figure out what to do.”
“What’s there to figure out?”
“For one, it’s our duty to give you the resort we promised, so we want to fix it.”
“Honey, you won’t be able to fix it. It’s too late.”
She gritted her teeth. “Then we’ll pay whatever penalty that’s built into the contract. Would that be acceptable?” Natalie had told Meredith many contracts had such provisions to protect clients.
“Frankly? No. Your construction manager is a fool, and his crew is lazy and incompetent.”
She disagreed, but didn’t say anything.
“I’m going to send you a contract addendum that specifies a firm deadline and milestones. If you don’t want to go that far, then I’ll have our legal team terminate the contract. I’m sure it won’t be difficult. Or, of course, you can just fire your crew and put better people in place.”
“If I fire everyone without getting all the facts, it’s going to have a horrible impact.”
“Like what? The resort going up on time?”
Meredith caught herself just in time before she rolled her eyes. “My workers aren’t just numbers on a piece of paper. They have families.”
“That’s not my problem. My only concern is the resort.”
“When you make people feel insecure about their jobs, they tend to become disloyal and demoralized.”
“Thank you for that managerial leadership lesson, Merry. I’ll take that under advisement.”
She clenched her jaw. “You don’t have to be condescending. There’s nothing wrong with being nice.”
“Except nice doesn’t pay the bills or complete projects.”
“And being nasty does?”
“My father grew Aylster Resorts into a multi-billion dollar company. I’m going to make it even bigger and more profitable. I don’t have the luxury of caring about people’s feelings or families. If they don’t want to get fired, they should do their jobs right in the first place.”
Stunned, Meredith stared at him. This Daniel was nothing like the old Daniel she used to know. The man who’d shielded his sister at all costs wouldn’t have spoken like this. When he hadn’t come to Istanbul for Judy, Meredith had been angry and disappointed, but at the same time she’d told herself he must’ve had a good reason. Now she wasn’t sure. “What’s happened to you?”
“I learned some hard truths about people.”
“Well, I’m sorry to hear that. But you’re wrong. There’s more good in people than bad.”
He barked a laugh, the sound absolutely devoid of humor. “No, Merry. There’s nothing good. Just bad.”
* * *
Meredith sat in one of the deck chairs, legs pulled up to her chest, staring at the beach. The water lapped gently at the sand, reminding her of the serene and tranquil Andaman Sea at her family’s vacation home in Thailand. The rhythmic sound soothed her frayed nerves.
What had happened to Daniel? He didn’t seem capable of love anymore, and that conviction only cemented her belief that she’d done the right thing all those years ago.
Meredith remembered the day Judy had died like it had happened the previous afternoon. Judy’s parents had flown out, although strangely enough Daniel hadn’t bothered. He’d taken over one of the Aylster properties, and maybe he’d been too busy. Meredith hadn’t understood what could possibly be that urgent, but now, having spent some time with him, she realized there might have been things more important to him than going to the hospital where his sister had died.
On the other hand, maybe it was better that he hadn’t come. It might have been better if nobody had come.
“You stupid girl. I told you to stay at home, but no, you wouldn’t listen!” Judy’s father had yelled, a stark blue vein standing out on his ruddy forehead. Meredith had watched from around a corner, hands over her mouth, unable to process so much anger and hatred. “No wonder you’re dead now. You should’ve listened to me, instead of being stupid like that wild friend of yours! It’s appalling she survived. Both of you should’ve—”
Before he could finish the hateful sentence, Ella had placed a hand on his shoulder. “Shhh… Calm down.”
“How can I be calm? I raised her better than this. Six months in Europe. Ha! This place is full of libertines, and she came with that Lloyd girl! Who knows what they did to get into this
mess? Mark my words. There were drugs, booze and men involved.”
“The doctor said there was nothing in her system…”
“You believe that? This isn’t like America. What the fuck do they know?” He’d shaken his head, looking down at his daughter’s body. “Judy asked for it. She asked for it, and she got it, just like she deserved.”
Meredith’s stomach felt queasy at the memory, and she covered her mouth with shaking hands. Judy hadn’t “deserved” anything. She wouldn’t have been in Europe to deal with her unexpected pregnancy if her father hadn’t been such a horrible, misogynistic jerk.
And that man had turned Daniel into this cold, unrecognizable person. The kind of damage Judy’s father could’ve done to Judy’s baby was incalculable. He didn’t need the dysfunction of Judy’s family touching him. He had been just a newborn, a blank slate, and needed to be raised in love, to learn the true meaning of empathy for others and grow up to be a confident, resilient man. The Aylsters would’ve never been able to do that for him.
What if Daniel knew about Eric but was biding his time? He wouldn’t want to bother with a child, but he wouldn’t hesitate if he thought he could use his nephew to get what he wanted.
Her heart twisted, and she swallowed. The need to go home was so strong, she shook. She hugged herself, fingers digging into her flesh. She longed to hold Eric in her arms and reassure herself he was all right. She’d die before she let anything happen to him.
He was her son.
* * *
Daniel stopped short at the sight of Merry sitting by the ocean. Shit. He’d forgotten Ella had given Merry the suite by the beach. Its balcony had steps that led directly to the sand.
He hated it that Merry acted like she was all fluffy, lovey-dovey goodness. Her pretense turned his stomach. The fact that she was even more gorgeous now than she had been annoyed him…and the fact that he noticed her beauty infuriated him.