Bound by a Child

“What did I do to make you so adversarial toward me?” he asked, turning back to her as the waitress left.

“Why do you care?”

“I’m tired of always arguing with you. In fact, that brings me back to my reason for tracking you down,” he said.

“What reason?”

“I’d like to buy you out. Your shares in Infinity Games are now worth a lot of money, and we both know you don’t want to work for my cousin Kell or me. I’ll make you a fair offer.”

She sat there in shock as his words sank in. Did he think her family heritage meant so little to her? When she thought of how her dad and grandfather had always been so busy at work that they’d never been around...well, hell, no, she wasn’t selling. Especially not to a Montrose heir. “Never. I’d give them away before I sold to you.”

He shrugged. “I just thought I’d save all of us a lot of frustration. You don’t seem to be really interested in working for the merged company.”

“I’m not selling,” she said one more time, just in case he had any illusion that she was going to walk away easily. “I’m planning to keep my job and make you and your cousins eat your words.”

“What words?”

“That Emma and I are expendable. Don’t deny that you believe it.”

She and her older sister still had to prove themselves if they wanted to keep their jobs. Sure, they were shareholders, so they’d always have an ownership stake in the company, but their actual jobs were on the line. Their younger sister, Cari, had already jumped through hoops for the Montrose cousins and had ended up keeping her position and falling in love with one of them.

Declan Montrose was now engaged to her, though three months ago he’d arrived at Infinity Games to manage the merger of the two companies, which meant he was there to fire the Chandler sisters. But Cari had turned the tables on him, revealing that he was the father of her eighteen-month-old son as a result of a brief affair they’d had. This had been a big surprise to everyone on both sides of the merger. It had been an interesting time, to say the least, but in the end she and Dec had fallen in love and Cari had managed to save her job at the newly merged Playtone-Infinity Games.

“I wasn’t going to deny it,” Allan said. “The situation with both you and Emma is different than the one with Cari. When she approached Dec and I with her ideas for saving the staff at Infinity Games she was happy to listen to our ideas, as well.”

His words hurt; Jessi wasn’t going to lie about that. But Cari was known for being the caring sister, and Jessi, well, she’d always been the rebel, the ballbuster. But that didn’t mean she was emotionless. She wanted to see her family’s legacy in video games continue; after all, Gregory Chandler had been a pioneer in the industry in the seventies and eighties. “I have a few ideas that I’ve been working on.”

“Share them with me,” Allan invited, glancing again at his phone.

“Why?” she asked.

“To see if you’re sincere about wanting to keep your position. No more lame ideas like sending out Infinity-Playtone game characters to make appearances at malls. You’re head of marketing and we expect more than that.”

“It wasn’t—” she said, but in her heart she knew it sort of was. She didn’t want Playtone-Infinity to be successful so she’d...shot herself in the foot. “Okay, maybe it was a little lame.”

“What else do you have in mind? You’re too smart not to have something big,” he said, staring at her with that intense gaze of his.

“Was that actually a compliment?”

“Don’t act so surprised. You’re very good at your job and we both know you know it. Talk to me, Jessi.”

She hesitated. She was good, and she wasn’t ever as tentative as she felt right now. It was just that she’d been beaten and felt like it today. “I don’t... What can you do?”

“Decide if it’s worth my time to help you,” he said at last.

“Why?”

“Our best friends are married and we’re their daughter’s godparents. I can’t just let Kell fire you without at least making some sort of effort to help,” he said. “Patti and John would never forgive me.”

“Then why offer to buy me out?”

“It would solve the problem and we’d both be able to walk away from this.”

“It would,” Jessi said. “But that’s not happening.”

She rubbed the back of her neck. She didn’t like anything about this merger but she also didn’t relish the idea of being fired. “I’m one person who wouldn’t be swayed by your bank account.”

He shrugged off her comment and for a moment looked pensive.

“It bothers you that I sent the jet to pick you and Patti up that first time we met, doesn’t it?” he asked, leaning back and glancing at his iPhone, but quickly looking back at Jessi, which earned him a few more points toward being a good guy.

She took a swallow of her gin and tonic. “Yes. It felt like you were trying too hard. I mean, offering your private jet to fly us to Paris...that was showing off.”

“Maybe I just wanted Patti to have a proposal she’d always remember. You and I both know that John doesn’t earn what I earn. I was just helping my friend out.”

“I know. It was romantic. I admit I didn’t behave as well as I could have.... I guess I can be a bit of a brat.”

“Well, you certainly were that weekend,” he said, leaning in so that she caught a whiff of his spicy aftershave.

She closed her eyes for a minute and acknowledged that if she didn’t keep Allan in the adversary category, there was a part of her that would be attracted to him. He was the only person—man or woman—she’d ever met whom she could go head-to-head with and still talk to the next day. He understood that winning was important to her and didn’t get mad when she won. He just got even, which, to be fair, appealed to her as much as it irritated her.

“But that’s in the past. Let’s work together. I think you and Emma probably have a lot to contribute to the newly merged company.”

“Probably? Jeez, that sounds encouraging,” she said, taking another sip of her drink.

“I’m trying here,” he said.

“Well, I’ve got a few feelers out in the movie industry. There are three new action movies coming next summer that I think are good matches for the type of games that we develop, which might be enough lead time to get a really good game out.” Given that the merged company was not only a prime video game developer for consoles like Xbox and PlayStation, but also had a thriving app business for smartphones and tablets, making games with movie tie-ins was a naturally good idea. Infinity Games had never pursued this line of business before, but since the takeover, Jessi and her sisters had been thinking outside the box.

“That’s a great idea. I have some contacts in that area if you’d like me to use them,” Allan offered.

“Really?”

“Yes,” he said. “It’s in my best interest to help you.”

“Is it?”

“I’m the CFO, Jessi. Anything that affects the bottom line concerns me.”

“Of course it does,” she said.

She was torn. A part of her wanted to accept his help, but this was Allan McKinney, and she didn’t trust him. It wasn’t just that he’d thrown around his money as if the stuff grew on trees; it was also that she hadn’t been able to find out much about him from her private investigator, whom she’d hired to check out John when Patti had first met him. What the detective had turned up about Allan...well, frankly, it had all seemed too good to be true.

No one had the kind of happy, pampered existence the P.I. had found when he dug into Allan’s past. It was too clean, too...perfect. There was something he’d been hiding, but none of that had mattered at the time, since John McCoy was the main subject of the investigation and he’d turned out to be a good guy.

Maybe Jessi should ask Orly, her P.I., to start digging again. When it came to Allan, there had been too few leads and many closed doors the first time around. Given what had happened with Playtone and Infinity, and that she’d recently had Allan’s cousin Dec investigated, too, maybe it was time to ask Orly to find out what more he could about Allan.

“Sure, I’d love your help,” she said.