Choices
Page 19
“Right, thanks,” Matthias said and looked at Len. “Let’s get shit done, and then sneak out for a long lunch.”
“You two have a lunch meeting,” Dance cut in. “There will be bagels in the cafeteria at noon.”
“Gotta run,” Len said and looked at his watch. “See you at noon, and you might want to give Nina a call first,” he grinned and added over his shoulder, “In case she hasn’t seen the Facebook post.”
Shit.
She probably hadn’t seen it and might not appreciate it at all.
***
Nina
The sun was shining from a clear blue sky, I had a latte in my hand, and everyone was smiling happily as I walked into the company.
What a fantastic day, I thought as I shrugged out of my thin coat and opened my computer. It would only get better as well because it was my last week on the assignment, so things were winding down, and I’d polish my report a little but then send it to Jacob and Matthias. We had a meeting scheduled where I would present it to the management team at the end of the week. After that, I would be an advisor to a woman who I was pretty sure didn’t need one iota of advice, which meant I could cruise around the office and drink more soy lattes.
Or sit on the rooftop patio to work on my tan.
I finished the last bits of the report in a few hours and leaned back, thinking that I should perhaps go on a trip somewhere. Maybe Matthias could take a week off, and we’d go to Italy. Or London, no Paris. I loved Paris, and we could go to that Bois de whatever it was called, which I didn’t remember, and eat crepes with chestnut –
“Hey, Nina, you sure have some moves!”
I blinked and stared at Peggy.
“Uh... hey?” I said when she just grinned widely.
“You looked freaking amazing,” Peg said and wiggled her brows. “And Matthias? Who knew? Deep waters and all that.”
Deep waters?
Matthias?
“What are you talking about?”
“The video?”
I tried to not look like an owl on Xanax, failed at it, and pushed out a confused, “Video?”
“Shit.”
There was a video of me and Matthias where we both were out on deep waters and looked amazing? And I had some moves?
This was disturbing, to say the least.
“Video?” I asked gingerly. “Of Matty and me?”
“I’m friends with Simon on Facebook,” Peg said as she tapped her phone. “I guess you aren’t?”
Relief washed through me, and I felt my heart rate slow down immediately when I realized that someone hadn’t accidentally filmed us when we went a little overboard on my back deck the other week.
“I am friends with Simon on Facebook, actually, but I don’t use it much.”
Or at all. I had eight-hundred-fourteen friends on Facebook and never posted anything. I had nothing interesting to say, most of my so-called friends were former colleagues, and every time I checked the app, there were mostly ads or pictures of someone’s feet in the sand or skis against an outline of mountains, depending on the season.
“He posted a video of you and Matty dancing, and it’s awesome,” Peggy said and held her phone out. “There hasn’t been such a buzz in the office since our former ComOps VP was caught smoking pot at a club downtown.” She wiggled the phone to get my attention. “Look!”
I braced, but it didn’t look bad at all. My dress really was fantastic. Matthias moved his hips like a pro and also in a way that made his fitted shirt stretch nicely over his chest. We were laughing, and I heard Simon yell something, but then Matthias slid a hand over my hip and let it skim my butt, which made Si turn the phone and make a face before he turned it off.
The silly boy had added the hashtag oldmandancing, which was a clever way of playing with words.
“Has Simon connected with other people in the company?” I asked.
“He worked here last summer. How long did it take him to send you a request?”
Well, crap. Simon had sent me the friend request while we waited for news about Matthias in the hospital, so probably within thirty minutes.
That would explain the happy smiles greeting me that morning.
“What’s the gossip about the clip?”
“He’s über-hot. You’re über-cool. You’re great together. It’s good to see him so happy when he’s been known as all business and no fun for as long as anyone can remember. Everyone is expecting the next office bash to be less stuffy and more yay-partay...”
“No one cares that we’re...” I trailed off and made a circular movement in front of me to somehow illustrate Matthias and me.
“Of course not. This isn’t a monastery.”
“It is slightly unprofessional.”
“Nope. You’ve kept it out of the office and have been professional about everything you’ve done. No one cares, Nina. Or, they care, but they think it’s a good thing.”
Okay then.
“Lunch?” I asked.
“Dane told me they messed up his order at the bagel shop, so there might be some extra for us if we hurry.”
There were two bagels left, and we snatched them up right under the hands of a group from marketing. Matthias and Len were at a table, and they waved at us to join them, so we did.
“I tried to call,” Matthias said. “Got voicemail.”
“Shit,” I muttered and checked my phone, which was black. “Forgot to charge it.”
“Ah.” He smiled, but it looked a little tense, so I waited silently, and then he murmured, “Simon is on Facebook.”
“I know.”
“You’ve seen it?”
“Peggy showed it.” I couldn’t hold back a small giggle, and added, “We looked good.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I’ll talk to Si about posting videos without asking, but we did look good.”
“I guess it’s not a secret anymore that you’re dating,” Len said and got up to gather up their wrappings and napkins.
“We’re not dating,” I said around a big bite of the friggin’ heavenly bagel.
“What?” Len chuckled.
“We’re absolutely not dating,” Matthias agreed, but he sounded almost angry suddenly.
Oh.
We hadn’t made any promises to each other, so he was right, but I hadn’t expected him to declare it quite as emphatically.
”Exactly,” I mumbled, but my throat suddenly felt a little too tight, so I had to swallow a few times to get rid of the bagel.
Matthias leaned forward and watched me with narrowed brows. Then he put his finger in my face and muttered something that sounded suspiciously like the f-bomb.
“Babe, we’re living together. I eat that sugary fucking granola you like so much, and you pick up beer when you go grocery shopping. We’ve also had sex on just about any flat surface available, and more than a few vertical.”
“Matty –”
“Nina,” he said firmly. “We’re not dating for fuck’s sake. We’re in a pretty serious relationship.”
“But –”
“We are,” he declared. “Just get over it.”
Then he turned and walked away, followed by an openly laughing Leonard Jackson.
I was still staring at their disappearing backs when someone made a choking sound behind me. I turned and found myself facing an openly grinning woman who, judging from her apron, worked in the cafeteria.
“Girl,” she said. “I had a man like him, looking at me like that, I’d get over it faster than Carl Lewis crossed the finishing line back in the day.”
“Carl, um?” I mumbled, not entirely sure what was going on.
“Another fine, fine man,” she said. “And a good dancer too.”
“You’ve seen the video.”
“Simon worked here last summer,” she retorted. “You looked good.”
Matthias’ son seemed to have connected with a lot of people during his short internship.
“I should get over it?” I asked.
“I would too,” Peggy said.
Matthias hadn’t exactly declared his undying love for me, but it had been kind of sweet, and I had a warm, fuzzy feeling in my belly, so I smiled back at Peggy and decided that getting over it was probably the best thing to do.
It was what I wanted anyway.
***
I held my presentation, and the management team listened and nodded while I went through areas where I thought they were on par with best practice in peer companies, areas where they had improvement opportunities, and finally a rather long list of things I suggested they sort out.
I did not mention George and his unfortunate invoices, but I did talk about setting up a structure for regular internal audits. And the importance of proper authorization of payments.
The meeting was mostly for show, though. Matthias and Jacob had read the full report, and we’d talked about it already, and I’d had pre-meetings with Peggy and Len, so they knew what to expect. The others asked some questions but seemed okay with my conclusions.
After the meeting, Jacob asked me to come with him to Matthias’ office.
“You did more than I expected, Nina,” he rumbled. “And I expected quite a lot.”
“Thank you.” I hesitated but figured that I might as well put one more fish on the table. “Can I tell you one more thing?”
“Sure.”
“I didn’t want to say this in front of the others, and it’s just an observation I’ve made, so take it or leave it.” I swallowed and filled my glass with fresh water. “I didn’t get it,” I said and looked straight at Matthias. “I went through a lot of old projects and asked for material from as far back as they could dig up because some projects are wildly successful. Delivered on time, with high margins, to happy customers. And some went down the drain for no reason at all.”
“Okay,” Matthias said when I paused again.
“Before you became the CEO, you worked in sales and marketing, right?” I asked, which I knew that he’d done.
“What?”
“It took a while, but I found the common denominator.” I smiled a little, and added, “It’s you, Matthias. In the past fifteen years, virtually every project you touched turned into gold.”
“Really?”
He looked surprised, but I saw the flash of satisfaction in his eyes.
“Objectively,” I said and put my water down again. “You shouldn’t be the CEO. The company would make a lot more money if you headed Commercial operations and Marketing.”
“Huh,” he said and blinked a few times in surprise. “Someone needs to run the company.”
“Len.”
“Len?”
“Leonard Jackson,” I clarified.
“I know who Len is, Nina.”
“He’s better at it than you,” I said quietly and braced for a possible explosion. “He’s been behind a lot of your decisions in the past years, and he would be good.”
“Len should be CEO because he’s better at it than me?”
“Pretty much, yeah. You’d make more money that way.” I winced and added, “Much more. So, I just felt I should tell you.”
“And I should work with Com Ops.”
“If you can handle stepping down,” I murmured.
“I’d still own a third of the company.”
Oh, wow. It looked like he was seriously thinking about it.
“Yeah, but it’ll raise some brows,” I said.
“Matthias,” Jacob suddenly said. “I’ve been thinking about making the company public. You will not want to run it forever anyway. Si and Suzie have zero interest, Jake doesn't either, and his kids are too young. Might be better to let go now.”
“Really?” Matthias said, and then there was a long silence.
“I’ll leave,” I told them.
“You don’t have to –”
“Thank you, Jacob, but this is something you should sort out without me. Call Jake, sit down and hash out what you want to do.”
“Yes ma’am,” Matthias said with a lip-twitch. “Will do.”
***
I was on the couch with Pippin next to me, reading a book about some seriously hot guys living in the Colorado mountains. It wasn’t bad at all, and I wondered if skiing in Steamboat Springs next season wouldn’t be totally appropriate. I had a hard time keeping my focus on it, though, so I sighed with relief when I heard the front door open, and Pippin jumped off to greet his daddy as if Matthias had been off to war for years.
I watched him in silence when he walked in and put his jacket and briefcase on the kitchen table.
“We voted,” he said. “We’ll go public.”
“How do you feel?”
It had been a considerable part of his whole life and still was. Jacob had retired, and Jake had never worked in the company, but Matthias was the current CEO.
“The vote was unanimous, baby,” he said gently. “It’s weird, but I feel mostly relief.”
Chapter Seventeen
Birthday presents
Matthias
He was sitting on the couch, reading a brief from the consulting firm they had hired to help with the initial public offering and would move on to evaluations of various investment banks.
Nina was next to him, doodling on her sketch pad with a small, satisfied smile on her face. He'd seen some of her work, and she was good at creating interesting patterns and flower doodles with her ink pens.
“What are you drawing?” he asked.
She looked up and turned the pad around.
“A process for how to move to a simplified annual budget, and from there to a twelve-month rolling forecast.”
He barked out a short laugh and murmured affectionately, “Babe.”
“Well, a friend asked for advice.”
“Is he paying?”
“She,” she said with a smirk. “And yeah, she is, actually.”
“I thought you were just doodling.”
“Yeah, well, sue me. I'm a geek.”
“I know,” he said and waved the stack of papers in his hand. “You and me both.”
“How are things going with the IPO?”
Matthias felt a rush of happy, mixed with love and a blast of pride when they went through where they were in the process, what the next steps would be, and the timeline they tentatively had set up. She was bright, but she'd never been through the process of going public, so she must have read up on it because the questions she asked were on point and helped him clear his head.
“So,” he said. “We'll aim to get it done in six months, but it's likely to last a bit longer.”
“It’ll take a year,” she said calmly. “You should probably introduce a new CEO as well.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Not good to change leadership later, so we will start recruiting.”
“Len?”
“Doesn’t want it.”
“Seriously?”
“That’s what he says.” Matthias grinned and added, “Says he got enough of it when I was on sick leave and never want to do that shit ever again.”
“Unexpected, but if that's what he wants...”
“Yeah.”
“What are you going to do when the new CEO is in place? I could see you heading Com Ops under Len, but someone else... I don’t think it would be good.”
“I’ll take over as chairman of the board from Dad until we’ve gone public, and then... I don’t know. Another job in another company, I guess.”
“You could retire.”
He almost started laughing when she said that because she looked as if she’d just uttered a blasphemy of epic proportions.
“I know,” he said and decided to yank her leg a little. “You could retire too. Think about all the things we could do if we don't work all the time... We could go for long walks with Pippin. Cook dinners from scratch every night. Travel. Ski. Read books and relax.” He smiled sweetly and add
ed, “Work in the garden together.”
“Huh,” she gasped, and smiled a shaky smile. “Do you want to do that?”
“Fuck, no.”
He couldn’t hold a snort of laughter back and felt her relax next to him.
“Me neither,” she said with a chuckle. “And I have another job that I might take. Facility and Real estate optimization in a mid-size company, which should be interesting. It’s just a couple of weeks to help in the startup phase, though. I’ve already said no to running the whole project since it’s based in Denver.”
“Okay, you go do that. I’ll continue with the company for a while anyway. We’ll figure it out,” Matthias said, hoping that she’d have fun on her assignment, but also that she’d hate it because he had some ideas for what they might do now that they’d decided to not become Mr. and Mrs. Retiree.
***
Nina
It was my birthday, and I woke up to Matthias singing happy birthday against my clit.
I’d never laughed through an orgasm before, but I did, and it felt absolutely friggin’ awesome.
“Do you want your present now, or when the other gets here?” he asked against my neck when I'd come one more time, and he had too.
“Do bears shit in the woods?”
“I’m going to interpret that to mean that you would like your present now,” he said.
“Yes, please,” I said.
He reached under the bed and pulled out a gift-wrapped box that he handed me.
“Happy fifty-unf...”
The unf-part was since I’d put a hand over his mouth.
“No need to share my age with the universe,” I whispered.
“Babe,” he mumbled against my hand. “The universe already knows.”
“This is true,” I admitted.
“Open your present,” he said and added with a crooked grin. “It's not possible to change or return, so I really hope you like it.”
Brave man, I thought and vowed silently to squeal with sufficient enthusiasm regardless of what he bought.
Except, I didn’t.
I went completely silent and just stared.
He’d given me the Kama Sutra.
It looked like an antique edition, and when I turned the pages, there were absolutely stunning, hand-painted images.