Takeover In The Boardroom. Fiona Brand

      His easy honesty surprised her and charmed her in a way. She’d always thought of men like him as having goals. Solid, steady, unemotional stepping stones that marked their success.

      “Wow. I guess the heart of a Russian really does beat under that American-businessman veneer.”

      “My grandparents like to think so.”

      She offered him a bite of pancake with a slice of banana. “And your parents?”

      Vik took the bite just like he used to and memories of a time when they’d been friends, and all her dreams had centered on this man, assailed Maddie.

      “My mother has been out of the picture for all of my memory. My dad is like a computer virus. He keeps coming back.”

      She smiled. “I should say I’m sorry, but having a father who drives you nuts makes you more human.”

      Vik shrugged, but she couldn’t help wondering if he’d told her about his dad on purpose. To build rapport. She thought Vik had outclassed her dad a long time ago in the manipulation department.

      After all, Jeremy Archer still thought he ran AIH. However anyone with a brain—not blinkered by willful blindness—and access to the company would realize it was actually Vik’s show and had been for a few years.

      “Whose idea was it to offer Steven Whitley and Brian Jones up on the chopping block?”

      “It’s hardly a sacrifice to be offered this kind of opportunity.” Vik drank his coffee, his expression sincere if she could believe it.

      But then what was to say she couldn’t?

      “Marriage to the prodigal daughter for an eventual company presidency?” That might well be worth it to a man like Vik.

      “You don’t exactly fit the distinction of prodigal.”

      “Don’t I?”

      “You haven’t blown through your inheritance. In fact, you are surprisingly fiscally responsible.”

      “Thank you, I think.”

      “You haven’t abandoned your family to see the world.”

      “I moved out of the family home.”

      He winked at her. “But stayed in the city.”

      “What can I say? I love San Francisco.”

      “And your father.”

      “I’d rather not talk about that.”

      “Understood.” He smiled and her nerve endings went twang. “Your media notoriety isn’t even of the truly scandalous variety.”

      “Until Perrygate.”

      Vik waved his hand, dismissing the importance of Perry’s lies. “That will be handled.”

      “Thank you for that.” The thought of being forced to give up her volunteerism because of an unsavory reputation hurt deeply, compounding her pain at Perry’s betrayal.

      He knew how important working with the children was to her.

      “But seriously?” she asked, refocusing. “Whitley and Jones?”

      Vik shrugged, but his lips firmed in a telling line. “They’re the most likely men within the company to do the job.”

      “Marrying me?”

      “Becoming the next president.”

      “Besides you.”

      “Besides me,” he agreed.

      “You’re the only real candidate.”

      “I would like to think so.”

      “And then there is Maxwell Black.”

      Vik’s eyes narrowed, the brown depths darkening to almost black. “Your father is never going to approve the kind of marriage Black suggested.”

      “And if that is the only kind of marriage I’m willing to agree to?” she taunted.

      “Jeremy will hire a surrogate and have his own child in hopes of succeeding with him where he failed with you.”

      Wholly unprepared for that answer, several seconds passed before Maddie felt like she could breathe again. “He’s not a young man any longer.”

      “He is fifty-seven.”

      “He would not be so cruel.” And she did not mean to her.

      No child deserved to be born merely as a player on the chessboard. She should know.

      She’d taken herself out of play, but she’d had the strength of the memory of her mother’s love to bolster her own courage.

      This child would only have Jeremy Archer.

      Maddie shivered at the prospect. “I’m not having a child simply for him or her to be put in the same position.”

      “You want children.” There was no doubt in Vik’s voice.

      “Someday.”

      “Whenever you have them, or whoever you have your children with, Jeremy will want the company to ultimately pass on to them.”

      “I know.” Her father’s role in her life and that of any children she might have was something she’d already spent several hours talking to her therapist, Dr. MacKenzie, about.

      “That is not a bad thing.”

      She’d come to realize that. While Maddie’s feelings about AIH were too antagonistic for her to ever want to be a part of it, as she’d always seen it as the entity that kept her father from her, it did not automatically follow that her children would feel the same way.

      “You said something about me having a child being necessary for the man I marry to take over AIH.”

      “Upon the birth of our first child, my succession to the presidency will be announced. Your father will shift into a less active role as chairman of the board on his sixtieth birthday.”

      “And if I haven’t had a child by then?”

      “My becoming company president will not happen until we have had our first child.”

      “What if we can’t have children?”

      “We can.”

      “You sound very certain.”

      “I am.”

      She remembered the ultrasound her doctor had ordered as part of her last physical, at the company’s request. She’d thought it was odd, but since her medical insurance was through AIH, Maddie hadn’t demurred.

      “Jeremy had them run fertility tests on me.”

      “Just preliminaries, but enough to know that aside from something well outside the norm, you should have no trouble conceiving.”

      “That’s so intrusive!”

      Vik didn’t reply and, honestly, Maddie didn’t know what she wanted him to say. She wasn’t entirely sure the test had been all her dad’s idea. If Vik had suggested them, she wasn’t sure knowing would be of any benefit to her.

      “What else?”

      “The contract gives five percent of the company to me on our five-year anniversary. Another five percent on the birth of each child, not to exceed ten percent.”

      “How generous, he’ll allow me to have two children.” She’d always dreamed of having, or adopting, at least four and creating a home filled with love and joy.

      “The contract does not limit the number of children you have, only the stock incentive to me for fathering them.”

      She ignored the way Vik continued