Susan nodded and her baby pacifiers danced at her earlobes. She lowered her voice. “Yes. Word on the street is that Adam had a shit-fit when the scandal broke and wanted to pull the plug on the IPO. Jordan’s been working on this for years. Adam gave him two weeks to see if he can make it work, so obviously Jordan’s pretty upset. I think you may have just gotten caught up as the target for his frustrations.”
I looked away guiltily. It made sense that I’d be the target—and not for the reason she thought—but there was no way Susan could know that. I swallowed a ball of lead and blinked back some new tears. This was not good. Not good at all.
I knew from my business education that it took a huge expense and at least two years of hard work to get a company ready to go public. And it was tough to get bankers on your side, especially for a young and relatively inexperienced CFO like Jordan.
“Yeah, and the bankers aren’t too pleased that there is a company employee involved in this mess. Since they are the ones who would underwrite the initial stock shares on the day the company goes public, their financial risk is pretty hefty.”
I nodded. If things didn’t go perfectly in an IPO, a company could take a huge hit. It had happened with some big and successful companies very recently. They’d been valued at a certain price and then their shares dropped in price the second the company went public, losing them millions—sometimes even billions.
And that could happen to Draco, all because of my stupid sex video. Shit.
No wonder Jordan looked at me like he wanted to literally eat me alive.
I leaned in. “So that’s why he’s been out so much for meetings and taking so many conference calls? I was—”
“I hate to break up this gossip session, but would you two mind getting some work done?”
We both jumped and found ourselves face-to-face with the subject of our discussion. My eyes slid down Jordan’s powerful form. He was dressed in suit and tie—as he was pretty much every day since the return from Comic-Con. And he looked as exhausted as I felt. Not that it made him any less hot, curse him.
He dumped a pile of outgoing mail on the desk in front of us, spun and entered his office.
With shaky hands, I reached out and started sifting through the envelopes. “These need addresses…” I snatched up a lavender envelope that was blank. A love letter?
There was a sticky note attached, on which he’d scrawled, “Mom.”
“Oh yeah, I forgot it was his mom’s birthday this week! I didn’t even have to remind him,” Susan said, pulling up the address on her laptop.
I grabbed a pen, ready to address it. “Does he have you buy his cards and gifts for him?”
“Sometimes for his dates. He goes out with so many different women that he probably can’t keep up. But he never has me do it for his family. He does all that himself.” Sometimes for his dates. Huh, that figured.
I thought of the blond woman he’d been talking to in R&D. “He was chatting up some blonde at the demo last week. Lindsay. Is she his girlfriend?”
Susan laughed. “No, no. Not even. She’s Adam’s friend. Jordan doesn’t really stay in a relationship long enough to have them even be called ‘girlfriends.’ He might be a bit shallow and misguided, but he really is a sweet surfer kid at heart.”
My lips thinned. She read off the address and I wrote it down on the envelope. His mother lived in San Luis Obispo, about two hundred and fifty miles north of Orange County.
“He’s really close with his family, actually. Except for the dad. There’s something weird going on with his dad.” She shook her head. “Anyway, just give it some time. I’m sure he’ll calm down soon.”
I hurriedly addressed the rest of the mail while nervously keeping an eye out for his door to open. God forbid he needed another coffee.
Somehow I made it out of there on time, for once. That gave me hope that he might leave me alone for the weekend.
That hope was dashed, however, when Susan called me late Saturday afternoon.
“Please, April. I’ve been puking all day. I’m so dizzy I can hardly stand up straight, let alone drive.”
I took a deep breath and let it go. “Susan, I have plans. I’m going out with some girlfriends tonight.”
“Hon, I promise it won’t take you more than a half-hour to run to the office, grab the paperwork off my desk and then run it over to him. He lives really close. He’s in Newport Beach—the Wedge.”
I knew the area. It was at the tip of the Balboa peninsula in rich man’s land. I took a deep breath, wanting desperately to refuse. But it just so happened that my plans for the evening were going to take me to Newport Beach. It would be a simple matter of getting the file and then stopping by. Having to deal with the beast boss on a Saturday night was the real problem.