Accidentally in Love

  ACCIDENTALLY IN LOVE

  Anna Premoli

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  About this Book

  About the Author

  Table of Contents

  www.ariafiction.com

  About Accidentally in Love

  A funny romantic comedy about how opposites definitely do attract…

  Sara Di Giovanni is a successful lawyer in New York City: she is the star of her profession, an excellent role model to her very vivacious little sister, but has so far been unlucky in love…

  Ethan Phelps is the rich playboy trouble-maker whose only talent in life is spending money and dating women…That is until Ethan’s father dies with no will to his name, leaving his two sons the legal heirs to his billion-dollar company.

  Sara is forced to become the court appointed guardian to handle Ethan’s share of the fortune, as his family do not trust him to manage it himself. Sara thinks it should be easy, but it’s not so simple when Ethan is determined to get rid of her by whatever means necessary…

  What ensues is a dramatic and hilarious power-play between Sara and Ethan… but what will happen when feelings start to get in the way?

  Contents

  Welcome Page

  About Accidentally in Love

  Dedication

  Author’s note

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Thanks

  About Anna Premoli

  A Letter from the Author

  Also by Anna Premoli

  Become an Aria Addict

  Copyright

  To Carla and Franco, my in-laws, for all their precious and constant help.

  I will protect you from the fears of hypochondria, from the troubles you will encounter today, from the injustices and the deceptions of your time, the failures that your nature attracts. […] And I will cure you from all ills, because you are a special being, and I will take care of you.

  La Cura , Franco Battiato

  Author’s note

  As you read this book you will come across some technical terms that I decided not to remove because, even though it’s a romantic novel, I like the idea of it containing some of what makes up my professional daily life.

  Here is a brief explanatory glossary:

  EBITDA : acronym meaning earnings before interests, taxes and amortization, as well as company profit before interests, taxes and depreciation.

  Asset Class : used to deploy a group of financial investments that exhibit common features and similarities in the market. For example: liquidity or risk free investments, bonds, stocks, commodities, real estate investments, derivatives, and so on.

  Beta : in effect, a coefficient that measures the behavior of a stock or asset class relative to the market, i.e. the trend of a business’s performance changes as a result of market variations. For math lovers, it is the relationship between the covariance of the performance of i-th activity with market performance, and the variance of market yield: bi = covariance (Ri, rm) / variance (rm)where: Ri = i-th activity yield; Rm = market performance.

  Lehman Bankruptcy : On September 15, 2008, Lehman Brothers, one of the oldest and largest US investment banks, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, thus leading to what still remains the biggest bankruptcy in American history. Until 2007, real estate securities (including secure mortgages) was the most profitable bank division.

  Prologue

  The room was as crowded as ever, and perhaps even more than usual.

  It was, in fact, the first meeting to be held since the death of one of the company’s founding members and, needless to say, no one wanted to miss the show. Because if there was one thing they were all sure of, it was that the show was going to be a particularly entertaining one.

  All the financial papers had listed it among their not-to-be-missed appointments of the financial week. One well-known analyst with a reputation for being cynical but realistic had even said in his blog that it was “potentially going to be more fun than an action movie.”

  If nothing else, if you had even a single share to your name – or in your virtual wallet – the admittance was free, the water was too, and once the administrative business of the day was over and done with, you got to take home with you an elegant file-shaped freebie with a built in pen and notepad. At this type of meeting everyone always took copious notes, though nobody was actually writing anything down.

  And that day, more than all the others, the crowd that packed out the large conference room was there to find out information that went far beyond the estimated EBITDA for the current year. There were much more important things afoot and so, for once, it could be asserted with some certainty that no one cared that much about the bottom line.

  Well, almost no one.

  The noise showed no sign of abating, partly because several of the less easy going shareholders were delighted to have the opportunity to complain about how far behind schedule everything was.

  They might have had to wait years, but that day they would have their revenge.

  In the past, the Phelps & Phelps meetings had been famous for one thing: their perfect, obsessive organization of the details. Punctuality had always been a priority in the company, and Markus Phelps had put a lot of faith in it, though always being careful not to let show how seriously he took it. He had learned quickly that a listed company had to maintain a certain ‘image’. The quarterly figures counted, of course, but his reputation for being a bit of a bruiser had also helped the company’s success over the years. It was no coincidence that he was continually repeating to his colleagues that in business, marketing was everything. Absolutely everything. For him it was a rule that held true in both life and in business.

  Unfortunately, though, the man who had always been the public face of Phelps & Phelps had departed this mortal coil a few months earlier and at that moment in time, sitting in the front row, was his younger brother, Kirk, who held a thirty per cent share in the company, as had the deceased, and Markus’s first-born son, James, who had inherited half of Markus’s share.

  Kirk had never been much of a public relations man – that side of the business was something his brother had always handled. He preferred to stay in his office going over the accounts. That was all he did, each and every day: a multinational company won’t survive for long unless it pays close attention to economies of scale and sales data. For him, the numbers had always been a consolation, a secret passion, almost like a lover. Or an obsession, since he had never married. The company would have been his one true masterpiece, his great life project if it hadn’t been for his brother, who had decided, at the age of almost seventy, to have a heart attack while he was off having fun with his latest conquest.

  Markus had been widowed at a relatively young age, and afterwards had never shown any serious intention of getting married again. In fact, he’d begun to spend his time with women whose ages seemed to get lower in direct correlation with his own getting higher. There seemed to be a dangerous correspondence between his getting older and his need to surround himself with youth, which was why Kirk was almost mathematically certain that his brother’s final lover must have been between twenty and thirty years old. If he had lived for another five years, he might have broken the sound barrier as well.

  Though he had been approaching his seventies, Markus had always seemed to be the living
picture of health – one of those people who never felt ill, never felt tired. There had been no sign of the impending tragedy. Nobody had expected it, not even Kirk, who was an expert at anticipating problems. This one, unfortunately, had escaped him, and he couldn’t put his heart at peace. He was devastated to have lost his brother, of course, but even more he regretted the fact that he hadn’t acted in good time to avoid the epochal disaster he was now preparing to face. He should have thought about it while he could still have controlled the course of events – he should have been able to foresee the problem and face it full on, even at the cost of a fierce battle with his brother.

  Kirk considered himself a calm man. He hated heated confrontations, especially family ones, but the question of who was going to take up the reins was something that he really shouldn’t have ignored in such an irresponsible way.

  He still couldn’t believe that Markus had not left a will. Nothing, not even a couple of lines written on a sheet of toilet paper or on the back of a receipt from some bar. He had searched every single corner of the house and the office and contacted all the notaries and lawyers in the country and beyond before resigning himself to the truth. It was obvious that his brother had not expected to die so suddenly and that he must have thought he had all the time in the world to deal with the delicate question of his succession.

  He should have known, though, that life is always full of unexpected surprises – rarely pleasant.

  An intelligent man like Markus should have got his affairs in order and made some decisions. And instead he had done nothing. It was unbelievable.

  And now it would be all of them who would pay for this lack of foresight.

  Kirk wiped his forehead nervously with his hand as he watched the crowd in front of him getting noisier and noisier by the minute. Even James, sitting serious and composed on his right, did not seem to be handling it much better than he was. He was wearing, as always, his work uniform – a grey suit and a dark tie – but his expression was much more agitated than usual.

  “He can’t not come,” he whispered tensely. His uncle gave a nervous laugh, playing for time before answering.

  “Of course he can,” he replied, pretending to be calm. “It’s his right to ignore us, guaranteed by nothing less than our most beloved constitution. Even though, to be perfectly frank, his not turning up would be the best thing that could happen…” A part of him actually hoped that the damn lunatic would decide to stay away from the meeting. His absence might cause some small problems when it came to the moment of voting, given the share of the company he possessed, but at least that way they wouldn’t be exposed to public humiliation.

  “And leave us like this, without a majority?” hissed James, gripping the pen he held in his hand so tightly that he almost snapped it in two.

  Kirk turned to look into his eyes, where all of his agitation was clearly visible. James, who had been a rock in recent years, was still not used to hiding his feelings when it came to family matters – but he would be forced to learn how to, just as many others had done before him. “There is every probability. But we must not show concern. Smile – at the end of the day, that’s what they’re all here for.”

  “What do you mean, to see us suffer?” his nephew asked resentfully.

  “Exactly, and we must not let that happen.” And so, Kirk smiled as if he had only one problem in the world – that of trying to set a good example.

  In the meantime, a man who all present knew very well stood up. Ed Turner, who immediately silenced the audience with his menacing presence.

  “Kirk, what the hell are we waiting for?” he asked as if all present weren’t perfectly well aware. “I mean, this meeting was due to start at half past ten and it’s nearly eleven – we’ve been patient for long enough, don’t you think? Everybody who wants to participate in our humble little meeting is here. And they’ve been waiting for quite some time, if I may say so…” He finished his sentence with a theatrically sarcastic laugh.

  Turner was a billionaire who had never hidden his desire to sooner or later gain a controlling interest in Phelps & Phelps. He collected shares the way other people collected snow globes and didn’t like being told ‘no’ – and that was a word that Markus and Kirk had said to him repeatedly over the last decade.

  As we all know, though, the wheel of fortune never stops turning, and this time it seemed that it had suddenly turned for Turner. Old Markus had been a pleasant enough fellow – perhaps not particularly profound, he thought, and perhaps with a slightly excessive taste for young beauties, but he had always been cheerful and happy to be the centre of attention. He’d claimed that he only did it for the sake of the company, but in Ed Turner’s modest opinion, narcissists always managed to find some excuse that calmed their very slight sense of guilt. Kirk sat up straight in his chair. “We will be commencing very shortly. What’s all the hurry?” he asked, feigning indifference.

  Turner turned to him. “Everyone knows that Ethan will never come,” he said glacially, with just a touch of satisfaction. The fact that he had dared to pronounce that name did not escape the attention of the crowd, which immediately resumed its murmuring.

  As soon as he heard his brother’s name, James’s face grew dark and he began to squeeze his pen again, probably imagining that it was his brother’s neck.

  Kirk laughed nervously. “Well, it is not as though we need his presence to approve the quarterly budget…” he reminded everyone, trying to look almost bored at the idea.

  “Of course not,” Turner agreed. “As long as the stake is in Ethan’s possession. But who knows how much longer that will be the case…” he speculated, the malicious glint in his eyes a slap in the face to all those who think that the threat is an outdated art form.

  At that point James could no longer hold himself back. “What exactly do you mean, Mr Turner?”

  As a response, the other man gave him his most convincing smile, looking about as harmless as a vampire.

  “Let’s all try to calm down a moment,” Kirk suggested, realizing James was about to lose his head. “Turner is right, we can start the session. James, would you be so good as to read out the first point on the agenda?”

  His nephew stood up with the tablet in his hand, but before he’d had the chance to say a word, the noise level at the back of the room went up a notch. The chattering got so loud that all present turned around to try and see what the problem was. Or rather, who the problem was.

  Hundreds of eyes swivelled simultaneously to look at the man who had just entered the room, slamming the door rather inelegantly behind him. The soft lights of the room did nothing to soften the effect of Ethan Phelps’s dramatic entrance as he marched forward in the direction of his family, grabbing onto the backs of the chairs he encountered along the way for support. His blonde hair was, as always, long and untidy, and his eyes, which were naturally an extraordinary and very rare turquoise color, were bloodshot and puffy.

  James turned white at the sight of his brother. Less because he was so obviously falling down drunk – that was nothing new, he practically always was – and more because he would never have imagined that the bloody fool, who usually wore black as if he were the reincarnation of Batman, would have shown up dressed as if he’d just been on holiday in Hawaii. He was wearing a pair of shorts decorated with a floral print so hideous it could have blinded all present and a shirt also decorated with flowers that, however, clashed terribly with the ones on his shorts. Not even the most flamboyant would have dared call it ‘matching’.

  Not satisfied, James decided to lean forward to see the footwear his brother had decided to slip on for the occasion. Obviously, he was wearing a pair of flip flops, just as James would, at that point, have bet he would.

  Ethan concluded his unsteady journey and stopped in the proximity of the table occupied by the major shareholders, continuing to sway from side to side before everyone’s eyes as though he had just disembarked from some oceangoing vessel and was still feeling the rol
ling of the deck.

  “Aloha!” he exclaimed in a voice that managed to be both loud and pained, accompanying the greeting with the Shaka sign, stretching out his thumb and little finger and holding his hand over his head.

  Some voices from the back of the room actually had the nerve to answer him, but James was not one of them. Having to worry about his brother over the years had made him lose his sense of humour completely. “For God’s sake…” he muttered in a low voice as he watched Ethan try to remain standing upright –– an operation that cost him plenty of effort, judging by the expression on his face.

  Turner wasted no time. He stood up and stalked over like a predator, before giving him a loud smack on the back. The gesture almost made the younger Phelps brother fall to the floor. “You’re looking well, Ethan,” Turner told him, scrutinizing him as a hawk might its prey.

  Ethan tried to focus on the man standing in front of him but clearly wasn’t able to identify him, so he gave him one of those empty smiles he had learned to do as a child. The amount of alcohol in his bloodstream actually seemed to be helping him cope with the situation.

  “Did I miss something?” asked Ethan.

  Kirk sighed before answering. “No, nothing at all. We were just about to begin.”

  “Great! Then let’s get this party officially started!” yelled Ethan, raising his voice to make himself heard even at the back of the room. But the effort of shouting was too much, and he lost control of the nausea he’d been struggling to hold down since getting off his private plane an hour earlier. It suddenly surged up inside him, making his head spin faster and faster until all he could do was to give in to it.

  He was sorry – of course he was –– but it was hardly the first time in his life that he’d given up. Ethan considered himself a realist and was well aware that his nature wasn’t that of a fighter. It wasn’t just some pathetic excuse, it was about accepting his natural proclivities.