Her Man Friday(79)
Author: Elizabeth Bevarly

"Kimball?" he said in an effort to claim the man’s attention.

"Yes, Friday?"

"Would you, uh, care to help me out here? I seem to be kind of—"

"Befuddled?" the billionaire supplied helpfully.

"Uh, yeah. That’d be a good word for it."

Kimball sighed dramatically. "It’s actually quite simple, Friday, if you think about it."

"Is it?"

The other man nodded, then took a few steps forward, pausing beside one of the leather-bound sofas to strike a nonchalant pose. And then, very clearly, very matter-of-factly, he said, "Leo. Darling. Lily runs the company. She always has."

Leo opened his mouth to reply, but absolutely nothing emerged. He could only stare in silence at Schuyler Kimball, feeling certain that he must have misunderstood.

Seeming to take pity on his inability to speak, the billionaire flicked a piece of lint from his lapel and continued with a careless explanation. "She’s been the one in charge of Kimball Technologies from the start. We just never exactly got around to telling anyone about it, that’s all."

If Leo had thought he was confused before, he had been mistaken. Because with this newfound knowledge, he was suddenly, completely, utterly… well, still befuddled. "I’m afraid I’m not following you."

Kimball sighed again, even more dramatically. "I was afraid of that," he muttered. He glanced down at his watch. "Damn. Dinner will be served in fifteen minutes. Let’s see if we can make this quick, shall we?"

"Oh, that would be fine with me," Leo assured the other man. "Let’s just make it understandable, too, okay?"

Kimball took another step forward, rounding the sofa that was situated perpendicular to the fireplace and facing an identical one on the other side of a wide coffee table. "Have a seat, Leo," he said, following his own advice. "No sense standing on formality."

Leo obeyed the billionaire’s instructions, not because of any feeling of obligation or courtesy, but because the command was the first statement that had made sense all night. Lily, too, crossed to the sofas, but instead of aligning herself with Kimball on his, she sat at the opposite end of the one Leo occupied. Somehow, that went a long way toward making him feel as if maybe they would recover from all this.

Depending on just what the hell all this was. Unfortunately, the answer to that was looking murkier all the time.

"Schuyler’s intention to create Kimball Technologies started in an apartment we were sharing at the time," Lily said. "All the creative power, all the design work, even the labor, he performed himself. I kept track of the paperwork and records for him, more as a favor to him than anything else." She offered the billionaire a brief smile, then turned back to Leo. "Schuyler, for all his brilliance, can’t even balance a checkbook, let alone keep track of a business. Even a small one. So the responsibilities for that fell to me. Because he was my friend, and because I was well suited for running a business, I was happy to take them on."

Leo shook his head slowly, unable to believe he was hearing what he was hearing. "Are you trying to tell me that, all these years, it’s been you, not Kimball, who’s been running Kimball Technologies? That you’re the man in charge?"

Lily nodded, but smiled sadly at his wording. "I’m afraid so."

Finally, Kimball jumped in. "She’s been the CEO of Kimball Technologies in everything but title," he said without a trace of resentment. "When I decided to go into business for myself, Lily was, quite simply, the best man for the job. She still is." He threw her a look of weary resignation. "I don’t know what I’ll do without her. I don’t know what the company will do without her. Lily, darling, I wish you’d reconsider."

She shook her head and smiled with something Leo could only liken to melancholy. "Schuyler, you know what’s going to happen when word of this gets out. If you keep me in charge, the stock will plummet, the board of directors will be outraged… It’s better I quit now, before things go sour. You’ll find someone to take my place. Someone with a Y chromosome to make it all more palatable to everyone."

Leo gazed at both of them in silence for a moment, completely at a loss for something to say. Finally, he managed to get out, "You, uh, you’ll excuse me if I have just a little bit of trouble believing all this. Not that you couldn’t run the business," he hastened to add when he saw her expression change to one of prim offense, "but because keeping something like this a secret all these years would be next to impossible."

"Not really," she said, her pique evaporating, once she understood his objection. "What would probably have been impossible, at least where the American business and financial communities are concerned, would have been launching Kimball Technologies with a woman in charge. A girl, really, was what they would have considered me," she amended. "Because I was only twenty-one at the time."

"I’m sorry, but I’m still not following you," Leo said.

She exhaled a quick breath. "No one would have taken us seriously, had mine been the face they saw as the one in charge when we approached businesses for investment. A young woman, they would have all assumed, would never be able to cut it, wouldn’t have the sense or the wherewithal to build a business from the ground up. A young man, however," she added, dipping her head toward Schuyler, "well… that was perfect. A young hotshot mechanical designer with a brilliant mind, fresh out of college? Schuyler was all the rage.

"We used the prejudices of the business community to our advantage," she said. "The reason it was so easy to keep secret the fact that I was running things was because no one ever bothered to question Schuyler’s position. We said he was the CEO, and he was, in fact, the CEO—on paper. Then we let them assume whatever they wanted after that. We let them assume he would be the one in charge, the one with the final say, when in fact, I was the one making all the decisions and keeping the business running. And, naturally, everyone did indeed make that assumption. It was a very effective smoke screen."

"But—"

"No, no buts," she interrupted him. "The hard fact of business is that women simply are not given the same treatment or recognition that men are. And I wanted Kimball Technologies to be a rousing success. Maybe even more than Schuyler did. In order to accomplish that, I needed to be the one who was in charge, but we needed for other people to think that Schuyler was. Otherwise, it never would have worked."

"But why would you be content to stay behind the scenes that way?" Leo asked. "Why would you let Kimball take credit for your hard work?"