What kind of assistance could someone like him need from someone like me?
He answered my unspoken question. “I want to break up Craig’s relationship, and I think you’re the person who can help me do that.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Again, he’d shifted gears so quickly that it was hard to follow his thought process. One second he was telling me about losing his mom and his distinctly not fun childhood and the next he was saying something about me being able to help him wreck his brother’s engagement.
“Did you want me to be your lookout while you seduce Leighton or something?” Nothing else made any sense.
Not that anything he’d said so far made much sense.
“No, that relationship is definitely over. For a lot of reasons. She and I don’t have feelings for each other. While you . . .” He trailed off, arching his eyebrows at me.
“While I what? Am in love with Craig?” It seemed like Marco had forgotten one teeny-tiny fact. “Craig’s in love with someone else. I think this may be what is formally known as a lost cause.”
“Nothing’s a lost cause,” he said. “Plus, I have a plan.”
“Oh, this should be good.” I’d meant to keep that as an internal thought, but I couldn’t keep it inside. Especially since I was envisioning one of those evidence boards detectives used with note cards and strings to link all the parts of a complicated crime together.
But then I realized that I didn’t want to hear all the details until I understood the reason he was doing this. So I asked, “Why?”
“Why do I want to break up their engagement, or why do I think you’re the person who can help me?”
“Yes.” I wanted answers to both of those statements.
“Craig’s engagement is going to be bad for Minx and possibly KRT. Leighton is what they colloquially refer to as a gold digger.”
“How do you know that?” It seemed like a big assumption on his part. Which might be fair, considering he was the one who had dated her.
“Personal experience.”
“So what if she is?” I asked, finally grabbing a piece of my pizza. It was starting to get cold. “Plenty of wealthy men marry women who are after their money.”
“Leighton’s family owns Reflection Cosmetics. They want to merge with Minx.”
I chewed and swallowed the bite in my mouth. “Again, so? That’s not too unusual.” Cosmetic companies were constantly buying each other out.
“It is when Reflection is deeply in debt. I suspect they’re cooking their books and expecting Minx, and by extension KRT, to absorb their losses. It could ruin Minx financially. I know that Leighton’s family intends to do this because it’s the reason I broke things off. She accidentally forwarded paperwork her family’s attorneys had drawn up to merge the companies, along with a detailed letter about why she should insist on us not having a prenup.”
I opened my mouth in surprise. Hadn’t he said they’d only been dating for a short time? And the lawyers were talking marriage? It sounded like Leighton’s family had seriously jumped the gun there.
So when Marco ended things, she went after Craig instead? Who did propose after a few weeks? The whole thing seemed . . . gross.
Marco was still talking. “I won’t let Craig destroy it because he doesn’t know when he’s being played and can’t keep it in his . . .” He trailed off and then said, “Because he’s so easily distracted by shiny things.”
Leighton was definitely shiny. I took another bite. Reflection Cosmetics was one of the companies I’d planned on applying to. I supposed that was out the window.
“You remember I just quit Minx, right?” It seemed a little odd that he would be counting on a former employee to help out his company. Of course I didn’t want to see Minx Cosmetics fail, but why me?
“I do, and you said it was because your boss was a jerk. I did some research on you this morning. Got your file from HR and I pulled up some of your projects.” That felt off, like something he shouldn’t have done. I reminded myself that technically I had been his employee and he had a right to it. He must have seen my facial expression shift as he hurried to add, “Your work was exceptional. Meticulous. I saw your cover letter when you applied four years ago and how much you wanted to work for Minx.”
“It was one of my mom’s favorite makeup brands,” I said quietly. “I wanted so much to work there to honor her.”
“This company is my mother’s legacy,” he said. “So I get it.”
Again there was that feeling of being seen and understood, of a shared connection with him. I didn’t want to feel that way, so I circled back to what we’d been talking about. “What does it matter what Craig wants? Last time I checked, you are the CEO of Minx. You don’t have to merge anything just because Craig and Leighton are, uh, merging.”
He let out a short sigh. He loosened his tie and shrugged off his suit coat, letting it lie on the bench next to him. “Craig . . . is very good at getting our father to agree with him. So is his mother. That’s the reason he’s VP of product development right now, even though he doesn’t have any training or experience. His last job was as a DJ in an Ibiza nightclub.”
That couldn’t be right. Craig seemed much more reliable and capable. Responsible.
The same guy who got engaged to a girl he dated for two months? my contrary inner voice asked, and I told it to shut up.
“And when Leighton and I casually dated,” he said, for some reason emphasizing the word casually, “she repeatedly brought up the fact that she wouldn’t marry a man who insisted on a prenup. Whether that was her idea or her attorney’s, I don’t know. What I do know makes me concerned, as you can imagine.”
He sat quietly, letting me absorb all of this information while I ate. There was something that bothered me. Honestly, there were a lot of things bothering me about this conversation, but one more predominant than the others. “Is this why you asked me all that stuff about my tragic childhood? Were you trying to make me feel vulnerable in an attempt to butter me up so that I’d listen to your request?”
“What? No!” he said forcefully. “That wasn’t my intention. I asked about your parents because I recognized a kindred spirit and wanted to know more about your story. I find you interesting and easy to talk to.”
Well. That made me feel good—pink-champagne-bubbles-floating-inside-my-veins good. Interesting. Easy to talk to. If he was trying to butter me up, those were good things to say. I felt very flattered.
Marco continued. “I didn’t mean to lose sight of what I wanted to ask you. You can be distracting.”
When he said this, his eyes kind and sparkling, his mouth twisted mischievously, his jawline ready to cut through time and space with all its sharpness, hitting me with the whole force of his charm, how could anyone be expected to be immune to a full-frontal attack like that?
I noticed that my heart was racing, and my breathing was a little uneven. The scientist in me wanted to analyze what was happening and why, but the rest of me wanted to ignore these continually weird reactions. “You’re very good at this,” I told him with a forced laugh. “I bet no one ever tells you no.”