Page 117 of Trapped with the Billionaire

“What about you?” I asked. This battle was over.

* * *

Josh

Right now Icould have cursed Dad for a full hour for rushing this acquisition and not giving me time to learn Rossi’s history, Nicole’s history. Instead, I’d stepped on the emotional landmine without preparation, and with all the finesse of a bull elephant.

She deserved better.

Still, she wrapped it up with a smile.

“What about you?” she asked as she took a bite of her food.

“Benson Corp. the whole way for me too.”

She circled her fork over her plate. “Tell me about it, so I get a chance to catch up.”

I lifted my glass and peered into it, looking for a way to summarize our complicated family dynamics. “I’m the only son left at the company, so the responsibility is on me to carry on the…” I searched for how Dad would put it.

“Legacy?” she offered.

“That works. Legacy.”

“What about your brothers?”

“I’m the youngest, so I was the last to join the company, but now all my older brothers have moved off into their own ventures.”

She finished chewing. “Why’d they leave?”

She wasn’t pulling any punches.

I flagged down our waiter as he passed and held up my almost-empty wine glass. “Another, please.”

He looked expectantly at Nicole and her empty glass. “And you?”

She nodded with a full mouth. “Yes, please,” she mumbled.

“Working for Dad is a lot of pressure,” I told her. “You know…the expectations.”

She looked at me with a polite nod, but not the knowing smile. Judging by her response, she’d had a different experience with her parents.

“It started with Dennis. He’s the oldest and felt enormous pressure to get married.”

Nicole shook her head. “What does that have to do with anything?”

Only someone who’d never met the great Lloyd Benson could ask such a silly question.

“Dad has always been a heavy-on-the-family-values guy. Dennis got the message hot and heavy that in order to be considered stable enough to run the company, he had to stop sowing his wild oats and settle down with a wife.”

“And instead he left?”

I tilted my head. “No, but I’m sure he wishes he had. He married in a hurry. To say she was a mistake is putting it mildly. The divorce was inevitable and difficult.”

Our waiter interrupted us again, trading our empties for fresh glasses of wine.

She held up her finger as she finished chewing. A grin appeared. “Now I guess we all know you Bensons are stupidandgullible. Having to get married to run the business is so last century.”

I shrugged. “That pretty much sums up Dad’s thinking on the subject.”

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