James’s head turned distractedly in Caleb’s direction, but he kept his eyes on me. He blinked quickly, as if he’d been jolted back from someplace far away. “Uh...what? Who?”
“Walter Cannis,” Caleb said again as he and Madison settled at the table again, utterly oblivious to the moment they had just destroyed. “He’s in biopharmaceuticals, from Jersey.”
James stared at me for another second before pulling his dark eyes away. “Sure, uh...Walt Cannis. What do you want to know?”
As Caleb launched into a long diatribe about the markets on the American East Coast, I lowered my eyes to the table and began scribbling mindless doodles on my files, doing my best to pretend to focus. Every now and then, James glanced over at me before forcing his attention back to Caleb, chiming in with a yes or no or a nod.
Why did I have to say anything? Everything was going so well, minus the epic brother-on-brother bloodbath, of course. Look at him. I totally freaked him out. Gosh, Della, why can’t you ever leave well enough alone?
Of course, I wasn’t sure that was entirely true. He was certainly surprised and thrown off balance, taken aback, but I wasn’t sure it was in a bad way. I knew it couldn’t be some huge revelation for him. He was infamous for being a globe-trotting playboy, but he’d also had a long string of relationships along the way. The concept of a girlfriend couldn’t be new to him, but I wasn’t sure if I fell into that category in his mind.
The problem was that he certainly fell into the boyfriend category for me, and that was putting it lightly. In fact, never in my life had I been so enraptured with a man, so completely absorbed. I warmed at the mere thought of him, smiled stupidly at every mention of his name. I knew I was falling hard, but as charming as the man was, he was also impossible to read, so I had no idea whether or not he was falling along with me.
“Why don’t you get Stamper and Shief to help you?” James asked as I tuned back in to the conversation. “The eastern seaboard is their wheelhouse. They’ll know who to call.”
Madison and Caleb shared a quick glance.
“Can’t. Those two were sacked a fortnight ago.”
“Two weeks ago actually,” Caleb corrected.
“Whatever,” Madison said with a roll of her eyes. “My point is that they’ll do us no good now.”
James leaned forward in surprise, his brow furrowing with concern. “Why the hell were they fired? They were the best negotiators we had.”
Silence ensued from the other end of the table, as Madison and Caleb were incredibly reluctant to speak, to accuse his idiot sibling. I, on the other hand, was not so reluctant.
“Robert,” I said quietly, putting our awkward moment to the side so we could focus on the problems at hand. “He said they lacked initiative.”
“Lacked initiative?” James repeated with a note of frustration. “That’s just...” He stopped himself quickly, thinking better of what he was about to say. In the end, he leaned back in his chair and took on a look of forced nonchalance. “Well, it was Rob’s call.”
An awkward silence fell over the table as we all stared at him.
James pushed up to his feet, flashing a smile that didn’t fool anyone. “I should let you three get back to work.”
After some murmured thanks for the lunch and goodbyes, the last of the dishes were cleared, and the piles of paper were stacked once again upon the table.
James helped us organize I work before he left, running his eyes over each document he retrieved from the counter, unable to hide his interest. Then, although his body angled toward the door, he glanced back at the table as he slipped on his jacket, like a kid who was being forced to walk away from a puzzle he was dying to solve. “You really should put Capps on that account with Milton and Hearst,” he blurted.
Caleb and I looked up at him in surprise, but Madison threw her gaze down at the file. “Capps?” she asked. “Are you sure?”
James nodded and stuck his hands casually in his pockets as his eyes swept the papers again. “They were all friends at Cambridge back in the seventies, still play golf together every other weekend at a club in Westlake. If you want to sway the vote toward central pricing, Capps is the only guy at the table who can get those other two votes.”
Madison and I shared a look of astonishment. After all our hours of research and the thousands she’d invested in a private investigator, we had no idea there was any connection between the men, certainly not one that might work to our benefit. That far up the corporate ladder, when we were playing with stakes so high, a little tidbit of information like that could literally make all the difference.
“Incredible,” Caleb said, glancing helplessly at the pile of folders in front of him, “but how can we get to Capps? I mean, the man is notorious for ghosting, hasn’t been seen in public for the last ten years. I heard that even his own mother can’t get a hold of...” He trailed off as James pulled out his phone with a coaxing smile.
“Let me give him a ring,” James said with a smile.
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Chapter 19
THAT PHONE CALL TURNED out to be the first of about 425 of them, spread out over the next three weeks. Whatever questions James and I had about our romantic involvement were put on hold, as the problems with his father’s company had to be addressed first.
Never before had I seen such a work ethic, and I wouldn’t have expected it from a man known worldwide for living in a perpetual state of vacation. Never before had I seen such brilliance, certainly not from any purported mindless playboy who spent his time base-jumping and bedding beautiful women. James Cross was truly his father’s son, and as someone who revered Benjamin Cross as a visionary god, I could give James no higher compliment than that.
No problem was too immense for him to find some way around it, no task so insurmountable that he couldn’t somehow spin it to our advantage. After Capps came Comero. After Comero came Ryiesguard. Then there was Athache, followed by Mills, all lead players in their fields. After James had them onboard, the entire Italian delegation was soon to follow.