Page 6 of Due Diligence

“Yeah, just this thing they’re doing on young CEOs,” he replied, beaming so brightly that I was practically tanning in his glow. “Can’t give too many details.”

“That’s amazing,” Cassie responded, which tickled Alex so hard he began to run a hand through his sandy hair, chuckling all the while.

I could vomit—green and projectile style, like inThe Exorcist.

“Well, it sounds like Cassandra and I have this on lock, so if you need to go and work on that Forbes thing, feel free, Alex,” I cut in. It was the only thing I could do that would keep me from just straight up walking out of the conference room. And not a moment too soon. The sexual tension radiating off Alex was so thick we could bottle it and sell it to frat guys at a three-hundred percent markup.

He paused and canted his head to the side before he rubbed his index finger along the tip of his chin, up his square jawbone, and back down to his chin. I knew that look all too well. Desperately, he was racking his brain for some excuse to stay that didn’t reveal how little he had to do today. After five seconds, when he couldn’t come up with anything, he surrendered with a nod. “Yeah, I’ll take off,” he agreed. “Marcus, you’ll let me know if you need anything, I assume.”

“Of course,” I said—even though there was truly nothing I would need from him to get through the due diligence process. If anything, I just needed him to stay out of my way instead of popping into my office at random times of day to ask me what I thought about the Tweet he was going to send to his 1.1 million Twitter followers.

Alex went through an extended bye-nice-to-meet-you-I-hope-I-see-you-soon-wink-smirk-giggle with Cassie on his way out.That took up another two minutes of my day, which was a little over five dollars in company money (based on my annual salary).

Once we were alone, Cassie turned back to face me. At that point, I had moved into the seat at the head of the table and I was already watching her silently. She was doing the same. Brown eyes traced me through long eyelashes, and after a few seconds she wet her perfectly painted red lips with her tongue as she released a clicking sound, drawing attention to the fact that we had lingered on gazes for about half a minute.

Her expression shifted to curiosity as she raised an elegant, straight eyebrow and pursed her lips to the side. The move accentuated one rosy, shimmering cheekbone, so perfectly highlighted that I was surprised she wasn’t sponsored by Glossier.

“Are you sure we don’t know each other?” I asked her again, breaking the silence.

She raised both of her narrow shoulders. “I get that a lot.”

“Interesting.”

“I guess,” she murmured, which ticked against my patience. Before I could say anything, she turned to her laptop. “Did you get the link to the data room I sent over last week?”

The data room was the online cloud-storage system where I was supposed to upload a dauntingly long list of company records so the external auditors could tear them apart one by one. I nodded. “I logged in and took a look around. Seemed straightforward.”

“It is. Did you have any questions?”

My only question for her was how it was possible she didn’t recognize me. Had she eviscerated so many college guys that she couldn’t keep track anymore? “Nope.”

“Great. Well, I’ll oversee your cloud data room and your on-site room, which means I’ll be here most days. Is thisthe best room for you and me to work in?” Cassie raised a perfectly manicured finger and rotated it generally, gesturing at the exposed brick walls behind me and to my left, where the windows faced the street outside.

“Do you need to be here in-person? Everything we have is digital.”

“It’s for validation purposes. You’ll submit digital copies to the cloud data room for the auditors to review off-site, but they’ll also need to come on-site to review the documentation as well as to verify it’s authentic—and accurate. I’ll make sure everyone is upholding the security principles associated with the on-site room.”

“Which are…”

“You can read about them in the orientation document we sent last week,” she said, which was the corporate equivalent of her saying,We already told you this, you dumbass.

“Humor me. Since we’re here, and all.” My response annoyed her; I could tell by the way she cocked one of those perfectly penciled, elegant eyebrows of hers for just asecond.

“An on-site data room needs to be closely monitored and maintained. Only one person from any of our audit teams is allowed in at any given time, cannot bring in any electronics with data-copying capabilities, and can only enter at certain times as designated by a schedule you and I are going to create.” She tossed that silky hair again, clearly for effect. “As I said, we’ll need a room for you and me to work and a separate, secure room to use as the on-site data room.”

“Conference room B over there is generally free,” I said, nodding towards another conference room that ran adjacent to the open desks where the engineers worked.

She looked over and shook her head. That abrupt decline pissed me off a lot more than it should have. “It needs to besecure. Do you have any conference rooms that aren’t made of glass?”

“No,” I admitted. “Libra is a transparent company.”

She snickered when I said that, which immediately made my skin prickle. The sound was familiar somehow, almost as though she made the same noise on that last, infamous night ten years ago. At once, Cassie recognized her mistake. She cleared her throat and looked back at her laptop screen, which was suddenly the most interesting thing in the room. “What about offices? I’m assuming HR has a space where they have confidential conversations with employees.”

Our Head of People, Fiona, did use her office for things like that, but I wasn’t about to put her out for sixty straight days. I wouldn’t do that to anyone on staff, for that matter.

“Not an option.”

“Well, you’re going to have to give me something to work with here.” Her tone was even, but her words weren’t.

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