We spent the rest of the week working around the clock to shore up votes ahead of the shareholder meeting. We held emergency personal meetings with every shareholder we could track down who we thought could be swayed to our view of things. And beforehand we researched their business histories for common interests, potential weak points, and anything else we thought might prove handy, down to their favorite color for socks and how much sugar they took in their coffee.
And of course, we had to hide all this from Portia by not only carrying on with our usual business, but distracting her at all the crucial moments when our clandestine meetings were being held.
Mostly this meant burying her in special projects and outdated financial paperwork, but I’m not going to lie, one of my fondest exploits during this whole endeavor was the morning when I kept her from catching Grant with a shareholder by replacing her dry-cleaning instructions for her personal assistant, resulting in Portia making increasingly furious and incoherent stops at every cheap dry-cleaning place within fifty miles in a quest for her vintage mink stole.
A vital ally in our crusade turned out to be Jennings, who was invested in the fate of the company not just because of the shares he got during the buyout of Librio, or even his private ideals, but because for some inexplicable reason, he had taken a shine to Grant and me.
“A lot of those ‘good old boys’ and I go way back,” he boomed when we first approached him asking for help. “I might be able to loosen their tongues in a way that a pretty young lady and a pretty young man—no offense, young fella—might not be able to. Just give me some beer money to get me in the door with them, and I’m in solid.”
And he was, channeling information to us from Portia’s inner circle of shareholders one day, and then turning around and flooding a shareholder on the fence with all his powers of cajoling and charm the next.
We began to build a strong case against the takeover, and every day saw Grant, me, and Jennings start to win more allies over to our cause, shareholders who’d been persuaded that what we said made more moral and practical business sense: Tomasina Brown, Stephen Baker, Emma Hundred. People who other people listened to, and followed. Our ranks began to swell, and though we couldn’t be sure of exactly how many people were on Portia’s side, the numbers on our own were starting to look encouraging.
I began to think that we just might have a chance.
? ? ?
It was another secretive late night at Grant’s office, the lights turned way down low as we pored over documents, our hands touching as we passed papers back and forth.
We’d agreed to keep our reconciliation a secret from Portia, the better to throw her off-balance when we launched our counter-attack in earnest, and so I’d had to dress up in a slutty disguise just in case Portia had us under surveillance. If she or any of her minions were keeping tabs, it would just look like Grant sneaking another party girl into the office for a little naughty after-hours fun; business as usual.
A low-cut red shirt and plunging neckline had distracted from the overlarge sunglasses, red wig, and floppy hat I’d worn to hide my face, and though I’d planned to change into something more modest before we got down to work, Grant had taken one look at me in this ensemble and declared that that would happen over his dead body.
The breeze through the window was cool against my skin and somehow Grant and I kept finding reasons to accidentally brush against each other as we reached for the same file, or to put out a hand to steady ourselves against the other as we walked past for another glass of wine—it’s important to keep up morale during the long hard slog through paperwork—or to sit extremely close together as we studied the same documents, fighting to keep our concentration on the written words even as we could feel the heat coming off each other’s bodies.
Maybe it was wrong of me, but I couldn’t help but feel that the secrecy and urgency of what we were doing only heightened the excitement, tension, and lust keeping my body coiled tight as a spring, anticipation tickling along my skin.
“Can you pass that file?” I asked, and Grant did, taking a long moment to brush his fingers along my arm as he did so.