Page 358 of Tormented Billionaire Romance Series

“No,” I answer, “but it should.”

I’ve only been gone from Stingray a week, but just to show there aren’t any hard feelings I decided to invite the entire board over to the beach house on Long Island for a nice dinner. At least that’s what I said when I called Reeves and had him spread the word.

It took a couple of days for all eight to come on board, but they think I’m still trying to recover the company. When I told them I had no intention of working for Stingray in any capacity, though, the last of the holdouts caved.

Yako Inoue is catering dinner tonight, and the house is starting to fill with the mouth-watering aromas of this evening’s menu.

“I’m going to finish getting ready,” Grace says, and I nod. A lot is riding on how things go tonight. I should probably finish getting ready, myself.

In business, most of the time, it’s not what you want, but how you ask and how much leverage you have when you do. Ask too softly and nobody will take you seriously. Ask too forcefully and people will tell you no just to knock you down a peg.

It’s simple psychology.

I’ve never had much success with the middle of the road, though. In my experience, it’s best to make everything black and white. Then paint what they want to do with every color of nightmare you can put together.

That’s diplomacy.

I get dressed in one of my softer navy blue suits, something that says I certainly dressed for the occasion, but I’m not trying to prove anything. If they’re going to stay long enough to get railroaded, I need to come across nonthreatening. At least until it’s time to drop the hammer, that is.

Cinching up my tie, I head to the bathroom to check up on Grace.

“How are you doing?” I ask. She’s looking up at the ceiling, dabbing mascara under one eye.

“Almost there,” she says. She switches to the other eye, and after a few strokes of the brush, she stands up straight. “How do I look?” she asks.

She’s in a sleek, black dress that beautifully hugs, but doesn’t stifle her form. Over her hands, she’s wearing long, black gloves that go up past her elbows. They’re the same fabric as the dress.

“What’s the stone in these earrings?” she asks.

“Red Beryl,” I answer.

Grace looks in the mirror and takes a deep breath. Blowing it out, she says, “Is everything in place?”

“It should be,” I answer. “Have you seen Marly?”

“No,” she says, “I just came in here to finish my makeup and then the gloves and the earrings. By the way, there’s something I should tell you before dinner starts.”

“Can it wait?” I ask. “I know we have a few minutes, but I want to look everything over—”

She interrupts me, saying, “You know how I said I didn’t know you got fired, but I was so cool about it when you told me?”

“You talked to Nolan,” I state.

She answers, “I talked to Nolan.” Patting me on the shoulder, she says, “After the way he cut me off and forced me to buy a plane ticket instead of make a phone call—which I expect to be reimbursed for, by the way—I thought I’d have a little chat with him while I was waiting for you to get back to your office. He acts all tough on the phone, but you narrow your eyes at the guy and he starts quivering. It was sad, really.”

“Does this have anything to do with tonight? If not, I really would like to get out there,” I tell her.

“Just listen,” she says. “Since you weren’t talking about it with me, I figured you were either trying to handle it emotionally before talking to me—which is stupid—or you really did think I knew about it, but still didn’t say anything—which is also stupid.”

“You’re pretty smug for a trophy girlfriend,” I smirk.

She smacks me on the chest, saying, “You should be nicer to people who do nice things for you, like help put together a dinner party where nothing goes wrong.”

“I take your point,” I tell her. “Please, continue.”

“If I’m honest,” she says, eyeing me like she’s trying to keep me in place, “I thought you were doing some sort of inside baseball or whatever they call it and the whole thing was over my head,” she tells me. “However, I did know you hadn’t been able to find or get ahold of Jacque, so I thought I’d try my hand at it.”

“What does that mean?” I ask. “How’d you even find his number?”

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