Page 23 of The Merger

Their relief was palpable. A few of them even sighed. Whatever it took to make them stop hiding from me and do their damn jobs was great. If only they didn’t make me look like a giant asshole in front of my wife.

After the meeting, everyone got back to work, freeing me up to finish giving Sabrina a tour. We finished back where we started. I took a key out of my pocket and opened the door next to mine. “This is your office.”

I showed her into the space, larger than her previous one. “Do you like it?”

Her mouth fell open as she looked around wide-eyed. “You know, I don’t think the whole promotion aspect of the job hit me until just now. This space is crazy.”

I’d been so good at keeping my distance, giving her space to decide whom she wanted to be without me steamrolling right over her. But, here she was, right in front of me, and I couldn’t not touch her. I let my fingers slip through the silken strands of her hair, and tucked a loose curl behind her ear. “You deserve this,” I whispered next to her ear.

She shivered and all the blood rushed to my cock. Someday soon I’d send chills over her entire body, and I’d use more than my voice to do it.

ChapterNine

Sabrina

My body felt heavy as I let myself into my apartment. It was dark and quiet when I set my keys on the table. I knew Waverly wasn’t in her room, since it too was dark and the door was open. No one was waiting inside.

I exhaled. It was a long day of getting settled into my new role at work. Stryker thought the employees were afraid of him, and they were, but I got the sense there was more to their ineptitude than fear. I’d have to ask Jana if they’d managed to weed out all of her father’s cronies. Maybe it was paranoia, but I’d seen enough Machiavellian boardroom tactics since Fitz decided to try and force Beck to get married not to recognize when employees were working against the company.

Evie and Beck were happy, and it worked out in the end, but when Fitz threatened to split up Anderson Global if Beck didn’t get married, he opened the company to opportunists trying to take over. One of them was Jana’s father, Maxwell Easton. He tried to encourage one of Beck’s cousins to buy shares and force a hostile takeover of the company. Of course, the cousin was only a pawn whom he planned to screw over.

Maxwell saw his company, Easton Corporation, as a competitor of Anderson Global. The truth was he wasn’t anywhere near the same level. As it turned out, he’d badly mismanaged Easton Corp. Combine that with some shady accounting and it was Jana’s family business that was ripe for a takeover.

Jana’s grandfather had left the company to her. Her father had made certain the revised will was hidden, but nothing ever stays secret forever. Colt fell for Jana and with his help, she took control of the company, or whatever you’d call the disaster parading as a business her father managed to turn it into.

Maybe I was biased because she’s one of my two best friends, but I knew she was capable of bringing the company back into the black. The thing was, she didn’t want to. There was too much pain caused by her family. So she did what Maxwell had been so unsuccessful in accomplishing with Anderson Global. She took over the company and called in Stryker to clean the mess her father left.

I laughed to myself as I moved through my bedroom, shedding my constricting work attire in favor of tiny shorts and an oversized t-shirt. It was an old book-themed shirt with Fate written in big loopy letters. The rest of the quote had long since faded. Ironically it was a lot like my life. Fate had barreled into me, but the rest of the context had long since disappeared. I might never remember completely how Stryker came into my life, but the fact that all of these circumstances piled up to bring him back, I couldn’t help but feel I was on the precipice of something monumental.

The sound of a key scraping at the door lock filled the apartment. I went out to the living room to see Waverly stumble through the door. She bumped into the entry table and started giggling.

I sighed and looked at the clock on the wall. “Wave, it’s only six-thirty and you’re drunk.”

Waverly hopped on one foot while she tried to take off her designer heels. Of course, she didn’t have the coordination for that, so she fell again, knocking over the lamp.

She glowered at me like I knocked her down. Her hair had fallen out of the sophisticated updo she usually only wore to society events. I took another look at her and realized she was wearing a gold cocktail dress that set off her dark hair and eyes.

Waverly looked so much like Colt that she could have been Evie’s twin. A fact that irked her to no end. She did not like sharing her brother, not with me, his wife, and especially not his daughter. I always thought it was a big reason Colt and I weren’t closer growing up. That, and I’m about twelve years younger than him, but then again so is his wife.

Waverly was the same age as Evie, Colt’s daughter. None of us, including Colt, knew she existed until a little over a year ago. My stepbrother was a bit of a player, apparently losing his first love before he could even drive messed him up. It also left him with a daughter he didn’t find out about until he was accused of having an affair with her. That had to be the most confusing paternity test ever administered. How many times has a paternity test informed both men they were a father? Probably just this one time. Beck found out Evie was carrying his child, and Colt learned Evie was his daughter.

Needless to say, we were a very complicated group. Take my best friends, for example, Evie and Jana. Evie was technically my step-niece and Jana was my sister-in-law. Basically, our weekends were mini family reunions.

Waverly should have been right there along with us, but she declined every invitation issued to her. I didn’t know why she preferred to be alone when she seemed so jealous of the close bonds we’d all formed. I couldn’t help but fear it had something to do with me.

I tried to tell Colter when he insisted Waverly move into my spare bedroom that it wasn’t going to work. While she and Colt looked like their father, I had the golden blonde looks of my mother, a fact she’s never forgiven me for. Not because she was self-conscious, or wanted to look like me, but because she did not want me to look like our mother. In fact, I believe Waverly would be happier if I didn’t exist at all.

“Are you going to answer me? Why are you drunk at six-thirty?” I pressed.

She huffed out a breath, trying to blow away a lock of hair from her face. “Why are you talking to me? I’m drunk because, unlike you, I’ve got a life. You know, something more than wearing rags and padding my hips with a pint of ice cream. Maybe if you tried getting drunk once in a while it would dislodge the stick from your ass.”

“I worry about you,” I said. I shouldn’t. Lord only knew she didn’t care about me.

“Well, don’t. You might look like her, but you’re not my mother.”

“Our mother,” I snapped.

She looked me up and down, a sneer on her pretty face. “Like she claims you.”