nevertheless~

part 47

TESSA'S POV.

"I'm so sorry, I was late.", I apologise as I enter the room, and grab the chair next to Nora, who sits in the middle of me and Hardin on the large glass-topped black marble table.

"No no, nothing has started yet. Everything's fine, but where were you?", Hardin asks me, leaning back and speaking to me over Nora's shoulder.

"My mother had called, she said, they are taking dad for his surgery today, which I completely forgot about. But they think the surgery will go good, seeing how much care he has been in.", I explain my absence from earlier.

"Ah. Well, anything we should be afraid of?", he asks, sounding concerned. This is one of the many things I like about Hardin, that he is such a genuinely concerned person that it just shows off of him. For instance, I am sitting here across a board meeting which starts any minute and his concern as we speak is about my father's health condition; a man he didn't even know two months ago, he wants to know about now, because he is connected to me.

"There are some things related to uh, back home. But nothing you and I should be worried about. It's just a family friend who has caused my mother some troubles and he won't budge but other than that, all good.", I say not wanting to say more about Zed and his relation to me or my mother or anything about them. This is not the best time to bring up the family when I have a very important meeting going up in 5 minutes.

Zed has been the ever asshole in my story, which is why my mother's shrill and scary voice from earlier was no surprise to me when she brought up him and that he has been trying to call me ever since I flew from Seattle to Paris, but he hasn't been able to make it through me, a result of a very beautiful feature of phones that allow us to block people. I won't let a town fuck boy with no ambitions of his own ruin my good and steady-going relationship with Hardin just because he wants a chick to warm his bed each night and my one kiss back when we were 16 meant that I would be that girl for him, to him.

"Alright guys, I think we should be starting?", the man right next to Claudia who is the head of their team says, and all of us, straighten our spines ready to hear what proposal they have for our company.

"Yes", some of us say in unison. Jonathan sits on the other side of the table with the president of their company and I am partially intimidated by the man, but if he is going to be my boss in the next subsequent years, I need to be formalised and acquainted with the man.

"Alright, so let's first discuss the foundation of this proposal.", he says and I try to make notes as he speaks further.

"We propose a merger of our companies. We already have a great profit-making structure in our organisation, and we also have our employees working very smoothly for us, however, we would like you to see through our past considerations, and make your decisions. This amalgamation for you could mean that you get easier recruitment from our company to yours. You would get some of our assets as yours too. Our plants and factories are for the purpose of your use. And also a greater audience within the France boundaries. Our goodwill. It's all yours.", he smothers his charms all over us and he makes a beeline for his champagne glass.

"Right. Tessa, if you could look at these.", Nora passes me a file and I read through the pages of that thing.

"I have a question.", Hardin speaks as taps his pen on the notepad twice, clicking the pen shut in and out once.

"Yes please feel free to ask them.", the guy says as he puts his glass back down.

"If you're proposing a merger, why would you do that for such lower considerations for yourself. I mean, a merger would mean so many things for us, but for you it means....What do you get from this?", he asks.