Free The Billionaire's Secret by Ava Miles Page A

voice that kept telling him this was more than a painting tool wouldn’t be silenced—not by him, not by Chase.
    “I’ll send you a check today.” They’d never done it this way, but if Howard Hughes could finance his own projects, so could he.
    “Dammit, Evan, this is about more than money, and you know it.” Chase let out a tortured breath. “You’re taking our best R&D people away from their current projects. We have contracts, Evan, with strict deliverables. If you keep having them work on this project, we’re going to end up defaulting, and that’s a whole other ballpark of hell. One we cannot dig ourselves out of. Right now, all I can do is deliver your old designs. If we lose that, with nothing new to sell plus the defaults, we will lose this company, Evan. It won’t be quick, but it will happen.”
    He crossed the room to the French doors leading to the balcony. In the distance, the Eiffel Tower speared the sky. After the inventor, a civil engineer named Gustave Eiffel, created it for the 1889 World’s Fair, he came under significant criticism for its design. People had said he was crazy. But he stuck to his guns like every other famous inventor, and look how things had turned out. No one could imagine Paris without his invention. Gustave had combined art and aerodynamics and a whole stream of other theories into an awe-inspiring collage of metal. Evan wished he could buy the man a beer for reminding him to press on.
    “So money isn’t going to fix it,” he said, realizing he was seeing way too much evidence of this lesson in his life right now. “What will? I need my staff, Chase. And they are my staff.”
    “Did you just hear what I said?” Chase asked. “If you keep diverting staff and funds in one of the most critical departments in this company, we’re going to hit rocky shores, Evan. I love this company as much as you do. Do you want this ship to go down?”
    “Of course not,” he said, gripping the curved metal rails of his balcony as he thought through a solution. In some ways, it had been so much easier to invent things when his future had been the only one at stake. “How about this? We need more staff to accommodate this new project and our existing orders. How about you start hiring, and in the meantime, I’ll ask who wants to work overtime on my special projects?” He hadn’t unleashed his next idea on them yet. He was still fussing with the drawings in his head.
    “There’s more?” Chase asked. He sounded downright appalled. “How much painting did you do in Dare Valley anyway?”
    “A lot, and I liked it. Chase, every unnatural surface is painted.” He saw it now, everywhere he looked. Paint was a common thread throughout all modern life. “There’s something here.”
    “You keep saying that!” Chase said, losing his usual cool. “Are you sure the fumes didn’t go to your head?”
    It was enough to make him think of the chemical composition of paint. There was something about the polymers. They were trying to tell him something. He’d been playing with the equations, trying to decipher the secret.
    “Chase. I want this to happen, so I’m telling you. Make it happen. I gave you a solution. If you don’t like it, find another one and run it by me.”
    “You don’t usually play hardball with me, Evan,” Chase said.
    “Do you call this hardball?” Evan asked. “If so, you need to take up poker.”
    “I don’t share your appetite for risk,” Chase said, “which is why I manage the company and you invent. You know that, Evan. It’s why you hired me. But I’ll see what I can do about implementing your solution.”
    “I’ll finance the employees’ overtime myself so it doesn’t cut into your budget,” Evan said. “As my way of not playing hardball with you.” His gut burned a bit. “I don’t like fighting with you, Chase.”
    “I don’t either,” his friend admitted. “Usually we’re on the same page.”
    But not this time. And damn if that