Page 13 of Broken Brothers

But of much, much, much greater interest to me was the young girl seated by him. I did not know who she was—she was dressed far too professionally for her to be a wife or a girlfriend, and even then, I didn’t think Mr. Taylor would bring such awoman to a meeting like this. She was likely to be someone who was older than she looked.

But goddamn, did she lookfine.She had curves in all of the right places that were on full display even in her completely professional attire. Her eyes, when they looked up at me, had that kind of magnetic draw where not only could I not look away, I did not want to. She had an unsettling smile in the best way possible, in that it left my stomach fluttering a bit but it didn’t disquiet me.

In a way… I had not looked at a girl with some lust like her since Sarah Hill. That experience had scarred me away from looking at girls as anything other than judgmental and, in their eyes, “above me” because I was adapted.

Something about this girl’s eyes…

“Hi, Chance Hunt,” I said, holding my hand out.

“Craig Taylor, pleasure to meet you,” Craig said. He had the tight grip that made you think he was trying to send a message whenever he shook someone’s hand. “This is my daughter, Layla. Ours is a family-run business, and so she will be taking part in the proceedings today.”

“Hi, Chance,” she said.

I knew, intellectually, she had spoken in an even-keeled manner when she acknowledged me and shook my hand.

But I swear, there was something in it that left my stomach feeling more than a little excited. I had no idea how I would ever get to act on this one, but I knew that I would enjoy thinking about how I could have her for a half hour or so.

And then an idea came to mind.

“Welcome to Burnson Investments and thanks for coming out here,” I said. “Mr. Burnson had an emergency so he asked me to run the meeting. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Not at all,” Craig said, who seemed to buy the comment hook, line, and sinker. He had no trepidation whatsoever. I hadto consciously fight looking at Layla as I talked with her father, but I swore that she had a slight look of surprise that soon morphed into one of knowing. “Shall we?”

I escorted the Taylors to one of our main conference halls, talking details of the merger and explaining what we wanted out of the deal. I counted myself lucky that I had taken the time to examine this deal as the emails came through—even though I had envisioned being nothing more than a chauffeur of sorts, escorting the Taylors to Mr. Burnson’s office, I still wanted to learn.

After all, as I’d noted far too often, I was not a true Hunt. I did not have a billion dollar business promised to me. I did not have anything other than what I had gathered for myself, which was mostly relegated to knowledge and a level of cunning that Morgan could not have as a spoiled true son of Edwin Hunt.

We sat down in the conference room, Craig and Layla on one side, me on the other.

“So let me explain how this will work,” Craig said. “We want you guys to invest $10 million in us for 8 percent of the company. I think that much is known, right?”

“Absolutely,” I said confidently. As I said, I’d done my research.

“And how does that work for you, generally speaking?”

It was in this moment that the words of Edwin Hunt came to mind.“If you take the first offer, you’re the last person to ever succeed in business.”There was nothing I hated more, as a human being, that instead of being a father, I was like an employee of Edwin’s—and not even a direct one, as those words had not been spoken to me, but to Morgan. I just happened to be in the same room and hear it.

But… well, I wasn’t about to say no to taking advice from Edwin Hunt when it could help me.

“You’re saying with that offer that you think your company is worth, roughly let’s say, $120 million,” I said. “But in looking at your revenue and market share, we only had it pegged at $105 million. Now, obviously, $15 million is a bit of a gap, so why don’t we see if we can reach a middle ground?”

I had to fight so damn hard to keep my eyes on Craig. It was not fair for him to bring Layla in for how stunningly beautiful she was.

It almost made me wonder, honestly, if Craig knew how distracting his daughter was and thus used her for that purpose. She hadn’t said anything beyond saying hi to me, but if she opened her mouth at any point, I’d have to be on guard for her killing my negotiation tactics.

As Mr. Hunt always said, business has no boundaries when it comes to competition. And, I noticed, he would use that rule to the fullest.

“Well, that’s interesting you got that number, Chance, because I came to a very different number,” Craig said. “I noticed that our revenue was $15 million this past year, and since most businesses sell at 10x typical revenue, I would say that you are getting yourself quite the deal.”

This went back and forth for a little bit. I have to say, I believe I held my own ground quite well. Edwin had done a marvelous job.

But I had to struggle to do so. I kept swearing that Layla, bless those curves and those seductive eyes, kept trying to draw me in. Whether for the purposes of helping her father or just because of her attraction to me, I could not say. I knew I was handsome, and I knew that she found me attractive.

Well, OK, maybe that was a bit of the cockiness and arrogance speaking at the moment. But I was rarely wrong in my gut feelings about things, and this was such an example.

An hour later, Mr. Burnson had still not shown up. I almost morbidly wondered if he had suffered a heart attack on the golf course, so focused on hitting the fifteenth hole for par that he strained too hard and burst a blood vessel. But it did not matter, because somehow, I had managed to get 9.5 percent of the deal for a $10 million investment.

Maybe 1.5 percent did not sound like much, but 1.5 percent of a company that looked to grow to the billions within the next few years would prove incredibly lucrative to the company. And we still had the original eight percent on top of that—suffice to say, for an intern, I had done awfully damn well for myself.