“I love you, Chrissy,” he says firmly, finishing my thought for me, and then I can say it, hell I feel like screaming it.
“I love you too, Logan.”
It’s only once we’re back in the car, then again in the huge foyer of Logan Industries, welcomed warmly by the doorman that I realize…
I can be anywhere with Logan, it’s him that makes me feel so at home.
“Uh… Mr. Parker, begging your pardon, sir,” The doorman calls out after us.
Logan turns, giving the man his full attention while he steps over to us.
“Security has been asking after you a lot. So has a Mr. Foster from PR and accounting. About his daughter,” he adds without looking at me.
“Thanks for the heads up, have a nice night!” Logan chimes cheerfully, taking my arm in his and choosing the private elevator over the main ones. Even though the building seems totally empty.
“I noticed only one or two floors lit up on the way over,” he muses to himself as we rise up.
“Public relations and accounting looked like a Christmas tree,” he adds, and I know what he means by that.
My dad.
“That’s a good thing, Chrissy, trust me. I had a feeling about your dad, as much as I had a feeling about you,” he tells me, pecking my lips and rubbing my arms, noticing me shivering.
“Mine,” he says firmly. “I guess you both are, now.”
The elevator opens into Logan’s office, his home.
I try to picture me here, every day.
It’s difficult to imagine even though I’ve never been past his office, his desk.
The sight of his desk makes me blush though, a smile playing on my lips as I recall what happened earlier, which already feels like a lifetime ago.
I’m not sure which happens first next, whether it’s Logan’s eyes rolling as he smiles or if it’s the rattling on the glass of his office door. The shadow of a man almost filling it in the dim light from the corridor.
“So much for a whole day,” Logan says, and I recognize my dad’s profile as Logan unlocks the door himself, holding it open and ushering my dad in.
“Mr. Foster, I’m sorry to have kept you in the dark all day. I’m eager to hear of your day so far but understand too-”
My dad all but brushes past Logan, making straight for me.
“Chrissy? What are you doing here? I thought you would’ve been home hours ago. I tried calling, but figured you’d gone to bed…”
His voice trails off at that last word, and after registering what I’m wearing he turns back to face Logan.
As a daughter’s father now, not as an employee.
“And how about you tell me about your day, Mr. Parker. Your day with my daughter?” he says cuttingly, looming up but nowhere near Logan’s size.
Logan sits down at his desk, pressing his fingers together in a triangle and taking a moment to think before speaking, eventually tracing the same fingers over the very spot he devoured me on not so long ago.
“I think you came here to ask me more than that,” Logan says cryptically but throws my dad a bone.
“Chrissy and I were out celebrating. Her new internship here at Logan Industries. I tried to contact you but I understand you’ve been somewhat busy with your new position?”
My dad seems confused, he relaxes, then tries to say something but only looks me up and down again, then casts his eyes back to Logan who’s as smooth as marble. And just as cool.
“Internship?” My dad whispers, half smiling, half gasping as he looks at me again.
“I… uhhh, yes… I do have news to report,” my dad adds, finding his place again, his manners, which I notice Logan appreciates.
“Take a seat, Mr. Foster. Tell me all about it,” Logan adds, shooting me a glance to do the same but also apologizing for the interruption to our evening.
“Well, umm. It’s been a strange day, Sir. Filled with all sorts of accusations,” My dad begins, suddenly unable to look me or Logan in the eye, choosing a spot on the floor in front of him instead.
“But it’s stranger still,” he says, trying to find the right words.
“The points I’m connecting between what I discovered in accounts and what I’m seeing through your senior staff are… well… nothing short of astonishing.”
Logan’s brow darkens.
“Meaning? Speak plainly, Charles.”
“The whole board of directors, apart from yourself… and most all of your senior staff who hold significant company shares have been working hard to set up a hostile takeover of your entire company, Sir… using another business as a proposed backer… and channeling fake profits… bogus trades…”
I have no idea what any of this means, but it sounds serious. Logan stands up, leaning on his desk as his eyes bore into my father’s.
“Hotels?” he asks, and my dad nods stiffly, surprise at Logan’s reaction.
“I thought so,” is all Logan says, before resuming his seat.
Chapter Eighteen
Logan
So it’s true, my suspicions are realized. The whole board working to undermine me, but at the same time, no surprises at all.
I knew something was going on. You don’t build something from nothing, live, breathe and eat it twenty-four seven for twenty years while the others play golf and take holidays to know something’s not quite right.
That the ship has more than its fair share of rats… but all of them?
I’m not surprised at all.
The office phone on my desk is flashing three, then four lines. In another second the whole thing’s lit up.
My cell phone chimes, which I answer.
It’s my private security detail, repeating what I’ve just heard but they have no hard proof.
“You have the proof?” I ask Chrissy’s dad as I cover the mouthpiece. He nods swiftly, with security telling me everything was wiped before they could get to it.
I order a full report due in the morning from the security team, saying nothing of the proof Chrissy’s dad says he has and hang up, knowing the other lines are choked with assholes trying to save their own necks.
“By
