Lovers and Takers (14 page)

But he knew who she was.
 
She was the best fuck he’d had in years, he thought.
 
That was who she was.
 

But he thought again.
 
Was that all she was to him?
 
Was that the reason why he thought about her for days on end and then gave in and phoned her?
 
It wasn’t as if he had all of this free time on his hands.
 
He would have to move around a ton of meetings and briefings and even a phone conference with a shareholder just to have dinner with her.
 
And he was willing to do all of that just because she was good in bed?
 
He’d had good fucks before and he was never willing to go to those lengths with any of them.
 
What made Veronica Wingate any different?

He didn’t know.
 

But she was different.
 

He knew that much.
 

But forget it, he thought.
 
He had too much work to do to be thinking about some woman.
 
And for the remainder of the day he did just that.
 
He got his work done.
 
He went from meeting to meeting with shareholders, many of whom owned less than two percent of his company.
 
But every percent counted if he had any chance of averting Craig Halprin’s hostile takeover attempt.
 

By ten at night, after a conference call with yet another shareholder who wasn’t willing yet to commit, he felt as if he’d been spinning his wheels all day long.
 

When Aubrey came into his massive office, and saw that his father was leaned back in his chair staring out of his wall-sized window, he knew his trip overseas had not gone well.
 
He slowly walked around, and stood in front of the window.

“It’s late, Dad,” he said to him, a look of concern all over his face.

Jake just sat there, his elbow on the arm of his chair, his hand cupping his chin, staring out of the window.

“No takers?” Aubrey asked.

“None,” Jake said.
 
“Every single shareholder balked.
 
Halprin had already gotten to most of them and had apparently promised them the moon.
 
And they want to see if I can match those offers.”

“After all you did for them,” Aubrey said bitterly.
 
“It’s a crying shame they won’t come through for you.”

That truth was perhaps what was angering Jake the most.
 

Aubrey stared at his father.
 
“You know what it’s going to come down to, Dad.”

Jake looked at his son, but dismissed the mere thought of what he was implying and looked back out of the window.
 

Years ago, when his company was in free fall, Jake had to sell nearly forty-nine percent of his company to over thirty investors.
 
Now Halprin was buying those investors out one by one, leaving him with a fractured company and a tenuous hold to majority ownership.
 
A majority ownership, Aubrey was reminding
him, that
included three different entities.

“There’s no way around it,” Aubrey went on.
 
“You own thirty-three percent of Varnadore Global.
 
Pam and I own five percent shares each.
 
That’s forty-three percent.
 
But mom still owns eight percent.”

Jake’s heart lurched in despair at the thought of Dena Varnadore owning an ounce of a share the company he was building while she was fucking anything that moved.

“It’s a fact, Dad,” Aubrey said, in reaction to his father’s unspoken anger.

“I had no choice,” Jake made clear.

“I know you didn’t.
 
I know she threatened to take me and Pam away from you unless you gave her a stake in the business, I know all of that.
 
But it doesn’t change the fact that with our forty-three percent and her eight percent we are the majority stakeholders no matter what the others do.
 
If Mom doesn’t sell out there’s no way Halprin’s takeover bid will succeed.
 
You will retain majority ownership.”

Jake leaned his head back.
 
“You aren’t telling me anything I haven’t already told myself, Snug,” he said.

Aubrey used to hate when his father called him Snug or Snuggles.
 
Now it didn’t even faze him.
   
“But the thing is,” he said to his father, “you can’t just tell yourself.
 
You’ve got to tell Mom.”

Jake looked at his son.
 
He used to force them to have visitation with their mother when they were still minor children.
 
He always made it clear to them that their mother divorced him, not them.
 
But as soon as both Aubrey became an adult, he refused to have anything more to do with his mother.
 
Especially since he remembered how little attention she paid to them whenever they would visit her.
 
And he, unlike Pam, remembered the night Jake caught her cheating on him.

Jake certainly refused to have anything more to do with her.
 
His heart still ached whenever he’d attend a premiere, or a party, and unexpectedly see her beautiful face in the crowd.

“You’ve got to tell her, Dad,” Aubrey made clear again.

“And what do you expect me to tell her?” he asked his son.
 
“That we need her?”

“Tell her not to sell out.
 
Tell her you need her, yes, that we need her to stay onboard with us.”

Jake couldn’t even begin to wrap his mind around the idea of begging his ex-wife for help.
 
He’d walk through fire before he had to go that low.

“Anyway,” he said, rising out of his chair like a
very
burdened man, “I’m calling it a night.
 
And you do the same,” he said to his son, kissed him on his forehead, and left the office.

Aubrey looked out of that window that had so captivated his father.
 
But all he could see was the dark.

Jake drove slowly toward his South Beach estate, as he took a call on his car phone from one of his lady friends.
 
This one was a consultant with her own firm.
 
She wanted to know if he could use some company tonight.
 
He realized when she asked it that he did want company.
 
But oddly for him, not her company.
 

“I’m dead on my feet, Mya,” he said.
 
“Maybe another time.”

“You sure?” she asked.
 
“I can get there.”

“No, I’m sure,” Jake said with more finality.
 
Mya knew to back off.

“Well, I’m here if you need me.
 
Have a good night.”

“You too, babe,” Jake said, and hung up the phone.

What was wrong with him, he wondered.
 
Mya was one of his favorites.
 
She knew how to please him.
 
But if that was so easily the case, why the hell wasn’t he letting her?
 
Because, for some cockeyed reason, the woman he had held a week ago was the same woman he wanted in his arms tonight.

Griff and Roni were finishing up a briefing with one of their investigators, when Drena, their paralegal, came into the interview room and interrupted them.

“What is it, Dree?” Griff asked her.
 
“We’re wrapping it up now.”

“Yes, sir,” the young para stated, ‘but a guy’s here asking for Roni.”

“So?” Griff said.
 
“Take his name and give him an appointment.”

“Yes, sir, but he’s not here for that.”

Roni looked up.
 
“Is he a sponsor?”

Drena looked disconcerted.
 
“I don’t think so,” she said.

“Then who is he, girl?” Griff asked impatiently.
 
“Spit it out.”

“It’s Jake Varnadore,” Drena replied, and looked at Roni.
 

Griff looked at Roni, too.
 
Astounded.
 
“Jake Varnadore?” he asked her.
 
“The Varnadore Hotel’s Jake Varnadore?
 
The titan of industry Jake Varnadore is the Jake you turned down for dinner?”

All eyes were on Roni, including the investigator.
 
But Roni was still digesting the fact that Jake was sitting in her waiting room.

“Excuse me,” Roni said as she stood up and headed out.
 
She could hear Griff telling Drena to wait there so that she and Jake could have some privacy.
 
But as she headed for the back stairs that led downstairs, and continued to digest the news, she truly didn’t know what to feel.
 
She didn’t know if she was nervous about this visit of his, or thrilled.
 
It just all seemed kind of burdensome.
 

She pushed open the heavy door from the first floor stairwell and made her way along the corridor to the waiting area.
 
And when she saw him standing in her small reception area, his tailored suit a telling contrast to his tattered surroundings, she was even more stumped.
 
Why was he there?
 
She knew that they had had a blast in bed, but a man like him probably had a blast in bed with whichever female he was in bed with.
 
So why was he there?
 
He had his back to her, as he stood looking up at the paintings on the wall.
 
His suit coat was flapped open, and his hands were in his pockets, and even from the back he cut a mighty pose.

“You wanted to see me?” Roni asked to get his attention.

As soon as Jake heard her voice, he turned quickly.
 
And when he saw her again, he knew why he had impulsively taken a U-turn, and decided to come here instead of going home.
 
That face, that body, this woman intrigued him.
 
And why did she have to smile when he turned her way?
 
She looked so damn adorable when she smiled!

“My para said you wanted to see me?”

“Yes, yes I did,” Jake said as he walked toward her.
 
A memory of being with her, of his dick ramming into her wet cunt, of his big hands sliding along her naked, wet body, flashed across his mind.
 
His physical attraction to this woman astounded him still.
 
“I had a question to ask you.”

Roni wasn’t expecting that response.
 
“Really?
 
What?”

Jake felt oddly awkward.
 
“I wanted to know if you’d had dinner yet.”

At first Roni smiled.
 
Was this guy for real?
 
And then she laughed.
 
The image she had had of Jake Varnadore, the hotel magnate, and the actuality of Jake Varnadore, the man, was like night and day.
 
“Not yet,” she said.

Well, that was something, Jake thought.
 
“Neither have I,” he said.
 
And then he stared into her stunning, hazel eyes, to impress upon her the importance he was putting in this request.
 
“Have dinner with me,” he said to her.

Roni stared at him, too.
 
Because, oddly enough, it felt like last week all over again.
 
She felt that same pull toward him.
 
She felt as if there was some invisible chain that was tugging her, and seemed determined to link them together.
 
And, suddenly, turning him down, as she had so easily done earlier that day, wasn’t plausible.
 
“I should be able to wrap things up in ten minutes,” she said.
 
“If you can wait.”

Jake nodded his head.
 
His feelings about coming here, about her, were all over the place.
 
A part of him was pleased to see her again, and to be around her again.
 
But another part of him was alarmed by the prospect of putting his heart out there like this.
 
He hadn’t been this excited about a woman since he first met his ex-wife, and he knew what pain that caused him. But he convinced himself that this was nothing like that.
 
He wasn’t falling in love with this woman.
 
He just wanted to fuck her.
 

That was what he told himself, anyway.

“I can wait,” he said to her.

SEVEN

Pam and Kara took their seats at a window booth inside Aster’s, a well-connected seafood restaurant in trendy South Beach.
 
Both were dressed in short pastel-colored dresses, with one, Pam, wearing a matching cap.
 
They weren’t in their seats two minutes, however, when Druce entered the establishment and made his way to their table.