Tempting the CEO(10)

But who knew he was so fucking sexy? Why the hell hadn’t that been in the bio information? Or maybe, like, a picture of him?

I organized my papers in the appropriate order, last drafts first, and took out a blank pad, resolutely determined to ignore the complete and total awkwardness of the situation. See, this was why I never did hookups. That morning-after thing, possibly exacerbated by the “he turns out to be the client on the other side” thing.

His breath against my cheek brought with it a kind of a stress flashback to him moving above me and inside me, but I realized he was only leaning forward to hand me a pencil. “This rolled off the table,” he said innocently.

I took the pencil without looking at him.

“So you do things the old-fashioned way, do you, Angelina? May I call you Angelina?”

I ignored the request to use my first name—the big faker—and concentrated on the old-fashioned comment. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Pencil and paper.”

I glanced at him.

“No typing your notes into a tablet?” he continued with a nod of his head toward the troop of young associates who were doing just that.

“No. And they’re probably just surfing the internet so they don’t have to listen to Bob.”

I said it loud enough that one of the associates across the table heard me, and he stifled a smile. Jed glared at him for some reason.

“Fine, so here we all are again,” Bob said in his “this meeting has just come to order” voice. “We’ve already wasted one whole day in negotiations when we should have been wrapping this up a long time ago. Angelina’s client couldn’t make it, but I asked Jed here today so that he could help us get out of the weeds a little and cut a deal, which is what we’re all here to do, right?”

“Certainly, Bob, but sometimes you seem to forget I’m on the other side and not one of the many, many”—I looked around the table at the lawyers outnumbering me by far—“many lawyers who work for you.”

Bob turned red-faced. “If you worked for me, Angie, I’d have fired you by now.”

“Nobody fires me but my client, Bob. So where were we yesterday?” I flipped open a contract. “Oh, here we are, clause six, page fifty-two.”

Bob made a show of flipping pages angrily, glaring at me. “I hope we’re not going to be traveling at the same glacial pace we did yesterday. Maybe that’s how you do things out in Detroit.” He put the emphasis on the first syllable, whether to annoy me or give a vaguely racist connotation to it, I didn’t know. “But here in New York, we don’t haggle over this pissant stuff.”

“Good to hear. So can I assume you’ll limit the warranty period to a reasonable one, like I asked you to? Maybe eighteen months instead of ‘the end of all time and then some,’ as you have here?”

I heard a muffled laugh next to me, but I ignored Jed, concentrating on his lawyer.

“I’m sure you don’t realize this, Angie, but this clause is always written this way. Always. In every deal Worth Industries has ever done, and with companies a lot more prestigious than your client.”

“In all of them except for the last ten deals Worth Industries has done, you mean? I didn’t go back any further than that, I must admit.”

“What?” Bob snapped.

I reached for one of my precedent folders and handed him several slim sheets of paper, extracts from the corresponding clause in the last ten deals his client had done. “The warranty period ranges from six months to three years, more or less, and the three-year one was with a company where its track record was pretty shaky. My client has years of results on the records. I’m being generous offering eighteen months.”

Bob didn’t even look at the folder, handing it to one of his associates, who proceeded to scan it and nodded to Bob after a moment or two.

“We have access to the SEC website even out in Detroit.” I was meticulous with my pronunciation of our fair city’s name. “As you of all people know, as a public company, Worth’s acquisition contracts are, well, you know, kind of public. Your firm probably even does the filings.”

“Actually, we have a pretty good in-house securities team that does those,” Jed pointed out.

“So I can only assume you thought I wouldn’t do my homework, Bob, to try to make the claim you did about this clause.”

“Fine. Eighteen months. Move on,” Bob barked.

Jed’s cell rang and he glanced at the number, getting up and answering it as he walked out of the room. I could just hear, “Hey…did you check him into rehab…no, I’m going to be a little longer than I thought,” before he stepped into the hallway and shut the door behind him.