The Antonides Marriage Deal Page 5

  Listening today was quite enough. She was impressed with how thorough Elias was and how he was able to take the information Paul provided and examine it from different angles. He had, as he’d told her, done a thorough job of considering many of the ramifications of the purchase of Corbett’s.

  She still wasn’t convinced that it was a good move. It seemed a little too far afield, but she would listen and consider and do more work on her own, and then she’d comment.

  In the meantime, she’d read the stack of material he left her.

  She wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d given her three feet of invoices and grocery lists to read. But she wouldn’t know unless she skimmed every single piece. So she spent the rest of the afternoon in her office doing just that.

  Some of the reports seemed little more than she’d expected. But some were significant. They outlined in far greater detail than the material her father had given her what the financial status of Antonides Marine had been when Elias had come in eight years ago—and what it was now.

  She got a far clearer understanding of just how dire the straits had been when Elias had taken over, and an even greater appreciation for how astute his business handling was. He’d seen what needed to be done, and he’d done it—even when it had meant cutting out some very appealing but not terribly lucrative lines.

  The venture into luxury yacht construction that his father had spent vast amounts on was obviously one of Aeolus’s pet projects. It had drained the company’s assets, though, and had brought in very little.

  When Elias took over, it had been the first thing to go.

  There was nothing in the papers he gave her that spelled out in words his father’s opposition. But in the “who was in favor of what” pieces, it was clear that Elias’s decision had met with considerable parental opposition.

  She wondered if she dared point it out to him as something the two of them had in common. Somehow she doubted it. But the more she read, the less she blamed him for his attitude. And when at last she leaned back in her chair and contemplated the skyline of Manhattan against the setting sun, she had to admit that if she were Elias Antonides, she’d resent an interloper coming in, too.

  At eight o’clock when she gathered up the stack of papers she intended to take home for further study. It was a foot and a half high, but every bit could be all important. When she finally opened her mouth, she wanted to have her facts straight. Giving the stack a little pat, she went in search of a box to put it in.

  The office was deserted. Rosie had left ages ago, but not without poking her head in to remind Tallie to bring the recipes tomorrow.

  She’d promised them to Paul, too, who thought his fiancée would like them, and to Dyson who’d said he didn’t have a fiancée, but who needed one? If you wanted cookies badly enough—and they were good enough—you just baked them yourself.

  “I’m liberated,” he’d told Tallie.

  She smiled now at the memory, glad she’d brought them, determined to bring others tomorrow. They were good for morale. And they were an excellent way to connect with the staff, even if some people, she thought as she opened the supply closet, looked down their once-broken noses at them.

  “Ah, excellent,” she muttered, discovering a box behind the paper supplies. She fished it out, then stood up and turned, slamming into a hard male chest.

  “Can I help you find something?” Elias’s tone was polite, his meaning was anything but. Loosely translated, Tallie knew, he wanted to know what the hell she was doing.

  She smiled brightly at him. “You’re still here, too? I was just getting a box to take some work home.” She tried to step around him.

  He blocked her way. “What work?”

  “Some of that reading material you provided. Excuse me.” Her tone was polite, too, but when he didn’t move, she sidestepped him and—accidentally, of course—knocked the box into his solar plexis. “Oh! Sorry.”

  Not exactly the truth, but if he was going to stand in her way… She heard him mutter under his breath as she hurried back down the hall with the box in her arms.

  Footsteps came after her. “You don’t need to take things home.” He stopped in the door of her office, scowling as she piled the papers into the box.

  “Well, I don’t plan to stay here all night.”

  “You’re taking way too much trouble.”

  “It’s not trouble. It’s my job.”

  His jaw bunched, and she knew he was itching to say, “No, it’s mine.”

  But he didn’t say anything, just exhaled sharply and rocked back on his heels before muttering something under his breath, then turning and stalking off down the hall.

  “Welcome to your first wonderful day at Antonides Marine,” Tallie murmured to herself as she watched him stalk away.

  No question about it—Tallie Savas was going to be a pain.

  Who the hell needed a president who baked cookies? Who came to meetings and sat there, scribbling furiously on a notepad and never said a word? Who buried herself in her office with the piles and piles of reports he’d given her and actually read them? And took them home with her?

  Elias stood glaring after her from his office as she tottered toward the door, the box full of files balanced on top of her briefcase, and three empty cookie tins teetering precariously on top of that.

  A gentleman would help her with it.

  Elias didn’t feel much like a gentleman. He would have liked to have seen her collapse in a heap.

  But the way his life was going at the moment, his father would probably want to pay all her medical bills with money Elias hadn’t made yet!

  Grimly he strode after her. “Allow me,” he said with frigid politeness and opened the door for her.

  “Thanks.” She gave him a sweet smile that was completely at odds with her stubborn refusal to go home and let him get on with the job. “Have a good evening.”

  “Oh, yeah,” he said drily.

  She turned her head to grin at him. The top cookie tin teetered, and she nearly dropped them all, rescuing it.

  Against his better judgment, Elias said grudgingly, “Do you want some help?”

  Tallie shook her head—and the cookie tins and the briefcase and the box. “No, thanks.” And she wobbled off down the hall.

  Oddly annoyed at having his offer refused, Elias shut the door behind her. But he didn’t move away. He continued to watch her through the glass. If she dropped the damn things, she’d have to let him help her.

  But at that moment one of the doors down the hall opened and a man came out. Elias recognized Martin de Boer instantly from his tweedy elbow-patched jacket and his floppy earnest-and-intense-journalist-too-busy-to-get-a-haircut hair.

  Martin wrote for the snooty monthly opinion mag, Issues and Answers, that rented a group of offices down the hall. When Elias had leased to them, he’d figured they’d be congenial tenants, and the people who worked on the physical magazine were. He even played recreational league basketball with the layout director.

  But the journalists who wrote for Issues and Answers were a different story. They thought everyone else had issues but only they had answers. And from the few conversations Elias had had with him, Martin de Boer had more answers than most. As far as Elias could see, de Boer was a pompous, arrogant know-it-all who stuck his oar in where it wasn’t needed.

  And his opinion didn’t improve as he watched Martin smile and speak to Tallie, obviously offering to help carry her box. In this case he got a brilliant smile in return and a reply that permitted him to whisk the box out of her arms gallantly and cradle it in his own.

  Hell! Elias glared. She’d practically kicked his shins when he’d offered! He was half tempted to stalk down the hall and jerk the damn box out of de Boer’s skinny arms.

  Good thing his cell phone rang.

  Bad thing to hear his father’s voice, jovial and upbeat, booming down the line. “Well how’d it go today with our new president?”

  Elias, watching Tallie di
sappear into the elevator with Martin the Bore, bit out two words: “Don’t ask.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE PHONE began ringing right after she came in the door.

  “Just wanted to see how things went,” Socrates said. Her father’s tone was deliberately casual and offhand but at the same time simply simmering with curiosity.

  Tallie, who was feeding a very hungry and indignant cat who thought he should have eaten two hours before, scooped some fishy-smelling glop onto a plate and set it on the floor. Harvey fell on it ravenously. She straightened and took a deep breath. “Just fine.”

  She would have left it at that, but she knew from experience that that wasn’t the way to handle Socrates. Less was never more with her father. And letting him ask questions was worse than telling him more than enough to lead him astray.

  So she launched into a full-scale report on almost everything—about the office, the murals, the furniture, the history of Antonides Marine—in short, more about the history of Antonides Marine than she was sure he ever wanted to know.

  And about everything, in other words, except what she knew he wanted to hear.

  To give him credit, he waited patiently through the whole recitation. It was his gift, she thought, knowing when to pounce. She made sure she gave him nothing to pounce on.

  “Well, well. You certainly seem to have had a good day,” he said heartily when she finally wound down. Harvey had long since finished his dinner and was eyeing the bacon and eggs she was making for herself.

  Tallie shook her head and gave him a stern look. He gave her a gimlet-eyed glare that reminded her uncannily of Elias’s hard-eyed stare, the one that said Antonides Marine was his, not hers.

  My eggs. My bacon, she mouthed at him silently.

  “So you like them?” Socrates pressed on in her ear. “The people? Companies are made of people, Thalia. What about the people?”

  A small nudge to get her closer to what he wanted to know.

  So Tallie obediently rattled on about the people. She started with Dyson: “an absolutely charming naval architect,” and went on to Paul: “obviously has a strong work ethic. Solid midwestern values,” and then to Rosie, Lucy, the accountant and even the temp girls. She talked and talked about everyone but—

  “And Aeolus’s son?” he finally had to ask. “Elias was there, wasn’t he?”

  “Elias? Oh, yes,” Tallie agreed, as determinedly offhand as her father, damn it. “Elias was there.”

  Foaming at the mouth. Furious that you bet his daft father our piddly island getaway against their ancestral home, and then got Theo to make sure you won it—and the presidency to boot.

  “Ah, good. And he was…helpful?” There was a certain guardedness in Socrates’s tone now.

  “He gave me a lot to read.” Which was nothing but the truth.

  “To read?”

  “Reports. On the business.”

  “Oh. Oh, good. So he, ah, seemed to accept you, then?”

  “As president, you mean?” Tallie said guilelessly. Then, “Apparently you didn’t give him any choice, Dad.”

  Her tone told him she was onto him.

  “Oh, now, that’s not true!” Socrates blustered.

  “Yeah, right. You didn’t use Theo to get what you wanted? And tack on the presidency, as well, and then tell Aeolus Antonides that you’d deed his ancestral home back to him if—and only if—Elias remained on as managing director for two years?”

  There was a minute’s silence while her father apparently tried to figure out how to handle the damage control that was clearly necessary.

  “I did it for you, Thalia. It is an opportunity for you. You’ve always wanted to go into business!” he said at last.

  “As if that was the real reason you did it.”

  Socrates sputtered and muttered, but no words came out.

  “Stop trying to manipulate my life, Dad,” Tallie said evenly. “Stop trying to shove men down my throat.”

  “I never! I merely provided an—”

  “Eligible man,” Tallie filled in for him.

  “So he is eligible? So what? I cannot make you marry him, can I? Or vice versa.”

  “But you would if you could.”

  There was another pause. Then, “Marriage is a wonderful thing,” Socrates said. “Your mother and I—”

  “Are meant for each other.” And a good thing, too. Tallie couldn’t imagine her parents with anyone else. “No one else would put up with you,” she told him. “And I’m very happy you and Mom have each other. And if Brian had lived, I would have married him, but—”

  “He would not want you to stay single forever, Thalia.”

  “I know that! But he wouldn’t want me to marry just anyone, either!”

  “Of course not. But—”

  “Stop it, Dad. Just stop.”

  There was a long pause, then: “I am stopped.”

  Yeah, right.

  “We’ll see,” she murmured. Then she said briskly, “I have to go now, Dad. I have a lot of work to do. All that reading Elias gave me to do.”

  “Oh, yes?” Socrates shifted gears right along with her. “Yes. Good. I’ve been concerned about Antonides’ intention to diversify.”

  So he hadn’t bought the company only to shove her down Elias’s throat and vice versa? He was actually interested in the business. Tallie shouldn’t have been surprised. Her father never ignored the bottom line.

  “I hear he is considering a buy-out of another company,” Socrates said. “Tell me about it. I might know the men in this other company. What did you say it was?”

  “I didn’t.”

  There was a brief silence which Tallie didn’t fill. “And what is it?” her father finally asked.

  “I can’t say.”

  “Can’t say? What do you mean, you can’t say?” Socrates was clearly surprised by that.

  “Business is business. What goes on in the office is confidential. You know that, Dad. You taught me it yourself.”

  “Yes, yes. Confidential. Business is confidential. But, Thalia, not when I own forty percent of it!”

  “Even then,” Tallie said firmly. “You’re on the board. You’re not involved in the day-to-day running of the company.”

  “But—”

  “No one wants to have the board second-guessing their every move. You would hate it.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Come to the next shareholders’ meeting, Dad,” she said sweetly. “We’ll tell you everything you need to know there.”

  It was no big deal, Elias told himself every morning. So Tallie Savas’s name was now on the letterhead as president of Antonides Marine.

  So what? It didn’t make any difference to the way he ran things.

  But the truth of the matter was, it did.

  It wasn’t that Dyson and Paul were “yes” men. It was that they didn’t see things the same way Tallie did. Dyson was theoretical and Paul was nuts and bolts. And Tallie was…well, Tallie.

  She saw things from a different perspective.

  “A woman’s perspective,” she said with a shrug, as if it, too, was no big deal.

  But irritatingly, it was. She brought up things he didn’t pay as much attention to—people things, like how to balance job and family issues.

  Balance was not something Elias was familiar with. When he was at work, he thought about work. When he wasn’t at work, he thought about work.

  “Work matters. Pure and simple,” he told her.

  “Get a life,” she told him.

  They glared at each other.

  But the truth was, for the first time in years, Elias found that he was having to cope with a distraction. Of course, he could claim that the distraction was work by another name—but work had never had a woman attached to it before.

  And this one was definitely distracting.

  Elias was ordinarily happy to appreciate a beautiful woman. But he had always—until now—been able to choose the time and place. He had never m
ixed business with pleasure. He was still trying not to.

  It wasn’t easy.

  Now, at the damnedest, most inconvenient times, he’d be sitting there in a meeting, trying to focus on what Paul or Dyson was saying and he’d glance across the room at Tallie. And his attention would take a sharp turn away from the work at hand.

  He would find himself transfixed by those wayward strands of hair that had a habit of escaping from the confines of whatever she was trying to tame them with that day. And the next thing he knew, he would be imagining what it would be like to see her hair untamed, wild and glorious. And it was a quick jump to imagining what it would be like to unpin it and run his fingers through it.

  And then, inevitably, Dyson would say, “So what do you think, Elias?”

  And he’d be caught flat-footed, dazed and confused, without a clue about what Dyson had just said. It had happened more than once.

  Last Tuesday he had been watching Paul make one of his intricate charts on the whiteboard, which was not exactly fascinating. And his gaze had drifted over to Tallie and locked on the sight of her crossing her legs. The glimpse of smooth tanned thighs as she shifted was enough to make him lose track of all of Paul’s lines and curves and squiggles.

  “With me so far?” Paul asked, turning to face them.

  Tallie had nodded, tapping the end of her pen against her front teeth, and Elias closed his eyes and squashed his errant thoughts and did his best to bully his brain cells into paying attention.

  It was almost like being in high school again!

  It made him furious. Though whether he was more furious with Tallie for being there or himself for being unable to ignore her was a question he didn’t ever ask. So he challenged her, asked her tough, demanding questions.

  And she gave him thoughtful, considered answers that showed she was paying attention, even if he wasn’t. Further irritation.

  “That Tallie’s one sharp cookie,” Dyson said to him one afternoon after a meeting in which she had once more pointed out things the rest of them hadn’t seen.

  Elias grunted. That was another thing. Cookies!