LMGK was considering purchasing Everton.
And this report was part of their due diligence.
“Oh,” I gasped.
Connor saw that I’d figured it out. “Yup.”
Wow. Just… wow.
Klaus didn’t know he was being evaluated. And that evaluation could potentially influence the entire buyout.
I winced. “I guess we didn’t do so well.”
“No, you didn’t. Your appraisal of the market is waaay off.” He glanced over at me hastily. “Not you, of course – Klaus’s.”
“Well, he always does that,” I said in an off-handed way.
Connor frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve proofed all his reports over the last six months. I have to double-check everything, and, well… he tends to tell the client what they want to hear. Not necessarily reality.”
“Wait – wait, wait, wait,” he said. “Do you know about – ”
And for the next five minutes it was like I was defending a doctoral dissertation.
He asked tons of questions about previous business deals Klaus had done. The thing was, Connor knew details that he shouldn’t have been able to know, and he kept throwing out numbers left and right off the top of his head.
I did my best to keep up. I did okay – when you spend as much time as I do babysitting for Klaus, you have to clean up a lot of messes. I remembered some of them particularly well.
At the end, he shook his head. “Incredible.”
“What?”
“That you’re an assistant and not a junior executive, at the very least.”
He looked serious.
I blushed. “Well… it’s nothing really, just what I’ve picked up in the last six – ”
“Stop,” he said, almost angry. “Don’t do that. Don’t be modest; don’t lessen your worth like that. You’re an assistant, but you just showed a better grasp of the big picture than a couple of Harvard MBA’s I’ve hired in the last month. Don’t play it off. It’s damn impressive. You’re damn impressive. Don’t ever make yourself out to be any less than what you really are.”
I was about to swoon.
He was looking deep into my eyes as he said all these things… and that scent, that masculine, intoxicating cologne, was making my head swim…
“It’s also a little sad,” he finished up, which jolted me out of my reverie.
“What is?” I asked, taken aback.
“That a woman like you is working for an idiot like Klaus. The situation should be reversed – and if it were, I would hope you’d fire his ass.”
I grinned. “In a New York second.”
He leaned in a little bit. My grin faded as my vision went woozy again.
“I see so much potential in you, Lily… a huge future. Somebody who could really go out there and kick some ass. Smart, capable, funny, charming…”
He paused, and the barest hint of a smile played at the corner of his mouth.
“…beautiful, if it’s not inappropriate to say that again…”
My heart skipped three beats this time.
He leaned in closer.
“It’s too bad you’re such a doofus.” And with that, he broke into a huge grin.
I snapped up straight, totally jerked out of the spell. “What?! I am not!”
And then, because I didn’t really know what he meant, I asked, “…what exactly do you mean by ‘doofus’?”
“Somebody who, either out of a lack of intelligence – which isn’t your problem – or a deficit of self-esteem, sells herself short and puts up with crap she shouldn’t. Only doofuses work for douchebags,” he said, with an expression like I hate to break it to you, kid, but the truth hurts.
Okay, by that definition, I actually am kind of a doofus, but I wasn’t about to admit that to him.
I crossed my arms. “I have to pay rent, I have to eat, and if the only way to do that is to work for an asshole, sorry, Mr. Bigshot ‘Gonna Buy The Company Someday,’ but I like having a roof over my head and dinner every night. It’s not going to be that way forever. It’s only temporary. Haven’t you ever had to put up with crap, ever, or is your life so charmed that you never had to overcome any setbacks?”
He laughed as he headed towards Klaus’s office. “Alright, alright… so you’re just a little doofus. Come on, let’s go dig up some more evidence of your boss’s douchebaggery.”
13
Connor spend another hour intently examining file after file. He asked for the companies by name, and he seemed to know exactly what he was looking for.
I didn’t do much except look for folders as he sat in Klaus’s designer office chair, his rock ‘n roll boots propped up on Klaus’s desk, and read and read and read.