Affair with the Rebel Heiress Read Free Page A

Ford’s boots with the leather-clad portfolio he’d been carrying. “Keep your feet off my desk. Christ, it’s like you’re ten.”
    Ford’s feet, which had been crossed at the ankles,slid off Jonathon’s desk. He lowered them to the floor and ignored the insult.
    “The desk is worth twenty thousand dollars. Try not to scuff it.”
    Finally Ford looked up at his friend, taking in the scowl. He glanced over at Matt, the third partner in their odd little triumvirate, who sat on the sofa, with one leg propped on the opposite knee and a laptop poised on the knee. “Who shoved a stick up his ass this morning?” Ford asked Matt.
    Matt continued typing frenetically while he said, “Ignore him. He’s just trying to bait you. He doesn’t give a damn about the desk.”
    Ford looked from one to the other, suddenly feeling slightly off-kilter. Together the three of them formed FMJ, Inc. He’d known these men since they were kids. They’d first gone into business together when they were twelve and Jonathon had talked them into pooling their money to run the snack shack at the community rec center for the summer. One financially lucrative endeavor had led to another until here they were, twenty years later, the CEO, CFO and CTO of FMJ, a company which they’d founded while still in college and which had made them all disgustingly rich.
    Jonathon, though always impeccably dressed and by far the most organized of the three, might impress some as overly persnickety. But those were only the people who didn’t know him, the people who were bound to underestimate him. It was a mistake few people made more than once.
    In reality, it was unlike Jonathon to care whether or not his desk was scuffed, regardless of how much it was worth.
    Still, to mollify Jonathon, Ford abandoned the chair he’d been sitting in and returned to his own desk. Since they worked so closely together, they didn’t have individual offices. Instead, they’d converted the entire top floor of FMJ’s Palo Alto headquarters to a shared office. On one end sat Jonathon’s twenty-thousand-dollar art deco monstrosity. The other end was lined with three worktables, every inch of them covered by computers and gadgets in various stages of dissection. In the middle sat Ford’s desk, a sleek modern job the building’s interior designer had picked out for him.
    With a shrug, he asked, “Is Matt right? You just trying to get a rise out of me?”
    Jonathon flashed him a cocky grin. “Well, you’re talking now, aren’t you?”
    “I wasn’t before?”
    “No. You’ve been picking at your nails for an hour now. You haven’t heard a word I’ve said.”
    “Not true,” Ford protested. “You’ve been babbling about how you think it’s time we diversify again. You’ve rambled on and on about half a dozen companies that are about to be delisted by the NYSE, but that you think could be retooled to be profitable again. You and Matt voted while I was in China visiting the new plant and you’ve already started to put together the offer. Have I left anything out?”
    “And…” Jonathon prodded.
    “And what?” Ford asked. When Jonathon gave an exasperated sigh and plopped back in his chair, Ford shot a questioning look at Matt, who was still typing away. “And what?”
    Matt, who’d always had the uncanny ability to hold a conversation while solving some engineering problem, gave a few more clicks before shutting his laptop. “He’s waiting for you to voice an opinion. You’re the CEO. You get final vote.”
    FMJ specialized in taking over flailing businesses and turning them around, much like the snack shack they’d whipped into prosperity all those years ago. Jonathon used his wizardry to streamline the company’s finances. Matt, with his engineering background, inevitably developed innovations that helped turn the company around. Ford’s own role in their magic act was a little more vague.
    Ford had a way with people. Inevitably, when FMJ took over a