Never Dare a Tycoon (20 page)

“Why not?” she asked, walking over to the windows.

 

“Because I thought you could use the anonymity. People won’t kiss up to you when they don’t know you have the power of their jobs.”

 

“And do I?” she asked, raising one eyebrow and looking back at him.

Brett shrugged. “In a way. Think of your position as a lobbying job. You can suggest anything you consider important. But I have final veto power. You need to bring all suggestions directly to me. And everything must remain completely confidential until they are implemented. Anything not implemented will remain unspoken.”

Antonia nodded. She was starting to become suspicious of the job. She wasn’t sure, but she had a funny feeling that Brett might be humoring her, giving her a job just to keep her happy but assuming that anything she comes up with might be insignificant. She thought about it for only a moment.

“Deal,” she said. If she was going to prove anything, she might as well start now. “Any suggestions on how to get my feet wet?” she asked.

 

Brett nodded, “I have a meeting with the vice presidents in five minutes. How about finding out what they’re all up to.”

 

“Sounds great,” she said, smiling brightly.

 

Grabbing her pen and paper, she followed him down the hallway where he got her a cup of coffee, then they made their way to the conference room.

As soon as Brett walked in, all the men and a surprising number of women stopped talking and quickly took their seats. There were ten vice presidents, six men and four women. Antonia chose a seat after everyone else had sat down. She wanted to be at the end of the room, inconspicuous.

But Brett had other ideas. “Ladies and Gentlemen, I’d like to introduce you to Antonia Attracelli. She’ll be working on a special project for me. She’s to have access to all files. She’s working on a type of audit for the company.”

Everyone turned to Antonia and nodded, some smiling to her, others concealing what she suspected was hostility.

And then the meeting was underway. This session was more of a brainstorming meeting with each vice president defining their goals for the next quarter. Once the explanation was finished, the other people at the table voiced suggestions, offered solutions, ideas, support or just praise for the stated idea.

Antonia made notes on everything. She didn’t know what to suggest, so she just kept quiet and absorbed the culture as well as the ideas. Brett had a way of making everyone feel like they were part of a team and not the head of their own individual areas.

After the meeting, Antonia walked back to her office and turned on the computer set up on the desk. She had no idea where to start searching. A number of ideas had occurred to her at the meeting, but she didn’t know where to find the information to look deeper into the situations.

A soft knock at her door interrupted her thoughts. Antonia looked up and saw a woman standing in her door, a pad of paper in her hand. “Ms. Atracelli?” the woman asked, slaughtering Antonia’s name.

Antonia smiled and stood up, “Yes?” she asked.

 

The woman smiled back and came into the office, her hand extended. “I’m Kim. I’ve been assigned as your temporary secretary until you find someone else.”

 

Antonia blinked, but took the woman’s hand. “Oh. Ok.”

 

“What do you need me to do?” Kim asked, standing in front of Antonia’s desk awkwardly.

 

Antonia thought for a moment, but nothing came to her. “I don’t know. I don’t really know what I’m doing. Maybe you could help me,” Antonia said. The woman looked surprised but encouraged and her shoulders seemed to relax slightly. “What kind of help do you need?”

Antonia gauged her new secretary’s expression. She seemed like an intelligent woman so Antonia decided to dive right in with her ideas. Maybe Kim could add something to them. “Well,” she said, waiving Kim into one of the modern, wooden chairs in front of her desk, then came around and sat down in the other one. “I’m new at this so I don’t really know where to get information to answer some of my questions. Perhaps if you told me where I could find it, I could get started on something.”

Kim nodded her head. “I’ve been with the company for about five years so I’m pretty informed about most things. There are projects I’ve never worked on, but I know other people who’ve worked on them and can contact them to get the information,” Kim said almost shyly.

Antonia was grateful and smiled at Kim’s enthusiasm. “That’s great. I guess I should explain my position here, but I’m not completely sure what it is myself right now. We’re going to have to play it by ear for a while,” Antonia started. “My goal is to find ways to save Hancock Enterprises money. And I was just in a type of brain-storming meeting, I guess the whole top staff was in there, but I think I might have some ideas.”

“What are your ideas?” Kim asked, leaning forward.

“Well, something struck me in the meeting. We have a number of contractors and I was thinking maybe we could do the work more cheaply in-house. Or maybe not in-house, but perhaps Brett might want to create a subsidiary to do some of the work.”

“Brett?” Kim asked.

 

Antonia flushed, “I’m sorry. Does he go by Mr. Hancock in the office?”

 

Kim shook her head. “I don’t know.” After a moment, she said, “Are you talking about Mr. Hancock, the president?”

 

Antonia nodded her head. “Why?”

 

Kim paled slightly but continued. “I’ve never worked for him, but I’ve heard he’s a pretty hard task master.”

Antonia laughed. “Yes, I suppose he can be. He definitely wants things his way,” she said, thinking about their personal relationship. “But I wouldn’t worry about him. He’s a softy.”
Kim only nodded, sure that Antonia was out of her mind.

Antonia stood up and moved behind her desk. “The problem is, I don’t know what these contractors make, how much we pay them and they might do more than what I assume they do. Is there any way you can get that information?” she asked.

Kim nodded her head and wrote on her pad of paper. “I’m sure it’s in accounting. I’ll run down and see if I can get their contracts. Do you only want this one contractor or are there others?”

“Stick with this one for now. I might be heading in the wrong direction. But I noticed on the stock market yesterday that there’s a company going downhill and they might be amenable to a little help.”

Kim looked confused but she stood up and walked out of the office to get the information from accounting.

Antonia sat down and played with her computer and was grateful to see it had a link to the internet. She quickly set up bookmarks for her favorite places on the internet so she could reference them easily.

Kim came back about fifteen minutes later and handed Antonia a file. “What next? Would you like a cup of coffee?”

Antonia, who was already looking through the legalese to find the base price of the contractor, glanced up at Kim. “No. Coffee seems to upset my stomach lately. But thank you for asking.”

“Are there any phone calls you need me to make?”

Antonia thought for a moment. “Yeah. See if you can get an annual report from this company,” she said and wrote down the name of J.C. Incorporated, the company she’d been watching that manufactured computer chips.

Kim walked out of the office and made several phone calls. The rest of the afternoon, Antonia and Kim researched several companies, compared the stock for buy out possibilities, processing capabilities, personnel if the information was available, and anything else about the company they could find. While Antonia worked on the computer, researching the information from the internet, Kim found information from the personnel files and the accounting department and put them into a spreadsheet to compare prices and benefits.

It was seven o’clock when Brett walked into her office. Antonia and Kim were bent over files, calling out information to each other. Neither woman noticed him as he stood in the doorway. Finally, he cleared his throat to get their attention.

Antonia looked up and smiled. “Hi. What are you doing here?” she asked.

 

Brett looked down at his watch. “Do you know what time it is?” he asked.

Antonia looked at her watch. “Seven o’clock.” Just his presence in her office made her blood start pounding. How was she going to get over him and convince him that they needed to stop the wedding when her body reacted like this?

Brett rolled his eyes. Shaking his head, he walked over to Kim and shook her hand. “I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Brett Hancock. You’re Kim Mason?”

Kim could only nod her head, she was so completely overwhelmed by the president of the company acknowledging her presence in such a casual manner. He always appeared so aloof in the hallways.

“I’m taking your boss out. She’ll be back tomorrow morning.” Brett didn’t ask Antonia, he just took her coat off the back of her chair and held it out for her.

“Brett, just give me another half hour. Then I’ll head out,” Antonia said, looking down at the file on her desk.

But she should have known that he wouldn’t go for something like that. He pulled the file out from underneath her hand and gave it to Kim. “Would you hide this somewhere. Knowing her, she’ll bring it home and work on it once I drop her off,” he said.

Antonia wanted to protest, but she was too embarrassed. Kim took the file and left the office, smiling.

 

Antonia turned on Brett, trying to control her temper. “What do you think you’re doing?” she asked.

 

Crossing his arms over his chest, Brett smiled. “I know this is cliché, but do you have any idea how incredibly gorgeous you are when you’re angry?”

 

“How could you do that to me? We’re right in the middle of something. I’m not ready to leave.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Kim pull her coat on and walk by the office door, purse in hand. “I think you might be keeping your secretary here a bit late at night. Besides, its time to eat. I need company and you’re the best looking person in the office.”

Antonia gritted her teeth. He might be right about Kim but she refused to admit it to him.

 

“Come on,” he leaned over her desk and smiled, “Wouldn’t a huge plate of pasta, slathered in cheese and pesto sauce sound good?” he said.

Antonia refused to answer, but her stomach growling gave him all the answer he needed. He picked up her coat, then reached around and tried to turn off her computer. She slapped his hands away when he did that, mainly because he had to reach around her to do it and his closeness made her skin tingle. “I’ll do it. And yes, I’d love a bowl of pasta but I can make that myself.”

“Good, then you can make both of us some,” he said.

 

“No. I’m going to find that file and work tonight. I have some ideas that I want to think through.”

 

“What are they? Maybe I can help.”

 

“No, I’ll present them to you formally just as any employee would,” she said, stuffing files into her briefcase.

Brett allowed her to fill her briefcase but then he picked it up himself and carried it out the door, only letting her carry her small purse. “I can do that, you know,” she said, referring to her briefcase.

“I know, but I always liked carrying girls’ books when we walked home from school. Made me feel manly,” he joked.

 

“You don’t need to feel any more manly,” she said under her breath.

 

“What was that?” he asked as he pressed the button to call an elevator.

 

“Nothing,” she said, hoping her face didn’t look as red as it felt, and turned to watch the numbers over the elevator as it climbed to their floor.

 

Brett chuckled. “Oh.”

 

“Have you always been so irritating?” she asked, trying not to smile, his good humor contagious.

 

“Yes. Have you always been so sexy?” he asked.

Antonia couldn’t hold it in any longer. His question made her laugh. He always seemed to do that. Turning to face him, she asked, “Why do all your employees think your such an ogre?”

“They don’t,” he said, pretending to be offended.

 

“They do. Everyone but your vice presidents are completely intimated by you,” she said.

 

“Because I’m mean?” he joked.

 

Antonia laughed, but shook her head. “No really. I think some of them might even call you fierce.”

 

Brett shrugged his shoulders. “I am fierce. You just haven’t seen it yet. I expect a lot from my employees. I pay them well and want them to deliver for me.”

 

“What about me?” she asked.

 

“You deliver,” he leered.

 

Antonia laughed. “No, really. What if I don’t ‘deliver’?”

 

He looked at her face, understanding that she was worried. “You will.”

Antonia looked down at the floor. He had such faith in her. But even that faith terrified her. She didn’t want to let him down. It was more than just proving something to her brothers. Now she wanted to impress him.

The elevator arrived and broke the tension. Antonia stepped onto the elevator, then almost fell against the side of the cab, holding onto the wall in an attempt to wait out the dizzy spell. She didn’t want Brett to notice, so she pretended like nothing was wrong. But she felt his arm go around her and was grateful for his strength.

“Is everything ok?” he asked, looking down into her eyes.

Antonia smiled. “I guess I’m just hungrier than I thought,” she lied. This was the second time she’d felt this type of dizziness. The last time was during the middle of the day, right after she’d had lunch. At least she hadn’t had morning sickness….

Antonia went completely still. Morning sickness? Dizzy spells? It wasn’t possible.

 

She counted back to the first night she and Brett had slept together. Then recounted. She was two weeks late.

 

It wasn’t possible, she thought again. She couldn’t be pregnant. It was way too early to have symptoms like this, wasn’t it?

But Jennifer didn’t have any symptoms. No morning sickness, no cravings, nothing. Marsha, on the other hand, had spent practically every moment of the first three months of her first pregnancy in bed, but during her second pregnancy, she’d been happy as a clam. Antonia had heard that all pregnancies are different, but could they be this dramatically different?

She could only be about three weeks pregnant. If she was pregnant at all, which might not be the case, she reminded herself.