Page 36 of The Spare
“I guess.” Xander rounded the counter and sat beside me. “Make sure he comes back this time?”
I laughed, squeezed his shoulder, and pushed myself up.
I was taking the photograph to Marcus’s office, and Xander could go get it when he was ready. That way, I knew they had to talk again. It was a way to force them together when they were too stubborn to do it themselves.
That was the only reason. It wasn’t that I wanted to see him and needed an excuse.
Marcus
I looked at my emails to see we’d just completed another leveraged buyout of a German nanotech company. It took longer than planned. Something about being back was distracting me. I was yanked from my thoughts by a familiar voice on the other side of my office door.
“Is he free?”
My mood lightened.
The door opened. Sloan walked in, and I got up to shut the door behind her. Her hair swept back and brushed forward with the door’s movement.
“I didn’t know Carter worked for you. We went to high school together,” she said offhandedly. Her arms were wrapped around a large frame. The picture, however, was pressed against her, and I couldn’t see it.
“Who?” I asked, suddenly annoyed. She must have seen someone she knew.
Over the past few weeks, I was confronted with a lot of annoying little truths I’d forgotten. One of them was that Sloan was a magnet for high-society assholes. Every man at the Augustus club between the ages of twenty-five and forty found it appropriate to ask me or Henry if Sloan was seeing anyone.
It was maddening, and choking the life out of every single one of them was largely impractical. I had to deal with it.
She laughed when she turned to me. “Nobody of any consequence.”
“You look nice.” I flinched at the word. She looked like a force of nature that threatened to destroy every shred of resistance I had. Nice felt more appropriate.
“Jeez, you and that word.” She rolled her eyes and took a seat in front of my desk.
“How was the date?” I asked.
“CeCe says hello.”
As I walked past her, she handed me the frame. “You stole this.” I resisted the pull at the side of my cheek and sat down at my desk. It was a picture of the four of us after Sloan’s law school graduation.
There were some memories I could hardly recall, but others were etched deep into my mind. For some reason, Sloan’s law school graduation was a day I remembered with perfect clarity.
“Borrowed,” she corrected. Her smile brightened the room. “He’ll get it when he’s ready.”
We all had a copy of the small four-by-six photo that Sloan’s mother took. She must’ve assumed mine was lost somewhere. Sloan had hers and Xander’s enlarged and framed. I was holding Xander’s.
“That’s why you stopped by? Ransom?” I ignored the disappointment. Why else would she have stopped by, if not for something Xander related?
Things were getting better with my little brother. I didn’t expect him to forgive my absence overnight. But he needed a push, and Sloan was often the one to administer those. She did things like that a lot—everything she could to keep our little group together. I was sure it was for Xander’s benefit; nobody handled monumental changes well, and least of all him.
She shook her head. "Well, that's not theonlyreason I came by."
"No?" An unfamiliar excitement shot through me.
"If my coup is going to work, I'll need a head on a platter to present to the board." Our eyes locked, and a sly smile grew along her mouth. "Yours would do."
“How generous of you.”
“No queen can stage a coup without keeping her military generals happy. And the board would be mine. No better way to win their favor than giving them our biggest competition.”
"That's big talk," I teased and leaned back in my chair. I tried not to picture all the ways she could convince me to give up my company. "You'd have to either convince me to step aside or force me out."
