Page 113 of Not in Love
ELI
Eli was so fucking giddy, even his own damn dog found him irritating.
“I know, I know. Not ideal,” he told Tiny during their morning walk, when he kept glancing back with a forlorn expression, as if wondering where his new favorite human had gone. “She’ll come over again soon.”
He was certainly going to try to lure her back tonight. And maybe it wasn’t going to be too hard—because she’d as good as acknowledged that she wanted to be with him. He knew it, and Rue knew it, too. Together, they were different. Unlike anything before—or after, he suspected. And last night she’d finally given them a fighting chance.
“Just trust me,” he told Tiny when the lovelorn puppy eyes wouldn’t stop. “And stop pining. It’s undignified.”
His morning was full of off-site meetings, and he glided through all of them. “Eli! Why do you look so much better than usual?” Anton asked him when he strode through Harkness’s lobby. Eli considered firing him on the spot at the implied insult, but the paperwork would have delayed his reunion with his one true love: texting Rue.
Which was delayed anyway, when Hark impatiently gestured him inside from the glass window of a conference room. “Do you ever pick up your damn phone?” he asked before Eli had even closed the door.
“Not during meetings, no.”
“What about when the meetings end?”
“Depends on how annoying the caller is. Are you conducting a survey pertaining to habits around electronic devices, or is there something you need to tell me?”
“It’s about Kline,” Minami said. Eli glanced at her and Sul for the first time. Noticed their serious expressions.
The tension in the room finally cut through his good mood. “What happened?”
“The documents your girlfriend gave us,” Hark said. A minute earlier, the words would have made him smile. Hark’s tone, though, gave him pause. “The lawyers went through them.”
“Already?”
“Not that time consuming. She sent precisely what we needed.”
Yup, that was his girl. “And?”
Hark’s mouth twisted into a smile. “Florence’s fucked, Eli. She’s underwater on her ratios, the audited financials might as well have been written in crayon on a diner menu, and she’s got fifteen material contingencies under the couch cushions. But you know what’s fucking brilliant?”
Eli shook his head.
“The insolvency clause. If Kline is unable to meet its financial obligations or pay off its debts, the lender will be able to convert the debt into equity—or claim ownership.”
“We knew about that already.”
“But we didn’t know how bad off Kline was. And that it’s never going to be solvent by the end of the second quarter.”
“That’s June thirtieth,” Eli said unnecessarily. Everyone at the table already knew.
“Less than a week, Eli.” Hark grinned. “We got it. We really got it.”
“There’s more,” Minami interrupted, sounding incongruously cautious. Eli’s scalp tingled in alarm.
“What?”
“So.” She nibbled at the inside of her cheek. “Florence knows she’s in deep shit. She might even know that Rue gave us the books—I don’t know. But she’s aware that her only choice is to pay back the loan before the quarter ends.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Hark interrupted. “There’s no way she can gather enough funds—”
“There isn’t,” Minami agreed, still looking at Eli. “That’s true. But that won’t stop her from trying, and since she’s exhausted most of her avenues, the only way for her to generate cash is by selling company assets.”
Eli pulled out a chair and sat—next to Hark, across from her. “She can’t sell the biofuel tech. It’s the collateral for the loan. So if that’s what you’re worried about—”
“That’s not what worries Minami,” Sul said, and the tingle sharpened. The energy in the room was just off. Beside him, Hark was buzzing with excitement. The others looked, at the very least, preoccupied. “There are other assets Florence is shopping around.”