"I didn't schedule this infernal meeting.Youdid!And in direct conflict with my annual do, I might add. A less magnanimous gran might accuse you of having done it on purpose."
"Or taken responsibility for forgetting to put her unnecessary after-Christmas party on the official calendar."
As usual, Nora refused to own up to her mistakes. "Well, it's not a party, per se. More like a treasured tradition. I don't understand why you need me at this silly meeting anyway."
"Gregory Latham runs AudioNation with an iron fist, and for some reason, he wants your approval for our potential eight-figure deal, even though it has nothing to do with you. Latham needs to know you're fully on board, so I'm bringing you with me. Believe me, I'm not happy about it, either."
I'd always been a straight shooter—one of the many personality traits I'd inherited from my grandfather.
But Nora blinked at me like an offended little old lady who'd never encountered such behavior before. "Sometimes I wonder if Maria was right when she said there was something broken inside of you."
Maria, the nanny/grief specialist Nora had foisted on me after I came to live with her and my grandfather. She'd quit in a fit after I used my generous allowance to pay some dark web guy to hack into her emails and unearth all her dirty secrets (that was before I met Lobo). If Maria's angry tears had been any indication, she hadn't appreciated me countering her incessant safe-space invitations to "open up, tell me anything" with my own questions about the husband who'd given her chlamydia before running off to Florida with another man.
"You'd rather I be like my father?" I asked Nora. "Putting pussy before everything and going along with your little set-up job because you promised me she has nice tits?"
"She also has a sparkling and wonderful personality," Nora grumbled. "I just led with the tits."
"Hard pass."
Nora huffed and went silent. But unfortunately, her refusal to speak didn't last long.
"I'd rather you be like your grandad," she insisted. "He considered me for more than what I possessed between my legs, long and beautiful as they were."
She let out a sad sigh. For her dead husband or for the legs of her youth? It was always hard to tell with Nora. And I didn't care enough to ask.
"Your dear granddad understood that even when my looks faded, having someone in his life who he loved and who loved him back was more important than any business meeting. Do you have any idea how many appointments with VIPs he canceled just to have another round with me between the sheets?" Nora grinned. "Over fifty years of last-minute cancellations we had together. Yet when he died, he had tears in his eyes because he said we still hadn't gotten enough time together. And y'know, Coley, I couldn't disagree. At the end of a life, love really is the most important thing."
Heartwarming story. But, "My grandfather wasn't doing multimillion-dollar deals with AudioNation."
"Oh, Coley. You know that's not what I meant. You work too much. The company is all you think about. It's no way to live."
Her dark-green eyes filled with pity, as if I were some poor worker bee, not the powerful CEO of an international hotel conglomerate. "I want you to have what I had. Love! Intimacy! Incredible sex! And I truly do believe that Sunny can give you all of that if you convince her to have you. Plus, she's the granddaughter of my dearest friend."
Nora's pitying look morphed into a wicked grin. "Oh, if Glo were still alive, I imagine she'd be right here beside me, plotting ways to get the two of you together. You should have seen the way Glo and I burned up the town before your grandad plucked me out of the Benton Girls line...."
Now she was invoking some dead friend I'd never heard about until Nora wanted to set me up with her granddaughter?
Refusing to indulge this conversation any further, I pulled out my phone and started returning work emails.
Alas, Nora didn't need my attention to continue. She prattled on through several more stoplights.
"And that's why I've decided to give my chair seat and shares in Benton Worldwide to your brother if you don't agree to woo and marry Sunny."
Hold on.What?!I abruptly stopped typing an email to Agnes about scheduling a follow-up call with Gregory Latham for tomorrow.
"You didn't just say you were going to give your chair seat and all of your shares in Benton Worldwide to Max?" I asked Nora, sure that I'd heard her wrong.
But she heaved one of her overly dramatic Irish sighs. "Yes, I'm aware this decision of mine is not ideal for your little deal with the Lathams. Max called me personally to tell me how very much he despises the idea of giving residency rights to…what did he call it? ‘A soulless corporation disguised as a music label that actually gives a fuck.’"
She sniffed, as if we were talking about some minor difference of opinion, not giving billions of dollars’ worth of shares and controlling interest in the company to an international playboy who’d never set foot inside our boardroom. My half brother literally phoned it in to every quarterly meeting.
"Why would you do that?" My hand tightened around the phone I'd never used to teleconference into an important meeting of the Benton board. Not once. "You are aware, giving your chair seat and shares to Max would kill the AudioNation deal."
"Yes, but..." Nora shook her head. "I'm afraid this is the only way I can get you to take me seriously."
Not to put too fine a Logan Roy point on it but, "Nora, you are not a serious person. If you do this, Max will win."
"It's not a competition," Nora insisted. "I know that you and Max have history…”
