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She shakes her head. “Of course you didn’t look at the guest list on the calendar invite.”
“What about it?”
“Apparently Phineas Hughes might actually be coming.”
My gaze sharpens. “Really.”
“He responded with Maybe.”
A snort. “More like his secretary responded with Maybe. No way is he coming.”
Summit has definitely made a splash in New York City. I’m not being humble. I get hammered with interview requests from news outlets and investors wanting the next big secret. I’m still not playing at the level of Phineas Hughes, COO of the entirety of Hughes Industries. I’m a small fish compared to the whale of their Financial Services division. But that division is only a fraction of the overall corporation’s total revenue. I don’t expect this merger even crossed his desk, much less warranted a dinner.
Christa sits down on the corner of a chair in that way she has, where it seems like it should fall over but doesn’t. A glossy black Louboutin taps against the marble floor. “That’s what I thought. But then I called over. I used to work with someone in their IP department.”
“What? You never told me that.”
She folds her hands primly on her lap. “You didn’t need to know.”
“How long before you broke her heart?” We mostly talk business, both of us being workaholics. But we’ve worked together long enough that I know a little of her personal life. Enough to rib her constantly for the endless stream of women she makes cry.
“Three weeks. It was a long one. But I’m not taking any shit from you, Mr. Emotionally Unavailable.”
I shrug, not minding the retort. “If you don’t date them, you don’t have to break up with them.”
“New York City’s most eligible bachelor, ladies and gentlemen.”
“So are you going to tell me what your ex said?”
“Well, she spoke to her new flame who works in HR who talked to someone who—it doesn’t matter. Apparently, this is on his schedule. His real schedule. The one that shows up on his phone. He’s going to try and make a drop-in appearance between one event and another.”
“If he does, we’ll shake hands. No big deal.”
“You have a tendency to get punchy.” Her gaze gets lost in the middle distance. I can tell she’s calculating Summit’s new bottom line pending any number of details that will be hashed out after this dinner. “Maybe not literally. You have your little fight nights for that. But you get emotionally punchy.”
“Emotionally punchy?”
“Yes. A tendency to push people away. Such as… a long string of secretaries.”
Fuck. Was I emotionally punchy with Bristol? Of course I was, because she stole from me. You were an asshole before that, says a small voice in my head. A voice that sounds annoyingly like my brother Sinclair. “Well, it’s a good thing I’m not asking Hughes to fetch my coffee tonight.”
She raises both hands in the air. “I’m serious. This is yours to lose. You already have the deal, unless you fuck it up. The only thing you can do is make it worse. These guys have to like you. They have to be charmed by you. And most of all, they need to be distracted from work.”
“It’s a work dinner.”
“Yeah, but there’s the kind of work dinner where you debate ideas, and there’s the kind where you talk about where you’re vacationing for the winter.”
“I’m great at debating ideas, thank you very much. And I don’t take vacations. Ever.”
“You’re great at winning debates, but that’s not what you need to do with these bigwigs. And definitely not with Finn Hughes. If you piss him off, it’s over.”
“So you want me to kiss his ass?”
“God, Will, are you trying to sink the deal?”
I’d moved on from it in my head. Focused on Bristol.
Is she why the prospect of merging with a megacorp suddenly seems unappealing? It’s the obvious next move for Summit. And for me. There’s a superyacht, for fuck’s sake.
