Lace-Covered Compromise Read online

  Riptide Publishing

  PO Box 1537

  Burnsville, NC 28714

  www.riptidepublishing.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. All person(s) depicted on the cover are model(s) used for illustrative purposes only.

  Lace-Covered Compromise

  Copyright © 2017 by Silvia Violet

  Cover art: L.C. Chase, lcchase.com/design.htm

  Editor: Carole-ann Galloway

  Layout: L.C. Chase, lcchase.com/design.htm

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher, and where permitted by law. Reviewers may quote brief passages in a review. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Riptide Publishing at the mailing address above, at Riptidepublishing.com, or at [email protected].

  ISBN: 978-1-62649-658-3

  First edition

  November, 2017

  Also available in paperback:

  ISBN: 978-1-62649-685-9

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  Adam Kingston expects to inherit his father’s multinational conglomerate. When he finds out half of it went to Nate Thomas—an annoying man whose dreams for Kingston Corp.’s future clash with Adam’s need to stave off financial disaster—Adam is furious. He’s willing to do whatever it takes to wrest control of Kingston Corp. from Nate.

  Nate may be soft-spoken, but he refuses to be swayed by Adam’s arrogant demands. When Nate accidentally drops a pair of his lacy panties in front of Adam, there’s no mistaking Adam’s interest. Nate hadn’t realized Adam was bisexual, but now that his secret is out, Nate is willing to use Adam’s lust against him if it means protecting the welfare of the company he loves.

  For Adam and Nate, hatred and desire are closely linked. Their inability to compromise threatens the company and could expose their tightly held secrets. But as they work together to develop a plan to save Kingston Corp., they begin to realize there might be more to their relationship than anger and lust.

  To friends and family who’ve always supported my career and given me the love and encouragement to keep writing.

  About Lace-Covered Compromise

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Dear Reader

  Also by Silvia Violet

  About the Author

  More like this

  I watched as my father’s coffin was lowered into the ground. Most of the other funeral goers had left, including Nate, the self-righteous prick who now owned half of Kingston Corp., the company my father had built from the ground up.

  It was supposed to be mine. All mine. Not split up with someone who isn’t family, no matter how convinced he was that Nate would run it better.

  The few mourners—was anyone other than Nate actually mourning or had they just shown up in hopes of making the papers?—had moved far away, standing in darkly-clad clusters, whispering, perhaps sharing their most damning memories of my father. How many of them had happy reminiscences? Mine were sure as hell few and far between.

  “Sir, do you need a moment?”

  It took me a bit to realize the funeral director was speaking to me. I shook my head. “Go ahead and put the old bastard under.”

  The man nodded, his face remaining impressively blank. He must hear all kinds of sentiments in his business. I turned and walked away, scanning the paths to see if I could escape the cemetery without talking to anyone. Not fucking likely if I went back the way I’d come in. Fortunately, I didn’t have to. At least I’d made it through the ceremony without one of the fucking panic attacks I’d been having recently. Yet another thing I had to thank dear old Dad for.

  I pulled out my phone. “Darryl, bring the car to the south entrance. I’ll meet you there.”

  My aunt and my wicked ex-stepmother had assigned themselves as my keepers during this blessed event. They’d done their best to parade me in front of all the attending media, but now it was time to make my escape. I headed where there seemed to be no funeral goers or photographers hoping for another shot of the grieving son. As if. There were probably a few members of the press hiding somewhere, but at least they were discreet. What had my stepmother thought I was going to do, anyway? Stand up in front of everyone and say how I really felt? I might’ve done so if I’d thought anyone would actually care, but I’d had enough of being a scandalmonger for a while.

  In his last hours, my father had pretended to reach out to me, to forgive past mistakes—in other words, he’d given me a chance to apologize for being a disappointment. I’d wanted to believe he was sincere, but no, Daddy had put a nice little surprise for me in his will. He’d probably laughed behind my back every time I visited during his final illness.

  “Adam! Adam!”

  I ignored the female voice calling me. It would be best for everyone if I got out of there without having to speak to another person.

  “Adam!”

  Wait. Was that Valerie? She wasn’t supposed to be here yet.

  I turned and there she stood, the woman my father had wanted me to marry. He’d tried to set plans in motion when I was still in high school, but we’d known we’d make a lousy match, so instead of becoming engaged, we became best friends. Valerie understood what it was like to live with parents who wanted to mold you in their image.

  Now, we saw each other as often as we could even though she lived in the tiny principality of Nazapoli near the Italian Alps. She’d fallen madly in love with actual Nazapolitan royalty and become a duchess with lots of important state duties.

  “You’re here.” Obviously she was or else I was worse off than I thought.

  She nodded. “I am.”

  “But I didn’t think you were going to make it for the funeral.”

  “My pilot was able to take off early.”

  “Ah, yes, being connected to a royal family does have its advantages.”

  “It does.” Valerie pulled me into her arms. I was so startled I let her, though normally—unless I was fucking somebody—I liked to keep people at arm’s length.

  When she pulled back, I scowled at her.

  “I needed the hug ev
en if you didn’t,” she said.

  “Selfish brat.”

  “Pot. Kettle.”

  I smiled for the first time that day. Almost a year had passed since I’d seen Valerie, but she was as beautiful as ever. She wore a perfectly tailored black sheath dress, and her dark hair was swirled up in an impeccable Audrey Hepburn–esque style. She could easily have walked off the set of an early 1960s film. I was surprised photographers hadn’t mobbed her.

  Valerie took my hands in hers, and because she was my best friend, I allowed that too. “How are you? And don’t give me any bullshit.”

  “Pissed off.”

  She nodded. “That sounds right.”

  “You’re not even going to pretend to be shocked that I’m not grief-stricken?”

  “I’ve never pretended with you, Adam, and I appreciate that you don’t pretend with me, either.”

  That was true. No matter how tempting it would’ve been to get my father off my back, I never pretended I might marry her.

  “I couldn’t get this day over with fast enough. The old ass should consider himself lucky I showed up at all.” I offered her my arm, and we started walking the way I’d been headed. “Thank you for letting me be honest.”

  “So the rumor is true, I take it?” she asked.

  I snorted. She had to be referring to my father fucking me over on my inheritance. “How much time do you have?”

  “As much as you need. I’ll be in Chicago for a month, and I don’t have any plans tonight. But if I did, I’d cancel for you.”

  “I asked my driver to circle to the back of the cemetery. Would you like to get a drink?”

  “I would love that, but I think we’d better go back to your apartment or my hotel if we don’t want to be surrounded.” She tilted her head toward a photographer who was literally hiding behind a tree watching us.

  “Fuck off,” I yelled.

  “Adam.” She batted my arm.

  “Now you’re pretending. Nothing I do really shocks you.”

  “I’m simply attempting to correct your abysmal manners.”

  I snorted. “I suppose you’ve always done that.”

  “Sadly, I’ve always needed to.”

  “You’d do best to give up on trying to teach me propriety; even my father eventually did.” I stumbled on the uneven pavement, surprised by the pain of the memories that confession brought up. The one thing I never wanted to do was fail, yet my father had thought I was a failure at basically everything.

  “Hang on just a minute. Let me call my driver.” By the time she’d finished telling her own driver that he wouldn’t be needed, we’d reached my car.

  “Where to, Mr. Kingston?” Darryl asked.

  “My apartment.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “At least then I won’t be seen going to a married woman’s hotel room,” I said, when I was seated next to Valerie on the soft leather seat.

  “No, just taking one up to your flat.”

  I gave her a mocking, wide-eyed glance. “Surely no one would think I’d seduce an old friend on the day of my father’s funeral.”

  “That is exactly the kind of thing you’d do.”

  “Too true, but . . .” I gestured toward the diamond on her left hand, which was so large her husband could probably see it all the way across the Atlantic. “I don’t do married women.”

  She scoffed. “Nice to know there’s something you don’t do. Now tell me about your father and the very attractive man who now owns half of Kingston Corp.”

  I opened the limousine’s liquor cabinet and poured myself a Scotch. “Would you like a drink?” I asked, glancing at Valerie.

  “No, thank you. One of us should be sober.”

  “That’s sure as hell not going to be me.” I downed my drink and poured another. I sipped this one for a few moments and then felt ready to talk. “To answer your question, yes, the rumor is right. Fucking Nate fucking Thomas now owns half of Kingston Corp. Half. Of. My. Company. The nerdy little tree-hugging enviro-nut who wants to turn the all of Kingston Corp. into some kind of pro-Earth charity now owns half of it, and I’ve got to figure out how to overturn the will or get him to sell. Maybe I can convince him it’s evil to own the means of production or something.”

  “I doubt he’s truly a communist—are there still communists? From what I’ve read about him, he seems like an idealist and certainly pro-environment, but—”

  “You haven’t met the self-smug bastard.”

  “I’m going to make a wild guess here, based on everything I know about Adam Kingston. Is the real problem that he hates you and refuses to do what you say?”

  “He . . . Yes.” Why could Valerie always read me like that?

  Valerie tucked in a piece of hair that had escaped from its confines. “This should prove interesting.”

  “I don’t want it to be interesting. I want it to be over.”

  “Have you ever actually talked to Nate?”

  I glared at her.

  “Well, have you?”

  “We’re at every division president’s meeting together. Most weeks, he tells me I’m callous and reckless, and I argue that he’s trying to give all our profits away. He makes me lose my temper faster than anyone other than my father.”

  “Telling him how wrong he is isn’t talking to him.”

  “We have discussions, they are just—”

  Valerie raised her brows. “Do you, or do you dictate and expect him to obey?”

  “I . . . Fuck, why do you always have to act like things are my fault? That is one reason I could never marry you.”

  “One of a billion reasons. Do you have another one to confess?”

  The gleam in her eye made it clear she had something specific in mind, but she knew most of the reasons, except . . . Fuck, had she figured out that I liked men? I’d never even hinted at it, and it wasn’t a reason for not marrying her. I liked women too.

  Someone must know. You can’t truly believe you’ve kept it secret all these years.

  One day I would get caught with a man and more people than my father would lose respect for me. But until then, the adrenaline of almost getting caught on a regular basis only made my dirty secret better.

  “What is that look about?” Valerie asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “It’s never nothing with you.”

  “Why do I feel like I’m twenty again with you trying to get me to take something, anything, seriously?”

  “Because neither of us has really changed.”

  I smiled. “What the fuck am I going to do about Nate?”

  “You’re going to have to talk to him and work this out like an adult, one qualified to run a global conglomerate.”

  I hated how right she was.

  The fucking will turned out to be airtight. After a week, my lawyers couldn’t find a single loophole, and I’d hired the best. The problem was, so had my dad. Apparently, my father could give the company to anyone he chose. There was no chance of proving that my old man wasn’t in his right mind when he wrote the will. He’d been as sane as ever. Shrewd, unfeeling, vengeful, but sane.

  I was going to have to talk to Nate or, as Valerie would put it, talk at Nate and hope he’d listen. There wasn’t much chance of that, though. He might be a woolly headed, put-the-world-ahead-of-profit hippie, but he was smart—not as smart as me, but damn close. And he was stubborn, really fucking stubborn.

  And you’re not?

  My father had taught us both to never relent. I couldn’t understand his interest in Nate. Not long after hiring him, my father had taken Nate under his wing. Over the years, he’d spent more and more time acting as a mentor, but from what I could see, Nate was less like my father’s ideal son than I was. My father had been a smooth-talking businessman who’d seduced companies into rolling over and showing their belly. Then, when they were too weak to fight, he’d take control, buying them out and merging them into Kingston. I’d always thought my dad wanted a fox for a son, a fox in
bunny’s clothing. I was ruthless, but I didn’t have the patience for the sweet talk or seduction. I didn’t wait for an opponent to show weakness, I just went right for the kill, like a shark.

  Nate thought you could succeed in business by making everyone happy. He sincerely believed he could make the world a better place. The fool. So how the fuck had he been my father’s protégé? No way in hell had he actually converted my old man to his way of thinking. Harvey Kingston had never changed his mind, not for any man, woman, or child other than my mother, but she’d been gone so long he’d forgotten how to bend.

  I glanced at the time on my laptop screen. Nate would be out of his meeting with my father’s attorneys. I could head down to his office and catch him off guard. Beard him in his den, as it were. It was time he understood that it was my place to decide the direction this company would go. He’d simply have to get on board.

  Nate understood environmental science, and I agreed with my father’s decision to put him in charge of the Enviro division. I might even be able to stomach letting him run the division however he wanted to, but the future of Kingston Corp. depended on me putting plans into action in the Research division, plans he might not like. The board wanted us to share leadership with me as CEO and Nate as president, a position we would create just for him. No way in hell was that going to work. I doubted he’d even been keeping up with Kingston’s financial reports, and he’d likely fallen for my father’s bullshit about how bright the future looked. My father had insisted nothing was wrong up until the day he died, but Kingston was in serious financial trouble, and I needed to get us back on track.

  I had a few ideas about how to do that, one of which was to reduce Kingston’s reach. My father had originally started Kingston Corp. as a household products company, but as the world and the market had shifted, Kingston had become a conglomerate, owning and overseeing a number of diverse businesses. As much as I hated the thought of selling off any of those divisions, I would do what was necessary. Because, despite what my father thought, failure wasn’t an option for me.

  The elevator dinged. I’d reached Nate’s floors. As the doors glided open, I stepped into the Enviro business’s executive offices. As I walked through the sea of cubicles, I heard a wave of whispers cross the floor. Apparently one girl thought I might be planning to finish Nate off. I wasn’t quite that ruthless. This wasn’t the Old West. Hell, we weren’t even in Texas. Although there was some appeal to the idea of settling this all with a duel. I’d rather be shot at than spend hours, days, weeks negotiating with someone who didn’t understand profit margins.