Poppy shot him a glare, which he missed entirely.
“Will you be living in the main house with us?” Evelyn asked. “There’s plenty of room.”
Poppy’s jaw dropped again.
Chase shook his head. “Katie is getting the lake house ready for us to move in there.”
“Lake house?” Evelyn squinted at her son. “How will you ever manage that? You work ten-hour days as it is, and it’s a two-hour drive. Both ways. When will you sleep?”
Chase pulled a chair out for Katie, seating her to his left. Then he sat and gestured for everyone else to join them at the table. He opened a folder laying in front of him before explaining things to his mother. “I’m staying at my apartment in town until the house is ready, and I think a helicopter would make travel easier.”
“Helicopter?” Evelyn gaped at her son. “Do you think that’s wise?”
“I’ve been thinking about getting one for a while. Sometimes I need to get somewhere in the city faster than traffic will allow, and we already have a pad on the roof from when Dad wanted one.”
“So, you’re going to stay here in the city when your new bride is all alone at the lake house?” Evelyn asked. “Am I understanding the situation correctly?”
Katie decided to jump in to help Chase out. “I’ll probably come here a few days each week and stay at the apartment with him.”
Evelyn scoffed. “That cramped little space?”
“It will do fine, Mother,” Chase said. He winked at Katie. “We’re newlyweds. We don’t need a lot of room.”
Katie added, “And we’ll be at the lake house together every weekend. We’ll hardly be apart at all.”
Chase slid the folder in front of her and handed her a pen. “Sign here.” He tapped the bottom of the paper where a signature line waited. “Then you’ll have your stock.”
“You see?” Poppy paced back and forth on the other side of the table, refusing to sit. “That’s all he cares about. He just married her for the extra stock.”
Tired of people talking about her as though she weren’t in the room, she slapped her hand on the table’s surface. The loud smack startled the others and gave her a small burst of confidence. Poppy jumped about a foot in the air, and the color left her cheeks. “For your information,Poppy, Chase and I have been secretly seeing each other for several months.”
“Is that so?” Poppy asked in a mocking tone.
“That is so.” Katie placed a hand on Chase’s and exchanged a smile with him. She conjured up her feelings for Phillip so she could use them to fool everyone. “I love this man, and I don’t care what you think about our marriage. The stock doesn’t matter to me.”
“Then don’t take it,” Poppy said.
“Allow me to finish, please.” Katie glared at the girl before repeating herself. “The stock doesn’t matter to me,buthe does. Working for him has given me a unique insight. This company deserves the best CEO, and that’s him, and I think you know it deep down even though you won’t admit it.”
Poppy’s hands curled into fists. “Billy would make a much better CEO, but no one here gives him a chance to do anything.”
Katie shook her head. “He has been given more than a dozen chances to prove himself in the last two years alone. He doesn’t show up half the time, and when he is here—”
“Don’t bother trying to talk sense to her,” Chase said. “Poppy doesn’t care about the company. She just wants to be the wife of a CEO.”
Poppy turned to Billy. “Are you going to let him speak to me like that?”
Billy groaned. “Can’t we just get along?”
Katie wrote out her name on the provided space. “There. It’s done.”
She pushed it back to Chase, and he returned it to the folder.
Poppy’s face turned a vivid red, and her eyes looked wild as she stormed from the room. Her husband followed her without a word to anyone. Their friend and fellow stock owner Reginald Jacob congratulated them on his way out.
As soon as the door shut, Chase and his mother smiled from ear to ear and congratulated each other on outsmarting Poppy. Their words floated over Katie. She barely heard them. A tremor traveled through her as the weight of everything landed on her shoulders. She’d married her boss and agreed to have his baby. Now, she was responsible for ten percent of stock in his company.
The pressure mounted.