“Smuckers,” I say.
I take the wee prince out to receive his rightful petting, snap on a leash, and set him on the floor. “Did the meeting start? I thought it wasn’t starting until two.”
“Looks like some sort of pre-meeting,” she says, scratching Smuckers’s head. “Are you doing a charitable giving pitch? To the board?” she adds when I seem confused.
I suppose it’s natural to think it, being that I’m dressed as a librarian with a flair for dirges and dogs. “No, I’m actually on the board.”
April gives me the side-eye.
“I’m the new member,” I add. “In place of Bernadette. Technically, Smuckers is.”
April glances again between Smuckers and me, still not sure whether to believe me.
Not that I’m a mind reader.
Though my impressions are usually right.
Don’t be jealous. If you spent enough time being hated by everyone with access to Twitter, Facebook, and TMZ, you, too, could end up with the ability to instantly process the tiniest of movements, one of the few perks of going through the hell that I went through, and a talent I seem to share with the common housefly.
I feel Henry coming toward me well before I see him. My housefly-like room monitoring abilities don’t extend to people I can’t see, but apparently Henry is a special case; the sensation of him nearing prickles over my skin.
I turn to find his cobalt blue eyes fixed tightly on me. He saunters toward me like the prince of Wall Street. And the prince of Manhattan. And the prince of sunshine and men’s fashion and the coolly-striding-toward-you club.
My skin heats, and tiny Irishmen start up a jig in my belly.
The rest of them are flanking him on either side, but Henry outshines them, because he’s Henry Freaking Locke.
“Vicky,” he says. “And Smuckers. Right on time.”
“Looks like you already started.”
“Would we start without you?” He asks this in a friendly tone that makes the Irishmen jig even faster.
“Um…yes?” I say.
“That wasn’t a meeting,” Brett, aka the less glorious and way meaner copy of Henry, says.
“We’ll be back in ten.” Henry heads for the elevator, followed by his cufflinks and click-shoe entourage. Yeah, the board meeting definitely already started. First item on the agenda: exclude me.
“You’re an owner.”
I turn to find April looking at me anew.
“Well, technically it’s Smuckers,” I say.
She nods thoughtfully, seems to weigh her words. “You might ask for a full description of board privileges. Did you know we send cars to pick up all members?”
“No.”
“There’s a credit card attached to board membership that you can spend on meeting-related stuff. A projector, for example. Or a new case for the dog. Anything utilized in a board meeting would be reimbursed. You really don’t know any of this?”
I shake my head.
“Have you sat on a board?”
“No,” I confess.
“You’ll like it here. Locke Worldwide is like family. Doing the right thing really is the right thing around here.”
That’s the Locke motto, and I find it sweet yet eerie that she acts like it’s true.
Ten minutes later I’m in the glass boardroom with its floor-to-ceiling windows looming over all the world. Henry introduces me around. He doesn’t bother to introduce me to April, who sits in the corner with a laptop at the ready.
People sit down. I settle Smuckers onto my lap. Henry saunters around the table handing out sheets of paper—the agenda.
My belly tightens as he takes his seat across from me, beautiful and sleek in his gray suit.
“I’ve never sat on a board before,” I say. “So I’m wondering, before we start, if there are things I should know. The lay of the land. Maybe, you know, some sort of greetings wagon thingy?”
Henry doesn’t try to hide his annoyance. It lights up his face in a way that maybe pleases me too much. “A greetings wagon thingy?”
“You know, that bag neighbors hang on the doorknob to welcome somebody who just moved in to the neighborhood, and it explains things they should know about neighborhood amenities, like playgrounds, and there are pizza coupons and—”
“I know what greetings wagon means.”
“Smuckers is a bit new at all of this.”
He flicks his gaze to April, who nods quickly. “I’ll set up a courier,” she says.
I nod at April. It took guts to help me. It occurs to me that I could give her a raise. Or can I? I own fifty-one percent of the company so it seems like I should be able to. Yet not. Because while I steer fifty-one percent of this company according to my title as majority shareholder of the steering board, it doesn’t feel like I’m in charge of it at all, any more than riding a bucking bull results in any kind of steering of it.
They go over financials first, and there are a series of motions on pension funds—switching up investment vehicles or something like that. At first I try to keep up, asking for things to be explained, a task that Henry always takes on with his icy blue gaze at me that sends shivers skittering over my skin.
“…the balance sheet is figure two in your packet. We’re unhappy with an underperforming pension fund investment. Are you going to vote with us to make it right?”
“Smuckers concurs,” I say. Like I even get any of it.
I was always good at school, but this must be how somebody who doesn’t speak English feels when they’re plopped down into an English-speaking school. All these new terms. Now and then April, who is apparently the type to pull for the underdog, brightens from over in her corner, like when she thinks I asked a good question.
Ninety minutes tick by. Two hours. I question what I’m doing here, but I remind myself how I don’t let rich people push me around. How Henry had me detained, tried to bully me and pay me off.
Never again.
So I sit up. I get mentally tired of asking questions, but I ask them, then I vote however Henry votes.
Henry did, after all, make the company bigger and stronger, according to the reports I crammed on the way over. He’s fiercely protective of it, too, which I suppose is admirable. As CEO, he handles day-to-day operations, but I get to have the final say on those operations as Kaleb once did.
So, in a way, I’m in charge. I’m steering the ship and he’s my galley slave. The idea of him sweaty and shirtless, straining at the oars, comes to me unbidden. He works out. Maybe weights. No, he’s too cool for that. Henry would go for something sporty, like soccer. Or probably a sport where you hit something. Maybe boxing. Or rugby, all rough and tumble.
“Vicky?” Henry’s staring imperiously at me. “Does Smuckers have a vote?”
“Smuckers is with you,” I say. “On this one, anyway.” I say it like Smuckers might not always vote with him. Smuckers is an independent thinker.
Henry turns to the next page of the agenda, calm and suave, a Gucci menswear god without a care in the world.
They drone on to the next item. I make us take a break, blaming it on Smuckers having to go out, but it’s really me. Ten minutes later, we’re back at it.
The one woman in the meeting, Mandy, seems to be a financial person. Brett is all about business relationships. Henry is the vision and strategy guy, and Kaleb is the corporate bottom line and super-argumentative guy. Other people are heads of various business divisions.
They discuss questions at length, look at all the sides of things. They respect and admire and protect each other. They trust each other.
It makes me feel lonely.
Another hour claws by. I’m hungry. Tired. Starting to feel like I did in the police station, and not at all like I’m taking my power back. I look down at my nails, which I painted special for today, just wanting to do a good job. Just wanting to show I’m not this piece-of-shit scammer.
I brush a bit of Smuckers’s fur off my dark dress. Really, I’m so tired of f
ighting.
Chapter Six
Henry
Did Mom think she was leaving me with one last little piece of hell? Getting the final word in? I should be thanking her; there’s nothing I like better than a fight. Especially a fight I’m going to win.
This company is my family and has been for a long time—long before my mother chose a scammer and a dog over her own son.
And there’s nothing I won’t do for my family.
I propose another mind-numbing financial move. I’ve noticed she’s actually interested in construction stuff—it’s the only time she’s really tracking. So I keep the focus on the financials. This is business we could conclude in a tenth of the time, but I’m reading everything. I warned the group that I would.
It’s working; I’m wearing her down. When she feels especially tired, she scratches the dog’s head, as if that will perk her up, and she’s doing that now, big brown eyes glazing over.
If she had a team backing her up, we’d know about it by now. According to our PI, she has no business background, aside from selling ridiculous dog collars and things. My guess is that she got her hooks into my mom thinking she was an easy, small-change mark and only later realized what a big fish she had. And she got greedy, tried to take down this thing herself.
All alone. Messing with Henry Locke. Who does that?
Soon I’ll go in for the kill. I watch her stretch subtly in her chair. It took guts, I’ll give her that.
Now I’ll destroy her. I’ll strip her of everything. I find myself wondering if her neck will pinken when she realizes. Will she come at me with anger? At times she seems almost to despise me.
Will she get that loathing glow again? Will she show her claws?
Something wicked twists inside of me, and it’s not entirely unpleasant.
Brett kicks my foot. Givens wants Tuesday’s numbers. I blink and grab my tablet. I give him the numbers, then sneak another glance at her.
When I’m relatively sure she’s not paying attention, I bring up the voting amendment, a densely worded bylaw change that will redistribute voting rights, favoring family and longstanding board members over newcomers—namely her. It’s worded in a way I’m pretty sure she won’t recognize, given her lack of business knowledge. Three lawyers signed off on it.
I present it in a rambling monotone.
Basically, she’s about to vote to strip her own voting rights. Once she votes for that, we’ll reorganize the company. Reorganize her and the dog right out the door.
I yawn. Sure enough, she yawns, too. “All in favor,” I say. She turns her brown eyes to me. She’s been doing that. Pretending she understands and then watching me for a cue how to vote. Smart enough not to vote against her own meal ticket, I suppose. I created a nonsense amendment to test the theory, and I warned the group ahead of time I’d do it.
Kaleb wasn’t happy with the plan; he said it went too far. He always feels like I go too far until Locke needs to send a hard guy to the negotiating table, and then he’s happy for me to go too far.
So he went along, because I haven’t been wrong once, and I built the shit out of this company. Even with Kaleb acting like a giant boulder around my ankle, keeping us back from real progress, I built it.
Even through the crash and the real estate downturn, when other builders were wheedling out of paying subs, I found a way to pay people, to finish jobs the right way, to keep our Wall Street end happy.
No way will a small-time scammer get the best of us.
I finish rattling off the amendment where she agrees to have no more say in company business.
Vicky isn’t paying attention, though Smuckers is the very picture of alertness, suddenly, eyes like black buttons, tongue hanging out, staring at me like he’s spotted a squirrel riding on my head. I look away, not wanting to encourage his excitement.
“All in favor,” I say. We start around the table. My heart speeds up like it always does when I go in for the coup.
Vicky’s going to go for it. I feel almost sad for her.
Almost.
These shenanigans wouldn’t fly in a publicly traded company. Then again, neither would a dog on the board. In a private family company, all bets are off.
Listlessly, I raise my hand. “Aye.” We get a string of ayes.
She raises her hand. Her pretty lips part. Her chest rises slightly, and then she pauses, brows furrow. “Wait, I don’t even know what this is.”
I sigh and read it off. “All present in favor. Just waiting on you.”
She cranes her head forward, eyes narrowed.
“Can I get a definition of reallocation of plebiscite by seniority?” Vicky asks.
My heart sinks. “What is this, a spelling bee?”
“I just don’t understand it.”
“It’s a procedural motion to ensure continuing smooth operation. An agreement on forms of agreement. You’re going to have to get used to voting on matters of procedure.”
She watches Brett and Smuckers. “Specific definition, please,” she says softly.
Mandy groans.
“It’s procedural,” I say, sliding a packet of printed bullshit across to her. “A matter of continuation.”
She lifts her gaze back to me. She’s a fish out of water. A fish on land, really, flopping around, visibly confused. But she keeps flopping, keeps fighting. She’s a scrapper, really. “Reallocation of plebiscite?”
Everyone looks at me. She’s asking the right question. “The rule gives precedence to experience.”
“What’s plebiscite?”
“Ballot.”
Her chest rises again. Another intake of breath. I know exactly when it dawns on her, because that glow comes back in to her face. “Precedence to experience. As opposed to a…?”
She waits for me to fill it in. I sit back, as if bored. I’m anything but.
She fixes me with a wry smile that twists up some part of me. “Maybe as opposed to a fluffy little dog?” she finally supplies.
“Not how I was going to put it.”
“Well, then.” She sits up straight. “Smuckers has considered your amendment, and he’s decided to vote no.” She turns to Smuckers. “What is that, boy? Oh, I’m sorry, nay.” She glares at me now. “I can’t believe you tried to strip him of his vote. Do you have no decency?”
“When it comes to protecting this company? No.”
Her gaze intensifies. “Just no?”
“None at all,” I say. “No decency whatsoever. Nada, if you will.”
Her pretty lips part. It’s shock. Maybe a little bit awe.
I give her an amused smile, adjusting my jacket sleeve over my cuff just so. The suit was tailored by a man who charges three hundred bucks an hour and is worth every penny.
“Uh,” she says. “You think you’re all that? You’re not.”
“Oh, I am,” I say. “I very much am. And for the record, I will crush you in the end.”
“Smuckers had this medication once,” she says. “We tried to hide it in his food, and he spit it out. No matter what we did, he’d spit it out.” She puts one finger on the paper with the new amendment we printed up and slides it back across the desk. “Smuckers doesn’t like when people try to fool him. That’s his message for you.”
“I have a message for Smuckers.” I put my finger on it and slide it back across to her. “Smuckers needs to know that we have a private investigator on this case. Smuckers might not have very nice food to eat if you ended up in prison.”
Finally she looks scared.
Brett swoops in. “I think we can all walk away from this table happy. Maybe Henry was hasty with that ultimatum. I say we settle this. One-time offer from me personally.” He writes the number—$4,500,000.00. “This offer expires in two minutes.”
My heart pounds. This is sloppy. The third final ultimatum. But he’s doing it as a personal thing. And if she takes it, okay. We’ve shown how close she can come to losing everything.
She looks at the paper.
She’s all alone caring for that sister of hers. She’s poor—we have her banking information; we know it for a fact. She has every reason in the world to take it. Yet she hesitates.
“This is our last offer,” Brett says. “After this, we’ll take the company from you, and you’ll get nothing.”
She raises her brown eyes to me. It’s me she’s really dealing with. I like that she knows that. “You know what Smuckers hates even more than being fooled?” she says.
My heart pounds. She almost lost everything to me, and now she’s going to tell me a dog story?
“He hates being threatened,” she says. “And bullied. He really, really hates it.”
“Well he’s going to have to get used to it,” I hear myself saying. “He’s used to bubbles and bows and sunny parks but he’s in the jungle now. There are animals here who are faster and stronger and smarter than he is. Animals who will dominate him easily. Savagely, even.”
“Then you don’t know Smuckers very well.”
“Oh, I know all about Smuckers, and I’d suggest he practice rolling over. Baring his belly for the superior predator.” I lower my voice. “Begging sweetly for mercy.”
The color heightens in her face. This shouldn’t be fun.
But it is.
I keep going. “Smuckers may think he can request packets and bylaws and definitions and get up to speed, but he can’t compete here. He doesn’t have the skills.”
“Smuckers thinks owning fifty-one percent is the best skill to have,” she says.
My pulse quickens. “Then Smuckers should prepare to be destroyed.”
Kaleb clears his throat. “I think this meeting has devolved to the point where we can adjourn.”
“We still have issues to take up,” I say.
“More plebiscites?” She shoots a hard gaze at me. “No, thanks. Though I do have one request. An assistant.”
I wait. She can have whatever she wants. Does she not understand that? She could take an entire floor as her office if she wanted. “Do you have an assistant in mind? You can bring in anybody you want.”
“I’d like somebody familiar with the company and the board. Maybe April?” She gazes over at April. It’s a good choice.
Girl Meets Billionaire Page 60