“Emerson?” Olivia said, curiously. “Thank you. I’ll take the lunch Emerson thoughtfully asked you to pick up into the kitchen.”
Emerson tried to bite back a grin at the confusion on Connor’s face. “You don’t go by Emerson, do you?”
Then she laughed. “Not around people who know me well, but as I said, you were being an asshole when I told you not to shorten it.”
Connor pulled her playfully toward him and kissed her. “Are you ever going to let me live that down?”
With pursed lips, she shook her head. “Probably not. In case you hadn’t noticed, I kind of like the way you say Emerson.”
He moved his lips to her ear. “In case you hadn’t noticed, I occasionally slip and call you Em when I’m deep inside you.”
“Now, that’s a win-win.”
He smudged his thumb along her cheek. “You had a little dust,” he said, his voice rough at the edges like frayed rope.
“Is he here?” The voice of her brother boomed from the kitchen. There was a moment’s pause and then peals of laughter.
“Ready to meet Jake?” she asked.
“For you, anything.”
For the first time in his life, Connor deliberately and carefully got his numbers wrong.
He sat back and looked at the report for his father on possible acquisitions. Everything in it was meticulously researched, conservatively estimated, and hit all of his father’s objectives.
Except Dyer’s Gin Distillery. There was no way he was going to let his father get his hands on Emerson’s distillery.
No one number was hugely inaccurate. But the sum of every positive number being rounded down, and every negative one being rounded up was just enough to put Dyer’s in the middle of the pack with at least three other distilleries looking better. If he could put his father off the scent, it would solve all his problems.
With Dyer’s out of the picture as a possible asset for acquisition, there would be no conflict of interest with regards to him dating Emerson. And he was deliberately tuning out the irony that the entire exercise to make it look that way was a giant conflict of interest.
He flipped to his Excel spreadsheet and looked at the real numbers, which told a very different story. They had space to expand, capacity, a loyal and capable leadership team with Emerson, Liv, and Jake. They had the combined skills to run the place well and create new products.
The lunch he’d had with Jake and Olivia had proved that.
Jake had been thrilled to see old drawings and papers of his father’s that Emerson had found in the office. He talked excitedly about some of the formulas and how he could combine them with flavor profiles he was already working on.
And learning so much more about Olivia, he could see why Paul Dyer had been so protective of her. She was a whip-smart sweetheart. She mentioned plans and campaigns she’d thought of. Bright, innovative approaches. He found out she was responsible for the Medallion branding he’d admired.
They’d talked about future plans, such as a canning line for Dyer’s on-the-go mixer products and a range of spin-off items for the distillery store.
As a businessman, he would have invested in them in a heartbeat.
But as a man halfway to falling head over heels…
Perhaps he was being a fool.
Perhaps the years of holding out on a serious relationship had been for a reason. Perhaps Emerson had clouded his vision.
But he knew that wasn’t true, could feel the truth down to his bones. He knew full well what Dyer’s was worth…he just felt Emerson was worth so much more than all of it. The fact that he didn’t understand why his father was in the goddamn photograph when there was no record of him in the distillery’s history bothered him, but not as much as it maybe should have.
They’d juggled the weekend. After helping her work through more of her father’s things on Saturday, he’d helped her decorate her home for Halloween. They’d hung small ghosts from the tree in the front garden, set gravestones around its base, and laid cobwebs and black plastic spiders over the bushes beneath the windows. Later that afternoon, he’d driven the two of them back downtown to his condo, where they’d showered, together, and went out for dinner. On Sunday morning, he’d dropped her off at the distillery while he’d gone to work out and collected her when she was done. They’d spent the afternoon hiking before returning to the condo, where she’d helped him prep his meals for the week ahead and had even eaten one for dinner.
How is it? he’d asked.
She’d shrugged. Nothing a bottle of sriracha can’t fix.
After they’d eaten, they’d made love on his sofa as the sun went down. And all he wanted to do was watch the sun go down over Emerson’s naked body for the rest of his life.
He adjusted himself, suit trousers not being the best material for hiding the makings of a hard-on.
Once the documents were printed and he’d gathered his wits, Connor made his way up to his father’s office on the floor above his. Cameron was in the office next door, with his chair facing away from Connor. He appeared to be in the middle of a phone call, with the hand gesturing he was doing, which was perfect. The last thing he needed was Cameron trying to force his way into the meeting.
“Dad,” he said, tapping on the door as he pushed it open.
His father motioned for him to take a seat as he said goodbye to whomever he was speaking to on the phone.
Connor could hear the faint strains of Cameron in the office next door. Why had he never noticed that before? He wondered how easily his own voice carried into Cameron’s office.
His father slapped the phone down on the desk. “What have you got for me?” he asked, holding out his hand for the report.
Connor handed it to him. “This is the updated report on potential
