The Billionaire Bargain 3 (9 page)

• • •

It
was time. I gripped Grant’s hand tightly as we waited in the
wings, the lights dimming in the ballroom except for the ones over
the stage. Butterflies performed complicated aerial maneuvers in my
stomach. This was it. No more preparation, no more hedging of bets.
This was when it was all going to go down.

A
rustle of silk, and Portia came around the corner in ivory heels and
a sleek dress that looked as though it had traveled here through time
from the 1920s. I tried to pull my hand back, but Grant held on to it
tightly. He wasn’t interested in covering: we were in this
together now, and he didn’t care if Portia—or anyone
else—knew it.

She
gave a barely perceptible start as she surveyed the way Grant and I
were standing so close together, but she recovered almost instantly,
favoring the pair of us with an icy smile.

“Well,
isn’t this a fairytale ending for you both,” she said
through tight lips. “Cinderella has won the heart of the prince
after all. Well, they do say you can’t teach good taste.”

Grant
squeezed my hand gently. “We have nothing to say you, Portia,”
he told her. “We don’t speak to traitors.”

“So
melodramatic,” she said with a sniff. “I do hope for your
sake that’s not the line you’re taking in your speech
tonight. Investors respond so poorly to theatrics.”

“Whereas
you are totally one hundred percent honest and authentic,” I
butted in sarcastically.

“Oh
dear, you two are meant for each other,” Portia said, surveying
us with cool disdain. “It’s simply business, children.
Nothing personal.”

She
breezed past us and swept onstage like a super-villain taking her
place before the cowed and subjugated masses, and the crowd fell
silent.

“Well,
that went well,” Grant muttered.

“Don’t
worry,” I said. I kissed his cheek. “There’s still
her whole speech. She has plenty of time to alienate everybody. Hell,
she can usually do that in thirty seconds without even trying.”

Grant
tried to smile, but it looked a little pained. I wrapped my arm
around him, willing us both to make each other strong.

Onstage,
Portia favored the audience with a brittle smile as though she were a
dentist trying to assure them that this wouldn’t hurt, not one
little bit. The first few rows flinched back slightly.

“Ladies
and gentlemen,” Portia said, “my case is plain.”

Behind
her, the screen flickered to life, showing a picture of Grant’s
grandfather. I could feel Grant’s pulse spike as his hold on my
hand suddenly became a death grip.

“The
founder of this company was a true original. With a firm grasp of
economic theory, the marketplace, and the importance of hard work, he
took raw materials and transformed them into something beautiful:
Devlin Media Corp.”

The
screen transitioned to the next slide, another grainy black and white
picture, this time of the Devlin Media Corp headquarters when they
had originally been constructed in the early 20
^th
century—not as tall as they were today, but imposing and
impressive with their engraved columns and Art Deco stained glass
windows nonetheless.

“Perhaps
it sounds strange to you that I should call a company beautiful,”
Portia said. “After all, it is not a word one usually
associates with strength. But consider the great white shark: a
graceful, merciless, ruthless engine intent on seeking out its prize.
It does precisely what it was engineered to do, with speed and
efficiency, with no apology to those too slow or unworthy to avoid it
or get out of its way. Is it not beautiful? Is there no poetry in it,
no art?”

“What
the hell kind of strategy is this?” I hissed in a strangled
whisper to Grant. “Does she think this is a poetry open mic at
a coffee shop?”

“She’s
playing on their emotions,” he muttered back through gritted
teeth. “Building them up to make them feel like apex predators,
then serving them up a nice plump bit of prey they can rip apart
until it bleeds to death.”

I
cast my eyes over the audience, and I was disheartened to see that he
was right. Many of them were sitting straighter as they took in her
words, their eyes starting to shine. If she persuaded too many
people, swayed too many of our supporters back over to her side…

“Yes,
Devlin Media Corp was once a thing of great beauty,” Portia
said. “But we failed in our responsibilities. We grew bloated
and complacent.”

The
picture behind her changed, showing the company headquarters, but
through a dark filter that made the building look dirty, and shot at
a bad angle, so that the towers were slightly obscured by the smoke
from a fast food restaurant. I silently cursed the Photoshop gods.

“We
began to think like a charity instead of a business,” she went
on.

The
picture changed to show an overweight family of six sitting on a
couch, watching a television. I recognized the woman; she was one of
the most friendly cafeteria workers we’d ever had. I’d
missed her when she’d had to go on leave due to a broken leg,
but thanks to her health insurance package, she’d been able to
come back to work within a few months. How the hell had Portia gotten
a picture of her family? That was slimy as hell.

“We
began to throw money at spongers, wastrels, programs that were
inessential to the core of our mission, of our purpose.”

Charts
went up along the screen, blaring fire engine red lines showing
steadily nose-diving profits. Until you looked at the scale, of
course, and realized that Portia had manipulated the graph to give an
inaccurate impression, but most of the audience was sitting too far
away to see how she had labeled the x and y axes, and she rapidly
clicked past it anyway, before even the people close to her could
have given it much scrutiny.

Especially
if their eyes were on her face, which she had now set in an
expression of noble determination, her shoulders squared as if she
were an Amazon warrior given one final mission for the good of all.

“But
Devlin Media Corp can become a thing of beauty again,” Portia
said, her voice ringing across the room like a call to battle. “We
can once again honor the vision of our founder. We can once again
compete in the global marketplace!”

“We
never stopped,” I muttered.

“Portia
doesn’t want competition,” Grant muttered back. “She
just wants to crush everyone else and make a throne out of their
skulls. I can’t believe I was so blind!”

I
brought his hand to my lips and pressed a kiss to it. “You
wanted to believe the best of her. That’s not a crime, or a
weakness. That’s just you being a good man.”

“And
thanks to my goodness, thousands of people may be about to lose their
livelihoods,” Grant said tightly.

Onstage,
Portia was in full stride now. “This isn’t a takeover
from Pinker Inc. This is a chance to reclaim our company’s
birthright! This is a chance to enter into this century, onto this
world stage, as a power to be reckoned with!”

She
raised her fist as if she were planning to smash all that stood in
her way.

“Once
we’ve shed the detritus accumulated over the years, our profit
margins will soar. Our business will operate at peak efficiency,
delivering results that no one can argue with. We will become faster,
brighter, better. With the help of Pinker Inc., we will become a
giant in this economy, and no one will be able to stop us!”

Thunderous
applause greeted this pronouncement, and my stomach dropped down to
my shoes. I tried to tune out Portia’s final words as she
wrapped things up with more misleading statistics and an analysis
that would have gotten thrown out of an Econ 101 course—but
that I was still afraid the shareholders would listen to, motivated
by her rhetoric and her promise of future profit.

Grant
was looking nervous too, and I knew that I had to help him. I took
his other hand and pulled him so that he was facing me, not the lying
hell-beast onstage.

“Babe.”
I tugged at his arms until he looked me in the eye. “Okay, she
got a head start. But I know you can turn it around.”

He
shook his head, defeat creeping into his posture. “I wish I
shared your faith.”

“Hey!”
I said. “Listen to me. You are Grant Fucking Devlin. You’ve
got a smile that could sell every brand of toothpaste in America, a
head of hair that could let a politician get away with slapping a
baby, an ass that could make an entire convent of nuns reconsider
their life choices—”

Grant
was trying not to laugh. “I’m not sure those are the
qualities the shareholders are looking for, Lacey.”

“You’re
likeable and persuasive, was the point I was making,” I said
with a little glare to make the ‘Lacey is giving you a
motivational speech, so shut up’ subtext more apparent.

“More
importantly, you have two other qualities: a head and a heart. All
this research we’ve been doing, you know this company backwards
and forwards, not just the flashy surface stuff like Portia does. And
you love this company—which is something Portia the Robot From
Planet Cut-Throat will never understand. And that’s why she’ll
lose, because she’s fighting for money, but you…you’re
fighting what you believe in. And that makes you stronger than she
could ever dream of.”

Grant
reached out and gently stroked a strand of hair over my ear. My
breath caught in my throat.

“Thank
you, Lacey,” he said quietly. “I don’t know what I
would do without you.”

For
a second, time seemed to stand still. There was only him, and me, and
the look that passed between us.

Then
I couldn’t resist making one more point.

“Plus,
you have an accent,” I added. “I don’t know if
you’ve noticed, but Americans? We go crazy for accents.
Especially if they’re vaguely British.”

Grant
got a pained look on his face. “I’m Australian, it’s
entirely different—”

“I
know, I know, you’re a former penal colony, you’re all
descended from convicts, it’s very sexy, now go! They’re
calling your name!” I gave him a little push towards the stage
where the moderator was announcing the next presentation.

Grant
leaned forward and pressed a kiss to my lips, passionate and full of
the promise of more to come.

And
then he was striding onstage, all nervousness shed like an
ill-fitting coat, and my heart began to beat so rapidly I could have
been mistaken for a hummingbird.

This
was it. Everything that happened from here on out would be riding on
this moment.

The
crowd knew it too, and a hush greeted his arrival.

Grant
looked out over the soaring crowd that controlled his destiny, and
that of his company, tonight—and gave a sheepish grin.

“Hey,
guys?” he called up to the tech booth. “Can you kill the
feed to the screens? I’ve changed my mind about what I want to
say.”

Wait,
what? We had been working on this speech up to the last minute—if
he just chucked it and—

Breathe,
Lacey. You love this man. Now, you have to trust him too.

The
screen behind Grant went dark, and the only light was the spotlight
shining down on him. It should have made him look small. But somehow,
Grant seemed to absorb the light and radiate it out from himself even
stronger, as if an angel had descended from the heavens to walk among
mere mortals.

Grant
strolled to the edge of the stage. All eyes were on him, wondering
what his next move would be. He spoke conversationally, barely
raising his voice, and yet it rang clearly through the complete
silence as his audience listened, rapt.

“Ms.
Smith’s done some pretty fancy talking just now about the
numbers. And you know, I originally planned to come out here and
explain to you just how misleading and wrong her numbers are. But the
plain fact is, well, I’ve already explained to most of you
about the different equations Ms. Smith and I are using, and if you
aren’t convinced that she’s feeding you a pack of lies
yet, well, I’m not sure you’ll ever be.

“So
instead, let me tell you a story.”

Grant
flashed a winning smile at the crowd, and though they were in
darkness, I was pretty sure a goodly portion of them were melting
into their seats in response.

“This
story begins with a young, spoiled prince, set loose by his parents
to wander about his kingdom in search of adventures. Picture, if you
will, a towheaded boy of six, wearing a sailor suit two sizes too big
for him and an ego it would take him the rest of his life to grow
into.”

Polite
chuckles followed his description. Mine was one of them.

“His
kingdom? The headquarters of Devlin Media Corp. Now, when I said that
his parents set him loose in search of adventure, I should have
mentioned that he wasn’t supposed to venture beyond the floor
where his parents’ offices were. Soon enough, however, the
foolhardy and arrogant prince discovered the stairwell, and before
you could say ‘once upon a time,’ he was irrevocably
lost.

“But
just when the young prince was about to give up all hope and start
blubbering like a faulty fire hose, he came upon that staple and
savior of all fairy tales: a wise and wonderful wizard.”
Grant’s eyes misted over with nostalgia, and I swear I could
hear the audience sigh along with him. “His name was Louis.

“Like
all kindly wizards, Louis wiped my tears and became my guide. He
showed me the magic of his work, the secret potions he used to wipe
out stains, the secret passageways he took from place to place so as
to appear from nowhere as if by magic, in the halls of the great and
powerful. That day, I saw the countless ways in which his
housekeeping work, though silent and unsung, benefitted the company
enormously. That day, I learned the value that each member of Devlin
Media Corp holds.