Page 13 of The Kiss Keeper
He passed the blonde without a second glance and extended his hand. “If I’d known you were coming, I would have gotten you a seat up front.”
“Next to that?” the man asked, gesturing with his chin toward the blonde who hadn’t yet realized that she’d become inconsequential.
“Nothing wrong with a little company,” Jake tossed back.
Charlie chuckled. “But you see, Jake. If I’d let you know I was coming, you would have offered for me to do the presentation with you, and I wanted to watch you, unguarded.”
“Fair enough. How’d I do, boss?” he asked, but he already knew the answer.
Charlie narrowed his gaze. “Like always, you nailed it. There’s not a councilman, sultan, or senator you can’t get on your side. I knew you had the balls for this racket after you closed the deal on that high-rise in Dubai. Do you remember that project?”
Of course, he remembered. But the fact that Charlie remembered it, with his myriad of business deals going on at any one moment, was what spoke volumes.
Pride glimmered in the man’s eyes. “I’d sent all my senior people over, thinking it was a slam-dunk deal. But after three months of negotiations, they hadn’t gained an inch. That’s when you came to me, Jake. Christ! What were you? Twenty-five?”
“Twenty-three,” he corrected.
“Twenty-fucking-three,” Charlie repeated, shaking his head. “You asked if you could take a shot at Dubai. I thought it was youthful ignorance. If ten of my top people—half of them my damn nephews—couldn’t pull off a half a billion-dollar deal, then how the hell could a kid fresh out of college do it.”
Jake kept his features neutral as Charlie watched him closely, the crinkles in the corners of his eyes deepening.
“In less than twenty-four hours after you landed in the United Arab Emirates, you called to tell me you’d sealed the deal.”
Jake shrugged off the accomplishment. “I just happened to know that the Sheikh heading up Dubai’s development council liked basketball. After a few games of one-on-one, he was ready to come to the table.”
Charlie shook his head as a sly grin pulled at the corners of his mouth. “It wasn’t only the basketball. I saw your notes. You’d researched their entire negotiation team. You’d scoured their social media profiles. You knew them inside and out. You knew what they wanted, and you knew how to use that to get me what I wanted.”
“Rolling in with the Linton name doesn’t hurt either,” Jake replied.
Yes, he’d single-handedly closed a huge deal, but nobody liked a loudmouthed braggart.
Charlie continued to study him with a hawkish eye. “You and I both know it wasn’t only my name that got us that deal. Despite that cocksure presentation you did, you’re persuasive without being a prick. You know how to work a room. You come in knowing what levers to pull. You do your goddamn homework.”
“You taught me that, Charlie. I owe my success to you, and I’ll always put Linton Holdings first,” he said, keeping his voice steady.
The walk down memory lane was over as Charlie’s inquisitive demeanor changed to one of the driven and ruthless negotiator. At seventy-five years old, the man still commanded respect and a healthy dose of fear from anyone who dared get in his way.
“I’m glad to hear you say that because I have a special job for you, Jake. There’s a piece of land I’d like for you to acquire.”
“I’m your man. I can be on a plane to anywhere in less than an hour. Where to next? Just this morning, I got a tip from a local politician that the market is heating up in Spain. Is that where you’d like me to go?” he asked.
Charlie shook his head. “I got a tip, too. But it’s not about Spain. It’s about Maine.”
The breath caught in Jake’s throat. At the mention of Maine, his stoic demeanor nearly cracked.
He cleared his throat. “Maine? Like trees and barely a high-rise or luxury resort to be found? That Maine?”
Why the hell would Charlie want to send him there? Linton projects fell in the hundreds of millions—even billion-dollar range. What would be the point of dropping that kind of money in a location that was barely a blip on their development radar?
Charlie gave him a slap on the shoulder. “That’s the one, my boy. I want you to procure a piece of land a little north of Portland near the coast called Woolwich Cove. There’s currently a camp on the property that goes by the name Camp Woolwich,” Charlie said, contempt infused into the words, but Jake couldn’t focus on the man’s darkening expression and willed himself not to break out into a cold sweat.
Camp Woolwich was the last place he’d been before his world had turned upside down. The last summer where he believed that life was fair and that kids couldn’t have all the things they loved taken from them in the blink of an eye.
Charlie’s hawkish gaze was back. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Have you heard of Camp Woolwich?”
Oh, there was a ghost. A ghost named Otis Wiscasset.
He’d have to do a better job at muting his emotions. Charlie didn’t miss much, and he sure as hell wasn’t about to break down and share his sad childhood tale.
