Authors: Lucy Monroe

The Real Deal (35 page)

BOOK: The Real Deal

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“I presented it again with a few conclusions of my own.” He smiled smugly. “I think we've got Eric Brant solidly in favor of the merger.”

“He's always been in favor of the merger,” she replied with exasperation. Didn't anyone at the head office understand that the problem was Simon, not Eric? “It's
Simon
who won't be budged.”

“That's not a problem.”

Clearly her boss was convinced of that or Lance wouldn't be in Port Mulqueen. “Did Daniel mention to you that if Brant Computers goes public, Simon will sell his new designs to the highest bidder?”

Lance shrugged. “He's bluffing and if you weren't so blinded by his
personal attributes
, you would realize that.”

“If you make one more crude, snide or suggestive comment in regard to my relationship with Simon Brant, I'm going to make taking apart a big screen television and letting it crash to the floor seem like an act of mercy.” She bared her teeth in an imitation of a smile. “As for Simon, you don't know him. He doesn't play corporate head games. It's not a bluff. He feels really strongly about keeping the company family held.”

Lance shrugged again, his expression chilling in its calculation. “If Simon Brant attempts to sell his designs to the highest bidder, he'll be in for one hell of a legal battle.”

“He didn't sign an intellectual property rights agreement for Brant Computers. He gives them his designs because it's his company, not because he's legally required to do so.”

“There are such things as implied contracts, Amanda. Didn't you learn anything in your business law course?”

Implied contracts?
She ignored the dig, feeling sick to her stomach. “What you are proposing isn't ethical.”

Lance laughed and it was not a nice sound. “Grow up, Amanda.”

“I am an adult. A moral adult, which is something I realize you have no familiarity with.”

“Sticks and stones, sweetheart.”

“Simon is not an asset on Brant Computer's spreadsheet.” The nausea in her stomach increased. “You can't force him to design for the merged companies.”

“We'll see.”

Amanda stood up, not bothering to hide her disgust. “Yes, we will. Eric won't support a bogus lawsuit and Simon is no patsy. In fact, he's a hundred times the man you could even think of being.”

Lance rolled his eyes. “Anything else, Amanda?”

“Yes.” She smiled, a real smile born of joy from the experiences that led to the thought she was about to express. “You're a lousy sex partner as well as morally corrupt. I now know what it means to be satisfied by my lover and I have to wonder how much you paid the women you had affairs with, because it sure as hell wasn't your prowess in the bedroom that convinced them to have sex with you.”

It would have been a very effective exit line if it wasn't followed by an unexpected dash to the women's restroom where she lost her breakfast.

Chapter 19

S
he used her cell phone to call Daniel from the ferry.

He wasn't answering on his mobile and, according to his voice mail that morning when she'd tried to reach him before going to see Lance, he was still out of town.

She closed the flip phone wishing desperately that Jillian hadn't flown back to LA the night before.

Amanda needed someone to talk to.

Her work was blowing up around her ears and she very much feared that wasn't the only thing that would be exploding in the next nine months. If that bout of nausea in the restroom meant what she thought it did, her waistline was going to do a fair amount of exploding as well.

Panic curled through her, fighting with anger for supremacy. She was furious with her boss for going behind her back and sending Lance to negotiate with Eric. It showed such a complete lack of respect for her professionally that she had to wonder why he'd sent her on the mission alone in the first place. And betrayal twisted her insides as she thought of the ammunition he'd armed Lance withâher work.

Beyond that, she was sickened by their proposed plans to use legal means to force Simon to design for the merged company. She didn't know if it would work, but it would drive a huge wedge between him and his cousin. If the merger went through, their relationship would be strained enough.

It wasn't right.

She wanted to warn Simon and tell him about her suspicion that Daniel was working on the other shareholders in an attempt to override Simon at a shareholders' meeting with their votes added to Eric's. Amidst all that was her worry that Extant Corporation knew details about Simon's current projects that they shouldn't know. She had no idea how they'd gotten the information, but Daniel had certainly implied they had it.

But she still worked for Extant and she could not convince herself that she had the right to say anything as long as she was an employee of the company.

The fact that she wanted to say anything at all was a huge deviation from the way she would have responded before meeting Simon Brant and falling in love with him. A few weeks ago, her entire future had been bound up with her job. That wasn't true anymore. Even if Simon didn't want her as a permanent fixture in his life, she was afraid that, in one way or another, she was going to be.

She laid her hand over her stomach, the queasy feeling not gone completely. Whether that was due to the rocking motion of the ferry or something inside her own body would be determined when she reached Simon's house and used the early pregnancy test kit she'd bought after leaving the restaurant.

“Amanda . . .”

At the sound of Simon calling her name, she came out of the bathroom, feeling curiously light-headed.

All she saw was Simon's back. He'd turned around and headed back out of the room already.

“I'm right here.”

He pivoted back to face her, his expression strangely blank. “So you are. Where's your watch?”

She'd forgotten to put the combination watch-communication unit on that morning. “I don't know, beside the bed probably.”

He turned to look and her gaze followed his. Sure enough, there it was on the nightstand.

“Simon, Iâ”

“Eric just called,” he interrupted, swinging back to face her. “Our second cousins are demanding a special meeting of the shareholders to discuss the proposed merger with Extant Corporation.”

It was her worst fears realized. Dizziness came over her and she swayed. “I see.”

“Do you?”

She nodded, still too loopy from what she had learned in the bathroom to measure her responses. “I expected something like this.”

“Are you saying you knew your boss was talking to the other shareholders for Brant Computers?”

Her brow wrinkled at the flat tone in Simon's voice.

“Yes.” She'd known. She hadn't wanted it to be true, but she'd suspected and it turned out her suspicions were right.

“So, what was this all about?” He swept his hand toward the bed. “Your way of keeping me occupied while your boss got my cousins hot for the merger?”

“What?” His words didn't make any sense.

“You promised me you weren't using sex to manipulate me into agreeing to the merger, but I should have asked a different question, shouldn't I?”

Suddenly his meaning became clear, and so did the reason why Daniel hadn't told her he was sending Lance to Port Mulqueen. She had unwittingly done exactly what Simon had accused her of. Daniel had used her like a paid prostitute. Knowing she wasn't guilty in her own heart was little consolation with Simon looking at her with such a wealth of disgust in his gunmetal eyes. Daniel had used her, but the possibility that Simon believed she'd done it on purpose, gutted her.

She went hot, then cold with the most excruciating pain. “You think I made love to you toâ” She clapped her hand over her mouth and ran back into the bathroom.

She barely made it to the sink before being sick. She hadn't eaten anything since coming back to the island, so she dry-heaved and it hurt. But then everything hurt right now. She couldn't get a deep breath and hot tears burned a path down her cheeks as she bent over the sink.

Two strong arms came around her. One held a washcloth which he wet under the tap and then used to wipe her face.

“Shh, baby. It's okay. Relax.”

She closed her eyes and let him comfort her because she felt physically too weak to fight him and her emotions were decimated.

Her stomach finally settled and he swept her into his arms, carrying her back into the bedroom.

He laid her gently on the bed. His hand brushed her cheek, but she kept her eyes shut. She didn't want to look at him right now, didn't want to see eyes she was used to seeing burn with passion, or light up with humor, or with what she'd convinced herself was caring, now burn with resentment. It hurt.

“Amanda . . .”

She turned away from him and curled up on her side. “Lance thinks that if they get the merger through, the combined companies can force you to give them first option on your designs with some kind of legal injunction based on implied contracts.”

She spoke quietly, but she knew he could hear her.

His hand settled on her shoulder. “Babyâ”

“And I think Daniel knows whatever it is you're working on right now.”

Now Simon knew it all. If Eric had waited to call just one hour, she would have told Simon everything and he would never have accused her of something so despicable. She would never have had to know what a low opinion he had of her morals, or that whatever he felt for her, it wasn't love.

You didn't think things like that about people you loved. She didn't have a lot of experience with the emotion, but she knew deep in her heart that she would not have even considered a similar scenario with Simon in the deceiving role. She'd never entertained doubts about him using sex to manipulate her either, not like he'd wondered about her in the beginning.

But then, she loved him.

“That doesn't matter.” Simon's voice was gravelly above her.

She shook his hand off her shoulder. “It's all that matters.”

Damn it. Why was she so weak right now? She just wanted to get up and leave, but she didn't think her legs would hold her. And where would she go? Not back to Port Mulqueen. Her job there was over. Her job was over, period.

She could go home.

She was unemployed, but she still had her condo. After faxing in her resignation without giving notice, she doubted she'd get any kind of reference. It might be a while before she found another job. If things got really tight, she could list it with her mother's real estate agency and make at least one person happy.

He rolled her onto her back by exerting steady pressure on her shoulder. His gray gaze was mesmerizing. “Are you pregnant with my baby, Amanda?”

“Yes.”

“I'm glad.”

Was he? She guessed he could be. You didn't have to love the mother of your child to want it, did you? Simon would be a wonderful father, but that wasn't something she could deal with thinking about right now. She'd never considered being a single parent, giving birth to a child by a man who didn't love her.

“What are you going to do about the merger?”

“Eric's on his way over now. We're going to talk.”

“I hope you can work it out between you.”

Simon looked down at the woman he had made love to so exquisitely the night before. She had burned like living flame in his arms and told him she loved him. Her Hershey dark chocolate eyes were lifeless now, as if that incredible fire had gone out and all that remained was dead ashes.

She was talking about the merger as if it was the only thing that mattered.

As if being pregnant with his child didn't matter.

As if he didn't matter.

She wanted him and Eric to work things out, but there was no room for compromise. He couldn't agree to the merger, especially after what she'd just told him about her boss's plans. He didn't want corrupt management working with his company.

He wished he could give her what she wanted. Make it all right and make her happy, but he couldn't.

He touched her again, relieved when she didn't reject him. “I'm sorry.”

“Me too.”

He wanted to ask where they went from there, but she looked so fragile and he wasn't sure he could take the answer when it came. Maybe she didn't think they went anywhere. Maybe
they
were a done deal as far as she was concerned.

She'd admitted to knowing her boss was working behind the scenes to make the merger go ahead, but accusing her of using sex to keep him occupied in the meantime had been stupid. He was the one who had kidnapped her and convinced her to stay. She had too many hang-ups about her own ability to attract a man to have planned to use it in some nefarious manner.

He was an idiot.

And his idiocy had been born of jealousy, along with a feeling of betrayal which he should not have experienced. He knew her job came first. Right from the beginning, he'd known that. But he'd wanted more and so, had made her pay for it when he didn't get it.

Remembering the sound of her heaving over the sink, the pasty white complexion of her face and the tears, he felt like the world's biggest heel.

“You have nothing to apologize for, but I do. I shouldn't have accused you of using what we have. I know it wasn't like that.”

Her eyes begged him to mean it, for once her emotions as clear to him as a perfectly polished optical lens.

He pulled her into his arms, holding her so tight she squeaked.

He loosened his hold just a little. “Please, Amanda. Forgive me. I didn't mean it.”

She cuddled into him and he felt like he'd cracked the secret to fiber-optic computer processing.

“Are you sure?” Her voice was muffled by his chest.

“Positive. I was the one who kidnapped you, remember?”

“I remember, but I thought you had forgotten.” That was all she said, but he sensed there was more going on in her mind.

He also sensed that right now she had no intention of opening up to him.

They stayed that way for a long time, her allowing him to hold her. Finally, she squirmed in his arms and he let her move back a little so he could see her face.

“Do you think you can convince Eric to vote against the merger?”

“I don't know.” Remembering her words earlier, he asked, “Why did you tell me about Daniel and Lance's plans?”

BOOK: The Real Deal

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