The Boardroom_Jonathan Read online

  “Samantha, please…consider this from my point of view. We decided to acquire Wordsworth because it would benefit us. If we keep all these employees on payroll…well, it’s just not a benefit anymore.”

  Samantha stared at me, waiting.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Samantha squished a macaron between her fingers and laughed. “It’s all about the money for you, isn’t it?”

  I was taken aback. “Of course it isn’t,” I assured her. “Look, I’m sure your employees are all good people—”

  “They’re great people, Johnathan.”

  I sighed and tried once again to explain to Samantha. “Business isn’t about people. Business is about ideas and risks and a constantly fluctuating economy. It’s about winning. We don’t make friends in business. We network.”

  “Business is about making connections.” Samantha said assuredly, and held her head up like a queen.

  “And…” I said. “…businesses that believe that are doomed to fail…” I took a sip of wine and mumbled, gesturing towards her. “…case in point.”

  “Fuck you, Torver.”

  I put my glass down and sighed, determined not to let my temper get the best of me again. “Look, Samantha, I’m sorry. That was inappropriate.”

  Samantha jerked her head back in anger. “You bet it was.”

  “I just—”

  “Do you know how old the Wordsworth Company is, Johnathan?” Samantha scolded, her eyes indignant with emotion. “Next to you, we’re ancient. We’re not some hip new start-up that can change their whole system to fit with the trends. We have men and women who have spent their entire working lives at this company, okay? We have freaking…” Samantha’s voice started wavering. “We have fucking file cabinets full of papers typed up on typewriters. We’re an institution, we’re a team, and we’re a family, and you have the nerve to just…waltz in and ruin these people’s lives without even…without even—”

  Oh shit, she was crying.

  Samantha was trying her best to breathe and remain professional, but it was no use. She looked as if she was about five seconds away from completely blubbering, and I recoiled in fear. I had always been uncomfortable seeing other adults cry, and seeing a professional as composed as Samantha usually was, spiral out of control, was worse.

  “I’ll think about it.” I said.

  “What?”

  Samantha stared at me wide-eyed. “I’m sorry I got emotional, I just…” she shook her head and looked down. “This past year hasn’t been easy.”

  I took a deep breath and looked at her, trying my best to sound sincere. “Look Samantha, when I say, ‘thinking about it’, it just means I won’t lay off your employees right away. I’ll look at some possible solutions, but…” I knotted my hands together. “The chances are not very good. If it ends up costing us too much money, we’ll have to—”

  “Those people are worth the money,” Samantha said. “You have to trust me on that.”

  I smiled. “And you won’t hate me if I have to do it?”

  Samantha eyed me sideways, “No promises.”

  I held out my hand to her. “Well, Ms. Doyle,” I said rather triumphantly in the poshest accent I could muster. “Shall we make this peace treaty official?”

  Samantha laughed and held out her hand. “I suppose,” she said with a playful raise of her eyebrow. Black dots of mascara were smudged under her eyes from her tears.

  We shared a moment of silence as we watched the majesty of Mount Rainier tower over us. The mid-afternoon sun was warm enough to make the first chilly autumn breezes feel like relief. I took another look over at Samantha, who was trying to put her hair back into place. Christ, this meeting had certainly been a lot more than I had originally bargained for. I wondered if promising to look into alternate solutions for the layoff situation was a bad move. I knew, and Samantha must have known too, that there was no way I was going to change my mind. I had seen the data on her employees—they were old, unproductive, and unequipped for the rapidly changing pace of the Seattle business world, but for some reason, they were her everything. Seeing someone as tightly-wound as Samantha come undone like that had made me want to give her and her employees a chance…and perhaps it was more because of curiosity now, than anything else. Why was this so important to her? Why did she want to keep these people who had probably dragged the Wordsworth Company into bankruptcy in the first place?

  Either way, Samantha Doyle was a roller coaster of a woman, and I had a curious sort of intuition that I was strapped into my seat for good.

  Chapter 3

  It had been over a month since I had any sort of substantial conversation with Samantha Doyle. The pleasantly cool days of early autumn had morphed into the biting northwestern rains of late November, and a wet chill had permeated the air. I had left on a three-week-long business trip with stops in Tokyo and Madrid, and when I returned yesterday I received a rude welcoming full of premature Christmas music and Kirk’s collection of wooly scarves.

  The Wordsworth Company had an alternating group of two or three employees working in our largest office and sharing the space. Samantha stopped in occasionally, and I got frequent emails informing me of progress, but it was mostly a lot of paperwork and legalese that was dealt with by our legal and financial departments. So far everything seemed to be going smoothly.

  I had gotten back a day early, and so I decided to drop into work that afternoon to say hi to everyone and check up on progress. I had a bag full of various souvenirs for the staff, which mostly consisted of tiny porcelain rice bowls that I got gotten the company name etched onto at a high-end souvenir shop in Tokyo. The day already seemed saturated with post-vacation malaise, and my head was unpleasantly numbed from the jetlag.

  I walked into my office to see Sabryna absorbed in fiddling with the controls on a device that hadn’t been on the wall when I left.

  “Morning Sabryna,” I said, grinning as I watched her turn around to see both me and the cherry-blossom painted bowl I had placed on her desk.

  “Johnathan!” she said, and gave me a quick hug. “You’re back already?”

  “You betcha,” I said, and plopped down in an empty chair, still exhausted. “I see the new intercom system has been successful installed.”

  Sabryna glared at the lit-up electronic screen on the wall. “If you say so,” she said. “I still don’t see the point. We all have each other’s cell numbers. We’ve never had a problem with just texting.”

  I sighed. “It’s more for our reputation than functionality,” I explained. “It’s so when potential clients come in they think we have the most advanced tech…and then we get their business.”

  Sabryna smiled at me skeptically. “If you say so, Torver.”

  “So, what else has been going on?”

  Sabryna sighed as she typed some dates into her computer. “Not much. Samantha Doyle and some of the Wordsworth people are in the other room working out some legal stuff.”

  “Ah,” I said. “Anything else?”

  Sabryna laughed. “You mean, has Samantha said anything else about you? Did Amy leave her panties on the floor of your office? That kind of thing?”

  I rolled my eyes. “No.”

  “Like I said,” Sabryna said, giving me a knowing look. “Literally nothing.”

  I bit my lip. “You haven’t heard anything about…a cruise? Have you?”

  Sabryna burst out laughing. “A what? No. What on…nope,” she said, putting a hand on her forehead, “You know what, I don’t wanna know.”

  “Fair enough,” I said, and snuck out down the hallway to see how the Wordsworth negotiations were going.

  I stood at the edge of the tiny conference room window to see Kirk, Cassidy, Samantha Doyle, and two of the Wordsworth lawyers crowded around the table. Things seemed to be running smoothly—much more smoothly than they had been when I left. One of the Wordsworth lawyers was leading the discussion, and Samantha and Kirk were listening intently.

  Sam
antha seemed far more at peace with the arrangement than when I had seen her last, and I hoped it wasn’t because I had gotten her hopes up about delaying the layoffs. Her hair was in a looser sort of bun today, and a dainty opal necklace brightened her eyes…her strength had more of an aura of calm surrounding it. I really did hope she would be happy here.

  “Spying now, are we?”

  I jumped and turned around to see Amy a few steps behind me.

  “Hi…um, Amy.” I stuttered a bit. “It’s nice to see you again.”

  “It’s very nice to see you again too,” Amy said, her gaze locked on mine. “Did you have a nice trip?”

  “Ah, yes,” I said, unsure of what to say next. “The um. The sushi was very good.”

  Amy laughed. “I have heard the sushi in Japan is some of the best.” I was already hitting myself for saying something so stupid.

  “Anyway,” I said, feeling myself already becoming a bit hot under my collar from her stare and the fact that she had caught me watching the meeting. “I’m just walking around the office, checking in on a few things, and then I should go home and get some rest.”

  Amy smiled. “Very good,” she said, and kept gazing at me intently, her lips parted and her hands twisting at the hair at the nape of her neck. “And you do know, Johnathan, that even though I’m technically Samantha’s assistant,” she took a step closer and looked down for a brief moment, feigning innocence. “I can always assist you with whatever you need.” Amy stared back up at me and ran a slender finger down the length of my silk tie. Ohmygod, this was really happening.

  I couldn’t help but grin boyishly at the compliment of having such an outright sexy woman hit on me so shamelessly, but unfortunately, this was work, and Sabryna was right—I couldn’t risk messing up our relationship with Wordsworth over something like this. I took a deep breath and tried to force the blood back up to my brain.

  “Thanks, Amy.” I said, and held out my hand to meet hers in a formal handshake. “But I have all my work delegated out to my own employees right now.”

  I was stunned by Amy’s apparent indifference to the snub. “Very well, Mr. Torver,” she practically purred, and I watched her circle around in her nude-pink heels and saunter down the hallway.

  I didn’t get the impression she thought our conversation was over.

  Chapter 4

  “You live in the shed behind your parent’s house?” the girl asked.

  “Well not live…well, actually…” I shrugged as we made our way through the backyard in the dark. “I’m saving up my money and working to build my company, so the shed sort of serves as an economical way to have a private office.”

  “Very ambitious,” she said, glancing around the interior with amusement. The room was a mess of papers, food wrappers, and a disheveled futon, but most of the time it served as home. A flashlight stood up on the ground as a makeshift lamp, giving the whole space a soft golden light. “Now,” she said, walking up to me slowly. “Where were we again?”

  I smiled as I caught her against the wall and slid my hand around her waist. “As if I could forget,” I whispered, and she moaned as my mouth found her neck. I kissed her as we moved our hands across each other’s bodies in a maddening frenzy. I needed more of her, all of her, and I felt her breathing hitch as I suddenly began to stroke her from underneath the hem of her skirt.

  “Johnathan,” she pleaded. “The bed…please.”

  We tumbled onto the futon without even bothering to move aside the papers spread across it. I groaned in anticipation as I felt her hands undo my zipper, and I tossed her discarded skirt off of the bed. Suddenly we were both naked, and the curves of her body were illuminated by the lamplight, all shades of golden shadows like a long-forgotten painting. I moved on top of her and kissed her, almost in reverence, and tangled my hands wildly through the dark strands of brown hair that were splayed out on the pillow. Soon I was inside her, we were moving together, and she was letting out gorgeous sighs that echoed off the walls. I buried my head in her neck, immersed in her and the pleasure, when I suddenly looked down at her and she met my eyes…

  I didn’t register who the woman really was until that moment—she had been a diaphanous fog of legs and moans and skin when I stared directly into her eyes and—

  “Samantha?”

  “Look, I know jetlag is a thing and all, but sleeping in two hours? Come on, man.”

  I awoke with a shock to see Kirk standing over me looking incredibly pissed…and incredibly confused. Hell, I was incredibly confused.

  “How the hell did you get in?” I asked, suddenly conscious of the fact that I was sweating bullets and had a massive case of morning wood going on underneath my sheets.

  Kirk gave me his classic teacher look again. “You didn’t lock the doors, genius,” he laughed. “You’re a rich dude, and the right burglar could have made a killing last night.”

  “Yeah,” I said, still processing the images running through my mind, and then I noticed Kirk was staring at me with genuine concern.

  “You alright?” Kirk asked, setting down his coffee. “You have a nightmare or something?”

  “Um.”

  “Something hot?”

  I felt myself blush for the first time in ages, and ran my hand over my morning stubble. “Something sort of in the middle.”

  Kirk cackled. “Kinky.”

  I looked at the clock. I really had slept in two hours and figured I must have forgotten to set my alarm in the haze of last night’s jetlag.

  “You got ten minutes, and then we’re heading back to the office,” Kirk said, and I groaned. He shut the door to my bedroom and went to go wait in the kitchen while I dug through my closet for a clean shirt. I rested my head against the wall for a minute. Of all the people I could have had a sex dream about, Samantha was an odd choice. You’d think after Amy’s rather brazen behavior yesterday that she would have been more likely to make a surprise appearance, but Samantha? The same Samantha who was hell-bent on making the acquisition of her company as difficult as possible? I shivered as the last moments of the dream circled back through my mind—this dream was no vague morning recollection, but one saturated with color and detail, and one that was insistent on staying put firmly in my memory. But seriously, I thought, putting on my tie…what the hell?

  I looked at my slightly disheveled appearance in the mirror and decided it would have to do.

  Kirk looked visibly annoyed as we got into the car, and I made a mental note to treat him to dinner to make up for the fact that he had to come and wake me up for work…again. Maybe that Korean place Samantha was talking about…

  Samantha. She would be at the office today, fully armed and ready to fight. Christ.

  An uncomfortable silence had settled into Kirk’s Jaguar as we sped down the highway. He adjusted his glasses and attempted some small talk. “So,” he sighed. “There might be a blizzard coming in a couple weeks. Insane, right?”

  “Yeah,” I said, and continued to stare out at the trees absentmindedly.

  “Okay, as your best friend, I really have to ask, Johnathan, sorry, but—”

  “The dream?”

  Kirk smiled. “Ohhh this is gonna be good.”

  I bashfully sunk into my seat. “Well,” I said. “It was a sex dream.”

  “Mm-hmm,” Kirk said, raising his eyebrows and urging me to continue. “And?”

  “Well, back when the Torver Group was starting out, remember how I basically lived in that shed behind my parent’s place? And that’s where I would bring girls to…” I sighed. “So, in the dream, I was living back there, and I brought a girl back, and—”

  “Get to the point, Torver.”

  “It was Samantha Doyle.”

  Kirk’s face morphed into a bizarre combination of joy and shock as he suddenly slapped both his hands down on the steering wheel. “No,” he said cackling. “Nah man, that is too good! Samantha Doyle! You didn’t!” He was laughing so hard that I was getting concerned about him stil
l being able to operate the car. “Oh my god, you had sex with Samantha Doyle. Damn!”

  He kept laughing.

  “Let me remind you,” I told Kirk. “That this was completely the work of my subconscious mind and that I had absolutely nothing to do with it, okay?”

  Kirk grinned. “So, was it good?”

  “What kind of question is that?”

  “Aw please, even in dream sex you can tell how good it is.”

  I looked away from Kirk and shrugged. “It was actually…it was actually pretty good. Really good.” I admitted, and judging by the look on Kirk’s face you would have sworn he’d just won the lottery.

  “I knew there was chemistry between you two.”

  I scoffed. “We only just got past hating each other, Kirk, I don’t think so.”

  Kirk only smiled and shook his head. “The science of chemistry is made up of all kinds of reactions, and maybe some of them don’t start out perfect, but they get there.” He smiled. “Maybe you and Samantha are an element all your own.”

  “I’m about five seconds away from punching you in the face, you cheesy bastard.”

  Kirk just cracked up even more as we drove into the parking lot. “And as you can see, I don’t really care.”

  I swallowed hard as we took the elevator up to the office. Today was a big negotiations day with Wordsworth, which meant I would have to spend an endless day shut in the conference room with Samantha. Of all days. Kirk simply stared up at the screen flashing the numbers of the floors we were ascending with a massive grin on his face.

  I rested my head in my hand and sighed, already counting down the hours until I could go back home. “Why do I get the terrible feeling you’re going to enjoy this way too much?”

  Kirk laughed. “I’m already enjoying this.”

  I walked into the office to find Sabryna already setting up the pastries and coffee in the conference room.

  “Only glazed doughnuts this time,” she said, and I cringed as she winked at me.

  “When are the Wordsworth people getting here?”