When You Are Mine by Kennedy Ryan Page A

“Go on in.”
    “Is my tie straight?”
    He backed toward his father’s office door, using his old standby—the boyish grin. She rolled her eyes and shooed him into the office.
    “Unacceptable,” Martin Bennett snapped into his cell phone. Walsh pushed the door open wider.
    The opulent office always made Walsh feel like its luxury was closing in on him, from the expensive Persian rugs to the clean lines of the mammoth desk, set in front of the breathtaking view like a crown jewel. There was only one comfortable chair in the whole office, and his father kept that for himself. All the other seats were beautiful, but hard and unyielding, keeping you slightly on edge. Walsh knew this was just one layer of his father’s design to maintain every advantage he could, no matter how small.
    The office overlooked the crowded New York landscape. Seeing the breadth of the city made his father proud of the patch of urban jungle he’d subdued with the machete of his relentless ambition.
    “I don’t pay you to ‘think’ you know things.” Impatience pierced his father’s every word. “I pay you to know, unequivocally without a doubt, what to do. Action, Miller. Not excuses. I want that company, and don’t come back until you have it.”
    His father hung up without a good-bye. The weight of his considering look fell on Walsh like a steel beam. One Walsh had learned not to buckle beneath.
    “Walsh.”
    “Dad.”
    “How’s your mother? She has a birthday soon, doesn’t she?”
    “Um, she’s fine.” Walsh mentally scrambled to orient himself to this new tactic. One of the unspoken terms of his parents’ armed truce was that they never asked him about each other. “Yeah, her birthday’s tomorrow. I’m flying back today for the party.”
    “Hmmm. Still seeing that old man?” Martin picked up a heavy hourglass on the edge of his desk and flipped it over, setting it down with a thud before the sands could settle.
    “Sam Whitby?” Walsh frowned, taking his eyes from his father’s face only long enough to watch the sands’ rapid fall in the new direction. “He’s only five years older than you, Dad.”
    “He looks fifteen years older.” Martin riffled through his catalog of disdainful expressions before settling on a sneer for Kristeene’s suitor. “Don’t know what she sees—never mind. None of my business. So you’re back from another one of your little mission trips, huh?”
    “It’s not a…never mind.”
    Walsh couldn’t be bothered to explain again why the orphanages were so important to him. Philanthropy was another planet to his father, a strange land where people actually cared about the well-being of others.
    “There was a little girl from the orphanage who had a brain tumor. I took her to Rivermont for surgery. She didn’t make it and I flew her back to Kenya to be buried there.”
    “Sorry about that.” It sounded like Iyani could have been a goldfish Walsh had flushed down the toilet as far as his father was concerned. “I have my eye on a new company.”
    “Oh?”
    Walsh kept his tone neutral. He approached each of these paternal conversations with tactical precision, careful not to volunteer too much information, but to wait for his opponent to make the first move, revealing how to best defend.
    “Merrist Holdings.” Walsh recognized the predatory gleam in his father’s eyes, savoring the taste of coming conquest. “You familiar?”
    Walsh kept his posture deliberately languid, but his mind executed a rapid-fire retrieval of any information he could recall about Merrist Holdings. It never paid to reveal excitement about any venture. He had learned early that his father invariably viewed emotions as leverage. For him to know you wanted something was to give him a weapon to use against you.
    “I know very little about Merrist, Dad. Enlighten me?”
    “You must know something.” His father fired him a knowing look.
    He always made it his business to know his father’s next move.