Chapter 19

Chase and Alex walked into the Morrison headquarters and were immediately escorted to the top floor. Unlike the clean lines of the Stone offices, this building displayed Texas pride in every corner. Heavy wood, iron accents, and leather were the palette of choice. The wall over the main reception desk had painted tiles with an image of an old western town and a sign saying, “Morrison Inn and Saloon established 1892.”

Jack walked toward them as they stepped out of the elevator. He wore a suit jacket, no tie, and cowboy boots. “I’m glad you made it.”

Chase extended his hand. “Thanks for having us.”

“Anytime, anytime. And you must be Alexandrea.” Jack shook Alex’s hand next.

“Call me Alex.”

“Okay, darlin’, whatever you want.” Jack stopped shaking her hand and quickly added, “I mean no disrespect or inappropriate advance when I say darlin’. My wife, Jessie, reminds me over and over that not everyone appreciates our Texas endearments. If it bothers you, I’ll do my best to stop, but old habits are hard to break, so no guarantees.”

Alex smiled. “You’re fine. Thanks for the disclaimer.”

“C’mon back.” Jack started leading them out of the top-floor lobby. “How was the flight?”

“We can’t complain,” Chase told him.

It was nice to have their first private jet experience together. Chase and Alex both explored every inch of the plane, pushing buttons and lying down on the bed in the back. The only other person Chase knew that would absorb the joy they had in the flight would be Piper. Someone he wanted to see on the plane just to hear her call out his gazillionaire status for owning such a thing.

“Our thunderstorms are notorious for keeping you circling above the airport. I’m glad the weather cooperated.”

Like Stone Enterprises, the Morrison headquarters was a series of wide halls and offices. The hum of a working office and chatter of employees were different only in the accents of those talking.

Jack led them into a corner office that doubled the size of the one they used in California. “I don’t believe you’ve met my father.”

Chase recognized Gaylord Morrison from the photographs in the articles he’d read up on while on the flight over. “We’ve not had the pleasure.”

Gaylord pushed out of his chair when they walked in. “Hello, hello.”

Gaylord’s handshake was as strong as the man was tall. Or maybe his height had more to do with the boots on his feet and the Stetson on his head. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“It’s all mine.” He turned to Alex. “Aren’t you beautiful.”

“Thank you, Mr. Morrison,” Alex said. “Our mother speaks highly of you.”

Gaylord’s expression softened. “How is Vivian?”

Chase was instantly impressed that the man remembered her name. “She’s doing well.”

“Did she ever remarry?” he asked.

“No,” Alex replied.

Gaylord let every emotion inside him show on his face. “That’s too bad.” He frowned. “Wait . . .” He smiled. “Maybe I should give her a call.”

Chase and Alex looked at each other and started to laugh.

Jack moved to the other end of the room, where two leather sofas faced each other, with a giant distressed wood table in between. “Daddy . . . we’ve talked about boundaries.”

Gaylord lifted a hand for Chase and Alex to take a seat. “I keep telling my son that there are only three types of boundaries when it comes to women. There’s the invisible line . . . the one you know is there, but you cross over it anyway. Sometimes on accident, sometimes on purpose. Then there’s the line with a wall and a door. You have to knock, sometimes it requires a key to unlock, or sometimes the person on the other side opens it up and lets you come right on in.”

“And the third?” Alex asked.

“That’s barbwire without a gate, darlin’. No matter how thick-skinned you are, it’s gonna hurt going through it, and you’ll aways come out on the other side bleedin’.”

Chase couldn’t hold back his laugh. The man had a point.

“Now the question is . . . which boundary would you classify your mama in?”

Jack met Chase’s gaze and mouthed the words I’m sorry with a shake of his head.

After a solid hour of chatter, the kind that put Chase at ease and told him he came to the right place for a crash-course education on how to be the CEO of a billion-dollar hotel business, Gaylord spelled out the bottom line in what sounded like a fifteen-minute TED Talk.

“What can I help you with?” Gaylord asked once the small talk had ended.

“We don’t know what we’re doing or how to go about making the decisions that are best for the company,” Alex admitted point-blank.

“You can’t know . . . not without the right people. Listen here . . . some of the best advice I ever got from my granddaddy is something Jack and I use every day.” He lifted a finger in the air. “You hire the absolute best person to do the job, whatever that job is, and get out of their way. Your job is not to do the tasks. That ended when you took over the corner office. Your job is to make the decisions, and you do that by hiring the right people. Do you see my theme here?”

Alex nodded, and Chase listened.

“Second”—Gaylord lifted another finger—“use your board. They’re invested. Know those players, know what motivates them. This is where all those dinners and golf games come into play. You need to know who is padding whose pockets and weigh that into the information that comes across your desk. Corporate gossip almost always has a factual base to it. You worked in acquisitions and mergers and know this firsthand, I’m sure,” he said to Alex.

“True.”

“At the same time, don’t ever discount your gut.”

“What do you mean?” Chase asked.

Gaylord sat back and crossed one boot-clad ankle over a knee. “Let’s say your numbers guy comes to you with something and tells you everything is green-light go on a project, but that gut of yours is making you hesitate. Listen to it. If something’s too good to be true, it is. Something smells bad, you’re right. This is a skill you will hone quicker than a snake strikes its prey when you know the players and what motivates them. Now . . . you really need to know your people, who to trust. There are a lot of wolves in sheep’s clothing when you’re playing with the numbers we have at our disposal.”

Alex turned to look at Chase, a concerned look on her face.

“Who are you thinking about right now, little lady?” Gaylord asked Alex.

She smiled. “I think Arthur is a good man, our CFO. I don’t know him well, but so far, he’s been helpful in explaining things I’m unfamiliar with. Hasn’t been pushy. A good feeling.”

“Okay, who else?”

“Gatlin,” Chase said for her. “Our VP.”

Gaylord shifted his eyes between the two of them.

“He rubs me wrong,” Alex said. “Not sure if we can trust him.”

“You’re listening to your gut, that’s good.”

“It might be that he thought he would take over after our father died and is ticked that he didn’t,” Alex explained.

For the first time, Jack spoke up. “Until he proves you right, or wrong . . . proceed with caution.”

Gaylord smiled at his son. “And if he proves you right, and you can’t trust him, get rid of him. You have to have confidence in your executive team. Otherwise, you won’t sleep well at night.”

Chase looked at his sister. “Time will tell.”

“Don’t rush anything. This business moves slow, or should. I always thought your daddy was growing way too quick for sustainability. I would double-check any new acquisitions that come across your desk and get second and third opinions if needed.”

Chase felt Gaylord’s advice seep in deep. “This has been extremely helpful. We can’t thank you enough.”

Gaylord shook his head. “I haven’t done anything. And if you don’t mind me saying—and even if you do mind—your daddy should have been mentoring you both to take over his company from the time you were knee-high to a grasshopper. None of us are getting off this floating rock alive, and he should have planned for this. But the fact that you’ve flown all the way here to seek advice from an old Texan innkeeper means you two are going to be just fine moving forward. That said, you need anything, we’re only a phone call away.”

Jack stood and clapped his hands together. “All right, who’s ready for some barbeque?”

Chase and Alex stood at the same time. “We don’t want to keep you,” Alex said.

“What did I tell you?” Gaylord asked. “Dinners and golf. And I don’t golf. Have no interest in chasing a tiny ball around a potholed field. Now if you ever want to go hunting, I’m your guy.”

“I’ve never held a rifle,” Chase admitted with a laugh.

Gaylord’s smile fell, and he glanced at his son. “We need to fix this.”

“One thing at a time, Dad. One thing at a time.”

Chase leaned back in the back of the oversize black SUV that took them from the steakhouse to the hotel.

Alex held her stomach and moaned. “I ate too much.”

“Gotta put some meat on your bones, little lady,” Chase said with the worst accent he’d ever attempted.

Alex laughed. “Mom was right. Gaylord’s a good man.”

“Do you feel better about things?”

“Hard not to with all that energy. It’s nice to know we have someone to call if we need them.”

Chase agreed.

Alex’s phone rang. She pulled it out of her purse. “Hi, Mom . . . Yeah, we just left. Hold up, let me put you on speaker. Chase is in the car with me.”

Alex placed the phone on her lap and pressed a button. “There we go. What were you saying?”

“Is Gaylord still a bigger-than-life personality?”

“Oh, yeah!” Chase said.

“He’s got the hots for you, Mom. I wouldn’t be shocked if he calls,” Alex told her.

“Oh, please.”

“We’re serious,” Chase added.

“That’s ridiculous,” Vivian said.

Chase could hear the fluster in her voice.

Alex nudged Chase’s side with a huge smile.

“How did it go?”

“It was a good visit. Worth our time for sure,” Alex said.

“Chase? What do you think?” Vivian asked.

Chase winked at his sister. “I think you should go out with him.”

“Oh my God, stop it, you two.”

It was fun to poke at her. For as long as Chase could remember, their mother didn’t date, and whenever they mentioned she should, Vivian would blow them off and change the subject, much like she did now.

“Speaking of dating . . . who is the mystery woman, Chase?”

“The mystery what?”

“There’s an article in The Beat with a picture of you and a woman.”

Chase shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Hold on, let me send you a link.”

It took a minute, but his phone pinged in his pocket.

“I sent it to both of you.”

Alex opened the link screen at the same time Chase did.

The gossip magazine had captured a picture of him and Piper standing in front of the garage the second he realized he was about to give in and kiss her. Chase’s face was as clear as day, Piper’s was hidden behind the large-brim hat covering her head. And if you didn’t know her personally, you wouldn’t recognize it was her.

Alex reached out and slapped his side and mouthed the question, Is that Piper?

“The article suggests she might be Melissa, but that’s not Melissa,” their mother said.

“Of course it’s not Melissa, and it’s not what you think.”

“I know the expressions on my son’s face, and that one is—”

Heated.

“Trick lighting, Photoshop. You can’t believe everything you see captured from a zoom lens.”

“Well, darn. I was hoping.”

Alex hurried the conversation along. “Mom, I’ll call you later. We’re almost at the hotel.”

They were nowhere near the hotel.

“Okay, honey.”

The second Alex disconnected the call, she smacked Chase’s shoulder with every word she spoke. “What. Are. You. Thinking?”

“Nothing happened.” He rubbed his shoulder.

Alex zoomed in and shoved the image on her phone in his face. “You want to repeat that?”

“She was dizzy,” he explained, which wasn’t a lie.

“You’re holding her.”

“Not really,” he denied. But yeah, he was.

“Other than you, there is only one person in that office I trust, and it’s her. She’s too valuable to lose, Chase.” Alex was pissed.

“She’s not going anywhere, Alex. You can trust me on this.”

She grumbled and studied the image the rest of the way to the hotel.

What was it Gaylord had alluded to? There’s always a little truth in the gossip.

Fuck!

Piper stared at her phone in absolute horror.

Chase had sent her an article in a text message. They caught my bad side, was Chase’s comment.

The picture of the two of them standing close together and Chase looking like he wanted to swallow her whole was going to keep the office gossip rolling for a very long time.

Everyone there knew she’d been at the Stone Estate working with Chase on collecting and putting Aaron Stone’s personal office in order. But this picture painted a whole different idea of what was going on in that house.

The article didn’t name her, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t find out who she was eventually.

Piper blinked and imagined if that picture was taken a few months from now. She’d be obviously pregnant . . . and if her name popped up and her parents saw it . . .

This wasn’t good.

This isn’t funny, Piper texted back.

We’re on the plane headed home now. I’ll come by your place once we land, and we can strategize how to handle this.

Piper read his message, dropped her phone in her lap, and looked around to see if anyone was watching her.

Then she started typing.

Are you crazy? If the media follows you, they’ll know exactly who the mystery woman is, and then what? How will we explain you coming to my house after hours?

Three dots flashed on her cell-phone screen.

Dee walked by Piper’s desk.

Piper hid the screen of her phone against her chest, realized how suspicious that was, and then dropped it in her lap.

Once Dee had passed, Piper went back to her phone.

It’s not like we’re having an affair.

“That’s what it will look like,” she said as she typed the words.

One of us would have to be married for this to be an affair, he replied.

This? There is no THIS!

Instead of dots suggesting a text was coming in, Chase typed in three little dots.

. . . There is a little bit of THIS.

Piper wanted to throw her phone against the wall.

You don’t want THIS, Chase. For so many reasons.

We’ll talk about it when I’m back.

Do NOT come to my house. Piper looked at the time and pulled up Chase and Alex’s schedule. They should be landing in a couple of hours, right about the time Piper made it home from work.

Fine. I’ll call.

Fine.

Oh, no . . .

Her heart jumped. What?

When a woman says FINE it’s never fine.

Was he flirting with her? In a text message?

Go away! Just because my BOSS isn’t here doesn’t mean I don’t have work to do!

When he didn’t text back right away, she put her phone on her desk, face down, and stared at her computer screen, at a loss for what she’d been doing before Chase’s messages.

Her phone pinged.

Your boss understands and approves of this distraction.

Piper groaned out loud, opened the drawer of her desk, dropped her cell phone into her purse, and closed it with an audible shove.

He was flirting with her.

Chase Stone, gazillionaire and her boss, was flirting with her.