Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 103719 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 519(@200wpm)___ 415(@250wpm)___ 346(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103719 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 519(@200wpm)___ 415(@250wpm)___ 346(@300wpm)
“I’m your only buyer, Catherine.”
C.P. didn’t pause. “No, you’re not. And don’t get up. I’ll let myself out—”
“You’re going to regret this.”
She paused at the conference room door. After a moment, she looked back at him. He was still in that chair, but he’d sat back again and recrossed his legs, knee to knee. In fact, Gunnar Rhobes was looking so superior, he might as well have been standing up and looming over her.
“No, I’m not going to regret anything,” she said. “You’ve got your first rule wrong, you see. The number one thing to keep in mind at the negotiation table is don’t try to force the hand of someone who has nothing to lose.”
Those eyes darkened. “So you’ve declared war, have you.”
“We’re both capitalists. Did you think this was a tea party?” She nodded at him and opened the way out. “Enjoy your day, Rhobes. None of us know how many we have left—which is the point of my research.”
As she walked off, she got lost in thoughts of strategy, but they were interrupted by a drumbeat that made no sense—until a pair of suits came pounding down the hallway. The men didn’t look at her, and as they shot by her, she glanced over her shoulder. With their jackets open, the flapping made it seem like they had pin-striped capes.
Lawyers as superheroes. What kind of DC Universe was that? And there was satisfaction in knowing that something was going wrong in Rhobes’s world.
When she got out to reception, C.P. went to the elevator and called down for her car on her cell. Just as she hung up, the doors opened, and she caught sight of her reflection in the mirrored panels as she stepped in. Her blond hair was in a perfect swoop off to the side, and her face was unlined thanks to regular Botox between the eyebrows. Her uniform of professional garb was elegant as always, and her tall stilettos added to her height.
She was just as she wanted to appear. Imposing and in control.
The image had been honed after she’d gotten out of graduate school and started working at Merck. Her hair was actually ash blond, a color that was not even brunette but a gloomy rain cloud gray, and without the bleaching, it was thin and had little body. Before she’d gotten Lasix, she’d needed heavy-lensed glasses, and a modest breast enhancement had given her flat chest some cleavage. She’d also voice-coached herself by watching Diane Sawyer broadcasts, mimicking that trademark low push of smooth syllables—and actually, Ms. Sawyer had been where she’d gotten the shade of blond from, too. Her first attempts had been out of a box and brassy as a doorknob.
And now here she was, a creation of her own drive, a culmination of personal evolution… proof that you could, in fact, be anything you wanted to be if you just worked hard enough.
Her father had been a plumber. Her mother had been a homemaker.
She had been an only child and relatively normal until she developed a Wilms’ tumor at age four. That was what started her journey into big pharma—
Ding!
The soft chiming broke into her reminiscing, and for a split second, she couldn’t think of what it meant or where she was. When the elevator doors parted, she shook herself to attention and disembarked into the gray-and-black marble lobby.
Her heels made a clipping sound that echoed up into the high ceiling. Ordinarily, she didn’t go around outside of her home or her lab without security, but she had wanted to come into Rhobes’s territory by herself to show she wasn’t intimidated by him.
Besides, he wouldn’t do anything really nasty here. Cameras were everywhere.
Her blond security detail, the one she was fucking, was waiting for her just inside the revolving door, this time in a black suit instead of a military uniform. And as he looked over at her, his eyes made a quick up-and-down that had nothing to do with bodyguarding and everything to do with what he anticipated doing on the return trip to Walters.
Would he have wanted her before the glow-up? she wondered. Without the money?
The answer to that didn’t matter to her any more than he did.
With a strong arm, he opened the static exit to the side of the rotating one, and as soon as she was through, another man in a black suit opened the rear of the SUV they’d rented from a local security company. As she crossed the concrete sidewalk, she imagined the small-town girl who was underneath the gloss schlubbing it to the vehicle. C.P. was proof that destiny was engineered, not a passive reception of some star-given series of calamities.
“Where to, boss,” the driver asked as her door was shut and the two security men got in the front seat. “You said change of plan?”