Eric said something succinct and ugly. He ran his fingers through his sandy hair, leaving it disheveled. “I didn't expect you to look at it that way.”
“Obviously.”
“Look, why don't you let Amanda finish giving you her presentation and then we can talk more later?”
“Listening to more statistics on sales and growth estimates isn't going to change my mind.” He and his older cousin rarely argued, mostly because they usually agreed, but also because they were both stubborn. Eric being four years older had never mattered to Simon.
“What will it hurt? I think you owe it to me to at least hear her out.”
“How do you figure that?”
“I've been managing the company with very little input from you for five years. If you ask me, you've chosen a darned inconvenient time to start showing an interest in the way Brant Computers is run.”
“You were just as happy with the division of labor between us after the crash as I was.”
Eric ran his hand over his face and then dropped it to the table. “I was. I am. I don't think you and I could have worked together the way Dad and Uncle John did before they died. They made a great team because they saw things from the same angle. I'm not sure there's a person on the face of the earth that looks at life quite like you do, Simon.”
Simon didn't take offense. He knew Eric didn't mean anything derogatory by the remark, but it landed with dead center accuracy in that empty, cold place inside him. The place swirling with the chilling fog of loneliness that had opened when his mom died and never gone away.
“I'm not going to kick Amanda out and send her back to Seattle with a flea in her ear.”
“And you will listen to what she has to say?”
“I'll listen.”
Eric nodded, looking satisfied.
“Thank you.” Amanda's voice pulled his attention back to her. The dark brown eyes were filled with a determination he could not help admiring, no matter how misplaced it was.
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Eric and Elaine left for the ferry and Amanda once again found herself alone with Simon.
He poured two glasses of brandy and handed her one before sitting on the opposite end of the sofa from her. “Okay, fire away.”
“You dated Elaine before she married Eric?” Oh, my gosh. What was she thinking? That was not what she'd meant to say.
Simon looked as startled by her left-field question as she felt. What had prompted her to ask that? She knew he meant to talk about the merger with her. Maybe it had been the three glasses of wine she'd consumed over the course of the evening. They'd loosened her tongue to the point of revealing a personal interest that was better left completely under wraps. If so, she was never going to drink again.
She set the balloon glass of brandy down on the coffee table with an audible thud.
“I wanted to marry her.”
If her question had surprised him, his answer shocked her speechless. She stared at him. He'd wanted to
marry
Elaine?
Simon grimaced in acknowledgment of Amanda's reaction. “Yeah. It was completely impractical. She's much happier with Eric than she could have been with me.”
“Did you love her?”
He shrugged. “I wanted her warmth. When she was around the shadows receded.”
That sounded like an eccentric inventor's definition of love to her. “How did she meet Eric?”
“I introduced them. He's my closest friend, my family. It seemed like the thing to do.”
“And they fell for each other.”
“Yes.”
“You all seem like friends now.”
“We are. I didn't hold her choosing him over me against either of them, if that's what you're thinking.”
“It was,” she admitted.
“What would be the use? Neither of them hurt me on purpose.”
But he had been hurt. She could see it in the depths of his somber gray eyes.
“I'm not that understanding, I guess.” Lance's betrayal still rankled and she would never trust the man she'd found him with again.
“You know that for a fact?” he asked probingly.
“I do.” Maybe she would have understood better if she hadn't been married to Lance, though, if her discovery had come before they'd gotten engaged.
“What happened?”
“My husband had an affair.”
“You told me you aren't married.”
“I divorced him.” And her parents still hadn't forgiven her. Neither had her older brother. According to them, she was the one who hadn't lived up to her wedding vows.
“And you haven't forgiven him.”
She thought about all the pain still roiling around inside her from marriage to a man who had rejected her femininity so completely. “It's not that simple. If you mean I'm not in a place where I can be his friend like you are with Eric and Elaine, you're right. But I don't wish him ill. So, in that sense I've forgiven him.”
“Does he want your friendship?”
“Of course. It's all about appearances in his and my family's circle of acquaintances. He wants everything to look amicable even though it wasn't.”
“Did he marry the woman he had an affair with?”
It was her turn to grimace. “No.” To this day, she didn't know who the woman she'd seen with Lance and the other man, was.
“Did he want the divorce?”
“No.”
“But you weren't willing to forgive him his lapse and stay married.”
She had grown steadily tenser as the conversation progressed. She felt like a pane of fragile glass on the verge of shattering. “No, I wasn't.” Then she looked Simon straight in the eye. “Would you have?”
“No.”
Some of the tension drained out of her. At least he understood. That was more than her family had been able to do. “We've gotten very profound in our conversation.”
His smile dispelled another layer of tension. “Yes.”
Maybe asking about Elaine hadn't been such a huge faux pas after all. She picked up her brandy and took a small sip.
“Jacob told me he found us asleep together in my bed.”
The strong spirits went down the wrong pipe and she coughed until tears streamed from her eyes. Simon had jumped up when she started coughing and now he handed her a glass of water. She took it gratefully, taking a big gulp immediately.
He extended a box of tissues to her. She pulled one out and used it to wipe the wetness from her face.
“Better?” Simon asked.
She nodded.
“Jacob said you told him I fell on you.”
Had he also told Simon about the compromising position she'd woken up in? She could only hope
not
.
“You fell asleep standing up and on the way to the bed, you somehow took me with you.”
“You fell asleep too?”
This was less easy to explain. She averted her head, not wanting to look at him when she tried to make him understand.
“You wouldn't let go. I couldn't wake you up and I couldn't move you. I decided the only thing to do was to wait until you'd gone into a deep enough sleep to relax your muscles.” That sounded much better than she had thought it would. “I fell asleep waiting. I'm sorry that I did so. I realize it was a completely unprofessional thing to do.”
She peeked at Simon out of the corner of her eye to see how he was taking her explanation.
His expression was unreadable. “I think we can agree it was an irregular situation.”
She nodded. That had been easier than she could have imagined. She barely stifled a sigh of relief.
“Why didn't you call for help from Jacob?”
No way was she going to tell him it was because she hadn't wanted to be caught with Simon's hand on her breast. Her reticence had been for nothing as that was exactly what had happened, but at the time she'd been trying to protect her professional reputation. “I didn't know if he would hear me, or not. He spends most of his time at the other end of the house and on a different floor.”
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Even though the explanation made sense, Simon could tell she was holding something back. He wanted to know what. Had she done it on purpose?
He would have sworn not, but the way she was avoiding looking at him was suspect. She could simply be embarrassed.
On the other hand, if what she said was true, she had no reason to be. She hadn't done anything to be embarrassed about.
“Eric seems very impressed by your business acumen.”
That brought her attention around. “I'm glad.”
She looked it, her eyes glittering with happiness.
For no reason he could think of, that annoyed the hell out of him. “Maybe he'll offer you a job if your superiors are too disappointed when the merger doesn't go through.”
She blanched, her head snapping back and her skin going pale. “You said you'd listen to the proposal before making up your mind.”
“I did not. I said I would listen to the presentation, period.”
He watched with interest as her brown eyes went almost black with irritation. “But if you've already made up your mind and nothing I can say will change it, why listen at all?”
“Because I promised Eric that I would.”
“But you will
listen
, right?”
“Yes, I'll listen,” he said for the second time that night.
That impressive determination burned in her expression again. “And I'll do my best to convince you that your mind should not be made up.”
He stood up. “But not tonight. I've got several experiments to catalog before going to bed.”
Surprisingly, she didn't complain. She simply nodded and actually smiled. “I'll look forward to seeing you tomorrow then.”
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By five o'clock the following afternoon, Simon hadn't made an appearance and Amanda's spirits were pretty much in the toilet.
He had as good as said his mind was already made up. His affirmation that he would listen to her arguments had less ability to buoy her up today than it had the night before when she had been mellowed by his company and three glasses of wine. However, even if she thought it would be a complete waste of time, she had to present her ideas to him.
What other choice did she have?
The deal was as dead as her love life without his cooperation.
His threat to start selling his ideas to the highest bidder instead of using them for the good of the company was an impressive one. She'd spent the morning clarifying some things with Eric. One of them had been Simon's agreement with the company for his computer designs. He didn't have one.
There was no way Brant Computers could force Simon to give them even first right of refusal on his future technical discoveries. She could not see Eric Brant dismissing such an eventuality as of no consequence. Even if he did, she was sure the rest of the family who held stock in Brant Computers wouldn't.
Though Simon and Eric owned the biggest blocks of stock, with thirty-five percent each, there were five other cousins who did not work with or for Brant Computers that held the remaining thirty percent of stock between them. In other circumstances, she would have considered going to the other stockholders to solicit support of the proposed merger.
But Simon's threat put paid to that idea.
It wasn't one she'd relished anyway. The company was family held and such a move by her would cause untold damage in the relationships among them. No. If this merger was going to go through, she needed the cooperation of one eccentric genius.
And each progressive hour without him coming out of his lab saw her grow further and further depressed.
She was going over her e-mail from work with desultory interest when her mobile phone rang.
She flipped open the palm size unit and said, “Amanda Zachary.”
“Amanda, Daniel here.”
Already dragging spirits plummeted.
“Hello, Daniel. I'm just putting together that report on the Garvey deal you asked for in this morning's e-mail.” Okay, she'd been thinking about it rather than doing it, but she'd send it off soon regardless.
“Great, but I wasn't calling about that. I wanted to know how dinner with Eric and Simon Brant went last night.”