It Happened in Manhattan: Affair with the Rebel Heiress / The Billionaire's Bidding / Tall, Dark & Cranky

Eight

From the blog of New York gossip columnist Suzy Snark:

Fiddling while Rome burned. Polishing the brass on the Titanic. Both phrases imply great negligence in the face of disaster. New Yorkers may want to add a new idiom to that list: Getting a massage while your company is being bought out.

I know, we usually eschew the nitty gritty business details for outright gossip, but this tidbit was too salacious to keep to myself. Besides, the business geniuses at FMJ have scheduled a press conference for this afternoon to announce their acquisition of Biedermann Jewelry. I thought you might want something to consider while they’re trying to convince their stockholders it’s a good thing they’re squandering their own resources to bail out Ford Langley’s girlfriend.

Readers will be shocked to learn that while Biedermann Jewelry stock prices continue to plummet, heiress Kitty Biedermann continues to receive daily spa treatments. Sources say she spends upward of two thousand dollars a week on mani-pedis and facials. In a time when her personal finances must be taking a hit, that’s got to hurt.

Is the heiress addicted to pampering? Is she simply careless? Or is there something else going on here? Perhaps she sold all her Biedermann stock back when it was still worth something. Too bad she didn’t see fit to tip the rest of us off, as well.

“Is any of this new blog true at all?” Ford asked.

She glanced at the image on his iPhone. Her stomach clenched at the sight of the scarlet swirl at the top of the screen. Another Suzy Snark blog. Just what she needed.

“Ah,” she quipped, trying to sound completely blasé. “Suzy Snark. What fun.” “Have you read it?” “I don’t read trash.”

He held out the iPhone. “You need to read this.”

Panic clutched her stomach. Her gaze darted from the phone to his face. She wanted nothing to do with any of that rubbish.

“Why don’t you try to sum it up for me?” she suggested in her best spoiled-brat voice.

“It accuses you of negligence.” Ford continued to hold out the phone as if he expected that to be all the encouragement she needed.

Though her heart seemed to stutter in her chest, she didn’t reach for the phone. What exactly had Suzy Snark discovered?

Ford continued, his tone full of exasperation. “She says you’ve been spending your days at the spa. Getting massages and pedicures when you should be working.”

“Is that all?” Her heart started thudding again, a rapid tattoo she was sure Ford would be able to hear.

“What do you mean ‘is that all?’ Is there more?” he demanded. “Is there something you’re not telling me?”

Instead of answering, she tried to sidestep the question. “It’s just a stupid gossip blog. You and Jonathon place entirely too much importance on what this woman writes. What does it even matter?”

He shoved his phone back in his pocket. “It matters. It may just be a gossip blog, but who knows how many people read it. This woman maligns you every chance she gets. Has it occurred to you that Suzy Snark may be the reason Biedermann’s stock is in free fall?”

She sucked in a breath. “No. It hasn’t.”

“I did some preliminary research. Every time she posts about you, the stock price dips. Starting with today’s press conference, we’re going to defend you against this woman’s lies. Now why don’t you—”

But he must have seen the truth in her expression, because Ford broke off. He studied her in silence for a moment before slowly shaking his head. “She’s not lying, is she?”

“I wouldn’t know. I didn’t read the blog.”

Ford ignored her comment. “Is she right? Have you really been spending hours of every workday at the spa?”

“I’m not going to defend myself to you.”

“You’re going to have to defend yourself to someone. The fact that you haven’t denied any of this makes me think it must be true.”

“What is it you want me to admit to? Going to the spa sometimes? Fine, I do that. Every woman I know gets regular manicures and pedicures. Most men I know, too. It’s not a crime.”

“No. But if you’re doing it during office hours, every day, then it looks bad. It looks like you’re not doing your job. It looks like you don’t care about the company. And if you don’t care about it, then why should anyone else?”

“Is that what you think? That I don’t care about Biedermann’s? I would do anything for Biedermann’s.”

“So you keep saying. But, frankly, I’m not seeing it.”

“Are you kidding me? Since I took over as CEO, I’ve poured everything I have into this business. I’ve spent every waking moment trying to educate myself on how to be the best CEO I can. I’ve listened to every damn business book published in the last decade, from Barbarians at the Gate to The 4-Hour Workweek, none of which have been remotely helpful, by the way. I’ve worked eighty-hour weeks. I’ve abandoned my social life completely.

“None of that made any difference. The stock price just kept going down. So I decided to buy whatever stock I could in hopes of keeping the price up. I liquidated all of my assets. Sold everything I had. Furniture, art, jewelry. Things that had been in the family for generations. I quietly auctioned it off piece by piece. A year ago, I moved out of the townhouse where I grew up, where Biedermanns had lived for over a hundred years. I sold it and moved into a walk-up.”

To her embarrassment, her voice, which had been rising in pitch steadily, broke on the word walk-up. She knew where she lived was the least of her worries, but somehow it signified all the things wrong in her life.

Knowing she was being ridiculous didn’t make it sting any less when he said, “Come on, you make it sound like life without a doorman just isn’t worth living. Surely it’s not that bad.”

“Have you ever lived without a doorman?” she asked.

“I live in a craftsman remodel down by campus in Palo Alto,” he deadpanned. “I’ve never had a doorman in my life.”

“Well, I now live on the fourth floor in a building without an elevator. I grew up with staff, for cripes sake. Our housekeeper worked for my family for forty-five years. After I let Maggie go, she couldn’t even afford to pay the tuition for her granddaughter’s college.”

Maggie had been like family. No, more than that. To a girl who’d never known her mother, Maggie had been family. And Kitty had had to fire her. Sweet Maggie had tried to comfort her, made her hot tea and murmured optimist platitudes like, I’ve always wanted to travel. Maggie had been too proud to accept a handout once she was no longer employed, so Kitty had done the only thing she could do. She’d tracked down Maggie’s granddaughter and hired her at Biedermann’s.

“Then why did you sell the house?” Ford was asking her. “And if you had to sell it, why not move someplace nicer?”

At his question, she bumped her chin up defiantly.

“Because,” she shot back. “When the stock price started to drop, I couldn’t just stand by and do nothing. So I bought as much as I could. And then when it kept dropping, I couldn’t even pay the taxes on the townhouse. Selling the house was the only option.”

“You should never have invested your personal assets in—”

“I know that, okay?” she snapped. “I was trying to help Biedermann’s and I made a stupid mistake. I’m really good at making stupid mistakes, thank you very much.”

It was just one of many, many stupid mistakes. Sometimes she felt buried under the weight of them.

“I’m just trying to—” he began.

But she cut him off with a belligerent glare. “I don’t need your help.”

He talked over her protests. “If Biedermann’s really does go under, you’ll have lost everything.”

What could she say to that? All she could do was shake her head and blink back the tears. “If Biedermann’s really does go under, then I’ve lost everything anyway.”

But that wasn’t entirely true anymore, was it? She’d have the baby. She’d have the family she’d always wanted. It was a small consolation that was turning into everything.

“So tell me this,” he said. “If you’re so desperate to keep Biedermann’s afloat, why this elaborate act? Why don’t you want anyone to know what you’re doing? Why spend your days at the spa getting massages and facials? You’ve got to know how bad that looks.”

She met his gaze. “I can’t—” she began before breaking off. Then she swept a hand across her forehead, pushing her hair out of her face. “I can’t explain that.”

“Well, try. Make me understand what’s going on here. Give me something, anything, that makes this make sense.”

“This is just what I do.”

Whenever the influx of written material got too much to handle, she took Casey, went to the spa and had her assistant read aloud to her. The paperwork was so overwhelming. Business documents were the worst. She just couldn’t wrap her head around the pages and pages of words. Listening to them read aloud helped. But what kind of CEO had her assistant read everything aloud? Christ, it was like she was a preschooler at story time. How could she explain that to Ford?

Instead she said, “It’s like a … a coping mechanism or something.”

“You mean the massages are a way of relieving stress?”

She all but threw up her hands in frustration. “No. I mean, I was raised never to reveal my weaknesses. You always have to keep up appearances.”

“I don’t understand.”

“No. Of course you wouldn’t. My mother died when I was young. My father was completely loving and indulgent, but Biedermann’s always came first, so he wasn’t around a lot. I was raised by my grandmother, who was already well into her sixties when I was born. It . . “

She struggled for words. Finally she finished with, “It made for an unusual upbringing. I grew up in the 1990s, but really, it’s like I was raised in the 1950s. To my grandmother, appearances were everything. I know she loved me, but in the world she lived in, you never let anyone see your weaknesses. You never aired your dirty laundry.”

And a child with a disability—a child who was imperfect—was the ultimate dirty laundry. She’d been such an embarrassment to her whole family. Such a disappointment. How could she stand disappointing anyone else?

“So, going to the spa is your way of whistling in the graveyard? Of pretending everything is okay when it obviously isn’t? You’re not fooling anyone.”

“I fooled you, didn’t I?”

“You didn’t fool me so much as make me doubt your sanity.” His words were like a slap. He must have regretted them, because he sighed and scrubbed a hand down his face. “Look, you’ve got to defend yourself against Suzy Snark’s allegations. Whoever she is, you’ve got to let people know she’s wrong about you.”

“And tell them what? That I was completely unprepared to take over as CEO? That I have no discernible leadership skills? That I have nothing to offer the company at all? How would admitting any of that help matters?”

“At least people would know you cared,” he said finally.

Then she sighed, suddenly exhausted by the conversation. “My pride is all I have left.”

For someone who’d lived her life in the public eye, Kitty seemed surprisingly nervous during the press conference. He doubted that anyone in the press noticed.

They stood side by side, along with Jonathon and Marty, a united front against the questions of the press. After he’d made the initial speech about FMJ’s decision to acquire Biedermann Jewelry, Jonathon had stepped forward to outline the basis of FMJ’s financial plan for Biedermann’s.

As Jonathon spoke, Ford stopped listening. It was all stuff they’d discussed before. Instead he focused his attention on Kitty. She stood beside him, dressed in a gray pin-striped dress that wrapped around her waist. It managed to mimic the feel of a business suit, but its curve-hugging lines looked outrageously feminine. Her hair fell in dark, glossy waves, shadowing one side of her face. Bright red lipstick highlighted the bow of her lips. She looked like she’d stepped out of a Maxim photo shoot. A teenage boy’s idea of how a woman should look in the workplace. A sexpot in a business suit.

Probably every man in the audience was mentally undressing her.

Hell, he wasn’t a teenager and even his body had leaped in response to the sight of her. He’d had to battle some primitive urge to drape his jacket around her shoulders and bundle her back to her office, where he could strip her dress from her body and worship her like an acolyte.

At least until he’d noticed how nervous she was. Outwardly, she seemed fine. More than fine, actually. The press no doubt saw the confident, beautiful—if a little overblown—woman that she intended for them to see. That he’d seen at first glance.

It was only at second glance that the illusion began to slip. Her smile, though open and alluring, was a little stiff. It was too unwavering. There was no play about her lips.

This wasn’t just nerves. This was perfectly contained, well-schooled nerves. This was someone who spent a great deal of time and energy learning to hide her panic.

The idea that Kitty—so composed, so polished and poised—might be fighting panic knocked him off balance. So off balance, in fact, that he let the press conference go on much longer than it should have.

Before he knew it, there was a blond reporter who looked about twenty-two saying, “Ms. Biedermann, when your father died unexpectedly last year, you were obviously woefully unprepared to take over as CEO of Biedermann Jewelry. Can you explain why you insisted on serving in a position you have neither the skill nor the training to hold? And furthermore, how do you answer allegations that it’s your gross incompetence that has led to Biedermann’s current predicament?”

Ford kept waiting for Kitty to interrupt the reporter. Sure, Kitty was obviously nervous. But he’d seen the subtle signs of nervousness from her on other occasions in which she’d gone on to cheerfully lambaste him.

From what he’d seen, Kitty never backed down from a fight and never took crap from anyone. So he was blindsided when the reporter made it past the phrase “woefully unprepared” without getting the verbal equivalent of a body slam. Why wasn’t Kitty defending herself?

By the time he heard the phrase “gross incompetence” he was done waiting for Kitty to don her own boxing gloves. He stepped up to the microphone. “If there are any signs of gross incompetence, I haven’t seen them. FMJ would not have invested this kind of money in a company whose leadership we questioned.”

“Then is FMJ merely investing in Biedermann’s?” a different reporter asked. “Or can we expect you to do your signature restructuring and complete overhaul?”

“We’ll be announcing some very exciting things for the stores soon.” He flashed his best charming smile. “I promise you this, within a year everyone in this room will be shopping at Biedermann’s.”

“And about rumors that this acquisition is fueled by a romantic relationship between you and Ms. Biedermann?” This question was again from the annoying blond.

Ford shot Kitty a glance to see if she was finally going to light into the woman, only to see Kitty still had that deer-in-the-headlights look.

So he ducked his head and gave the reporters his most boyishly mischievous smile. “Well, you found me out. This is all just a ruse to ask Kitty Biedermann out on a date. I figured a techie geek from California like me wouldn’t have a shot with a blue blood like Kitty Biedermann. Hell, I couldn’t even get her to return my phone calls before.” A chuckle rumbled through the audience of reporters. “But seriously, my relationship with Ms. Biedermann is purely professional. On my first night in town she took pity on me and allowed me to accompany her to the Children’s Medical Foundation fundraiser. We attended as business colleagues.”

“So you’re not the father of her baby?”

“Ms. Biedermann’s personal life is a private matter. Let’s keep this about business.”

And with that, Jonathon took the cue to wrap up the press conference. A few minutes later, Ford guided Kitty out the room and whisked her up to her office. By the time he had her alone, his shock had given way to anger.

“What the hell was that?” he asked even as he slammed the door shut behind them.

She spun around, her eyes wide. “What?”

“The way you behaved out there with the press.

That’s what.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” she stammered.

She pressed a palm to her stomach as if to still the fluttering in her belly. He grabbed her by the wrist and held her hand out between them. “Look at you. You’re shaking.”

She jerked her hand away and thrust it behind her back. “So what if I am? Those things make me nervous.”

“Yeah. I noticed. But that’s no excuse for letting that reporter walk all over you.”

Kitty glared at him. “What was I supposed to do?”

“You were supposed to defend yourself.”

“How could I defend myself? She was badgering me with questions. There was nothing I could do.”

“Kitty, I’ve watched you go toe-to-toe with a drunken rancher twice your size. Hell, every time we meet you try to rip me a new one. You know how to hold your own in a fight. That ninety-pound reporter shouldn’t have had a chance.”

She turned away, obviously searching for an explanation that would placate him. Finally she said simply, “That reporter was telling the truth.”

“About us?” he asked. “We agreed what happened between us is nobody’s business but our own. If you had a problem lying in a press conference, you should have told me that before—”

“Not about us,” she interrupted. “About me.” Again she turned away from him, but this time he sensed it was because she couldn’t bring herself to meet his gaze. “All those things she said about me were true.”

“Kitty—”

“About me being ‘woefully unprepared.’” There was a disparaging sneer in her voice. “About my gross incompetence. It’s all true.”

He stared at the stiff lines of her back, barely comprehending her words. She looked like someone waiting to be hit.

For a moment he could only stare at her while he sorted through his confusion. “What do you mean? You’re not incompetent.”