Mr. Arrogant: A Billionaire Romance (3 page)

The younger man sighed and ran his hand over his forehead. He closed his eyes for a moment and pressed his lips together before drawing in a deep breath and then looking at his father again.

“Alright, what have I missed? “ he asked in a short tone. His father looked at him pointedly.

“You miss a great many things a great deal of the time, but this time, you’ve managed to overlook the fact that this particular company has just hired Sergei Baxter as their Director of Innovation. I can’t even think of another company who has a position as a Director of Innovation, to begin with.” Phillip watched his son expectantly.

Jonathon shrugged. “So? What is it about position that should catch my attention?”

His father closed his eyes for a moment and shook his head before looking back at him and placed his hands on the desk while he leaned forward toward his son. “It’s a different business model, to begin with, which means that this isn’t your standard tech company. They are making headway in directions that other companies aren’t yet considering. More than that, however, is the fact that Sergei is heading that particular department.”

Jonathon shook his head while looking expectantly at his father. “Why does that matter?”

Phillip sighed and watched his son before speaking. “That matters because Sergei is the inventor of the email system that is tied into the most popular search engine on the Internet in the world today. He
is
innovation incarnate. I can’t believe they got him, but they did, and he’s contracted with them for the next five years. He’s going to take this company through the roof, and they want us on board with them in a controlling capacity.”

The old man leaned forward even further. “This is how people become billionaires in less than a decade.” He jammed his fingertip down on the papers in front of him as his eyes stayed locked on Jonathon. “If you knew just a little more, if you dug a little deeper, if you looked past the obvious on the outside, you would see that this innocuous looking little company is going to be one of the biggest investment opportunities of your entire life.”

Jonathon leaned forward, his eyes just as focused on his father’s as his father’s were on his. “We’re already billionaires.” He said simply.

Phillip eyes narrowed into slits. “Any business-savvy mind would never say something like that. We are buying this company, and that’s the final word on it.” He leaned back and folded his fingers into a pyramid before his chin.

“I wanted you to see the possible opportunities of this company before I did anything with it. I wanted to know how you would look at it, how you would react, and what you would do with it, if the decision were in your hands.

I wanted to know how deeply you would look and what you would value. You’ve shown me, and I must say, I’m disappointed in what you’ve given me. It’s not what I had hoped to see.” He sighed and reached his arm out to the phone on his desk.

Pressing a button, Phillip spoke in a quiet tone. “Margaret, could you please come in?” he asked politely.

“Right away, Sir,” came a woman’s voice over the speaker. A moment later, the door of the office opened, and neither man looked away from each other or up at her at first, until she reached Phillip’s desk.

“Yes, Sir?” she asked helpfully as she closed her fingers in front of her. They both looked up at her then. She was older; in her fifties, slightly rounded and mostly conservative. Her gray brown hair was pulled up into a bun at the back of her head, her dress hung down below her knees, and her shoes were sensible, at best.

“I’ll need copies of this file made for all of the board members for tomorrow’s meeting, please.” He gave her a pleasant smile as he closed the file in front of him and handed it to her.

She nodded and just as she was about to turn away, Jonathon stopped her. “Margaret, make me another copy, please and put all of these on a flash drive for me, then run it over to my office and leave it on my desk with a label on it.”

“Certainly.” Margaret didn’t hesitate, and she took the file from him and then walked out, closing the door softly behind her.

Phillip frowned at Jonathon. “Why don’t you have your secretary do that? Margaret is busy taking care of things for me; she can’t be running around doing work for you as well.”

Jonathon turned to look at his father with a sigh. “I don’t happen to have an administrative  assistant at the moment.” He knew that the subject of this conversation was going to go in a sour direction.

Phillip frowned and leveled his gaze at his son. “Why not? Have you lost another one?”

Jonathon pursed his lips. “She isn’t lost. She quit.”

His father leaned forward. “Why did she quit, Jonathon?”

Following a loud and deep sigh, Jonathon answered him but avoided his piercing eyes. “She wanted more from me than I am interested in.”

Phillip’s face grew pink and his dark brow furrowed over his sharp green eyes. “What are you doing screwing around with another secretary? You can’t do that!”

Jonathon sat up rigidly and lifted his chin in defiance. “Look, it just happened, okay? She came onto me and I took her up on what she wanted, that was it! She wanted to be more involved and I said no, so she left!”

His father planted his palms down firmly on the desk, “We can’t afford for you to keep doing that! You have been through secretary after secretary, and every time you get a new one, you wind up bedding her and then we wind up getting sued! You have a horrible reputation in the business world here, and the rumors are spreading further than Manhattan!”

Jonathon sighed and rubbed his fingers against his forehead, his hands over his face as he rested his elbows on his knees. He knew that the conversation wouldn’t go anywhere good.

Phillip continued, his cheeks going from pink to red. “I’ve lost thousands upon thousands of dollars to your numerous indiscretions, and I’m not about to continue doing it! The last one cost the company a fortune! You’re in all the papers and online media all of the time as being a playboy with an attitude; the arrogant bull is what I think they’ve begun calling you!”

He pushed himself up out of his chair and lifted his glass to his lips, emptying it and then walking over to the bar for a refill.

“Have you no pride? Have you no shame or decency about you at all? No sense of propriety! You are going to inherit this business from me, and you cannot take control of it if you are in danger of losing it, especially to something as tawdry as an affair with a staff member! What are you thinking?” he raged on and Jonathon sighed and said nothing.

“Now you’re endangering us again and you have no assistant. What are you doing about that?” his father demanded, returning to his desk.

Jonathon leaned back in his chair and looked at his father with slumped shoulders. “I’m actually having a few new admin assistants interviewed tomorrow. We’ll see where it goes from there.”

His father glared hotly at him. “You’d better keep it all business, do you hear me? I absolutely forbid you under any circumstance to have any kind of relations other than business with anyone you hire! If you do it again I’m going to mandate that all of your administrative assistants be men! Is that clear? We’ve had terrible press over this and I’m not about to stand for it happening ever again!”

Jonathon nodded in silence and then answered his father, though his gaze did not reach his father’s eyes. “I understand. I will not be engaging in any kind of romantic relations with any of my staff in the future.”

Phillip leaned far forward, his eyes nearly on fire with anger. “If it happens again, you will be fired. I am not going to absorb any further expense, collateral damage, or bruised reputation toward our family or this company because of your indecencies! You will not get another chance!”

He looked up at his father with his heart in his throat and finally met his eyes. “It won’t happen again,” he said quietly. His father did not make idle threats, and panic was coursing through him as he sat there facing a harsh reality he had never considered. His attention was locked onto the man seated before him.

“What in the hell are you doing with these women anyway? It can’t just be cheap or easy sex; you’re a good looking boy, you could go out and find girls all over the city, I’m sure. What on earth are you going after your staff for? Why don’t you find someone in our own circle of friends?

"You know, Vincent Grayson is my oldest and dearest friend, and I believe that his daughter Susan has liked you for quite a while now. She’s on par with you in every way. That would be a smart match. That’s what you should be focusing on, rather than the women on the other side of your office door. Give Susan a call and take her out. God knows it would make both Vincent and I thrilled if you two tied the knot, and it would certainly be a step in the right direction of saving your reputation and the reputation and finances of this company!” His eyes were fully open and his face was beet red.

Jonathon sighed again. He had known the conversation would go that route and he had hoped to avoid it, but there was no way around it. His father had had it with him. He had very little interest in Susan Grayson whatsoever, but telling his father that as he glared at him over his desk would be a bad idea; the timing could hardly be worse.

“I’ll give it some thought,” he said instead, standing up and straightening his jacket. “Good morning, father.” He spoke as a means of saying goodbye. With that, he turned around and walked out of the door, closing it behind him as he heard his father plunk his empty glass of scotch down on the desk.

Jonathon went back to his office and found the flash drive he had requested, waiting for him on his desk. It was labeled and as he plugged it in to look at it, he saw that everything he had wanted to review was on it. Margaret was a good secretary. He considered hiring a secretary that was a little older like she was; someone who might not be attracted to him, and someone he would not be attracted to. He knew that it wasn’t in his best interest to hire anyone else who might turn his head.

Jonathon hadn’t meant for each of his indiscretions to happen, they just seemed to develop and when hot sex around the office turned into more than a night or two out, he would realize too late that he had taken it too far, and then he’d have to either let the woman go because she wouldn’t let go of him, or she’d let go because he wouldn’t hold on to her.

It never ended well, and he swore every time that he wouldn’t let it happen again. After the last fiasco, he promised himself that he wouldn’t do it again, and then he had just promised his father, so there could be no slip-up with whoever was hired to fill the administrative position. In an effort to remove himself from the process of hiring and choosing a woman who might be tempting to him, he had given the task of hiring his new assistant to the head of the Human Resources department; a woman older than Margaret was, and possibly even more conservative. 

He was certain she would make a good choice for him. He wanted to negate any chance that he could be remotely associated with the final decision on who was hired. He was well aware of the office rumors and the whispered scandals that had made the rounds in the business he was slated to inherit, and he didn’t want to add more to it.

His father had shaken him up with the mention of him losing his job. He knew that Phillip had been disappointed in him, but he never would have guessed that he might lose more than what was left of the reputation he didn’t care much about. The company was a family legacy, and his father was not one to make a light threat. If it had been spoken, it had been spoken after much consideration and contemplation, and it was a serious warning to be heeded. Jonathon Cross was intent on keeping his romances out of the office and his mind focused on business.

The only request his father had made that he was disinclined to spend much time at all on was that Jonathon become romantically involved with Susan Grayson, the daughter of his father’s best friend, Vincent Grayson. Susan and he had been an item on and off throughout college, and though she had what could be realistically termed as an obsession with him, he had little interest in her other than for occasional intimate interludes. Even those had stopped after college, because she couldn’t seem to want to let go of him, and he had no interest in a serious relationship with her, and that was what she wanted with him more than anything.

For both of their sakes, he had for all intents and purposes, stopped speaking with her, but they would see each other on rare occasions and he was polite, and she was filled with longing, holding back her unrequited love for him.

Her father had prompted him several times to become involved with her, and his own father had done the same; both of them interested in merging their families, and their businesses. Her father was also interested in seeing his only daughter get anything that she wanted to make her happy, and there was nothing that she wanted more than Jonathon Cross.

Phillip had mentioned him getting engaged to Susan, and when he had, Jonathon struggled to keep his mouth closed, rather than to tell his father just how remote a possibility that truly was, no matter how much his father pressed him toward being with her.

Jonathon wasn’t interested in settling down with anyone for any length of time; he liked to have fun, and he preferred to indulge in spending time with a variety of women, and he was not about to give that up for his father, his father’s best friend, or anyone else.