The Antonides Marriage Deal

His teeth came together with a snap. “Morale at Antonides Marine is not low.”

“Of course it isn’t,” Tallie agreed. “And I want to keep it that way.”

“Cookies do not make morale.”

“Well, they don’t hurt,” she said. “And they certainly improve the quality of life, don’t you think?” She glanced around at the group who had been scarfing down her best offering and was gratified to see several heads nod vigorously.

A glare from Elias brought them to an abrupt halt. “Don’t you have work to do?” he asked them.

The heads bobbed again, and the group started to scatter.

“Before you go, though,” Tallie said. “I’d like to meet you.”

Elias didn’t look pleased, but he stuffed his hands in his pockets and stood silently while she introduced herself to each one, shook hands and tried to commit all their names to memory.

Paul was blond and bespectacled and crew-cut and personified efficiency. “I hope you’ll be very happy here,” he told her politely.

Dyson was black with flying dreadlocks and a gold hoop earring. “You’re good for my morale,” he told her with a grin, and snagged another cookie.

Rosie was short and curvy with flame-coloured hair. It was her job, she said, to keep everyone in line. “Even him.” She jerked her head at Elias. “I never make coffee,” she told Tallie. “Or cookies.” Then she confided that she might—if she could have these recipes.

“Sure, no problem,” Tallie said.

Lucy wore her silver hair in a bun and had a charm bracelet with a charm for every grandchild. Trina had long black hair with one blue streak, while Cara’s was short and spiky and decidedly pink. Giulia looked as if she were going to deliver triplets any minute.

“Boy or girl?” Tallie asked her.

“Boy,” Giulia said. “And soon, I hope,” she added wearily. “I want to see my feet.”

Tallie laughed. “My friend Katy said the same thing.”

They were a nice group, she decided after she’d chatted with them all. Friendly, welcoming. Everyone said they were happy to have her. Well, everyone except Elias Antonides.

He never said a word.

Finally, when the group began to head back to their various jobs, she looked at him. He was studying her as if she were a bomb he had to defuse.

“Perhaps we should talk?” she suggested. “Get acquainted?”

“Perhaps we should,” he said, his voice flat. He raked a hand through his hair, then sighed and called after Paul and Dyson, “Just keep going on the Corbett project. We’ll meet later.”

“If you need to meet with them, don’t let me interrupt,” Tallie said.

“I won’t.”

No, not really very welcoming at all.

But Tallie persisted, determined to get a spark of interest out of him. “I apologize for not letting you know I was already here,” she said. “I came in about seven. I could hardly wait,” she confided. “I was always getting to school on the first day hours early, too. Do you do that?”

“No.”

Right. Okay, let’s take a different tack.

“I found my office. Thank you for the name plaque, by the way. I don’t think I’ve ever had a plaque before. And thank you for all the fiscal reports. I got them from my father, so I’d already read them and I have a few questions. For example, have you considered that Corbett’s, while a viable possible acquisition, might not be the best one to start with? I thought—”

“Look, Ms Savas,” he said abruptly, “this isn’t going to work.”

“What isn’t going to work?”

“This! This question-and-answer business! You baking cookies, for God’s sake, then coming in with questions concerning things you know nothing about! I don’t have time for it. I have a business to run.”

“A business I am president of,” she reminded him archly.

“On account of a bet.”

Tallie stopped dead. “Bet? What bet?”

Hard dark eyes met hers accusingly. “You don’t know?”

But before she could do more than begin to shake her head, his jaw tightened and he sighed. “No, probably you don’t.” He opened his mouth, then shut it again. “Not here,” he muttered, glancing around the open break room. “Come on.”

And he grabbed her arm, steered her out the door and down the hallway, past the chattering temps and his flame-haired, goggle-eyed secretary and straight into his office. He shut the door with a definite click.

Elias Antonides’s office was far smaller than the one he’d given her. It didn’t even have a window. It had a desk overflowing with papers and files, two filing cabinets, a blueprint cabinet, three bookcases and one glorious wall painted by the same artist who had done the murals in the entry downstairs.

“Wow,” Tallie said involuntarily.

Elias looked startled. “Wow?”

She nodded at the mural. “It’s unexpected. Breathtaking. You don’t need a window.”

“No.” He stared at the mural a long moment, his jaw tight. Then abruptly he turned his gaze back to her and gestured toward a chair. “Sit down.”

It was more a command than an invitation. But it didn’t seem worth fighting about, so Tallie sat, then waited for him to do likewise. But he didn’t. He cracked his knuckles and paced behind his desk. A muscle worked in his jaw. He opened his mouth to speak, then stopped, paced some more and finally came to a stop directly behind the desk where at last he turned to face her. But he still didn’t speak.

“The bet?” Tallie prompted, not sure she wanted to know this, but reasonably certain it would shed light on why Elias was so upset.

“My father fancies himself a racing sailor,” he said at last. “And after he sold forty percent of Antonides Marine without telling anyone of his intentions—”

Uh-oh.

“—he hadn’t screwed things up badly enough yet. So he and your father made a little bet.” Elias cracked his knuckles again. She got the feeling he wished he was cracking his father’s head.

“What sort of bet?” Tallie asked warily. Dear God, her father hadn’t bet her hand in marriage, had he? He hadn’t done anything quite that outrageous yet in his attempt to marry her off, but she wouldn’t put it past him.

“The winner got the other’s island house and the presidency of Antonides Marine.”

“But that’s ridiculous!” Tallie protested. “What on earth would my father want with another house?” He had five now—if you counted what the family called “the hermitage” on a little island off the coast of Maine.

“I have no idea,” Elias said grimly. “I don’t think the houses had anything to do with it…even though,” he added bitterly, “in our case it was our family’s home for generations.”

“So why did they do it? Because of the presidency?”

Elias shrugged. “Not my father.”

But hers would have cared a great deal, she thought. She didn’t say so, however. “Then why would your father bet?”

“Because he thought he’d win!” Elias’s dark eyes flashed in anger. He shoved his hands through his hair. “He likes a good challenge. Especially when he’s got what he considers a sure thing. He didn’t count on your brother, the Olympic sailor,” Elias added heavily. He flung himself down in his chair and glared at her as if it were her fault.

Tallie knew whose fault it was. “Oh, dear. Daddy got Theo to race.”

It wasn’t a question. Of course he had got Theo to race—because just like Aeolus Antonides, Socrates Savas always played to win. And in this case, Aeolus had something that Socrates wanted far more than any house—the presidency for his daughter—and the consequent proximity to Aeolus’s Greek godson.

At least he hadn’t offered her hand in marriage.

But what he had done was almost worse.

“Then we’ll just call it off,” Tallie said firmly. As much as she wanted the chance to prove herself, she was damned if she wanted the opportunity this way. “I’ll quit and you can have your house back.”

Elias looked surprised at her suggestion. Then he surprised her by shaking his head. “Won’t work.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s your father’s. He won it, fair and square.” Elias’s mouth twisted as he said that. “Or as fair as Socrates Savas is likely to be.”

“My father doesn’t cheat!” Tallie defended her father fiercely on that count. He manipulated with the best of them. He played all the angles, pushed the edges of the envelope. But he didn’t cheat.

Elias shrugged. “Whatever. He’s got the house. And he’s going to keep the house.”

“I’ll tell him not to. If I can’t hand it back to you, I’ll quit. I won’t take the job.”

“You have to take the job.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s the deal. That’s the only way he’ll deed it back.”

Deals? Bets? She wanted to strangle her father.

“Tell me,” she said grimly.

“He told my father he’d deed it back in two years…” Elias stopped and shook his head.

“If…?” Tallie prompted. She knew there was an if. There was always an if.

Elias ground his teeth. “If I stay on as managing director of Antonides,” Elias said at last. “And you stay on as president.”

“For two years?”

Obviously her father didn’t have much confidence in her if he figured she would need two years to get Elias to the altar, Tallie thought wryly. Or maybe he thought it would take him two years to convince her that it was a good idea.

It wasn’t a good idea. And she had no intention of doing any such thing!

“That’s absurd,” she said at last. “We don’t have to play their games.”

“The house—”

“It can’t be that great a house!” she objected.

“There are a thousand others like it,” he agreed readily.

“Well then—”

Elias steepled his hands. “My father was born there. His father was born there. His grandfather was born there. The only reason I wasn’t born there was because my folks came to New York the year before I was born. But generations of Antonides have lived and loved and died in that house. We go back all the time. I built boats with my grandfather there when I was a boy.” There was no tonelessness in his voice now. All the emotion he had so carefully reined in earlier was ragged in his voice now. “My parents were married there, for God’s sake! It’s our history, our heart.”

“Then your father had no business betting it.” Tallie was almost as mad at his father as he was.

“Of course he didn’t! And your father had no business taking advantage of a man who shouldn’t be let out alone.”

They glared at each other.

It was true, Tallie reflected, what Elias just said. Her father had always had an eye for the main chance. His own dirt-poor immigrant parents had taught him that. If the Antonides family had an ancestral home to lose, it was more than Socrates’s family had ever had. Tallie had been brought up on stories of how hard they’d worked for little pay. So when opportunities came along, you took them, Socrates said. And luck—well, that you made yourself.

Tallie didn’t doubt for a minute that her father thought taking advantage of Aeolus Antonides was a prime bit of luck.

“So what do you propose we do?” she asked politely, since she had no doubt he’d tell her anyway.

“I don’t propose we do anything,” Elias said sharply. “I’ve been doing just fine for the past eight years on my own. I’ve pulled Antonides Marine out of the red, I’ve made it profitable, and I’ll continue to do so. And since you have to be here, Ms President, you can sit in your office or you can bake cookies—or file your fingernails.”

“I’m not going to be filing my fingernails!”

“Whatever. Just stay out of my way.”

She gaped at him. “I’m the president!”

“You’re an interloper,” Elias said flatly. “Why’d your old man stick you in here anyway?”

Tallie coloured, certain she knew the real reason. But it wasn’t the one she gave him. “Because I can do the job!”

That was the truth, just not all of it.

Elias snorted. “You don’t know a damned thing about the marine business.”

“I’m learning. I read every report my father sent. I researched AMI in journals and business weeklies. I spent the morning reading the financial statements you put in my office. And I told you I have some concerns—”

“Which are not necessary.”

“On the contrary, they are. If Antonides Marine is going to move out of strictly boat building, I think we should be considering a variety of options—”

“Which I have done.”

“—and we need to examine the whole marketing strategy—”

“Which I have done.”

“—before we make a decision.”

“And I will make a decision.”

Once more they glared at each other.

“Look,” Tallie said finally, mustering every bit of patience she could manage. “We both agree that I can’t leave—for our own reasons,” she added quickly, before he could speak. “So I’m staying. And since I am, I’m getting involved. I’m president of Antonides Marine, whether you like it or not. And I won’t be shunted aside. I won’t let you do it.”

Elias’s jaw worked. He glowered at her. Tallie glowered right back. And they might have gone right on glowering if the phone hadn’t rung.

Elias snatched it up. “What?” he barked.

Whatever the answer was, it didn’t please him. He listened, drummed his fingers on the desktop, then ground his teeth. “Yeah, okay. Put her through.” He punched the hold button and looked at Tallie. “It’s my sister. I have to talk to her.”

From the look on his face, Tallie didn’t think she’d want to be Elias Antonides’s sister right now. Or any other time for that matter.

“Fine,” she said. “Go right ahead.”

She needed time to come to terms with the things she’d learned this morning, anyway. It was far worse than she’d thought—the bet, the house, the deal, the arrogant unsuspecting Greek god her father had his eye on as a prospective son-in-law, not to mention said Greek god’s “file your fingernails” attitude about what her role should be at Antonides Marine. Oh, yes, she had her work cut out for her.

She stood up. “I’ll be in my office if you need me.”

“Yeah, that’ll happen,” Elias muttered.

She shot him a hard look, but he was already back on the telephone with his sister.

“No,” Elias said.

It was what he always said to Cristina. It wasn’t the bead shop this time. As he’d suspected, that had been a momentary whim. But this conversation wasn’t going any better. Whenever he talked to his sister Cristina, they ended up at loggerheads. Usually it happened sooner. Like within a minute.

This time it had taken ten, but mostly because he was distracted, his mind still playing over the frustrating encounter with Ms President while Cristina rabbited on about how she’d been out sailing off Montauk last week, and wasn’t it beautiful at Montauk this time of year, and on and on.

Waiting for her to get to the point, Elias had tried to think how he could have handled the irritatingly sanguine Ms Savas differently. Surely there had to be some way to convince her to leave well enough alone and not meddle in Antonides Marine affairs. But he couldn’t think of one.

She’d flat-out said, “I don’t follow directions well,” and then she’d pretty much proved it. Annoying woman!

“It was a beaut,” Cristina enthused. “You’d love it. You should come with us next time.”

Elias dragged his brain back from Tallie Savas long enough to say, “No time.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Elias. Get a life.”

“I have a life,” Elias said stiffly, even though he was sure Cristina wouldn’t consider working seventy hours a week on Antonides Marine and another thirty or forty renovating the building much of a life at all.

“Sure you do.” Cristina sniffed. “Come on, Elias. Mark would love to take you.”

So she was still with Mark? After what—two months now? Elias supposed it was some sort of record.

“You could bring Gretl,” she suggested enthusiastically. “We saw her this weekend, Mark and I. I don’t know why you dumped her.”

And he wasn’t going to tell her, either.

When he’d met Gretl Gustavsson at a South Street Seaport bar one night, she’d just broken up with her boyfriend and had no interest in getting serious again anytime soon. As Elias had no interest in getting serious at all, they’d enjoyed each other’s company.

Their relationship, which Elias didn’t even want to describe with that word, had gone on for the past two years—until Gretl started acting as if there was more to it than there was.

“I’ve wasted two years on you, Elias,” she’d told him a couple of months ago.

Elias hadn’t considered them a waste, but if that was the way she wanted to look at it, so be it. He’d said goodbye, and that was that. He hadn’t seen her since.

“She’s so sweet. She asked about you.” Cristina waited hopefully and got no response. She sighed. “Well, if you don’t want Gretl, fine. We’ll find you someone else.”

“No, you won’t,” Elias said sharply. “I don’t need you setting me up with a woman. Besides, I’m busy. I’ve got work up to my eyebrows. And it just got harder. In case you haven’t heard, we have a new president of Antonides Marine.”

“Daddy told me. And it’s a woman!” Amazement didn’t even begin to cover Cristina’s feelings about that. She giggled. “Do you think he’s setting you up?”

“No, I damned well don’t!” Though the thought had certainly occurred to him. Still, his father was rarely that subtle. Aeolus took a more shove-the-woman-in-his-face approach.

And the truth was, Tallie Savas would never be his father’s choice in a woman.

Aeolus loved his wife, but he had never stopped ogling tall, big-busted Nordic beauties. He’d thought Gretl was stunning, which she had been. But Elias had never fantasized going to bed with her. Because he’d gone to bed with her, he told himself. There had never been any speculation. Never any mystery with Gretl.

Whereas with Tallie Savas and her miles of wild curly hair—

“Maybe I’ll come and check her out. What’s she like?” Cristina said eagerly.

“Nothing special.” Elias made sure his tone was dampening. Then he cleared his throat. “She’s an MBA. A CEO. All business.”

“Battle-ax, hmm?”

“Pretty much.”

“Oh.” Cristina’s disappointment was obvious. “I wonder what Daddy was thinking then.”

“I doubt he was thinking.”

Cristina laughed. “He’s not that bad, Elias. He likes Mark.”

“Which proves my case.”

“It does not,” Cristina said, but she didn’t sound as defensive as she usually did about her boyfriends. “You don’t know him. He knows a lot about boats. If the lady prez is a hard worker, you’ll have some time off now. You can come out with Mark and me.”

“No.” Which brought them back to where they’d started. Elias pinched the bridge of his nose. “Look, Cristina, I’ve got work to do—”

“You won’t even meet him,” she accused.

“I’ve met him,” Elias said wearily. “I went to Yale with him.”

“So I heard. He said he’s changed since Yale.”

Elias hoped so. At Yale Mark had been a drunken reveler who’d only got in because his father knew someone who knew someone. What was it with Greek fathers?

“If you want me to meet him again, bring him out to the folks’ on Sunday.” He’d managed to avoid his mother’s last Sunday dinner by pleading a work overload. He wasn’t going to get out of this one and he knew it.

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Cristina mumbled.

“I thought you said the old man liked him.”

“Yes, but only because he can beat Mark at golf.”

Elias laughed. “Well, there you go. Something to build on. You’ll work it out, Crissie. I have to go. I’ll see you Sunday.”

“I’ll bring Mark if you bring Ms President.”

“Goodbye, Crissie.” Elias hung up before his sister got any more bright ideas.

He had other far more important things to deal with—like convincing Thalia Savas, aka Ms President, that despite what she thought, it was a better idea to spend the next two years filing her fingernails than trying to meddle in the business of Antonides Marine.

If she thought she’d done her homework, Elias thought, rubbing his hands together in anticipation, she had another think coming.

He’d show her homework. And he knew exactly where to start.

“For me?” Tallie looked up and smiled brightly when Elias appeared in her office late that afternoon with a three-foot-high-stack of reports and folders.

“For you,” Elias agreed cheerfully, thumping them on her desk. “Since you want to be involved in the decisions, you’ll want to get up to speed.

“Of course I will,” she agreed promptly. “Thank you very much.”

He gave her a hard-eyed gaze, but she smiled in the face of it and finally he just shrugged. “My pleasure.” He turned toward the door, then paused and glanced back. “I’ll have more for you tomorrow.”

Tallie’s determined smile didn’t waver. “I can hardly wait.”

In fact, she was having a very good time. After he’d finished his phone call with his sister, he’d gone into the boardroom to meet with Paul and Dyson. He hadn’t invited her, but she had gone in anyway. He’d looked startled when she’d opened the door and very much like he’d like to throw her out. But finally he’d shrugged and said, “Pull up a chair.”

Tallie had pulled up a chair and taken out a notepad and pen. She’d listened intently, making notes but not saying a word, though from the way Elias angled a glance at her periodically, she knew he was expecting her to stick her oar in.

She never did.

The first order of business she’d learned from her father was to look and listen before saying anything at all. It had stood her in good stead before. She intended to do the same thing here.

Listening today was quite enough. She was impressed with how thorough Elias was and how he was able to take the information Paul provided and examine it from different angles. He had, as he’d told her, done a thorough job of considering many of the ramifications of the purchase of Corbett’s.

She still wasn’t convinced that it was a good move. It seemed a little too far afield, but she would listen and consider and do more work on her own, and then she’d comment.

In the meantime, she’d read the stack of material he left her.

She wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d given her three feet of invoices and grocery lists to read. But she wouldn’t know unless she skimmed every single piece. So she spent the rest of the afternoon in her office doing just that.

Some of the reports seemed little more than she’d expected. But some were significant. They outlined in far greater detail than the material her father had given her what the financial status of Antonides Marine had been when Elias had come in eight years ago—and what it was now.

She got a far clearer understanding of just how dire the straits had been when Elias had taken over, and an even greater appreciation for how astute his business handling was. He’d seen what needed to be done, and he’d done it—even when it had meant cutting out some very appealing but not terribly lucrative lines.

The venture into luxury yacht construction that his father had spent vast amounts on was obviously one of Aeolus’s pet projects. It had drained the company’s assets, though, and had brought in very little.

When Elias took over, it had been the first thing to go.

There was nothing in the papers he gave her that spelled out in words his father’s opposition. But in the “who was in favor of what” pieces, it was clear that Elias’s decision had met with considerable parental opposition.

She wondered if she dared point it out to him as something the two of them had in common. Somehow she doubted it. But the more she read, the less she blamed him for his attitude. And when at last she leaned back in her chair and contemplated the skyline of Manhattan against the setting sun, she had to admit that if she were Elias Antonides, she’d resent an interloper coming in, too.

At eight o’clock when she gathered up the stack of papers she intended to take home for further study. It was a foot and a half high, but every bit could be all important. When she finally opened her mouth, she wanted to have her facts straight. Giving the stack a little pat, she went in search of a box to put it in.