is really an old-time traditional approach.”
“At least at Smythe and Westbourne.”
The other man nodded. “So you think you can determine what the customer wants.”
“I do.”
“How?” Coppel might be testing him, but he was intrigued as well.
“By becoming the buyer instead of the seller.”
Coppel nodded, his brow clearing. “You put yourself in the shoes of the consumer.”
“And realize that just as all people aren’t the same, all consumers and their needs aren’t the same, either.”
Looking down at some papers spread in front of him, Coppel said, “You appear to have a real talent in this area.”
Michael didn’t know about that. He thought his real talent lay in profit-and-loss margins and personal infrastructures.
“What about your family?” Coppel asked. “How much of your time do they require?”
And for the first time since he’d been summoned to this interview more than a month ago, Michael allowed himself to hope. He wanted a move up to one of the bigger, more diverse companies in the Coppel holdings. He needed a new challenge.
“None, sir,” he said with the confidence of knowing he had the right answer. “I’m divorced.”
“No children?” It was a well-known fact that Coppel didn’t believe a man should desert his children. Which was why he’d never had any of his own.
“None.”
Nodding, Coppel broke into a small, satisfied smile.
“You have anybody else who might want a say on your time?”
You got a lover? Michael read into the question.
“No.”
He saw women occasionally, but he’d been sleeping with Susan again, on and off, over the past three years, although they’d been divorced for seven. He couldn’t seem to find a passion for anyone else.
“Any dependents at all?”
What is this? Michael shifted in his seat, suddenly uncomfortable. He sent a sizable amount of money to his parents and brother and sisters back in Carlisle, but that was nobody’s business except his.
“Why?”
Eyes narrowed, Coppel sat forward. “I’m thinking about offering you a new position, a move from a subsidiary company to Coppel Industries itself.”
Michael didn’t move a muscle. Didn’t breathe.
“But the position I have in mind would require constant travel, and I won’t even consider offering it if that meant you’d be shirking personal commitments. I don’t break up families.”
Coppel had come from a broken family, had his father run out on him, been forced to quit school and provide for his ailing mother. He’d entered high school at nineteen after his mother passed away. He’d put himself through college exterminating bugs, and the rest was history. Not only history, but public knowledge now that Coppel was one of the top businessmen in the country.
“I have no one,” Michael said.
HE MADE HIMSELF WAIT until he was pacing the gate at the airport before calling Susan. Just to keep things in perspective.
Only to find that she wasn’t in her office. A hotshot corporate attorney, Susan was out slaying dragons as often as she was in.
Picturing his ex-wife in her dragon-slaying mode, he grinned as he hung up the phone.
“I WANT to have a baby.”
Seth spit the whiskey he’d been sipping, spraying it across the table. “What?”
Laughing, Susan wiped a couple of drops of Crown Royal from her neck. At least her silk blouse and suit jacket had been spared. “It’s not like you to waste good whiskey,” she admonished. Actually, she was a little concerned on that score. It was still only eleven. A bit early for her brother to be hitting the hard stuff. He’d ordered a drink the last time they’d met for lunch, as well.
Leaning across the table, Seth whispered, “Are you out of your mind?”
“Not as far as I know.”
“Susan.” He sat upright, every inch the imposing engineer who flew all over the country inspecting multimillion-dollar construction sights. “Be serious.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever been more serious in my life.” She was still grinning, but mostly because if she didn’t, she might let him intimidate her.
“Why?”
“I’m thirty-nine.” Neither of them touched the sandwiches they’d ordered.
“Yeah. So?”
Susan shrugged. “If I don’t do it now, I’ll have lost the chance.”
“That’s no reason to have a kid. You’re supposed to want it.”
“I do.” Oddly enough.
Picking up a fry, Seth still looked completely overwrought. “Since when?”
“Since I graduated from law school.”
He stared at her, fry suspended in midair. “No kidding?” She’d obviously surprised him.
“I have it all written down.” She spoke quickly, eager to elaborate, to convince him that her decision was a good one. The right one. To win his approval. How could she possibly hope to convince Michael if she couldn’t even get the brother who championed everything she did on her side?
“Before I married Michael, I spent a weekend at a lodge in Kentucky, assessing my life, my goals, my dreams. Life was suddenly looming before me and I was scared.” She warmed beneath Seth’s empathetic gaze. “Frightened that I’d lose myself along the way somehow.” Her brother nodded, looking down at the plate between his elbows.
“By the end of the weekend, I’d mapped out all my goals, both short- and long-term, in chronological order.” Seth was staring at her again, his expression no longer empathetic. Unlike the sophisticated lawyer she was, she rushed on. “It was the only way I could be sure I wouldn’t let myself down, wouldn’t end up sixty years old and regretting what I’d done with my life—when it was too late to do anything about it.” Like their mother, she wanted to add but couldn’t. The boys didn’t know about those last hours she’d spent with their mother before she died. No one knew. Except Michael.
Seth continued to stare silently. “I wrote down career goals first,” she said, then took a sip of her brother’s whiskey. “Where I wanted to be by what time. Financial goals. Work goals. Personnal goals. For instance, I wanted to be able to play the violin by the time I was thirty-five.”
“That’s
