Read Online Mastered By My Guardian by Opal Carew - Free Book Online Page B

in a breath. She was overreacting. Ever since they went public and had to have a board oversee the company, she’d felt like there was someone looking over her shoulder, but everything had been fine. Most of the board meetings were actually pretty mundane.
    She went through her emails and got caught up on a few outstanding issues, then she went and talked to Dan in research about a problem with the newest battery they were adding to their product line. They already had a lot of interest from a couple of the major cell phone companies.
    The morning slipped by, which always happened when she was able to roll up her sleeves and get involved in the design process, something that rarely happened now that the company had grown to over forty people and Bill insisted the two of them needed to lead, not just work in the trenches. But being an engineer was her passion, as it had been with her parents.
    Her cell phone rang and she picked it up.
    “Hey, it’s Sandy. Where are you? The meeting starts in ten minutes.”
    Chelsea glanced at her watch. “Oh, damn. I’ll be right up.”
    She’d totally lost track of the time, missing lunch entirely. Dan thanked her—they’d gotten past his initial problem and had made headway in resolving a new issue that had arisen.
    She hurried to the elevator, catching it just as the door was closing. When the doors whooshed open, she walked to the boardroom, drawing in deep, calming breaths. She could see through the glass that the board members were already seated at the large, glossy mahogany table. She saw Bill walking down the hall toward the room.
    “Bill, we never got a chance to talk this morning. Do you want to fill me in on what’s going on?”
    His lips compressed. “Maybe we should just get in there.”
    But there were unfamiliar faces in the room and that made her nervous.
    “Not until you tell me what the meeting is about and who those two men are.”
    Bill glanced to the two well-dressed strangers sitting at the board table.
    “All right. There’s no easy way to tell you this, but…I received an offer to buy the company.”
    “But we don’t want to sell.”
    “No. You don’t want to sell. I do. And I have the support of the major investors.”
    Her eyes widened. “You talked to them?”
    The cool, determined look in his eyes was her answer.
    “Look, Chelsea, this is not a bad thing. We’re going to make a shitload of money on this deal.”
    Her fists clenched. “I don’t care about the money.”
    “Well, I do, and this time you don’t get the final say.”
    The final say? In her whole life, when had she ever gotten the final say?
    He gripped her arm. “Come on. We’ve got a meeting to attend.”
    She tugged her arm free. “And what if I don’t go?”
    He shrugged. “That’s your choice, but we’ll have quorum without you. I’ve ensured that our silent partner and a representative from the company that owns the majority of the public shares will be present. We have a majority vote without you.”
    Bill turned and walked into the boardroom and sat down at the table. Chelsea followed him and sank down in a chair.
    The chairman started the meeting and went through the usual review of the past minutes, et cetera. Chelsea barely heard what they were saying over the pounding of her heart. Then her breath caught when he announced that an offer had been made on the company.
    Bill was called up to explain the offer. After this, the chairman would call for a vote and, if Bill truly did have the support of the investors, she was screwed. She, Bill, and the angel investor had twenty percent each, and the other forty percent were publicly traded shares. She knew that almost half of those shares were owned by one company, a fact that had always made her a little nervous, but not as much as now when she knew that Bill, the angel investor and that other company owned enough shares for a majority vote.
    Oh, God, she was going to lose the company.
    “Are we ready to vote?”