Taking Control (Kerr Chronicles #2)(16)
Author: Jen Frederick

He hesitates, no doubt wondering if sitting or standing gives him an advantage. Neither, of course. He’s had to come to me, and therefore he’s already the supplicant. Finally recognizing the futility of standing, he rounds the table so he’s seated with his back to the door but can still look out the windows.

Hedder is fit. His broad shoulders are encased in expensive and expertly tailored double-breasted blue wool. Stick a nautical cap on this guy and he’d look like he stepped off a yacht in Palm Beach. With a full head of multicolored blonde hair, which he no doubt dyed regularly, I can see his appeal to a certain class of older women. Fifteen, twenty years ago, his allure would have been even more potent, and it’s easy to imagine him charming Tiny’s sweet mother off her feet.

“Beautiful view you have here.”

“Thank you.”

“Employ many people?” His question is casual, but I don’t make the mistake of thinking anything he wants to know is just friendly interest.

“Not many. Around one hundred or so.”

He shakes his head in mock disbelief. I don’t for a minute believe that he doesn’t know exactly how many people are employed here. “So few to run such a large enterprise, but I suppose it’s the holding you refer to, rather than your varied and far-flung interests. Don’t you even have business in the Far East?”

“The Far East? I didn’t know that term was used anymore. But if you’re referring to the continent of Asia, I don’t know many who aren’t interested in the Asian market, either for importing or exporting purposes.”

He turns away from the window to face me, hands lying lightly in his lap. “A billion dollar multinational company headed by a man under the age of thirty-five is unheard of if you aren’t a tech genius. Yet here you are. A financial savant. A man known to have never stepped wrong. Whose investment savvy is the stuff of legend.”

“I’ve had losses and mistakes. I suspect they don’t fit with the current narrative,” I respond. His flattery is the gradual build to some great crescendo which he expects will evoke a response. Either I erupt in anger or effusive pleasure. I don’t think he’s decided which way he’ll play it. My nonchalance is making him rethink whatever scheme he arrived with.

Many people might underestimate Hedder, but this man is a predator. I know this because I am too, but my prey are companies and, well, a certain five foot four inch blonde with light green eyes. Lonely women are Hedder’s targets, based on the research I’ve had done on him.

“Yes. Ian Kerr is a golden boy. Everyone wants to touch him, hoping that his brilliance will rub off on them. But no one becomes as successful as you in such a short time without having a few skeletons in his closet.” With this opening salvo, he smiles as if to lessen the sting of his accusations. He is right, of course. I have many skeletons in my closet. The money I used to build my current empire has been washed clean, but it had unsavory origins. I don’t really give a shit unless it bothers Tiny.

I don’t think it would. She, of all people, would understand how desperation can drive one to take measures that could fall outside the laws of state and propriety. If you were starving and someone you love was hurting, you’d do anything. She gets that.

So does Mitch; he’d do anything to keep himself happy.

Because I don’t care what Mitch thinks, I remain silent. We stare at each other—or at least I try to look him in the eye—but he can’t maintain contact for more than a couple seconds before he drops his gaze.

“I know we have plans for dinner this Friday, but I wanted to come and take your measure. For Tiny’s sake.” His eyes flick over me. The dollar signs add up as he calculates the cost of my suit, my watch, and even my pocket square. The perusal ends as quickly as it starts and his attention moves back to the window. He watches himself smooth down the lapel of his jacket. As he stares at his reflection longer, I realize that he’s more interested in looking at himself than watching others.

A narcissist to the core. But I should’ve known that by his history of nonstop pleasure seeking. He needs to be watched carefully because Sophie Corielli, Tiny’s mom, wouldn’t have fallen for him unless he wielded some sort of magic. Sophie was too smart to be taken in by an ordinary man.

“I’m interested in everything to do with Tiny,” I respond. Beyond the yachting gear, I note he’s wearing a gold Rolex. Everything about him says money, from the carefully cut and dyed hair to the upscale clothes and his well-manicured hands. And it makes me want to leap over the table and throttle him.

“Then we have a mutual interest.” He leans forward, tearing his eyes off his reflection and directing them toward me. His expression is set to earnest, but the only thing this man is earnest about is himself. “My son told me that Tiny was settling down, and with her mother gone—God rest her soul—it’s my duty to take up the parental reins. Sophie would have wanted that.”

There’s no question in my mind that the very last thing Sophie would want is Mitch Hedder hanging around her precious daughter. I don’t know why their four year relationship ended, other than Sophie had gotten tired of Mitch’s roving eye. I do know that Mitch has spent the last seven years completely devoid of contact with Tiny and Sophie.

While they were struggling to make ends meet, while they were crushed under crippling medical bills from Sophie’s fight with mantle cell leukemia, while Tiny had to turn to delivering drugs for her stepbrother to make sure that they could afford treatment when Sophie’s cancer came out of remission, while all of that was happening, Mitch Hedder was accumulating enough wealth to deck himself out in designer threads and twenty-thousand-dollar watches. And not once in that time did he reach out to help them.

Strangling him with my own hands would probably be too good an end for him.

“It surprises me that you would say that, given your lack of attention and care toward the Corielli ladies in the last, oh, seven years or so.” I find it a struggle to maintain an even tone, my anger toward him is so great.

He doesn’t notice. With a careful hand, he smoothes down the back of his hair. “I was under strict instruction by Sophie to never darken her doorstep. I wanted to honor that.”

“Even when she had cancer?”

“There was little I could do.” He gives a negligent shrug, one shoulder raised slightly to express…helplessness? Maybe that move works with the ladies down in Florida, but it just pisses me the hell off.