“It’s a good thing I have someone to rescue me,” Grant said lightly, giving my side an affectionate squeeze. “I would hate to live out the rest of my days in a lab. My tan would suffer terribly.”
“And yet I somehow have the feeling that you would find a way to get your hands on hair gel,” I returned with equal affection, reaching up to ruffle his hair and watch him make that adorably scowly face he made whenever I undid all his primping. “Did you bankrupt a small country to get it to curl like that, babe?”
“Only a small one,” he promised, and laughing, we made our way into the fray, stepping apart as we crossed the room.
There was still an hour until the meeting itself, and with Portia around, it wouldn’t pay to let down our guard.
? ? ?
It was time. I gripped Grant’s hand tightly as we waited in the wings, the lights dimming in the ballroom except for the ones over the stage. Butterflies performed complicated aerial maneuvers in my stomach. This was it. No more preparation, no more hedging of bets. This was when it was all going to go down.
A rustle of silk, and Portia came around the corner in ivory heels and a sleek dress that looked as though it had traveled here through time from the 1920s. I tried to pull my hand back, but Grant held on to it tightly. He wasn’t interested in covering: we were in this together now, and he didn’t care if Portia—or anyone else—knew it.
She gave a barely perceptible start as she surveyed the way Grant and I were standing so close together, but she recovered almost instantly, favoring the pair of us with an icy smile.
“Well, isn’t this a fairytale ending for you both,” she said through tight lips. “Cinderella has won the heart of the prince after all. Well, they do say you can’t teach good taste.”
Grant squeezed my hand gently. “We have nothing to say you, Portia,” he told her. “We don’t speak to traitors.”
“So melodramatic,” she said with a sniff. “I do hope for your sake that’s not the line you’re taking in your speech tonight. Investors respond so poorly to theatrics.”
“Whereas you are totally one hundred percent honest and authentic,” I butted in sarcastically.
“Oh dear, you two are meant for each other,” Portia said, surveying us with cool disdain. “It’s simply business, children. Nothing personal.”
She breezed past us and swept onstage like a super-villain taking her place before the cowed and subjugated masses, and the crowd fell silent.
“Well, that went well,” Grant muttered.
“Don’t worry,” I said. I kissed his cheek. “There’s still her whole speech. She has plenty of time to alienate everybody. Hell, she can usually do that in thirty seconds without even trying.”
Grant tried to smile, but it looked a little pained. I wrapped my arm around him, willing us both to make each other strong.
Onstage, Portia favored the audience with a brittle smile as though she were a dentist trying to assure them that this wouldn’t hurt, not one little bit. The first few rows flinched back slightly.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Portia said, “my case is plain.”
Behind her, the screen flickered to life, showing a picture of Grant’s grandfather. I could feel Grant’s pulse spike as his hold on my hand suddenly became a death grip.
“The founder of this company was a true original. With a firm grasp of economic theory, the marketplace, and the importance of hard work, he took raw materials and transformed them into something beautiful: Devlin Media Corp.”
The screen transitioned to the next slide, another grainy black and white picture, this time of the Devlin Media Corp headquarters when they had originally been constructed in the early 20th century—not as tall as they were today, but imposing and impressive with their engraved columns and Art Deco stained glass windows nonetheless.
“Perhaps it sounds strange to you that I should call a company beautiful,” Portia said. “After all, it is not a word one usually associates with strength. But consider the great white shark: a graceful, merciless, ruthless engine intent on seeking out its prize. It does precisely what it was engineered to do, with speed and efficiency, with no apology to those too slow or unworthy to avoid it or get out of its way. Is it not beautiful? Is there no poetry in it, no art?”
“What the hell kind of strategy is this?” I hissed in a strangled whisper to Grant. “Does she think this is a poetry open mic at a coffee shop?”
“She’s playing on their emotions,” he muttered back through gritted teeth. “Building them up to make them feel like apex predators, then serving them up a nice plump bit of prey they can rip apart until it bleeds to death.”
I cast my eyes over the audience, and I was disheartened to see that he was right. Many of them were sitting straighter as they took in her words, their eyes starting to shine. If she persuaded too many people, swayed too many of our supporters back over to her side…