Chapter 1
Reece Chaney sat at the end of the conference table, staring quietly and calmly at Lara Gordon, his adversary, at the other end. His expression was hard and dark. Lara stared back, determined and unyielding.
Around them was fury and pandemonium. Voices were raised; fingers were pointing. No one was prepared to back down.
The workers at Reece’s construction company were on strike mid-project. Unpaid labourers, unpaid overtime and health and safety issues caused friction amongst the workers. A site accident had pushed everyone over the edge, forcing the union to get involved.
The failure to negotiate in good faith during already tense talks led the union to walk out of negotiations, then call a strike.
A construction project worth hundreds of millions of dollars was now at risk. Reece Construction was suffering from bad press, and even Reece Chaney’s reputation was on the line. Investors were nervous. They threatened to withdraw their investments if the negotiations with the union failed.
The prospect of losing the project’s investment forced Reece Chaney to take control of the negotiations to find a resolution with the union. He fired the project managers responsible for the site issues after they botched the original negotiations. Only Reece’s presence at the table persuaded the union to return to the negotiating table.
Reece, though, wasn’t a man to back down easily. He hadn’t built his family’s company into an international conglomerate to bow easily to union demands. Now in his late thirties, he was worth billions, yet somehow still single.
He agreed to pay the unpaid wages immediately and improve health and safety. He refused to pay overdue overtime, insisting that the hours were contracted. Nor would he compensate injured workers.
In Lara Gordon, the union had sent their fiercest negotiator. She had a reputation in the industry for using strikes and the media strategically to force companies to give their construction workers what they deserved.
After high school, Lara won a scholarship to study law at university. Her parents pushed her to do it, wanting their daughter to have an easier life than they did. After she graduated, her father was injured in a construction accident after nearly twenty -five years working on construction sites as a contractor. He never worked again.
The company that employed him got away with paying no compensation or accepting fault because they had more money and better legal representation. The legal system failed him. What happened shaped Lara’s future. She attended Harvard Law School, then she started working for the union, determined to stop what happened to her father from happening to someone else.
Now, too, in her late thirties, she was feared by employers in the construction industry.
The negotiations had lasted all day. After a hopeful start, the negotiations descended into shouting and name-calling. Even lunch failed to cool tempers.
“Everybody out!” Reece called abruptly over the noise, never taking his eyes off Lara, who stared straight back.
Lara nodded her agreement to her team, and they left the room, followed by Reece’s lawyers.
Reece and Lara continued to stare at each other with hostility once they were alone in the room.
“If you have a proposal to make, Mr Chaney, you should make it,” Lara told him tersely. “You better have something worth my while, or we’re done.”
“Or you’re done?” Reece laughed dryly in response, unruffled by her threat. “We both know you’re not walking out.”
“And why is that?”
“Your strike has already lasted two weeks. Your members have mortgage repayments. They need to put food in their children’s mouths. They have electricity, gas and water bills to pay. They need to be paid, and they won’t be for the days they’re on strike.”
“Unless your investors pull out first, which they will do if I walk out of this room.”
“Perhaps, but my investors are richer than your members.”
“Your proposal?” she reminded him.
“Why do you think I’m going to make a proposal?”
A flicker of doubt crossed Lara’s face, just a flicker. “Then why did you ask everyone to leave if you didn’t want to make a proposal that you didn’t want your lawyers to talk you out of?”
“Because the negotiations weren’t working.”
Lara nodded as she reluctantly agreed. “It was getting heated, I admit. You want to continue, just me and you? No other reason?”
“That, and you intrigue me.”
“I intrigue you?”
“You’re an attractive woman doing a job that can be quite dirty.”
“I knew it!” Lara laughed with disgust. “You think you’re the only misogynist I’ve had to deal with in this industry. I’ve buried every single one. I was told I shouldn’t have returned to the negotiation table. I thought… I thought I knew better. I thought that with you leading your side, we would get this resolved.”
“We still can. Drop the demand for compensation and overtime, and we’ll have a deal, Miss Gordon.”
“It’s Ms Gordon, thank you. I would appreciate it if you could get that right, at least,” she told him irritably. “You know we can’t accept that. We have a member still in hospital and several others with medical bills from your inexcusable third-world site health and safety. You’ve had workers working outside contracted hours since the project started without overtime. Not to mention that the people managing the project for you are assholes. Give me something, Mr Chaney. Give me something I can work with, and I’ll call off the strike.”
“I can’t give you anything.”
Deep disappointment covered Lara’s face. Disappointment, not just in the failure of negotiations and in the failure to get what the union members needed, but also a personal failure. Lara Gordon never failed.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” she told him quietly, tidying the papers in front of her, readying herself to leave.
“Lara, wait!” Reece urged her, the steel in him disappearing. “I will make you one proposal.”
“What?”
“Dinner.”
“Dinner?” Lara laughed incredulously.
“I’ll pay.”
“Your company will pay for us to have dinner. Do you think my team and I are that easily bought?”
“So, you can be bought? Interesting.”
“Fuck off, Reece! You know I didn’t mean it that way.”
“Well, your team isn’t invited, and my company isn’t paying.”
“Then who is?”
“It’s just me buying you dinner.”
“No, Reece. There will be no dinner,” she told him firmly.
“Do they know about us?” Reece asked pointedly.
“Who?”
“Your negotiating team and your union.”
“That was a long time ago, Reece. What happened between us has nothing to do with what we’re negotiating.”
“Really? I know you volunteered to negotiate the moment I got involved.”
“Fuck you!” Lara knew what Reece was implying. She knew if the union found out about her past with Reece, they would fire her for not disclosing it.
“It’s just dinner, Lara.”
“But it’s never just dinner with you, Reece.”
“This time it will be.”
“You’re an asshole, you know that?”
“Is that yes?”
“Fine!”
