Double-Cross My Heart (5 page)

Her mind flashing back to their times together in the last month, she registered a pain in her gut. He’d been pretty terrific. Sensitive, but not wimpy. Powerful and yet not pushy. Just last week she’d started letting herself think he might be for real. The guy for her.

Had he been playing her all along? Eden grimaced, flinching at the thought.

Her mouth firmed into a grim line, she picked up the phone and dialed Greg’s number. She’d often laughingly accused her friend’s husband of being a business “ho.” There weren’t many people on Wall Street with whom Greg hadn’t done some back-scratching. If anyone could ferret out any secretive buying of Michele stock, Greg could.

“Greg Tavish here,” he answered, his voice crisp and competent.

“Greg, it’s Eden.”

“Hey!” he responded, his voice gaining warmth. “How’s my favorite wife’s favorite friend?”

“I’m okay,” Eden responded, her determination growing now that she’d decided on a course of action. “But I need your help.”

“Anything,” he said easily.

“Jess has told you about the situation here at Michele, hasn’t she?”

“Yes, and I think that old woman is an idiot. Who’d have thought a new boyfriend would lead to a complete loss of rationality?” Greg replied with wonderful promptness. “What are you going to do? Put rat poison in her lunch or strike out and start your own company?”

“Neither,” Eden replied. “And I’m still considering my other options. I was talking with Jess at class this morning. I need your help. I’d like you to find out if you can get wind of any unusual stock purchases of Michele shares in the last…oh, six or eight weeks.”

Eden knew she hadn’t started talking to Alex about her job situation in the first week or so of their relationship. Any buying he’d done more than two months ago would signal a premeditated motivation on his part.

She refused to let herself shy away from the thought.

“Sure,” Greg responded. “You want just the stockholders names or do I need to really sleuth to see who’s acquiring?”

“Really sleuth. Look to see if Alex Holt is a player. Has he or any of his known associates been buying our stock. Find out whatever you can about him. You know, the usual stuff,” she said. “And…can you get it to me pretty quick?”

“Sure. Let’s hope Holt’s not interested. He’s very powerful,” Greg said, then paused, “Hey, didn’t Jess tell me the two of you are dating?”

“I’m not sure what we’re doing,” she responded evenly.

“Oh. Like that, is it? I understand. I’ll call you back this afternoon or tomorrow morning, at the latest,” he promised.

“Thanks,” Eden said with real gratitude. “You’re a peach.”

“Be sure and tell my wife that,” Greg teased before he hung up.

Eden replaced the phone in the cradle feeling stronger already.

Ignoring the stack of phone messages and the clutter of product development samples on her desk, she found her Palm Pilot and made a note to check back with Greg tomorrow morning.

Acceptance of the situation with Alex was completely unacceptable. She couldn’t just give up on her company without a fight and it was beginning to look like the company was threatened one way or the other. Either Michele would torpedo it by her foolish business decisions—the thought still brought a measure of shock with it—or Alex would buy it and take the company apart.

Sitting there at her desk, she registered the fact that she was doing her damndest to keep her thoughts on the company. She didn’t want to dwell on the possibility that a man she was so attracted to might be deliberately screwing her over. Using her to get the company.

God, maybe she was more like Michele and her own mother than she’d thought.

Wincing again, she steered her thoughts into safer channels. She wasn’t elderly and fearful of dying alone. She couldn’t let Alex destroy Michele Cosmetics, no matter how hot he made her.

Too many people here at the company relied on her. She’d hired half of them and had come to know the other half like brothers. She couldn’t let them down, dammit. They were the family she’d created herself, maybe a replacement for the one she now wondered if she’d ever have.

At the age of thirty-two, she knew she might never have children, might never be able to create a family of her own. The news reports that had come out a few years ago about women and their time-linked fertility had left her with the sinking conviction that she might have missed out on that particular opportunity.

Now the company was all she had…evidence that she wasn’t the same as her loser kin. She loved her mother, but the woman seemed focused on making the wrong decisions.

Running Michele Cosmetics meant everything to Eden now. She hadn’t had a serious boyfriend in a while. She’d hope Alex might fill that particular void, but that didn’t look good.

The real question was why was Alex zeroed in on the company? For her sake or for his own? Was he targeting Michele Cosmetics to help her or help himself?

Reaching down to her lowest desk drawer, Eden absently pulled it open and rummaged in the nearly empty carton of Payday bars. Biting one end of the paper rapper, she tore it open and sank her teeth into its salty sweetness.

She picked up the latest report from Robert Bergere, the Swiss genius who’d been commissioned to work up a formula for a new product. So far, the anti-aging cream hadn’t produced good results, but he had several other ingredients he wanted to try. One or two of them, he said, had real promise.

Great, she thought with irony, crunching her way into the chewy center of the Payday. Something in her life should have promise.

Wouldn’t it be poetic justice for Eden to end up shepherding the development of what could be Michele Cosmetics’ most lucrative product yet?

Outside her office, Eden heard voices in the hallway and recognized the bright, confident tones of her foe.

Quickly shoving the remainder of the candy bar into its wrapper, she tucked it in a drawer and dusted off her hands as Wendi appeared in the doorway.

“Hi!” Knocking on the open door with a pseudo-hesitant manner, Wendi said, “Hello? I hope I’m not interrupting anything!”

“Of course not,” Eden responded, pinning a smile on her face as she picked up an errant peanut and chunked it discreetly into the trash basket under her desk. “Come in.”

Even before the other woman showed her face at Michele Cosmetics, their enmity had sprang to life, no less forceful for the necessity both felt to hide their feelings. From the moment Michele had announced her plans for Wendi to join the company, Eden disliked the woman. Having someone else pave the way for her hadn’t ever been her way, but she’d had plenty experience with co-workers who got ahead any way they could.

After all these years in a corporate environment, she was becoming jaded, Eden realized as Wendi came into her office.

“Oh, thanks,” the other woman said, sinking gracefully into a chair. “It’s so lovely and quiet in here. What with calls from Michele wanting to chat and my assistants always asking me questions, my office is bedlam.”

The woman’s office, a corner one with two walls of windows, overlooked the river. Although the smile never slipped from her lips, Eden felt the muscles in her neck grow more rigid.

Assistants.
Plural. Wendi was already assigned a bigger personal staff than Eden and she’d been running the damned company for years.

“I’m sure it’s difficult to find your footing,” Eden said pleasantly, “what with entering an entirely new industry.”

“Oh, I don’t think cosmetics are so different from other kinds of business,” Wendi disagreed after a moment’s thought. “After all, life is just one big transition after another. Learning to learn is what it’s all about.”

“True.” Eden tried not to make the word wooden, but there was only so much a person could tolerate. Did Michele really think this woman—this pseudo corporate player—was better equipped to run the company than Eden?

No, Eden answered her own question. Michele was too busy enjoying romping with her boyfriend to really think about how her foolishness was effecting her company.

“So, how’s the Pretty Me line doing?” Wendi asked, sliding one slender leg over the other as she looked expectantly across Eden’s jumbled desk.

“I put the report on your desk. Didn’t you see it?” Eden replied gently.

Wendi grimaced. “It’s been so crazy. There’s so much to do with that Doyle McKenzie guy out. He’s vice-president of production and having him out sick just makes no sense. I haven’t had a chance to sit down and go through my in-box this morning. Would you summarize the report for me?”

“Everything with Pretty Me is going well. Sales are up seven percent over the last quarter,” Eden said shortly. Doyle was a terrific man with the production area. In any regards, his work had fallen into her lap, not Wendi’s. “The new lipsticks need a better advertising campaign but we have a few days before we have to decide on the angle.”

“Good,” the other woman said, getting gracefully to her feet. “Send me the proofs of whatever you decide.”

“All right.” She felt no surprise at the decision being left up to her. Wendi’s management style included very little work for herself and she suffered under the delusion that everyone existed to do her work for her, even colleagues at the same level.

“Well, I’ll let you get back to whatever you were doing,” Wendi said airily as left the office, “I think I’ll go visit Michele this morning. She was pouting yesterday when I had to cancel our lunch.”

“Fine,” Eden said, filled with contempt as the other woman disappeared around the corner of the doorway.

Revenge looked pretty good at this moment, but she still wasn’t inclined to take Alex up on his offer.

***

His feet propped on Alex’s desk, Bryan Zilkowski asked, “Is Eden Merritt going to come over to our side?”

Across the room, Alex finished buttoning his shirt and slipped a tie around his neck. As uneasy as he was about the way he’d started things with Eden, he wasn’t ready to talk to anyone about it.

Through the communicating doorway, the bathroom still radiated warmth from his shower. The muscles in his legs protested faintly as he bent to put on his shoes, feeling the after-effects from his usual morning run. The inky darkness before dawn had called to him. If he had to be awake, he might as well make use of his time.

Running during these early, sleepless hours seemed appropriate, anyway. Memories couldn’t be outrun, he knew, but he couldn’t keep from trying.

“Things appear to be going well with Eden,” Alex said, deliberately keeping his response low-key. “She’s a smart woman. Our plans are really in her favor, whether she realizes it or not.”

Bryan, his friend and lawyer, said, “She doesn’t realize it? Have you started putting on the pressure?”

“You know me better,” Alex chided, finding his friend’s words jarring. In the past, he may have pressured people, but he found himself recoiling from the idea of doing the same to Eden. “It’s not so much a matter of pressure as in pointing out Eden’s best interests. Naturally, she’s hesitating. I told her she should think it over, but unfortunately we need her decision quickly. I’m seeing her tonight. Now that we’ve started our campaign to quietly buy up Michele Cosmetics stock, the market is beginning to respond. Just yesterday, the stock ticked up another half a point.”

Thinking about the purely-business angle was easier and certainly what Bryan would expect of him.

“And we really need her help?” Bryan said, a shade uneasily.

“Yes. We need product information, marketing strategies—everything we can get our hands on, basically. We’ve got to sway the board. This isn’t quite the same game we’ve played ten times before,” he reminded Bryan, “I want to diversify our projects with as minimal a risk as possible. That means a new industry, and a new industry means some new angles to play.”

“I still don’t understand why you had to handle this yourself. Why didn’t you let Jason do it? He does our investigative work pretty well. You usually don’t get so personally involved.”

Knotting the tie around his neck, Alex debated how to respond. Bryan had worked with him a long time and knew him as well as any friend could, but that very fact made it less likely that he’d understand this.

“I don’t usually attend to the details,” Alex agreed, stalling, still refusing to give any clue of the niggling guilt he felt.

He’d run his operation with great success for a number of years. How could he explain the jolt that had shook him when he first saw the photos of Eden Merritt? He liked her smile, dammit, and now that he knew her, he liked the woman even more.

“So what gives?” Bryan prodded.

Alex shot him a sideways glance, weighing his responses.

The unvarnished truth was too irrational, too gut-punched. How could he explain that he’d just known if anyone was going to woo Eden and win her over, it had to be him.

The last month had been an intoxicating mix of business and pleasure. With thoughts of Eden, he had something more than solitaire and FreeCell to while away the early morning hours. To his own surprise, he felt more for her than simple lust. Now that he’d gotten to know her, he was even more sure of their making Michele Cosmetics the next company to secure and dismantle. Even if Eden didn’t yet realize what was in her best interests, he had little doubt about the subject.