Boss With Benefits (Billion-Dollar Bet, #2)

CHAPTER TWO

Four weeks later

A DAM ARRIVED AT the office at 8:00 a.m. after a Fourth of July holiday weekend that had very much not been a holiday. In fact, the last forty-eight hours had been so frustrating and stressful they had given him a full-on tension headache that still nagged at his temples.

The trouble had started bright and early on Saturday, following a round of squash that he’d arranged with Zane deMarco and Cade Landry in response to the report he’d received from the private investigators he’d hired to dig into the Helberg Holdings conundrum.

Zane was a deceptively laid-back corporate raider from the poorer part of the Hamptons, who he knew from his Cambridge rowing days and considered a friend. Cade, a hard-edged lone wolf from Louisiana who’d worked his way up from construction worker to big-shot property developer in just over a decade, he’d become acquainted with since arriving in New York.

The three of them crossed paths at functions and met up occasionally to shoot the breeze or thrash the living daylights out of each other on the squash court. They were equally driven, equally competitive and had always operated in different spheres of business.

Until now.

Because both men, the report had revealed, were behind the Helberg Holdings share price surge. And neither, Adam had learned to his annoyance when he’d confronted them in the sauna to which they’d headed after the match, was prepared to step aside.

‘No can do,’ Zane had drawled at the same time as Cade had given his head a sharp shake and declared, ‘Not happening. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, y’all.’

Of course it was, and with hindsight, Adam didn’t know why he hadn’t considered their involvement sooner. The portfolio of heritage enterprises owned by Reed Helberg was vast and varied, and in business his so-called friends were sharks. But he’d had no time to process the implications of this unbreakable three-way dead lock because Cade had then delivered yet more bad news, the trouble this time brewing in the offices of Blush , the women’s glamour magazine.

‘Did y’all know we’re the star players in their latest dumb article?’ he’d practically snarled, having just received a text from his PR consultant on the subject. ‘The Billionaire Bachelors Least Likely to Marry. Apparently, we three have been tagged as the One-Date Wonders—the guys with the longest odds—and they’ve already started a tally of how many dates we’ll have racked up by Labor Day... My PR team are freaking out about it. Personally, I don’t give a damn what a bunch of click-bait junkies and their enablers think of my dating habits. But no way in hell am I letting anyone make me look like a jerk who can’t keep his junk in his pants.’

Although he wouldn’t have put it in those terms, Adam had shared Cade’s sentiment. His integrity was everything, and this article, with both its inaccurate, unsavoury slant and the traction it was gaining, had sounded as though it had reputational damage written all over it. He, the board and the women he was regularly photographed with knew that his dating record wasn’t what it seemed—ninety-five percent of them were strategically selected by him to promote the company, and there weren’t even that many of them—but of what use was that? The optics were disastrous and the fallout could be catastrophic. At the height of his father’s philandering, which by that point had become legally as well as morally questionable and therefore even greater fodder for the merciless tabloids, sales had plummeted by seventy-five percent.

That wasn’t happening again on his watch, he’d thought, his temperature soaring in a way that had had nothing to do with the heat of the sauna. He’d worked himself to the bone building up both his reputation and that of the Courtney Collection, and he was not having four years of blood, sweat and tears put at risk simply to fill gossipy column inches and collect social media likes.

They’d all agreed that the interest in them needed to be nixed asap. But it was Zane who’d come up with the idea they take themselves off the market by dating one woman—and one woman only—for the duration of the summer.

At the time, that suggestion had made no sense to Adam at all. How on earth would that reduce the rampant interest in them? he’d asked himself while wondering whether the ruthless corporate raider had actually lost his mind. Wouldn’t the sudden shift from multiple dates to one only increase it? Wouldn’t the women in question attract attention of their own? And then there was the subterfuge and manipulation that such a response would involve. The lying, deception and the complete absence of integrity—everything he strove to avoid.

Given that the three of them were at the top of their game with infinite resources at their disposal, he’d racked his brains for a more mature, less complicated way to protect their reputations. But before he’d been able to come up with anything, Zane’s absurd proposal had somehow evolved into a bet, with their Helberg shares as the stake.

‘We meet back here on Labor Day,’ the man had drawled with a languid smile, as if acquiring the ailing conglomerate was nothing more to him than a game. ‘Winner takes all accumulated shares and has an unimpeded run at Helberg. Two birds. One stone.’

While Cade had gone along with the mad idea, Adam had reeled, scarcely been able to believe his ears. This solution to the twin problems of the reputational impact of the article and the stalemate surrounding the company they all wanted had felt farcical. Surreal. Ill thought out at the very least, and he’d protested these points. But ultimately he hadn’t been able to see how else they were to keep the share price down and determine who got Helberg. As Zane had coolly pointed out, the likelihood of them stepping out of each other’s way just because he—Adam—had asked nicely was zero.

So he’d accepted the bet. He’d had no choice. No matter how important his principles, he was not forfeiting Helberg. He needed it to right the wrong that had been a festering thorn in his side for years. Only when he’d reclaimed Montague’s would he find some kind of peace from the torment of knowing that because he’d declined his mother’s call the night she’d overdosed he was responsible for her death. Only then would he be free of the guilt that was preventing him from exploring a proper relationship with his sister, Charley. Vengeance and justice would appease his conscience, he was sure. Therefore, he had to play the game and play to win.

After leaving the gym on Saturday morning, he’d checked out the Blush article, which had been just as inaccurate yet as salacious as he’d feared, and the ‘one-date wonders’ hashtag, which had been worse.

Realising he needed to nip any fallout in the bud, he’d immediately called an extraordinary pre-emptive board meeting. He’d spent an hour soothing the ruffled feathers of those who’d caught wind of the story and had then moved on to reassurances that his standing—and that of the company—would remain intact.

That evening, he’d attended the event that had prevented him from insisting to Cade and Zane that the terms of the bet required celibacy and involved no unwitting women in it at all. He couldn’t have cried off the company’s Fourth of July extravaganza when he was hosting the bloody thing. He hadn’t even been able to ditch his date for the event because Annabel St James was the face of the Courtney Collection’s leading cosmetics brand, which had just launched a new five-hundred-dollar face cream whose sales would benefit from as much publicity it could get.

Instead, he’d capitalised on the situation by asking her to do him a favour and, for the next couple of months, feed any speculation that they were dating. Annabel—an old friend he’d known since school—had recalled that he’d once done the same for her to deflect some tiresome speculation about her own sexual preferences and agreed.

At least she wouldn’t get the wrong idea about the nature of their relationship, he thought darkly as he sat down at his desk and fired up his computer. There was no danger of her wanting more than he could ever give. He was never settling down for real. For that to happen, he imagined he’d have to embrace the chaos of desire and emotion, and even the thought of it turned his blood to ice.

Short discreet flings with women who posed no threat to his control were more than adequate for his needs. He had no wish to pursue the kind who tempted him into recklessness in the compact bathroom of a cocktail bar, who blew his mind and then left him there dazed and confused, and who subsequently stormed into his thoughts and dominated his dreams with alarming and unexpected regularity until he’d forced himself to shove her from his head once and for all. That had been a blip.

He wasn’t cut out for love or family anyway. To him, that word didn’t conjure up images of loud happy dinners round the table and warm cosy thoughts of unconditional love and support. It meant a father who’d preferred the company of much younger women to that of his wife and children and who’d liked to party hard even into middle age. A mother who’d been so miserable in her marriage that she’d wasted away in the castle in Northumberland before life had become too wretched to bear. A sister who, because he’d been away at school when she’d been born, he’d never really got to know but had let down nevertheless. It meant dysfunction so severe that if they hadn’t had billions in the bank, they’d have been on the radar of social services.

So Annabel was perfect for the situation in which he now found himself. He’d secured one woman for the entirety of the summer, and though it pained him to admit it, Zane had been right about the effect of that tactic. The half dozen paparazzi that had gathered outside his Central Park West apartment block had gone by the time he’d left home at the crack of dawn this morning, which meant that he was no longer a one-date wonder. His reputation was safe.

All he had to do now was sit back and wait for Cade and Zane to knock themselves out of the contest, and Helberg Holdings would be his. He didn’t imagine it would take long. There was no way on earth either man would be able to limit himself to one woman for the next nine weeks. Not only did they go through the opposite sex as if the human race were on the verge of extinction, but also, they weren’t nearly as driven as he was.

Cade seemed more bothered by the article and its effect on his PR team, and Zane clearly considered the whole thing nothing more than a source of entertainment. The text message he’d sent ten minutes ago was evidence of that. It had contained a photo of him—Adam—and Annabel at the party, entwined in a deliberately intimate embrace. Zane had captioned the photo with Could do worse for the summer! and a winking emoji.

Adam had rolled his eyes at the puerility of the message, but it was gratifying to know that his efforts had produced the desired result, and so soon. Now he could look to the fortnight ahead and the annual financial audit, which, this year more than most, needed to go without a hitch because the battle for Helberg wouldn’t be completely won on Labor Day. Even after taking possession of Cade’s and Zane’s shares, he’d still need to hoover up the rest. Unlike Zane, he wasn’t in the business of hostile takeovers. He’d have to woo the remaining stakeholders, and they’d be more likely to greenlight the deal if the credentials of the Courtney Collection were as spotless as could be.

Therefore, he would be laying out the red carpet for the people his father had scathingly described as ‘bean counters,’ the auditors who were due to arrive any moment now. He would see that their every requirement was satisfied. He’d be available for consultation 24-7, on hand to deal with anything that arose personally, which was why he’d had his secretary relocate the team from the basement to his domain up here and cancel any imminent travel arrangements he had.

He could not afford another hit to his reputation or that of the company should something be amiss. Both needed to remain squeaky clean until the acquisition of Helberg was tied up. He would allow nothing to go wrong and jeopardise the absolution he’d been pursuing for months and was now within such close reach. Nothing.

There were more disagreeable places to be spending the next two weeks before going on some much-needed leave, Ella mused as she glanced around in appreciation, then headed for the lift to which she’d been directed. Such as the noisy, cold, out-of-town manufacturing plant, where she’d been scheduled to go right up until seven this morning when she’d received instructions to divert to this team instead.

The twenty-five-storey Courtney Collection tower had been constructed thirty years ago. Its highly complex postmodern Art Deco design was said to resemble the fall of a skirt over a bent knee. It was clad in glass that was green on the left and white on the right, lit with multicoloured neon at night and had won widespread praise from architectural critics.

Inside, the extravagantly airy lobby oozed controlled, refined elegance. A palate of soft creams and taupe exuded expensive and exquisite sophistication. In between acres of glass that granted a view of Madison Avenue, tastefully abstract art hung on the walls and pale Italian travertine tiles covered the floor. Even the air smelled divine.

She’d read briefly, in the blissfully air-conditioned cab on the way in, that the Courtney Collection was the world’s largest luxury goods empire. It had one hundred offices on five continents. Vineyards in France and Australia. Seven-star boutique hotels in London, Paris and Rome. And upmarket retail spaces selling clothes, jewellery, perfumes and cosmetics in every fashionable corner of the globe.

Far more importantly, however, it offered her the chance of a long-awaited, well-deserved promotion.

In the aftermath of her regrettable affair with Drew Taylor, her then boss’s then boss, her career had stalled. She had not moved a rung up the ladder, as she’d previously expected. She’d continued as team leader on small, low-profile audits, and she had received neither a pay rise nor a bonus in a year.

A coincidence? When Drew had been transferred to the other side of the country to head up the office there? She didn’t think so. But she’d had no solid evidence of discriminatory treatment, and even if she had, she doubted she’d have done anything with it. The moral high ground could be a lonely place. Word travelled. She’d have likely been eased out of the firm and might never have worked in the industry she loved again, and she’d fought too hard to risk everything.

It had taken an immense amount of courage and determination to finish high school and attend college when, on that front, expectations both at home and in the classroom had been virtually non-existent. She’d had to be incredibly strong to stay out of trouble in an environment that seethed with it and retain the belief that unlike her parents, she didn’t have to deal drugs for a living. Once she’d decided at the age of fourteen that acquiring a profession was going to be her way out—accountancy, since she was good with numbers—she’d pursued it with dogged determination. She’d found the library. She’d researched and contacted charities that would help. She’d blagged her way into jobs in town to fund her studies and kept her endeavours quiet. Later on, she’d shed the visible stain of her upbringing by taking elocution and etiquette lessons and learned to network. She’d done whatever it took to graduate top of her class. She’d had her pick of jobs and she hadn’t looked back.

Briefly, stupidly, she’d lost sight of her goals, but she would not double down on her mistake. So instead of filing a complaint, instead of risking unemployment by resigning, she’d shoved a lid on her anger and bitterness and kept her head down. She’d bided her time until memories had faded, although her own hadn’t because she still couldn’t believe she’d been so reckless.

What had she been thinking? was the question that had hammered her for days after the affair had come to light when she’d accidentally messaged her boss instead of her lover. How could she have lowered her guard the night her department had gone out to celebrate the end of a successful financial year? Sure, there’d been gallons of champagne, and after working flat out for months, everyone had been on a high, but that was no excuse for falling into conversation with Drew and flirting. For allowing herself to be flattered by the attentions of an older man. For succumbing to the spark of attraction and then investing far more in it than he had when he’d made her no promises.

Even now she couldn’t work out what had been going on in her head. She’d lost focus. She’d let herself down badly. Because of the fallout, she’d ceded control of her career for the first time ever. She was still as furious with herself as she was with HR and Drew over what had happened. But playing the long game—however frustrating and unfair it had felt—finally seemed to be paying off.

Thanks to the previous incumbent coming down with a virus late last night, she was now leading this team of ten for the next two weeks on an audit that was anything but low key. It had been hinted that on the back of it, if all went well, she’d be awarded the promotion she should have received twelve months ago, together with a commensurate pay rise and bonus.

And it would go well. Because her year out in the cold was nearly over. Redemption was so imminent she could almost taste it. Soon she’d be able to let go of the rage and regret that consumed so much energy. And she would allow nothing to threaten any of it.

The doors of the lift opened with a soft swoosh. Ella pulled her shoulders and lifted her chin, then emerged into a vast space that was more penthouse apartment than office. It was triple height and had two adjacent walls made entirely of glass. Her gaze flickered around for a moment, taking in the laden bookshelves, the abstract art and more of the cream-and-taupe décor. The squishy sofas, the abundant flower arrangements and the conference table upon which had been placed a carafe of water, a glass and a platter of pastries.

But the contents of the room and the stunning view beyond disappeared the minute she clapped eyes on the man standing at the top of the staircase on the mezzanine, radiating power and authority as the master of all he surveyed, the man she’d known for twenty earth-shattering minutes four weeks ago and had never ever expected to see again.

For a moment, she stood frozen to the spot, staring up at him in utter shock. The world screeched to a halt. Her heart gave a great crash against her ribs and then accelerated until it was beating a thundering Oh-God-Oh-God-Oh-God tattoo. She had to be hallucinating. Because this could not be happening. It simply could not.

But as he set off down the stairs and the world started up again, she realised she wasn’t hallucinating and this was happening. By some horrible coincidence, perfect, sexy smouldering Adam, who’d rocked her foundations and stolen her wits in the restroom of a cocktail bar, was evidently her brand-new client.

And, oh dear God, she thought as a hot clammy sweat broke out all over her skin and she began to hyperventilate, the implications of this for her redemption, for her career, for her future, were not good at all .