China laughed. “That’s for what I read, but you don’t need one. We can just pull the minutes from the meeting.” China picked up her phone and pulled down the recorder app, tapped it on and said, “Have the January operations notes pulled.” She sat the phone down. “This is the process we’ll have to follow with all of this information.”
“Mom’s contact really was efficient in pulling all this together,” Brice said.
Alexander raised his left eyebrow. “Are you really surprised?”
“Not at all.” Brice shook his head.
“What do we do after we get this list together?” Morgan asked.
“We go fishing,” Alexander replied. “Once we have our list of targets, we divide and conquer. Figure out who’s trying to sabotage us.”
“And?” Brice questioned, frowning. His eyes cut to Morgan, who stood with a menacing look on his face.
“Then you let me do my job,” China said, glaring at all three brothers. The last thing she needed was for them to take matters into their own hands. “In the meantime, I’ll work up our initial response to the complaint, which is basically a clear and precise denial. We have forty-five days to submit it. Hopefully we’ll figure out what’s really going on, too, sooner than later.”
“What if we don’t know what happened in forty-five days?” Morgan asked.
“We have a hundred and twenty days from the initial response to file our final one that will either substantiate our denial, as long as we provide solid evidence to back up our claim, or we can request an administrative oversight ruling.”
“An administrative oversight ruling...what the hell is that?” Alexander’s eyebrows stood at attention.
“It’s the EPA’s way of giving some companies an out without having to admit guilt to anything. It’s like saying we simply made a mistake. But...” China raised her right index finger. “Companies still must pay fines and clean-up expenses if necessary, and their reputations usually take a pretty big hit and...”
“And what?” Alexander asked.
“Someone usually has to resign,” China said, staring into Alexander’s eyes. She could see past the bluster of his anger to his vulnerability, and all she wanted to do was help him find his place of calm. In that moment, China’s body was reminding her that what was happening between them was much more than she’d ever expected.
“But everyone stays out of jail, right?” Brice asked, his whole face lit up.
“Right.” China smirked.
“There was no damn administrative oversight. It didn’t happen and I certainly didn’t steal from my own damn company,” Alexander insisted. She could almost see the anger radiating from his body.
“Of course not, but something happened, Alexander. We just have to prove what that was and that we’re innocent of any wrongdoing,” China explained.
“If we can.” Alexander ran his right hand through his hair.
“When we do, they’ll close the case and issue a letter clearing us,” China promised.
“If not?” Morgan questioned, pulling out his cell phone to silence the ringing.
“Things get a lot more complicated. The courts get involved,” China explained.
“What do we do about the media explosion that’s coming? Life is going to get really crazy...very quickly,” Morgan warned.
“It’s not like we’re not used to the attention,” Brice reminded him, offering a nonchalant shrug.
“True, but Mom usually nips it in the bud before things get out of hand. She won’t be able to stop this runaway train,” Alexander said, shaking his head.
“Yeah, the EPA thinks they’ve got us by the balls, so they’ll turn up the heat big-time.” Morgan cracked the knuckles of both his hands. “We have to give KJ and Travis a heads-up.”
Keylan James Kingsley, or KJ, was Victoria’s youngest son and a professional basketball player in the NBA. Travis Kingsley, the youngest child of Elizabeth, was a successful cattle rancher who preferred a private existence and had little to do with their family’s business.
“Travis is really going to love this,” Brice said mockingly.
“We’ll deal with that next week. Right now, let’s start going through all this material that Victoria bought...I mean, brought for us to review.” China’s sarcasm wasn’t lost on anyone as she started distributing the different stacks of paper.
“There go my dinner plans,” Morgan said, taking a seat at the conference table.
“Dinner? We’ll be lucky to get through all of this before the sun rises Monday morning,” Brice countered, picking up a stack of papers.
China took the seat offered by Alexander. His hands grazed her arms and a warm shiver ran down her spine. “Th-thank you.”
“Anytime,” he said, in a tone that garnered his brothers’ attention. He met their stares. “What?”
“Nothing,” both brothers said in unison, passing a look between them.
China kept her eyes on the documents in front of her. The last thing she needed was for the other Kingsley men to figure out something was different between her and Alexander.
“Let’s get to work, gentlemen,” China ordered.
* * *
Alexander sat at his desk reading over the list of names he’d been given to follow up on. After a painful two-day review of documents accusing him and their company of malicious malfeasance, Alexander didn’t feel any more confident in their plan to find the culprit behind the unsubstantiated accusations. He was reaching for his coffee cup when he heard his office door being opened. Alexander looked up to see his cousin Kristen almost bounce into the room.
Kristen, Elizabeth’s eldest child, was vice president of general operations and in line to take over Alexander’s role as COO upon his promotion to CEO.
“Good morning, Alexander,” Kristen called out cheerfully as she entered his office, holding an electronic tablet in one hand and a large travel mug for her coffee in the other. The black-and-white Chanel suit that covered her petite body was much like something his mother would wear, and her mother would revolt against, and it made him smile.
Alexander turned and faced his computer. “Kristen, you really should cut down on the caffeine.”
She took a seat in front of his desk and rested her cup on its corner. “And you, my dear cousin, really should focus on the problem at hand. Sorry I’m late. I got here as fast as I could.”
“Late for what?” he asked, his brow puckered as he tapped the keys of his computer.
“Don’t tell me you didn’t get my message.”
The night before, Kristen had left Alexander a twenty-minute-long voice mail outlining her plans for a press conference and the message she felt they needed to convey. She’d even followed that up with a detailed email.
“I got it,” he assured her.
“Good, because we really need to get out in front of the EPA’s announcement.” Kristen took a sip from her cup.
“I guess...”
“You guess.” Kristen tilted her head slightly and her nose crinkled. “I know you’ve been working nonstop on this thing for the last forty-eight hours, but you’ve got to pull it together before you and China go in front of those cameras for the press conference.”
Alexander’s mind flashed back to the last time