Page 2 of Bargain With The Boss (Crescent Cove: The Moguls #2)

Sydney

Present Day

My heels clicked along the wide planks of the white oak flooring of A Home You Love’s headquarters. Seattle was enjoying a rare day of sunshine, and I wanted to be anywhere but here.

The summons had come from on high. Michelle Keller, aka my mother, had demanded an audience the minute I was free. Which meant ASAP. As per usual, she was there before me no matter how early I arrived.

She was already overbearing and exacting in how she ran A Home You Love, the multi-million dollar elite home decor business. However, whenJude left the company, she’d become a tyrant. Since he’d left Seattle for New York and his new family, she’d been intolerable.

Avoiding her wasn’t an option.

I nodded to Judy, her assistant, before sailing through the arched threshold into my mother’s domain.

The focal wall behind her desk was made of the shiplap that made her famous.

Floating shelves in a rich cherry wood held all her awards from Architectural Digest , the multiple American Society of Magazine Editors, and her much adored Forbes List crystal with its strategically placed spotlight to make sure it sparkled.

My mother was seated behind her glass desk, a pristine raspberry colored blouse tucked into a black pencil skirt with her four inch heels in the exact raspberry shade to match.

Her spine was ruler straight as she wrote on her white legal pad with the gold fountain pen the board of directors had gifted to her when the company officially passed a five hundred million dollar milestone.

She was gunning for one billion thanks to whispers of a merger.

She wouldn’t be happy until there was A Home You Love in every major city of the United States and Canada.

It used to excite me just as much, but lately I was exhausted thinking about it.

She held up one perfectly manicured finger—always a sheer pink—and kept writing in her exacting cursive. No rushing for Michelle Keller.

I folded my hands around my leather folio in front of me. Unease had followed me all morning since the text had landed in my phone.

We were already ramping up for the holidays. I’d spent the last week in meetings to nail down the perfect pattern for this Christmas holiday. Not my idea, of course. The decree had come down from my mother.

Last year had been farmhouse chic, and this year she wanted silver and blue with a French country cottage core. It was my responsibility to make it work. My mother was very good at the overall idea, and I was expected to make it come to life.

With very little of my own personal input.

I was cross-eyed from researching the history of the French country traditions to create A Home You Love’s spin on it. Not to mention making sure the pieces could be manufactured at the lowest cost for maximum return. The family company wasn’t a discount brand.

We marketed to the mid-level wealthy who wanted elegance and couldn’t quite afford a designer, but lived to show off how well they were doing.

It had been the cornerstone of A Home You Love’s brand since I’d been a teen. The business may have been on par with TJ Maxx and HomeGoods when it started, but my mother’s eye had been on the elites. And what she wanted, she got.

Finally, she put her pen down and sat back in her cream leather executive chair. “Thank you for coming so quickly. I know you’ve been focused on buttoning up the Charlotte Christmas line.”

“Yes, we’re getting close to the end. I’ve been working with the manufacturers in?—”

She cut in. “Yes, yes. I received your report this morning.”

And you read it?

The words were on the tip of my tongue. I always sent my reports and findings to her, but she rarely replied or even noticed them. More like she noted when they were missing more than worrying about what was in my spreadsheets.

“You’ve done a good job.”

The praise dug out a kernel of need inside me that I hated.

It was such a rare occurrence, I’d trained myself not to require it. “Thank you, Mother. My team has been working long hours on it, but I think the end is in sight.”

“Yes, which is why I called you up here. Leah, your assistant, can take over from here.”

My jaw dropped. “What?”

I worked my ass off since January to perfect this line, even if the mere sight of French blue toile made me want to hurl. I was seeing it to the end.

“Yes. I’ve been looking over your proposal for A Garden You Love, and I think with a few tweaks this could be a solid arm of the company.”

My heart kicked—hard.

“Really?”

She gave me a small smile. “Yes. There’s a lot of work to be done with the specifics of the proposal, but I think you have a good seed of an idea.”

I swallowed against the bile that rose up in my throat. I’d spent five years researching, doing cost analysis, ROI, and finding every weakness in that proposal. There was no seed. It was ready for implementation, but my mother couldn’t handle anyone having a better idea without her input.

I’d worked for the family company since earning my master’s in business from UC Berkeley and knew the ins and outs of every department of this business just like my brother. And still he’d walked away without looking back. Another pang hit me at the thought of him.

Jude escaped, leaving me behind.

Oh, I’d gone out to help my brother with his long-lost son. The mother hadn’t bothered to tell Jude about the baby until the child was inconvenient for her. I couldn’t fault Jude for taking care of his responsibilities, but he could have raised Owen here in Seattle.

But his defection had never really been about Owen’s hometown.

He’d learned that our mother had another family before ours. And that he was only my half brother.

That was the real impetus for his leaving.

He wanted to get to know his other family. The family that wasn’t me.

“Are you listening, Sydney?”

I blinked out of the mental detour. “Yes, of course. You’re considering my proposal.”

My dream had always been to build a new branch of the company. My own arm, with my own ideas. I’d earned the right to show the board of directors my proposal and get a true vote.

Not that it really mattered when my mother controlled 51 percent of the vote.

She always had the last say.

I knew that if I just had the chance to show them my ideas they’d see A Garden You Love was a great idea.

We’d have specialists who cultivated plants depending on the zones the store was in, teachers to help people with anything from picking plants to pest control, and designers who could help our customer’s vision come to life.

With the advent of YouTube, there were plenty of videos to help. But what if you didn’t know what questions to ask? What if the customer was too nervous to put their hands in the dirt? Heck, what if they didn’t even know what dirt to have?

I knew there was a hole in the market, and I was determined to fill it.

If my mother would just release her Herculean hold on every rein in the company.

My mother laced her fingers together on her spotless leather blotter. “Yes, but I have a counter proposal for you.”

I frowned. “Mother, I’ve more than earned the chance to make this project a reality.”

“Ah, but time in a job means absolutely nothing when it comes to business. It’s all about opportunities. And if you want a chance to make your little garden company a reality, you need to do something for me.”

I lifted my chin. “Some sort of quid pro quo?”

“Now you’re getting it.” She twirled her pen through her fingers idly, but her icy blue eyes were sharp.

“The board of directors wants a united front for the merger with Sophisticated Spaces. This nonsense with Crescent Cove is leaking into my plans. I need your brother back here, and you get your proposal to the board with my support after you implement my changes.”

The words pinballed around my head. With her changes. As if my ideas were lacking. I pushed that down, focusing on the main part of this scheme. It was always about Jude and the business. Never about me. “Mother, he has a family in New York. That’s not possible.”

She tucked a lock of her auburn hair around her ear. “That’s what planes are for. He can bring that simple girl back here and set her up in a house. At least he married her when he got her pregnant.”

I was used to my mother’s vitriol, but that was a lot even for her. “Maddie isn’t a simple girl. She’s actually one of the warmest and sweetest people I’ve ever met.”

“Just because she has a soft heart, doesn’t mean she’s intelligent, Sydney. Jude made his bed there.”

I pressed my lips together, swallowing the urge to defend Maddie Masterson, now Keller. And quite possibly Hamilton if Jude got his way with changing his name.I could only imagine what she’d say about Jude’s plans to change his name.

Not that it mattered right now, she was already forging on with her plan.

“You get Jude back here at A Home You Love, and residing in Seattle, then you get your chance.”

I shouldn’t be surprised, and yet my heart ached with the realization that she wouldn’t offer me the capital to start A Garden You Love on my own merits. She expected me to convince the board and just maybe she’d back me.

I opened my mouth to tell her to go to hell.

No deal.

“Oh, and if you don’t succeed in getting your brother to return, your entire team will lose their jobs.”

“You can’t do that!” I dropped my folio on her desk. “They don’t have anything to do with my plans for A Garden You Love.”

“Oh, don’t they? You wouldn’t be bringing Leah, Pete, Lynn, and Jared with you if your plans got off the ground?”

I shut my mouth, my throat closing at her words.

“Remember, I’m the one who taught you everything you know.”

“Their jobs shouldn’t be contingent on an idea I had. I’ll rescind the offer for the?—”

“Too late now. You brought the proposal to me.”

“And I can take it back.”

My mother’s perfectly lined lips quirked up in the corner. “That’s not how it works. It could be a very profitable piece to add to my company.”

Her company. She didn’t even pretend that it was a family company at this point.

And I was just a piece on her chess board.

“See, now that wasn’t so hard.” She picked up her pen. “Now, I have a meeting with my colleague in London. We are a go for a store right in the heart of the city.” She looked down at her legal pad, my dismissal obvious.

“Since when?”

“Since last Monday.” She gave me a cool look. “It’s none of your concern.”

“Everything about expansion has to do with me. London customers aren’t like Americans.”

“No, they’re far more discerning with their style and taste.”

“Exactly, it takes a lot of research and market analysis to figure out what would sell.”

“I know that, Sydney. I’m always three steps ahead on any deal I make, you know that.”

I did. But I also knew my mother’s hubris could cloud her sense when it comes to expanding the company in areas that weren’t right for our customer base. More than once I had to jump in and navigate the location for our stores.

Because I was the one who actually did the research.

She lifted her phone. “Judy, dial Frank Meacher for me.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

I shook my head. She couldn’t even dial a damn number on her own.

I grabbed my folio. Right now that wasn’t my problem. I crossed the room and just before I got to the archway, her voice followed me.

“I know you’ll figure it out, Sydney. I’m counting on you. So is your team.”

I didn’t bother replying as I sailed out of the room and past Judy. She wouldn’t even look up at me.

She knew just how fucked I was.