Propositioning Love

My lips tingle and my body begins to arch towards him before I think better of it. Coming to my senses, I pull away at the last moment. He scowls down at me as I grab my coffee from his hand, turn away from him, and drop my purse on the desk.

Stepping into me, my back warms with his heat as he leans into me and breathes into my ear, “Tease. I’ll see you at noon.”

He gives my butt a tight squeeze and I jump and squeak in surprise. Whipping around, I open my mouth to reprimand him but he’s already walking away, chuckling to himself.

“Oh my god, what was that?” Clara asks, and I find myself jumping and squeaking again.

I press a hand to my chest and tear my eyes away from Bry’s ass.

“What was what?” I ask, dropping down to my chair and trying to play it cool.

“Oh, don’t even give me that. You know what I’m talking about,” Clara rolls her eyes as she walks into my cubicle and makes herself comfortable.

She jumps up on my desk and crosses one leg over the other. Her butt has been on my desk so much over the past couple of years, I’m surprised there isn’t an indent permanently grooved into the wood.

I shrug my shoulders, still trying to play off what just happened as if it was nothing. Rolling my chair closer to my computer, I hit a few keys to wake it up.

With a determined glint in her eye, Clara uses her foot to roll my chair back from my computer.

“Uh-uh, work can wait. I’ve been waiting patiently all weekend. Time to spill it.”

Eighteen

Bryce

“Bryce,” Ariel comes through the speaker phone in the office just as I finish checking over the losses and gains spreadsheet for the last quarter.

“Yeah?” I respond, rubbing my eyes.

“Daniel is on line one.”

“What the hell time is it there?” I ask as I reach for the phone.

“About midnight,” she responds back.

“Goddammit. That’s not a good sign,” I grumble quietly, but loud enough for her to hear.

“Probably not. I’ll get Roger on the line if you want.”

“Not just yet, maybe I can solve whatever the issue is here,” I say before I pick up the phone.

“Daniel,” I say into the receiver as I lean back into my chair. “What’s going on?”

“Old man fucking Wong is challenging the directions his son wants to take,” he growls into the phone.

“Why the hell is he doing that?” I ask with a sigh.

This should have been a done fucking deal on Tuesday last week. We had this deal in the fucking bag.

I have to remind myself not to berate or shout at Daniel. He’s not the best closer in the business, but he’s a fucking stickler for the numbers. He can spin any quarter he touches into a dollar if he sets his mind to it.

But the Wongs in Singapore have been a fucking issue.

“He’s playing for time with the board members. He’s still holding on to the thought that he should still be running the company the old way,” Daniel says, and lets out an exhausted breath.

“What about Feng? I thought he had the board locked down?” I ask, and I have a sinking feeling about the whole situation.

“He did until his younger brother thought he could squeeze more money out of us for the buyout.”

“Kang… That little fucking shit. He’s the one who fucked around with half the company’s equity in the first place. They wouldn’t be able to operate another year if it wasn’t for us coming in to take it over,” I spit out.

Dammit, this isn’t Daniel’s fault. It’s the fucking greedy drug fiend’s fault. Kang is an asshole playboy who’s used the company’s assets as his personal fucking slush fund. Between Kang and his father, Feng is in deep shit.

Securing the board’s vote to sell was good, but if they’re getting all squirrelly now, this whole damn deal could be going south.

“I know that, and you know that. They know it too… But Kang is egging them into asking for more, and the father is hoping we balk. He thinks he can just hold out and everything will go back to normal,” Daniel says with some exasperation.

“Fuck,” I growl.

Right now, this is the last thing I need going down. Roger is flying over to England tomorrow, and I’m here in Atlanta.

“Fuck is right. I have the whole board here in the middle of a fucking conference room, yelling at each other right now. Feng is trying to calm them all, but as soon as he does Kang starts riling them back up again. Fucker is so hopped up on coke, he’s shaking.”

“Alright, what do you need from me?” I ask, and I know for a fucking fact he’s going to say the words I least want to hear right now.