Backup Plan (What's The Plan? Series Book 2) Read online

  Backup Plan

  Book 2 in the What’s The Plan? Series

  Lisa Fenwick

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

  EPILOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Addi! ADDI!” Sam yelled from the conference room as she pushed the obnoxiously large plate of heavenly-smelling pastries away from her.

  Addi appeared in the doorway, her long, wavy, magenta hair looking vibrant against her white blouse and dark skin.

  “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

  “This. This is what’s wrong. Stop! It’s been almost three years that I’ve asked for just healthy stuff for our meetings, and there’s always this crap for breakfast!” Sam made a face as she spoke, as if she had just bitten into a lemon. She knew that she wasn’t kidding anyone; her sweet tooth demanded treats, and if she didn’t get them, she acted like a hangry monster around the office.

  “Umm…right. But those have fruit in them. And they are gluten free. I think,” Addi said as she smirked.

  Sam groaned and shooed her out of the room and then reluctantly pulled the plate toward her, scooping up a large raspberry Danish. She had zero willpower, and she hated it. Working more than seventy hours a week left little time for her to prepare meals or exercise, not that she would be doing either even if she only worked ten hours a week. She had come to accept that her sweet tooth was invincible.

  “Ugh, why is it always so cold in here? Heat is included in the lease. Take advantage of it!” Mo said as he entered the room and started to fumble with the thermometer.

  Morgan “Mo” Peterman was only forty-two but acted like he was in his sixties. He was extremely cautious, always on time, and a whiz with finance. Sam had hired him as the CFO almost two years ago, after she had started to get in over her head with the company’s finances due to such rapid growth. Mo was a great fit in the company and kept everyone in line when it came to money.

  Sam looked at her watch just as Holly and Michael scooted in the door, the two of them sitting down across from each other at the glass conference table and each grabbing a pastry.

  “Okay, everyone, let’s get this moving. You all know how much I love meetings.”

  Sam despised meetings but knew that they were a necessity. She tried to have the minimal number possible, which amounted to one staff meeting a week and a ton of side meetings daily, which was fine by her. Communication was key, but there were more efficient ways of accomplishing it than having everyone sit in the same room for hours.

  “Michael, do you want to kick it off? How are things going?”

  “Well, as long as we keep you off of social media, I think we will be fine.”

  Sam scooched down in her seat a bit and felt her face getting warm. She hadn’t thought that hiring someone to do marketing or public relations was necessary. That was her area of expertise. She had a degree in it, for crying out loud! But more than once, she had inadvertently posted something that was meant for her personal profile on the business page. After the last time, when she’d shared a video montage of Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski dancing, she had finally agreed that hiring someone else to manage it was best.

  “I have some new ads running now on social media, mostly videos highlighting the recent celebrities we signed on, as well as some still shots with Academy Awards or X Games winners. We also have a few pieces scheduled with various news outlets. Most of those are about signing on Sharon. You wouldn’t think it would be such a big deal in this day and age, but it is.”

  Sam nodded in agreement. Sharon Wentworth was sixty years old and a former model. She had approached Sam about getting back into modeling, reviving her career like Sam had done for Tatiana Giordano. Sharon was gorgeous, and Sam knew she could market the fact that she really could pass for half her age to skin-care companies. Her first campaign had been a big hit, more so because of her age. It was a bit annoying: was sixty really that old? No one ever seemed to comment about men aging. Only about women.

  “How much are the ads? I don’t remember you having anything left in your budget for the month,” Mo said, causing Sam to clench her teeth. Mo always knew exactly what was left in each department’s budget, down to the penny. She sensed his question meant that there was nothing left in the budget.

  “Err…well, I planned on just using next month’s budget for it. We need to stay relevant. Ads get us out there and remind people who we are. It’s a constant necessity in this business,” Mike said.

  “No. It’s too tight this month,” Mo stated matter-of-factly.

  Sam locked eyes with Mike, who rolled his and dropped his pen on the table dramatically. Mike was brilliant with marketing but tended to be overly theatrical at times.

  “Okay, then I’ll just cancel everything. We don’t need any business anyway,” Mike said sarcastically.

  “Hold on,” Sam interjected. She hated this part of being the CEO. It was like babysitting at times, and lately it had gotten worse. “Mo, we do need to keep the name out there. I know we’ve had a slight decrease in the number of clients, but we still have had steady cash flow, right? I mean, our existing client base has been making us a lot.”

  “Sam, we need money to grow. It’s that simple. This company can’t grow without spending more money. You can’t get more money without new clients, and you can’t get new clients without spending more money. It’s a merry-go-round. I balance the cash as much as I can, but the reality is that we need an influx. A loan, investors, something.”

  “And you can’t get new clients without hiring new agents, because ours are all maxed out. I really need new agents,” Holly added.

  Sam sighed loudly. For almost two years, she had been battling against getting money from outside sources. She had thought that she could do it on her own somehow, but it just wasn’t the way businesses worked, not unless you had a few million in the bank. And she didn’t. She didn’t have a house to get an equity line of credit against, and she didn’t have anyone that she could borrow it from either. Banks wouldn’t loan her anything, as her company was still considered new, and again, she had no collateral to put up for the loan.

  “Guys, I know I need to get us some money so that we can grow. I’m just worried that if I go the venture capital route, I will lose control of this business, and I refuse to do that. I’ve worked really hard.” Sam had heard the nightmare stories of letting VCs invest in a company, and the next thing the original founders knew, they had been thrown out of the business that they started. There was no way she was risking that. She had worked way too hard. Weekends, late nights, no vacations, and no social life. There just was no way that she was going to give up control of her company. At the same time, she knew that she had procrastinated for too long, and now it was beyond urgent that they get some cash before her hand was forced, or worse.

  “Well, I may have another option for us,” Mo said, adjusting his glasses farther up on his nose. “I was approached by a firm a few weeks ago that is interested in a merger with us. They’re established, well known actually.
I’ve gone over their financials and done a lot of due diligence to ensure it’s real, and it is. This could turn things around for us financially.”

  Sam perked up, as did the others around the table. She hadn’t expected this. Mo hadn’t said a word about this before.

  “What’s the catch? I mean, they must want part ownership. And why us?” Sam asked.

  “So we lose our jobs? I mean, that’s what a merger usually is. That’s why they are called murders and acquisitions, Mo, instead of mergers and acquisitions. They certainly don’t need two CFOs, right?” Holly said, her face getting red.

  Mo shook his head and adjusted his bow tie.

  “No one would lose their job. The offer isn’t really a merger. It’s more like a partnership, where Horizon would remain intact. We would be a wholly owned subsidiary on the books – at least that’s what I think. They want us for our expertise with creating female talent. Their management team hasn’t done a good job at growing the female-based clientele list over the past years, so they are looking for someone who has a proven track record of doing it. They are much larger, so what they seem to want is for us to send them clients that want a larger firm to rep them, and in return, they are giving us a substantial amount of cash via a percentage of the clients’ income.”

  Everyone looked at each other. Sam shook her head. It sounded much too easy. There had to be a catch.

  “This seems way too good to be true. Are you sure this is legit?” she asked, eyeing the last raspberry Danish. Every time she started to get stressed out, she immediately wanted to eat something sweet, and that Danish was calling her name.

  “Yes. I’ve done a lot of research. Otherwise I wouldn’t even be mentioning this to you,” Mo said, sounding irked. “Of course, there needs to be a meeting where more information is discussed, like bylaws and things like that, but overall, this seems to be the real thing.”

  Sam knew that Mo would have gone over everything he could with a fine-toothed comb before presenting it to them. He was good that way. She looked around the table at the faces all staring back at her eagerly and then looked out the window into the office. It was a small company, only a dozen employees so far. But she had worked hard to get where she was, and these people had all taken a big risk in joining her. She needed to make sure that she didn’t lose everything for fear of having to give up some control.

  “Okay, I guess I need to seriously consider this. Who is the mystery company?”

  Mo adjusted his bow tie again and fumbled with his pen as he looked down before speaking.

  As he spoke, Sam felt like her chair had been pulled out from underneath her when he named the last company on Earth that she expected – Rossi.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “This is a bad idea, right? Tell me that this is a bad idea.”

  Sam looked at her reflection in the small mirror for what had to be the tenth time, as if what she saw would magically change and she would grow five inches and loose twenty pounds in the blink of an eye.

  “It’s not a bad idea. It is a business meeting. Nothing more, nothing less.”

  Sam turned to look Holly in the eyes then rolled hers upward as she played around with her hair again, pulling it back into a low ponytail and then taking it out of the hair tie and letting it fall loosely down, the thick brown and blonde locks brushing against her face.

  “Right. A business meeting. Just like any other business meeting I have had over the past three years. Why do I feel like if you believed that, you wouldn’t have just told me to change my shoes?”

  She grabbed the black Louboutins that Holly was holding and slipped them on. They were obnoxiously expensive, but she had bought them for herself a few months ago when she had been listed in Boston Magazine as a top female entrepreneur. While it was ridiculous, they did make her feel more confident, and she could use all the help she could get right now.

  “I just felt they went better with your jacket. The pop of red on the bottom. You know,” Holly said casually as she started to walk toward the door.

  “Oh no no no, do not even think about leaving this office! I need to go over the numbers with you one more time.”

  Sam already knew the numbers by heart, as well as everything else that she had studied for the possible merger, but she still wanted one last run-through. After all, Holly was her vice president of operations anyway, and ensuring Sam knew what she was talking about was her job. The whole reason they needed money was to hire new agents for Holly anyway.

  Holly stopped and let out a loud sigh as she turned around and plopped herself down in one of the oversized high-backed chairs in front of Sam’s desk.

  “Okay, let’s hear it for the tenth time.”

  Sam grabbed her papers and went over the figures with Holly, knowing that she was just trying to keep busy until she had to leave for her off-site meeting. She had purposely made the meeting for three o’clock, too late for lunch and too early for dinner. The reservation was at an upscale restaurant nearby that she frequently brought clients to; she felt comfortable there, and some of the staff knew her.

  “Sam, you know it all by heart. You’re just nervous. Calm down. This isn’t a big deal.”

  Sam took a deep breath and looked at her reflection again. Calming down wasn’t going to happen. And yes, this was kind of a big deal. Had she changed since she’d last seen Lance? Her hair was a bit blonder in the front, thanks to an overzealous hairdresser that she had had to use when her usual person, Gabriel, was away on vacation. She felt it washed her out a bit, so she had started to use self-tanner, which looked surprisingly real, giving her a nice bronze glow. She still didn’t wear a lot of makeup and stuck to neutral earth tones for eyeshadow and lipstick. Her eyes moved from her face down to her body, and her mood instantly went from nervous to self-doubt. Yet again, she wished that she was just a tad smaller, that she had maybe lost a few pounds since she had last seen Lance. It was too late now to worry about that.

  “Okay, here goes nothing,” she said, grabbing her long red duster and putting it on. It really did pop against the black top and slacks that she was wearing. And it matched the signature red that was on the bottom of the Louboutin heels.

  “Wish me luck,” she said to Holly as she headed down the hallway.

  “You’ve got this!” Holly yelled after her as Sam disappeared through the door.

  ********

  As she stepped outside, Sam took a deep breath, inhaling the crisp fall air. She started to walk to the restaurant for the meeting, almost immediately second-guessing her shoe choice. She was only walking a block, but the sidewalks were cobblestone, and maneuvering around on them in high heels was hard. She always wore heels, but usually they were three inches, not almost six like these were. She felt as if she was walking on stilts. After a trip that seemed to take twice as long as it should have, she arrived at the restaurant, hesitating for a minute before she pulled the heavy wooden door open and stepped inside.

  The aroma of cinnamon and pumpkin filled the air, a common scent in New England during the fall. The candles on the hostess stand flickered lightly as she approached it.

  “Reynolds, reservation for two,” she stated to the beautiful blonde hostess, who nodded immediately and grabbed two of the long black leather-bound menus. Sam knew that she had seen the woman here before, when she was being trained as a hostess. She had dropped the menus all over the floor. Sam’s date had cracked a mean joke about it, which had made Sam instantly want him to disappear. The date had ended with no dessert and no second date.

  “Yes, Miss Reynolds, we have a nice booth set up for you. Follow me, please.”

  Sam followed her to an oversized booth next to one of the large windows that overlooked the marketplace in Boston Square. There was a small centerpiece on the table consisting of some flowers and a tiny pumpkin. The orange and yellow colors popped against the stark white tablecloth.

  “Is this okay? If it isn’t, I can change it, no problem,” the hostess said nervously, still
clutching the menus, her coffin-shaped burgundy fingernails looking as if they could tear apart a small animal.

  “It’s perfect, thank you,” Sam replied, sliding into one side of the booth, the smooth, buttery leather seat a welcome respite for her already-sore feet. Now she remembered why she had only worn these shoes once before. They looked amazing but were beyond painful to wear.

  “Great! Err…umm…I really admire you for what you’ve done. I mean, you’re kind of like a celebrity around here,” the hostess gushed at Sam as she handed her a menu and placed the other one across the table from her.

  “Thank you. I really appreciate the kind words,” Sam replied, smiling. She really needed a drink and wanted to be alone before Lance showed up. Her heart was racing, and she was starting to sweat, a result of being so nervous.

  The hostess disappeared, and Sam put the menu on the table. She wanted to grab one of the knives to look at her reflection but was too afraid that she would get caught and die of embarrassment. She had specifically chosen to have her back toward the front of the restaurant. Otherwise she would have done nothing but stare at the door, and since she had made it a point to arrive twenty minutes early, that would have created more unnecessary stress.

  The waitress came, setting down a fresh-baked mini loaf of bread with butter, and took her drink order, her usual vodka tonic with a lemon, no lime, light on the vodka so she didn’t get tipsy. She slugged it back in almost no time after it arrived and flagged the waitress down, asking for a glass of water along with a second drink.

  Her mind started to race as she nibbled on some of the bread. What if this meeting went badly? It could easily go off the rails. Staying on topic would be critical. She knew that. She had drilled it into her head for days. This was a business meeting, nothing more. Ugh, she just wanted it to be over already.

  “She’s right this way. We made sure to give you the best seat in the house.”

  Sam heard the hostess and immediately knew that she was speaking to Lance. She quickly swallowed the bread that was in her mouth and tossed back some of her drink, dabbing at the corner of her mouth with the black napkin.