Scandalizing the CEO (2 page)

Frederick VonHauser was waiting in her office. He was on her staff but also a trusted friend. Freddie and she had met when they’d both been attending Northwestern. Back then Freddie had been Larry Murphy. But he’d decided that he needed a new name for his new college life and had changed it their junior year.

“Everything settled?”

“Yes. Steven Devonshire was there.”

“No kidding. Did he remember you?”

“Nope. Not even a flicker of recognition. Should I fire Danielle? She didn’t follow up and Davis and Jon stood around for over an hour with nothing to do. It was a complete mess.”

“Darling, I know you too well to let you change the subject. Are you sure he didn’t recognize you?”

“Yes. And that doesn’t matter. I’m having dinner with him later this evening.”

“Ains, you sneaky girl. So you were going to keep that to yourself?”

“I was. Because my underling shouldn’t know every detail of my life.”

“Underling? I prefer esteemed colleague.”

“You are. Now about Danielle…”

“She’s young. And the article she wrote is one of the best I’ve seen in a long time. But she’s not going to learn if we don’t push her.”

“She cost me hundreds of thousands today, Freddie. I can’t keep her on.”

He looked as if he wanted to argue but didn’t. She put her pen down and thought about the articles she’d agreed to run in the magazine.

“I need someone who can handle sports stars and royals.”

“For what?”

“A series of articles on the Devonshire heirs and their mothers. I want to showcase all three separately and then I need someone with a connection to Malcolm Devonshire. I want to do a sit-down with all three of his sons and him. I want the angle to be on mothering.”

“Good luck with that. How’d you get the heirs to agree?”

“It was Steven’s price for getting back to the photo shoot.”

“You and Steven made all kinds of deals, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Ains, was that wise? The man left you devastated before,” Freddie said.

“I have no idea, but when I realized he didn’t remember me and that he was interested in me now…”

She trailed off. She couldn’t say that a part of her wanted revenge. That wasn’t very noble and she knew she wouldn’t do anything to hurt Steven. But if they had dinner and he found himself more attracted to her, and this time if she was the one to walk away without glancing back…well, then she’d be just fine with that.

“Girl, this has disaster written all over it. You emerged from the ashes the last time as a phoenix, but that kind of transformation can’t happen twice in a lifetime.”

“Says who?”

He shrugged. “I guess you have to do what you think is right.”

“It’s not that,” she said. “I’m just curious.”

“Curious about a man who left you so shattered that you lost a ton of weight and had to move to another continent to recover? That kind of curiosity could be more than you can handle.”

She just looked at Freddie. She wasn’t going to back out of the date. She’d made up her mind that this time she’d emerge the victor from her encounter with Steven. A few minutes later Freddie left the office and she sat back in her
chair. She didn’t want to think too much about her deal with Steven or that it had nothing to do with this magazine and everything to do with the man—Steven Devonshire.

A
insley fidgeted nervously as she looked at herself in the bathroom mirror. Sometimes she still saw the fat girl she’d once been looking back at her. She turned to her side and stared at her stomach. That carb fest she’d indulged in at lunch had been a mistake. She was going to have to have a veggie soup for dinner.

She glanced at the slim-fitting black skirt. She was always torn when she looked at her reflection. She liked the body she saw in the mirror, but she never felt at home in it. She kept expecting the image to balloon up like one of those carnival mirrors she’d seen at the county fair growing up in Florida.

Sometimes she was really struck by how far she’d come. At times she could scarcely recall the small-town girl she had been, but at other times she felt just as awkward and out of place as ever.

The bathroom door opened, she put on her power smile and leaned in as if she’d just been checking her lipstick. It was Danielle. The other woman stared at her.

“I thought we were cool,” Danielle said.

Ainsley shook her head. “I’m sorry, but that cost us a lot of money today and now I have to go in front of my bosses and get them to sign off on another idea.”

“I know that I dropped the ball, but I’m just learning,” Danielle said.

“When I was just learning, Danielle, I lost my job for making a mistake like you. It took me three years to get my career back on track,” Ainsley said. The botched interview with Steven had cost her her job with the
Business Journal.

“Then give me a break here. You know how hard it is to start over.”

“That’s right, I do. So I don’t make major mistakes anymore. I’m not sure you learned from this one.”

Danielle crossed her arms over her chest. “How about a probation period? Let’s say six months of a trial and I’ll prove myself to you. If I screw up again, I’ll walk away and if I don’t I get to stay on full time.”

Ainsley realized that Danielle had gumption. She was an incredibly talented editor, if Ainsley was forced to admit it. “Okay, it’s a deal. But don’t make me regret it.”

“I won’t.”

Ainsley walked out of the ladies’ restroom to see Freddie leaning against the wall. “Did you put her up to that?”

“Yes, I did. I think we haven’t seen the best of her yet and if she wanted a second chance, I told her she’d have to go and make you give her one.”

She glanced over at her oldest friend. “You are so lucky I like you.”

He kissed her cheek. “I know. When do you talk to New York about your idea for the Devonshire heirs story?”

Even though Ainsley was editor-in-chief for
FQ,
she still answered to her boss in New York. They were owned by the best-selling magazine consortium in the world, and her boss liked to say they were number one because he was so hands-on.

“In an hour. I had to squeeze it onto the agenda at the end of the video conference call. I would love to have some photos of the women from when they were all dating Malcolm,” she said. “Do you think you can get on Corbis and find them?”

“I can and I will. What else do you need?”

“Nothing. I’ll do my other research, but finding the photos would be time-consuming. I need them to be unique and glamorous…”

“I think I know what you have in mind. I’ll e-mail them to you as soon as I have them.”

“Thanks, Freddie,” she said.

“I owe you one after I sicced Danielle on you.”

“This doesn’t make up for that.”

“What does?”

“A jog along the Thames tomorrow morning at seven.”

“Seven? That’s still the middle of the night,” he said.

“But you owe me, so you’ll be there.”

“You’re right, I will be,” he said. He headed down the hall to his own office and she reentered hers.

It was one thing to think of doing a story of this magnitude, but it was something else entirely to convince her publisher that it should be done. And she needed to make sure they could do the story she’d proposed.

She spent the next hour pulling up details on the women
who had been involved with Malcolm Devonshire. And Ainsley was fascinated by what she’d found. The women were all very dynamic and, from a fashion perspective, she couldn’t have asked for three women whose sense of style was more distinctive and individual. There was Henry’s mother, Tiffany Malone—the embodiment of a seventies hippie chick rocker. With her sexy long hair, sultry eyes and pencil-slim jeans, she was earthy and radiated sexuality. It was hard to think of her as being someone’s mum.

Then there was Princess Louisa—the wild-child party girl who was a distant cousin of the current monarch. Her look was haute-couture sexiness from her stick-straight bob to her slim-fitting, low-cut tops and hip-hugging slacks. She was glamour with a capital
G.

Then there was Lynn Grandings—Steven’s mother. The physicist, who should have seemed very much like a bookworm, but instead radiated a keen intelligence and with her waist-length, thick, curly brown hair, she exuded her own brand of sexuality. The picture that Freddie had sent showed her laughing at the camera, and it was easy to see why Malcolm had been attracted to her.

The only thing the women had in common was a distinctive beauty all their own. These women were defined by their lifestyles and she was dying to know what had attracted Malcolm to them at the same time. How had he been able to juggle these relationships?

She finished making her notes and realized that talking to the sons would be the perfect accompaniment for the story because these strong women raised them.

Dinah sat across from him in the conference room. He’d ordered the financials for Everest Mega Stores from the last three years. The retail stores had suffered a setback over
the last quarter but even prior to that there had been signs of decline. The pattern that emerged showed that the North American retail stores were the ones that were having the most problems.

“I think our North American retail shops should be closed,” Steven said after he finished reading the financials.

“I’m not sure,” Dinah said. “If we do that we stop the loss, but we aren’t going to see a new revenue stream.”

“If we focus our energies here,” he said, gesturing to the spreadsheet for Europe and the UK, “I think we can make it up. But I’m open to ideas on how to keep North America. I don’t really want to lose that market.”

“Why don’t I do some research? I can write a report on the analysis of closing the North American stores versus keeping them open. I’ll recommend some course of action as well, if you like.”

Steven glanced over at Dinah. “I like that idea. Can you have it to me by Friday?”

“Close of business?”

“If you need that long,” he said.

“Yes. I might take all the time.”

“I don’t mind. I want to make sure we’re doing the right thing.”

Dinah stood up and gathered her purse and briefcase. “We will. You’re known for saving companies like this one, so it should be a piece of cake.”

“Exactly.”

“Is that why you took this job?” she asked.

Steven shrugged. Dinah and he had worked together a long time and never had the conversations turned personal. They sometimes flirted and always talked business and
market trends, but never did any conversation broach the personal areas of their lives.

“Off-limits?” she asked.

“No. This is business—pure and simple,” he said. Opting for the truth as he saw it. The inheritance issues weren’t a big thing for him, because he saw this as a challenge and the chance to prove himself was too great for him to pass up.

“Good. I’m going to let my phone go to voice mail tonight.”

“You are? Why?”

She flushed and for the first time he realized that Dinah had a life outside the office. He always suspected she must, but they did work almost sixty hours a week so that didn’t leave much time for dating.

“I have a date and he told me to turn the phone off at dinner tonight if I wanted to see him again,” she said, her voice quiet and a little pensive.

“Okay, voice mail is fine. In fact, take the entire evening off. I don’t want you returning calls until tomorrow.”

“Does midnight count as tomorrow?”

He laughed. She was still his workaholic Dinah. “Of course it does.”

Dinah left a few minutes later and Steven sat back in his chair thinking about Ainsley Patterson. There had been something familiar about her, but he would have remembered meeting her.

He made plans for dinner and then started going through his executive staff. He called them all in one at a time and wrote down his impressions afterward. He had a list of people he thought were go-getters and could move the company forward. Unfortunately, there was a list of people who saw their job here as a paycheck only. He’d have to
move them around and see if that sparked some enthusiasm. Otherwise he’d have to fire them.

No matter the outcome, it was only a matter of time before he had this company running like a well-oiled machine.

He wasn’t sure when it had happened—perhaps when he’d been a boy playing quietly in the sterile environment of his mother’s lab—but he’d always known that he could rely on no one but himself.

S
teven had to detour back to the Leicester Square store to fire that duty manager. He had his secretary send a message to his half brothers that he’d be late meeting them. It was odd to think that these men he’d known about his entire life but had never met were now such an integral part of it. He wasn’t too sure how he felt about that. He didn’t necessarily want brothers.

He’d never yearned for a family as a child and as an adult he’d found that making his own way in the world suited him. Family just hadn’t been part of his reality. His mum was always in the lab, and Aunt Lucy was busy with her life.

His cell rang and he glanced down to see that it was his aunt Lucy. Lucy was his mother’s twin, the nurturer in their family. She called him once a week to just check on him.

Aunt Lucy had tried to mother him, but Steven had always known she was doing it because she didn’t think his mum was. And that left Steven feeling…cold.

“Aunt Lucy.”

“Hello, Steven. How are you doing, dear?”

“I’m good. How are you?”

“Fine, dear. I heard from your mother that your father had contacted you.”

Steven sighed as he exited his building. He went to his car—a Vallerio roadster. He had an original 1969 model in his garage at home. The new roadster had all the earmarks of the original, but power for this new millennium.

“It was nothing. He wants me to run one of his business units.”

“And the others?”

Others.
That was how his mum and Aunt Lucy referred to his half brothers. Was it any wonder he’d never been close to them?

“They are each running a segment as well. Whoever outperforms the others will be made the CEO of the Everest Group.”

“Sounds like your kind of challenge, dear. Will you be able to come home to Oxford on Sunday for dinner?”

He hesitated for a second. Not because he was considering it, but he wanted her to think he was. His aunt meant well and she was the only one of his relatives he talked to on a regular basis, so he always made the effort of at least seeming to want to spend time with her.

“Not this week.”

“Oh, well, maybe another time. Have a good evening.”

“You, too, Aunt Lucy.”

He hung up and got in the car. He drove through the
congested London streets to the Athenaeum Club. The members-only club would afford them the privacy they needed to talk. To have a chance to get to know each other away from the prying eyes of the paparazzi. Steven wasn’t used to the spotlight the way that Henry and Geoff were. But it didn’t bother him. He was enough of a businessman to know that any publicity was good.

In this day and age anything could be spun. He had made a dinner reservation for him and Ainsley at an African restaurant that he liked. He pulled up to the front of the club and the valet came to take his keys.

“I know I’m not a member,” a young woman said to the butler guarding the door. “I just need to send a message to Henry Devonshire. I know he’s in here.”

“I can relay a message for you,” Steven said. “I’m meeting him inside.”

“I just need to speak to him for a moment. Will you let him know I’m out here?”

“I sure will,” Steven said, smiling at the woman as she stepped aside. “And who are you?”

“Astrid Taylor.”

Steven nodded to her and then turned to the butler. “Steven Devonshire,” he said.

“Of course, sir,” he said. The door was opened for him and he entered the club.

The centuries-old club was decorated in a very conservative manner and it was lined with tables and chairs in discreet groupings. There was a bar at one end of the room and he spotted Henry and Geoff sitting at one of the tables toward the back.

“There’s a girl asking for you up front,” he said by way of greeting to Henry.

The other men and he shared little in the way of looks.
Geoff dressed like he was part of the upper crust of society, which he was. Henry always looked spot-on trendy, which made sense because he spent so much time with the people who made the trends that others followed.

“A girl?” Henry asked.

“Astrid,” he said. “I told them I’d let you know.”

“Thanks,” Henry said. He put his glass on the table and stood up. “Sorry to miss chatting with you, Steven. I need to go.”

“Do you?” Geoff asked. “Who is she?”

“My new assistant, Astrid Taylor.”

Steven signaled the butler and ordered a Seagram’s Seven. It was an old-fashioned drink, but one he’d always favored. The conversation went on between the other two men, talking about families and their half-siblings, and Steven felt distinctly uncomfortable. He had no family except his mum and Aunt Lucy. And he certainly didn’t want to talk about them. Steven found it interesting that Henry and Geoff’s mums had remarried and created families for their sons.

After Henry left, Steven sat back in his chair to assess Geoff’s mood. “How’s the airline business?”

“A mess. I’m not sure that this ‘boon’ from Malcolm is much of a gift. The airline is on shaky ground and the baggage handlers are threatening to strike. I have some ideas for turning it around, but it will be hard work. How about the retail stores?”

Steven had heard rumors about the airline within business circles. “The retail chain is healthy in Europe and here in the UK, but the North American division is faltering. I wonder how Malcolm let the business get into such bad shape?”

Geoff shrugged. “His obsession with flying around the
globe probably contributed to it. Or, as we all know, his obsession with women.”

Steven couldn’t help but chuckle. At the end of the day that might be what had cost Malcolm the cutting edge he’d had when he was younger. That was a mistake that Steven was determined not to make.

He liked to think he’d gotten the best skills from both his parents. From his mother, Lynn Grandings, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, he’d learned to apply the scientific method to every aspect of his life and to be methodical about planning, but he’d also been introduced to some of his mum’s crazy ideas. She always said that progress was made from ideas that others thought were…whacked. And from Malcolm he’d learned that winning at all costs was the most important thing.

“I forgot to mention to Henry that I have made arrangements for
Fashion Quarterly
to interview our mothers and us.”

“What? Why would a fashion magazine be interested in us?” Geoff asked.

“Our mums were all very fashionable women in their day and the editor-in-chief thinks that you and Henry are fashion-forward now. She’s going to do photo shoots of each us with our mums near something related to our business units. The editor-in-chief wants to assign a writer to interview all three of us and Malcolm. I’m not sure what his health is like, so I don’t know if that will be possible.”

“I’m not too keen on talking about myself and I don’t know that my mum will agree, but the airline could use a boost. As long as they stick to that angle, I’ll do it.”

“Good. I’ll have my assistant send the details. And now I have to go.”

“Me, too,” Geoff said. “Thanks for dropping by.”

“You’re welcome. I guess it’s time we got to know each other.”

“Past time,” Geoff said.

The men walked out together and there were photographers waiting outside. Steven stayed back and watched the mayhem that surrounded Geoff. There were questions about his distant cousins, the royal princes, and questions about his mother. All of which Geoff brushed off as he walked to his own car, ignoring the photographers.

After the pack of paparazzi had left, Steven left as the valet brought his car to the front. After meeting with his half brothers, he knew he was going to win the challenge that Malcolm had thrown down, but he wondered if it would fill the empty hole in his soul.

The restaurant that Steven had chosen was classy, but had a homey atmosphere. The décor was distinctly African and the lighting was low, offering them a sense of privacy.

The details of the interviews weren’t something she could talk about with him now. She had to talk to her staff writers and she wanted to see if Freddie could line up an interview with Malcolm before she made any decisions.

“Thank you for letting us go ahead with our shoot. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you how much it cost us to just wait around.”

“You’re very welcome,” Steven said. He’d ordered a bottle of white African wine to go with their dinner and lifted a glass to toast after the sommelier had brought it to them and Steven had approved it.

“To winning combinations,” he said.

She nodded and tipped the bell of her glass toward him. Their glasses clinked together and she looked into his eyes
as she took her first sip. He watched her the entire time, which she thought was interesting. He seemed like someone who was shallow and only concerned about his own needs, but he was definitely paying attention to her. He watched every expression on her face and she felt as if he wanted to make sure she enjoyed herself tonight. That was out of character for the man she’d met five years ago.

A bouquet of flavor erupted on her tongue as she swirled the sip of wine though her mouth. It was crisp and dry and had the subtle flavor of fruit to it. Not grapes but maybe apple, she thought.

When she returned her glass to the table, she smiled at him. “I like this wine. Thank you for recommending it.”

“Well, it has a bite, so I thought it might suit you.”

She had to laugh at the way he said it. She knew she came across as a man-eater when she was in business mode. But tonight she wanted to enjoy the opportunity to just get to know Steven.

“You mentioned earlier that your father was sick,” she said.

“I don’t like to talk about Malcolm,” he said.

She made a mental note that he referred to his father as Malcolm. Were they close? Somehow she didn’t think that question was appropriate. As an American in London, she’d learned quickly that some of the conversational topics she’d always thought acceptable weren’t here.

“My dad had a health scare about six years ago…and it really shook me. I’d always thought of him as invincible and it was humbling to realize he wasn’t.”

“Yes, it can be hard,” Steven said. “My mother is healthy as can be but she spends a lot of time in a sterile environment, so that’s to be expected.”

“What does she do?” Ainsley asked. She had done
her research on Lynn but wanted to hear about her from Steven.

A frown crossed his face so quickly that if she hadn’t been watching him she would have missed it. “My mother is a physicist. She’s won a few awards. Right now she’s working in Switzerland.”

“I guess you don’t see her often,” Ainsley said.

The waiter brought their dinners and they continued to discuss their families. It didn’t take long for her to notice that Steven always deflected the questions she asked about his family. Not that it mattered—her writers would get to him.

“What brought you to London?” he asked as they were sipping a darkly brewed after-dinner coffee.

She wondered if he’d remember her if she mentioned the interview she’d done with him. It was that article that had ultimately cost her her job. She’d been so nervous when she’d met Steven at his office that she’d spilled her coffee all over his desk. He’d been cordial to her at the time but when she left she overheard him on the phone with Joel, her boss. Heard him say that she’d been more concerned about her coffee and sweet snack than about interviewing him. When she got back to her office, it hadn’t surprised her that her boss fired her.

She’d written the article anyway and sent it out freelance to a couple of magazines, finally getting it picked up by one of the
Business Journal
’s competitors. It had appeared in
WIRED
magazine; they had been looking for articles on “young guns”—men under thirty who were changing and shaping the way businesses were being managed. That article put her on the map, so to speak, and gave her a chance to start fresh.

She was a little miffed Steven hadn’t recognized her
name but remembered that back then she’d been A. J. Patterson—something she’d thought made her seem more professional.

“My job. I used to work as a freelance writer in the States. But it’s hard to pay the bills with freelance gigs only, so I transitioned to an editor position at
Fashion Quarterly
in the States. While I was there, a piece I wrote on young Hollywood wowed my bosses and they offered me a full-time position as an editor. Once I started editing—which is very different than writing—I found that I loved it.”

“As much as writing?” he asked.

She shrugged, but then she decided, why not tell him. “Some days but what I loved about writing was the discovery, digging deeper and asking questions that surprised the people being interviewed. Not in a bad way, but just in a way that pushed them to examine and expand their own responses. I liked that.”

“Do you write anymore?” he asked.

No one ever thought to ask her that, she observed. The truth was there were times when she did miss writing but being an editor, especially one in her position, paid so much better. “No, I don’t. I’m in charge of our entire magazine.”

“Do you like being the boss?” he asked.

“Love it,” she said, with a grin.

She hadn’t realized until she’d gotten a full-time position at
FQ
that she really loved the competitive nature of her industry. It had also helped her focus on staying healthy. Working in fashion had made her very aware that she had to make her weight loss a permanent thing.

“But enough about me. You must be looking for a huge challenge to take on the Everest Mega Stores on top of
running Raleighvale China. Or have you stepped down there?”

“No, I haven’t stepped down. I don’t think I ever will. Raleighvale is in my blood.”

“How?” she asked. He was more open when she asked him about business. That was another interesting note that she mentally tucked away to examine later.

“It’s my own company. I took it over when I was young and made it into the success it is today. There’s a certain sense of pride of ownership that comes with that.”