Stormy Challenge Read Free

determinedly.
    "Yes."
    "Have you had a chance to read that contract my brother wants me to sign, so that he can go ahead and hire this high-powered consultant he's found?" Leya plunged into the question that had been on her mind ever since she'd given the papers to Court for his opinion.
    "I've read it. I went through it before I picked you up for dinner," he admitted quietly, a new note of seriousness entering the heavy-timbred voice. Across the table, the tortoiseshell eyes met hers.
    "Well?" she pressed a bit grimly. "Do you agree with me?"
    "That it's dangerous? It could be in the wrong circumstances," Court said slowly, evenly. The cognac swirled gently in his glass.
    "I knew it!" Leya stated with unhappy satisfaction.
    "As soon as Keith gave it to me I knew there was something crazy about the whole setup!"

    "I said it could be dangerous in the wrong situation," Court repeated calmly, watching her face closely. "You were wise to be cautious, Leya, but there are some mitigating circumstances involved here."
    "Such as?" she challenged.
    "Such as the fact that you know your brother, and I know the other party named in the contract. The man he wants to hire."
    "You know him!" Leya stared, totally astonished by this information. "You know this C. Tremayne? But how could you? Where would you have run into him?"
    "In Silicon Valley," he told her, using the slang expression for the area around San Jose, California, where so much of the new high-technology electronics industry was based. It had been so named for the semiconducting material that had helped revolutionize solid-state electronics.
    "You worked down there for a while?" Leya demanded, confused. "I didn't know you were in engineering. I thought you said something about finance. ..."
    "I've worked with several electronics firms, helping them secure venture capital. It takes money to do first-class research and I help them find it," he said, as if it were the simplest thing in the world.
    Leya knew there was a lot more to it than he implied, but she had other things to pursue at the moment. "So you've met Tremayne? What do you think of him?"
    Court smiled. "He's not the ogre you've convinced yourself he is, for a start."
    "He must be!" Leya scoffed. "What sort of creature besides an ogre would try to tie my brother to a contract like the one I gave you to read?"
    "A man who has as much to lose as your brother and wants to protect himself as well as his client," Court explained tersely.
    "All the protection is on Tremayne's side!" Leya exploded in disgust. "The way that contract is written, he's tied his salary into the profits. If my brother's company does well, Tremayne stands to make a tidy sum, far more than a normal salary for consulting!"
    "And if Brandon Security Systems goes under, Tremayne ioses said fortune."
    "What about that business of insisting on full decision-making authority?" Leya persisted irritably. "He's virtually setting himself up as president of the firm!"
    "From what I know of him, Tremayne doesn't make decisions by consensus," Court admitted dryly. "He wouldn't go into a situation like this unless he had the power to do what needed to be done, without having to refer everything to a committee."
    "But the main reason Keith insists on having the man in as a sort of chief consultant is because he's hoping to learn from Tremayne! If Tremayne won't be bothered with discussing his decisions, what good will that do Keith?"
    "If Tremayne has agreed to guide your brother over the next couple of years, until Keith has enough experience under his belt to take on the full responsibility of running the firm, you can rest assured he'll do as he says. In my experience, Tremayne is a man of his word. He just wants it dear from the outset that for the duration of the contract, he's in charge. If you ask me, your brother is showing a lot of sense. After all, it must be damned intimidating to suddenly inherit a large business at the age of twenty-five. You did say