Boardroom Battle

  Liz and Darcy

  Book 1: Boardroom Battle

  Copyright 2019 by Kelsie Fann. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  1.

  Liz heard the office door squeak open, and three sharp footsteps followed. She didn’t look up from her book. She knew who was standing in front of her desk: her boss, Mr. Chambers. He stood in front of her desk every day after lunch, full of questions, suggestions, and usually a dad joke.

  Liz glanced sideways at the clock on her computer to confirm her suspicions. Hmmm . . . Mr. Chambers’s lunch break had just started.

  Maybe he’s back early from lunch? She shut her book; the pages came together with a dull thud, and she looked up slowly.

  Her eyes moved across the glass top of her desk until her gaze hit the legs of the person standing in front of her. Instantly, she knew it wasn’t Mr. Chambers because her gaze would have landed on his big belly, usually clad in a bright, checkered shirt. Instead, her eyes landed on a crisp pair of dark suit pants.

  Liz’s eyes moved up the stranger’s tall body. She saw black, tailored pants; a perfectly fitted jacket; broad shoulders; and finally, his face, which if it weren’t locked into a deep scowl, would probably be considered handsome.

  A furrowed brow framed his dark brown eyes, which peered down onto the cover of her book. The look on his face indicated that he didn’t approve of her reading material.

  They stared at each other for a few seconds. Liz waited for him to introduce himself, but he didn’t. Instead, with a deep voice, he said, “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”

  His words were so strange that she had no idea how to respond. “What?” she asked the brooding man in front of her.

  “The opening sentence.”

  Liz narrowed her eyes, but he didn’t explain any further. Instead, he said the strange sentence again. “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”

  Who was this guy? And why was he interrupting her precious lunch hour, the only break she would get all day? She looked around the office. It was empty, except for her. If this guy was some kind of strange-talking serial killer, then her only weapon was her book, Pride and Prejudice.

  Liz tightened her grip on the book, ready to smack him if she needed to. Then he bent down and whispered, “It’s the opening line of the book you’re reading.” He crossed his arms as he stood back upright, looking like a judgmental statue.

  “Oh.” She quickly thumbed back to the beginning of the book. He was right. She was only a few pages from the end. She was so happy that the two main characters had finally gotten together that she’d completely forgotten about the first sentence.

  Liz closed the book again. The weight of the mauve hardcovered book felt oddly substantial. She hadn’t held an actual book in years, usually opting to read free books or free magazines on her Kindle.

  Her best friend, Rose, a hopeless romantic, had been stunned that she, Liz Bailey, had never read the book where the main character almost shared her name. Rose had pressed the book into Liz’s hands. Had it not been for the spotty internet connection in the office the past few weeks, Liz would have let the novel swim around in her purse, waiting until it was an appropriate time to return it, unread. But thanks to a lack of technology, she had devoured the entire Jane Austen novel.

  The black-suited man gave a small cough and looked around the office before his eyes landed on her desk. “Can you let Mr. Chambers know I’m here?”

  Liz smirked. This stranger thought she was the receptionist. While her first job at Chambers’s Media had been as an administrative assistant, ten years later, that was definitely not the position she stayed in.

  Liz ignored the stranger’s request and made a statement of her own. “You know a lot about Jane Austen.”

  He looked around the empty room again, impatiently waiting for her to summon her boss, but she didn’t. He shifted his weight back and forth, like he was uncomfortable.

  After a few seconds of awkward silence, the stranger answered her. “My mother was a fan.” He tilted his nose up, just a fraction of an inch. “Also, I’d like a cup of coffee. Black.”

  Liz’s eyes flew open; she was ready to teach him a lesson. She stood up, smoothed her pencil skirt, put her hands on her desk, and leaned forward. She was ready to tell this man exactly who she was and where he could put his orders.

  Before Liz could speak, the building door flung open. She looked through the glass wall that separated the executive office from the rest of the building and saw her boss Mr. Chambers walk inside.

  The tall stranger turned and looked at her short, balding boss as he walked into the executive office with a short step, then a long step. His mismatched gait and long white beard made Liz smile. Really, everything about him made Liz smile. He was the last of the dinosaurs. The last of a generation of executives who would need help attaching a file.

  “Welcome back, Mr. Chambers,” Liz greeted her boss as he walked through the glass door into the executive office.

  Mr. Chambers’s warm smile tipped a little to the right, just like his gait. “Good afternoon, Liz.”

  “Mr. Chambers,” the stranger standing in front of Liz’s desk interrupted. “I was just asking your secretary for some coffee.”

  Mr. Chambers let out a deep belly laugh. The sound filled the room, and, in seconds, it turned into a roar. Liz laughed too and sat back down in her chair, waiting for the stranger’s reaction.

  The tall stranger peered down at Liz. “Something funny?”

  It took a few seconds for the Mr. Chambers to catch his breath. The wheezing led to an uncomfortable silence between the trio. The awkwardness hung in the air as the tall stranger looked back and forth between the old man and the young woman as he waited for the punchline of the unknown joke.

  Finally, Mr. Chambers caught his breath. “Liz is not a secretary. She’s our director of New Media.”

  The stranger’s face flushed with embarrassment. Liz wanted to bear-hug Mr. Chambers.

  Unfortunately, Liz’s victory didn’t last long. In seconds, the stranger had set a scowl back on his face.

  “You could have told me,” he snapped at her.

  She clenched her teeth. He should be apologizing. Instead, of turning his mistake into her fault.

  Liz tipped her head up at him and sat tall in her chair. “You never asked,” she reminded him.

  She expected him to have another comeback, again blaming her for their interaction. But he didn’t. “Fair enough,” he conceded. Liz nodded and knew it was as close to an apology as she was going to get from Mr. Icy.

  “Come here, son.” Mr. Chambers motioned the stranger toward his desk in the back of the room. After glaring at the tall man with the terrible manners, Liz put her earbuds in to give them some privacy. It was a rule that when someone had a meeting in the open office, the people who weren’t involved wouldn’t listen in.

  Five minutes later, Liz had finished Pride and Prejudice when the stranger brushed past her desk. Liz took her earbuds out immediately. She picked up her portfolio of current work and walked to Mr. Chambers’s desk. She needed approval on their newest social media ad campaign.

  Liz sat down in front of her boss and opened her portfolio of print copies of their ads, hoping the physical copies would make the digital ads seem more familiar.
She spread them in front of him. “What amazing work do you have for me today?”

  She handed him a pen to sign off on the work. “Just need your approval on a couple of ads.”

  “Oh, one second, Liz,” he whispered. He looked above her head, where the stranger was about to step out of the door. “Darcy, one more thing.”

  Wait. Did Mr. Chambers really call him Darcy? No way. Liz whipped around to face the stranger.

  Liz pulled her long hair over her right shoulder and interrupted their conversation without even thinking. “Your name is Darcy?” Liz asked the man. Her eyes grew wide as she processed that their first names were the same as the main characters of the book she finished.

  She stared at the unforgiving scowl on his face. In real life, Liz would never go for Darcy.

  Darcy flicked his eyes toward her. “Like I said, my mom was a fan.” Then his eyes fixed on Mr. Chambers. “Yes, sir?” he asked.

  “Darcy, tell your partner James I enjoyed meeting him. That’s all,” Mr. Chambers said, looking down at the papers Liz had put before him.

  “I will. You have my number if you need anything.” Darcy walked out of the door briskly.

  Liz turned to Mr. Chambers as he ran a finger meticulously over each ad. “Who was that man?”

  Chambers didn’t look up from the papers Liz had put in front of him. “I don’t know how to tell you this.” Liz glanced at the clock; only a few more minutes until the rest of the execs were coming back from lunch.

  Mr. Chambers set down his glasses on the desk. “I wanted to tell you earlier. I didn’t want to let you down.” As he talked, his eyes welled up with tears.

  Liz couldn’t breathe. She’d known Mr. Chambers since she was eleven; she had grown up playing with his daughter, Dee. He’d given her a job at his company ten years before, even though she didn’t have a college degree or any experience.

  In all that time, she’d never seen him cry.

  Liz waited, her stomach in knots, as he wiped a single tear off of his wrinkled cheek. “I’m selling the company,” he said.

  2.

  Darcy rolled the opening sentence from Pride and Prejudice around in his mind as he waited for his car service to pick him up at the red, brick building that was the home to Chambers’s Media. He knew the line by heart. His mom quoted Austen better than she cooked dinner.

  Unfortunately, for his mother, Austen lied. It wasn’t true. He wasn’t looking for a wife. At thirty-five, he was proud of the fact that he only dated; he never called a woman his girlfriend. He hated the word “girlfriend.” It sounded childish. If he ever liked a girl that much, he would just call her his wife.

  He picked up a wrapper from the sidewalk and flung it in a nearby trashcan as he waited. He couldn’t imagine answering to one of those girls—the whining, entitled set that always seem to be around the charity events he was forced to go to. The kind more for socializing than actually helping people.

  The last girl he had dated was Cassidy. She was tall, bony, and probably too young for him. Her dark hair hung down her back like silk. At the Chicago Philanthropic Association Ball, his best friend James had forced him to dance with her, and then she wouldn’t leave his side. At dinner, she had hardly eaten. What was it? A half a glass of chardonnay, a half a packet of Sweet’N Low, and a half a piece of bread.

  She clearly had a problem with halves. She even went by half of her name. “Call me Cas,” she had said. Women.

  Darcy thought about the woman Mr. Chambers called Liz. He knew his mother was in heaven, smiling at the thought of their names being the same as the main characters in her favorite book.

  That idea was as ridiculous as Cas. He’d come down to Georgia to do due diligence on the company his partner wanted to buy, not to meet a high-strung executive woman with an obvious chip on her shoulder. He scoffed, remembering her smirk when old man Chambers told him she wasn’t a secretary.

  It was an honest mistake! How was he to know?

  But if he were honest with himself, he should have known. There was something different about her. There was something behind her eyes.

  Darcy could tell Liz wasn’t a girl looking at him, trying to assess how much he was worth. Instead, her dark eyes evaluated every word he said, as if, at any second, she could outsmart him, tear his words apart. Darcy shook his head. He didn’t want to think about her anymore.

  He picked up another piece of trash, and by the time his driver finally pulled up, he could feel beads of sweat dripping down his forehead. He was never using this car service again. The sooner he could get out of Savannah, the better. He didn’t want to see quaint, moss-covered trees anymore; he only wanted to see the cold, tall, metal skyline of Chicago. If he stayed here any longer, he’d have to start wearing linen. Or, even worse, seersucker.

  3.

  “What did you think of the great Mr. Chambers?” James plopped down in front of Darcy’s desk.

  James pushed his shaggy strawberry-blonde hair out of his eyes, waiting for Darcy to respond.

  “You’ve got to get your haircut, man. We’re thirty-five.” Darcy still couldn’t believe they were thirty-five. It seemed like only a few months had passed since Darcy’s parents suddenly died in a car crash and he asked James to help him pick up the pieces at Pemberley Media, but it had been four years.

  “I’m still making it work,” James shook his long mop. “What did you think of his company? I’ve got a great feeling about this one.”

  “This is the first company we’ve even looked at, James. Do not get invested.”

  At Pemberley Media’s last board meeting, one of Darcy’s board members had suggested he expand into another part of the country. Only a few days later, James had met Mr. Chambers in an airport bar, and he became obsessed with buying the man’s company and expanding their reach out of Chicago and into the South. James called it fate; Darcy called it hasty.

  “It’s not what we’re looking for,” Darcy ran his hand down the length of his tie. And it wasn’t. Darcy wasn’t sure about the South. He wasn’t sure about Savannah. And he wasn’t sure about the profits and expenses for Chambers’s Media.

  “Of course it is! He’s old, but look at what he’s built!”

  That was what Darcy couldn’t shake. Chambers was old school. He still did print advertising and was moving into digital marketing at a snail’s pace. But despite his archaic methods, he still boasted the biggest clients in town, and his office was full of employees.

  “I need to look at the numbers.” Numbers were Darcy’s job, numbers and making sure James didn’t bankrupt the company. James was great at ideas and making connections with people, but Darcy made sure they would actually work.

  James shifted in his seat, his affable grin fading.

  “What?” Darcy asked.

  James picked up a silver pen from the top of Darcy’s desk and started twirling it through his fingers. “Well, I’ve been talking to Chambers for a couple months now, and I may have promised him this was a done deal,” James said.

  Tap. Tap. Tap. Heels clicked down the tile floor outside Darcy’s office. James turned his head quickly to see their newest intern, a young woman in a striped jumpsuit, walk past Darcy’s office. “Hello, Amelia,” James shouted after the girl, practically leaping out of his seat.

  Darcy could feel his blood pressure start to rise. “James,” Darcy hissed. “Do not.”

  James twisted to face Darcy and pushed his hair out of his eyes before he spoke. “Darcy, that no-dating policy your dad created is older than Mr. Chambers.”

  Darcy grabbed the pen out of James’s hand. “It’s my father’s policy. And it’s been working fine for decades.” Darcy had a no-tolerance policy on interoffice relationships. He had swiftly fired their last VP of Finance after he had an affair with one of their newest employees.

  A grin crossed James’ face. “I know you won’t get rid of me, Darcy. You would have to talk to people yourself.” He winked and walked toward the door.

  “Get y
our hair cut,” Darcy told his friend as James walked into the hallway. Darcy leaned back in his chair and put the Chambers's Media prospectus in his lap. He slammed his feet up on his desk on top of the Savannah newspaper.

  He opened the binder and prayed the numbers worked like Chambers promised. He scanned the profits and loss statement, and within seconds, he knew they didn’t.

  In the past fifteen years, Darcy had looked through the books of thousands of companies, and he could automatically spot which ventures were profitable and which were money pits.

  He thought back to his visit in Savannah. He’d counted nine desks in the executive office, and twenty-two in the rest of the building, thirty-one total.

  Darcy looked at the budget. And at the bottom, after all the adverting expenses and building costs, was the problem. Employee salaries. Unless the office was only half full, the reported cost wasn’t high enough to cover all his employee salaries.

  He thought back to the office, visualizing the desks. Each one contained personal artifacts, which meant they were fully staffed.

  Darcy sighed, shut the prospectus, and closed his eyes. He didn’t know what was going on, but at best, Chambers’s Media had an atrocious accountant, at worst fraudulent. Darcy put his hands behind his head, still leaning back in his chair, and felt proud of his instincts and happy he didn’t have to go back to Savannah.

  4.

  Liz loved everything about Savannah, Georgia: the moss-covered trees covering the streets like canopies, the quaint town squares, and the gorgeous historic real estate. It was the kind of town where anything was possible—carriage rides, buried treasure, even ghosts. Where even a girl who had only a year and a half of college credit and no marketing experience could work her way up to Director of New Media of the biggest multi-media company in town.

  It was everything she’d imagined coming from the small town of Sugar Hill, Georgia, where the only stop light dangled from a wire, searching for the perfect victim to crush.