Fake Marriage Box Set

I rifled through the paperwork one more time, glad that I'd had Jenny, my secretary, postpone my meeting with the Albright girl until later in the afternoon, rather than the early-afternoon meeting that had originally been scheduled. Orinoco was most likely going to take over Albright. I just needed a bit more information about all the various implications of the buyout before I could sign it. And one of the implications that I needed the most information about, at the moment, was the potential insurance implications.

Orinoco had made a name for itself as one of the premier online retailers, but if we successfully bought out Albright, we would become something more than that. Not only did Albright carry its own portfolio of products that it sold online, but it made its deliveries using drones. If we could corner the market on drone deliveries, we would really be head and shoulders ahead of the competition.

The problem was, I didn't know what would happen if those deliveries went bad. There was too much potential for drones to crash or deliveries to be lost or damaged. I wasn't sure that Orinoco was prepared to absorb those risks.

Hence, why I needed to talk to Albright's main insurance analyst.

Jenny knocked lightly on the door and poked her head inside. “Mr. Goldwright, your three p.m. meeting is here,” she informed me.

I waved my hand. “Send her in,” I said, shuffling my papers into order on my desk.

The woman who entered my office was nothing like I would have expected. I didn't deal much with the insurance analysts that worked for Orinoco, but I had assumed they were all frumpy, older women who had gotten bored working in the finance department and decided to lone-wolf it in the insurance department.

But this woman was young, maybe a few years younger than me, and she was far from frumpy. She wore a neat gray suit with a bright, silky purple shirt that emphasized her pale skin and dark hair. And those legs, wow. They went all the way up.

I raised an eyebrow at her. “Ms. Jordan, or may I call you Lexi?” I asked.

“Mr. Goldwright,” she said in response, her tone clipped and her gaze frosty. “Thank you so much for agreeing to see me today.”

Ah, so she was upset about the change of time and change of venue, then. She had to realize that my time was more valuable than hers, though. Surely!

I nodded towards a chair. “Can I get you something to drink? Water, or perhaps something stronger?” I placed my finger over the call button on my phone, ready to have Jenny bring whatever the woman wanted.

But Lexi didn't sit down like I had expected her to. Instead, she narrowed her eyes at me. “Mr. Goldwright, I'

m here on business,” she said, in that same holier-than-thou tone that she'd used before. “I have a presentation for you, and I'll need a projector screen for it. So, unless your office is hiding something that I'm not seeing, I suggest that we adjourn to your nearest conference room.”

A pity: she had the frumpy attitude, even if she didn't have the looks to match it.

I probably wasn't going to be able to convince her to have a quick fuck right there in my office, as much as I'd love to bend her over the nearest surface and have my way with her, but I wondered if I could get her into bed with me regardless.

“I've read over most of the information you sent already,” I said, waving a careless hand. “I don't care much about your presentation, although I'm sure it's very informative. But I have some questions for you, and I'd like to hear you answer those rather than just read off slides for me.”

At that, she looked uncertain, and I wondered what sort of company Albright was that she was so afraid to go off-script. It didn't really matter, though. Once we bought their company, we'd have the ability to change whatever we thought needed to be changed, up to and including the fundamental structure of the company.

She shook her head, though. “Sorry, I thought I was going to be presenting to a group of Orinoco’s executives, or else I would have tailored the presentation to your specifics.” She sounded nervous and uncertain, and I couldn't help but laugh.

I stood up and went over to the mini-bar in the corner of my office. Normally, the wine inside was reserved for close friends or celebrations, but just this once, I'd make an exception. “Here,” I said, handing her a glass of wine. “You sound like you could use this.”

She sputtered, a faint blush staining her cheeks. “This is a work meeting!” she hissed.

“Of course, it is,” I agreed. “But we're not going to get any work done if you're tripping over your tongue for the entirety of it.” I smiled at her, hoping to charm her into relaxing.

She stared at me for another moment and then slowly reached out to accept the glass of wine. Equally cautiously, she folded herself into a seat.

Normally, I'd take the seat behind my desk and play up my position of power. Today, I chose to sit next to her, dragging the second chair close enough that our knees were almost brushing when we leaned in to look at the paperwork that she'd brought over.

“You were originally supposed to be meeting with some of my executives,” I told her offhandedly. “But this deal with Albright could launch both of our companies into the forefront of the industry, and I decided it was too important for me to pass it off on some of my lackeys.” I grinned over at her. “To be honest, I have a tendency to micromanage.”

“Oh,” Lexi said, looking at a loss for words.

“But there's a good reason for it,” I continued, boasting. “Under my leadership, I've taken Orinoco from being just a player in the online retail industry to being one of the forerunners in developing new technologies in said industry. Orinoco wasn't even a publicly-traded company before I came along, and now it's one of the most massive companies in the world.”

“Right,” she said.

She didn't sound impressed. In fact, if I had to gauge her, I'd say that she sounded disgusted. I suppressed a grin, wondering if she knew she was that easy to read. She probably thought I was arrogant, just another dim-witted dude whose dad had placed a bit too much trust in him. Or maybe she just wanted to go home. But what she said next surprised me.

“Orinoco has had a string of good luck,” she agreed, nodding her head. “But no one can stay on top forever.”