Page 26 of Her New Billionaire Bosshole (The Billionaire’s Bidding #2)
ELLIOT
T here are three different cameras pointed at the table where Andrea Williams and I sit, papers laid out in front of us, pens already uncapped and ready to be used.
I’ve seen other major signing events televised, but never one for women’s sports.
I should be nervous, but I’m not. Selling the team feels like the right thing to do — if I can get Sophie to talk to me again, we can clear the air.
I can tell her that I want to be with her, that selling the team will remove the friction between us, the roadblocks to our relationship.
“Even done something like this before?” Andrea asks, leaning back in her chair and looking at the papers on the table.
“Signed a deal?” I ask, laughing. “Sure, hundreds of times. Never on TV before.”
“Should be exciting.”
I open my mouth to answer her, but I’m interrupted by my phone ringing in my pocket. One of the executives behind the cameras glares at me, and I grimace, raising a hand to show that I’ll be putting it on silent.
Seeing Dad flash across the caller ID, I hesitate for a moment, then pick up. Even after my conversation with Brandon the other day, and the experience at the restaurant, I still have the instinct to answer him, an aversion against sending his call to voicemail.
“Hey,” I say, clearing my throat. “I’m kind of busy right now, but I can call you back?—”
“About to do the signing, right?”
I pause, brow wrinkling as I try to recall if he and I talked about when I’d be finishing up the deal to sell the team. Most of the other affairs are all settled, but we do need this one final signature.
“I just wanted to wish you good luck,” he says, before I can gather my thoughts enough to respond. “And let you know I’m proud of you for doing the right thing.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, shifting out of my seat, turning and stepping away from the table for a moment. “What exactly makes this the right thing to do?”
I’m thinking of Brandon — who is, objectively, doing the right thing — and how our father has refused to talk to him since he started divesting his inheritance.
Dad laughs like I’m making a joke. “Well, taking an offer of that size is kind of a no-brainer, son. Whoever made it must have known that you just couldn’t turn it down.”
It hits me so suddenly, so completely, that I feel stupid for not seeing it earlier.
First the call from Dad, then the call from the attorney right after. I’d thought, because if my brain’s preoccupation with him, that it would be Clark Eddings behind the offer. But it wasn’t.
“It was you?”
I’m furious, the anger building up inside me, flushing my skin, and my father laughs.
“Took you long enough to figure that out, son.”
“But you hate sports investing. Why would you offer me such a ridiculous sum just to get me to sell the team? That doesn’t make any sense if you’re not interested in building the franchise.”
“I’m not interesting in building it,” he says, with a bored tone, like that’s beside the point. “I was going to dissolve it the second you signed it over.”
The thought of that hits me like a ton of bricks — the disaster that I only just narrowly avoided. I think about Sophie, the players, Rhett and Steven, the people who love this team and rely on it.
“I don’t even know what to say to you right now.”
“You could start with thank you .”
“Why—” I bite off the sentence, stalking to the side, thrusting my hand into my hair even though it’s been perfectly put together by the stylist. “Why in the world would I thank you for lying to me?”
“Less of a lie, more of a strategic move. You’re my son, and I care about you. It’s more than worth it to me to waste a few million dollars to get you out of that fucking city.”
My dad doesn’t normally swear, and the sound of it from his mouth knocks me off-kilter. A sound tech appears at the side of the stage, making a hand signal to me that I don’t understand. They probably want me back, to sit down for the signing.
“I care about this team, Dad. Do you get that?”
“You think you care about it,” he fires back, a little venom flying into his voice. “But when a good offer came across the table, you were more than ready to abandon it. So how much, exactly, does it matter to you?”
“That was because?—”
Again, I cut myself off, realizing I don’t want to say a thing about Sophie to him. He doesn’t deserve to know about her — to hear about how happy she’s made me in the short time I’ve known her.
“Because what ?” His voice is prodding, insistent, and in another moment of clarity, I realize that there’s more than one Clark Eddings in the world — and maybe my own father is one of them.
And I’ve already wasted too much of my mental energy on assholes like that.
“I have to go.”
“Elliot, we are not done with this?—”
I hang up the phone, still pacing back and forth, mind a whirlwind of thoughts. I think back to when I first bought the team, the way I walked in there and started demanding changes, how I thought it would be best to grab it with an iron fist.
I’m pissed off with my dad because he offered up the money for the team without telling me.
And Sophie isn’t talking to me because I was going to sell the team without telling her.
Even if I thought it was best for us, even if it’s my right to sell the team if I want, I should have been honest with her. I should have talked to her. We agreed that we were going to work together, and I took her cooperation without offering my own.
“Son of a bitch,” I whisper under my breath, shaking my head, not believing I could be so incredibly stupid, so stereotypical as to become my own father without even realizing it was happening.
“Mr. Altman,” the sound tech says, appearing again, looking worried and gesturing behind him toward the stage. “It’s time for you to come on.”
I want to tell them to forget it, that I’m not signing a thing, but I realize this is an opportunity. Straightening up, I slap a smile on my face and stride forward.
“Sorry for the delay. Hey, is a thousand bucks enough for you to do me a favor?”
Just before I make my way back onto the stage, I pull out my phone and text my brother.
You were right.
In a minute, I’m seated back at the table and someone is fussing over my hair again. Then the cameras are turned on and facing the table.
All we supposed to do is sign the papers — a reel of footage that they can show in the back of the program while the announcers talk. But as Andrea picks up her pen, to sign for her client — my father — I turn to the side, holding a hand out, and the sound tech brings me a microphone.
“I’d like to say a few things,” I say into the microphone. The guys behind the cameras glance at one another nervously, and the other man — the one leading the show today, starts to gesture at me to stop, but nobody cuts my feed, nobody takes the microphone away.
There are some perks of having money.
I look directly into the camera, hope Sophie is watching, and begin.