16. Flora

Flora

“ L awsuit? What lawsuit?”

David looked at me with his cold, hostile eyes. God, he was such a dick. Maybe he’d always been that way, but his behavior seemed to go from bad to worse after I became the CEO. For some reason he seemed convinced that he was more qualified to run the company than I was, and he made no secret of that belief.

“Pure Nature is suing us. They claim that we engaged in industrial espionage and stole their proprietary formula for our green tea anti-aging cream.”

I shrugged, purposely making it look like the news wasn’t upsetting to me, even though it was.

“Obviously it’s a frivolous suit,” I said calmly. “They’ve seen the success of that particular product and now they’re cranky about it. We’ll deal with it.”

“At least your father was a lawyer,” he sneered. “He understood the legal implications of these kinds of lawsuits.”

“Well fortunately we have very good attorneys on retainer so I don’t need to understand the minutia. Now if there’s nothing else, I’m sure I have a meeting right now, isn’t that right, Amy?”

Amy stared at me like a deer in the headlights. I got it, Richardson was intimidating as hell, and he hadn’t been nice to her. Not that it was personal. He treated all the support staff like shit.

“We need to review the ad layout with marketing,” Teresa said, giving Richardson a pointed look. “If you’ll excuse us.”

David glared at her, then turned to me. “Who the hell is this?”

“David, meet my personal assistant Teresa. Teresa, this is our CFO David Richardson.”

He pointed at Amy. “I thought this one is your assistant.”

“I have two assistants now.”

“Who approved that?” he demanded.

“Me,” I said sharply. “The CEO and majority owner of the company. Now if you’ll excuse us David, we have a very busy day ahead of us and I’m sure you have work to do as well.”

His eyes blazed at the reminder that I was his boss.

He stomped out, not even pretending to be polite, slamming the door behind him. When I looked over at poor Amy she looked like she was about to cry.

“I’m so sorry Miss Meyer, I told him he couldn’t just hijack you like that.”

“It’s not your fault Amy. Could you please check in with Legal and get me a copy of the lawsuit, and set up a meeting for them to discuss options with me this afternoon?” I requested. “You might need to reschedule something else to make it work.”

“I’m on it Miss Meyer,” she said. “Anything else?”

“Could you please place a lunch order too Amy?” Teresa said, her voice kind and respectful. “I’d like to have us get a standing order to make sure that Miss Meyer gets her lunch every day.”

“Of course Teresa. Thank you.”

I sat down in my chair and unpacked my laptop, letting out a long breath. “I guess it’s going to be a good day.”

Teresa and I went to our respective workstations, both of us getting down to business. At one point I looked over and she was scowling at the screen. As if she felt me watching her, she looked up, her face softening as soon as she glanced in my direction.

“I’m doing a deeper dive on that asshole Richardson,” she told me. “I don’t like that guy.”

“He’s a good CFO,” I said, not sure why I was defending him. “At least that’s what my father always told me.”

To be honest, I wasn’t sure that I agreed but I’d been too busy learning how to run this company on my own to worry about finding a new CFO. If he kept acting rude and insubordinate, I was going to have to address that problem sooner rather than later.

“He’s involved in something shady, I can sense it,” she said. “Just give me some time, I’ll figure it out.”

The rest of the day passed quickly. I was in meetings most of the day, and other than when Flora forced me to eat the Cobb salad that Amy brought me, I didn’t take a break all day. My last meeting of the day was with our attorneys, who agreed that the lawsuit seemed frivolous.

“We should be able to get it thrown out pretty quickly,” my chief legal counsel Abraham Jacobson assured me. “Honestly I’m surprised that their counsel even agreed to this. They have zero evidence of espionage.”

“Let’s make sure,” I said.

I looked over at Teresa who was pretending to take notes. “Can we run some searches to see if any of our employees have any connection to Pure Nature?”

Abraham sent me a surprised look, but didn’t comment.

“On it, boss,” Teresa reassured me.

It was funny, she’d only been with me for three days now and I’d already come to rely on her. I wondered if she’d be interested in leaving Sapphic Security when this was all over, then immediately dismissed the idea. A woman like Teresa would never be content to be some woman’s assistant sitting in an office all day. She was coiled energy and had an adventurous streak that I could never hope to satisfy with some boring office job.

The truth was I liked her. I was attracted to her for sure, much more than I’d ever been to any other woman, but I also liked her as a person. I trusted her implicitly, although I couldn’t say why. It was like I knew her somehow, not as an employee or someone I thought was hot, but like we’d been friends for a long time. It was totally weird, but the more time I spent with her, the more connected I felt.

I’d loved waking up next to her this morning, and that kiss… I didn’t even have words to describe it. If Teresa hadn’t reminded me that we needed to get to work, I would have been tempted to see how far we could go.

My phone beeped with a text from my friend Julia mid-afternoon, reminding me that we had dinner plans. I looked over at Teresa.

“I’m having dinner with my friend Julia tonight,” I said.

Her brows lowered and she glared at me. “Who’s Julia?”

For a second I wondered if she was jealous, as ridiculous as that was.

“She’s my best friend.”

“I haven’t run a background check on her. What’s her last name?” Teresa demanded.

“You’re not running a background check on my best friend,” I said. “We’ve known each other since the first grade. She’s very wealthy in her own right and engaged to the CEO of Tech Express. Trust me, she has no reason to murder me.”

“She’s engaged?” Teresa confirmed.

Her fixation on that one detail made me wonder if what I’d seen before really had been jealousy. I felt a rush of pleasure.

“Yeah, and straight. I told her you were coming with us.”

“Good girl.”

God help me I should not like it when she said that, yet I did like it. I liked it a lot. Teresa raised an eyebrow and gave me a tiny smirk, telling me that she’d cued into that fact as well. I ignored her and returned to my computer.

We left the office around six and headed over to Pedro’s. It was a hole in the wall Mexican restaurant that we’d discovered years ago when Julia lived in this neighborhood. I was often recognized when I went out in Seattle, so it was nice to be some place where no one knew who I was. Pedro’s was a place where I could just enjoy a meal without someone trying to convince me to invest in their company or let them handle my portfolio.

Julia was already seated in our favorite booth in the back when we arrived. Teresa looked around, then pulled out her phone, tapping out a quick message.

“What’s wrong?” I asked as we crossed the bar.

“I want another set of eyes here,” she said. “There are too many variables.”

I wasn’t going to argue. She knew this stuff better than I did.

“Flora-Bora!” Julia jumped out of the booth, pulling me into a tight hug that made all the tension of the day immediately drain out of my body. “I’ve missed you babe.”

“I’ve missed you too,” I said, giving her a squeeze. “This is my… this is Teresa.”

Julia shook Teresa’s hand and gave her a smile. “Wow, you look way different than any bodyguards I’ve worked with.”

When she looked back at me, her gaze was teasing. “This reminds me of that book we read in book club last year. You know what they say about life imitating fiction.”

I knew exactly what she was talking about, a book where a super hot bodyguard fell in love with an heiress he was providing security for. The book had been steamy enough that even as a lesbian I’d enjoyed it immensely.

“Shut up.”