Page 23 of Guarding the Billionaire

Hearing Flora’s voice, he turned on his heel, his expression full of derision before he caught himself and neutralized his face.

“Flora. Did you know about the lawsuit?”

Flora

“Lawsuit? What lawsuit?”

David looked at me with his cold, hostile eyes. God, he was such a dick. Maybe he’d always been that way, but his behavior seemed to go from bad to worse after I became the CEO. For some reason he seemed convinced that he was more qualified to run the company than I was, and he made no secret of that belief.

“Pure Nature is suing us. They claim that we engaged in industrial espionage and stole their proprietary formula for our green tea anti-aging cream.”

I shrugged, purposely making it look like the news wasn’t upsetting to me, even though it was.

“Obviously it’s a frivolous suit,” I said calmly. “They’ve seen the success of that particular product and now they’re cranky about it. We’ll deal with it.”

“At least your father was a lawyer,” he sneered. “He understood the legal implications of these kinds of lawsuits.”

“Well fortunately we have very good attorneys on retainer so I don’t need to understand the minutia. Now if there’s nothing else, I’m sure I have a meeting right now, isn’t that right, Amy?”

Amy stared at me like a deer in the headlights. I got it, Richardson was intimidating as hell, and he hadn’t been nice to her. Not that it was personal. He treated all the support staff like shit.

“We need to review the ad layout with marketing,” Teresa said, giving Richardson a pointed look. “If you’ll excuse us.”

David glared at her, then turned to me. “Who the hell is this?”

“David, meet my personal assistant Teresa. Teresa, this is our CFO David Richardson.”

He pointed at Amy. “I thought this one is your assistant.”

“I have two assistants now.”

“Who approved that?” he demanded.

“Me,” I said sharply. “The CEO and majority owner of the company. Now if you’ll excuse us David, we have a very busy day ahead of us and I’m sure you have work to do as well.”

His eyes blazed at the reminder that I was his boss.

He stomped out, not even pretending to be polite, slamming the door behind him. When I looked over at poor Amy she looked like she was about to cry.

“I’m so sorry Miss Meyer, I told him he couldn’t just hijack you like that.”

“It’s not your fault Amy. Could you please check in with Legal and get me a copy of the lawsuit, and set up a meeting for them to discuss options with me this afternoon?” I requested. “You might need to reschedule something else to make it work.”

“I’m on it Miss Meyer,” she said. “Anything else?”

“Could you please place a lunch order too Amy?” Teresa said, her voice kind and respectful. “I’d like to have us get a standing order to make sure that Miss Meyer gets her lunch every day.”

“Of course Teresa. Thank you.”

I sat down in my chair and unpacked my laptop, letting out a long breath. “I guess it’s going to be a good day.”

Teresa and I went to our respective workstations, both of us getting down to business. At one point I looked over and she was scowling at the screen. As if she felt me watching her, she looked up, her face softening as soon as she glanced in my direction.

“I’m doing a deeper dive on that asshole Richardson,” she told me. “I don’t like that guy.”

“He’s a good CFO,” I said, not sure why I was defending him. “At least that’s what my father always told me.”

To be honest, I wasn’t sure that I agreed but I’d been too busy learning how to run this company on my own to worry about finding a new CFO. If he kept acting rude and insubordinate, I was going to have to address that problem sooner rather than later.

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