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“Wait!” the woman beside him called as he hurried away. “Aren’t you on this flight?”
He turned halfway just long enough to call back, “Not anymore.” And hurried out into the rainy September day.
BY TEN O’CLOCK the next morning, Michael was stepping into his mentor’s penthouse office in Atlanta, a firmly sealed envelope in his hand.
“You needed to see me immediately?” Coppel asked, taking off his glasses as Michael approached his desk. “Ready to demand a partnership already?”
The man was smiling, a picture of confidence.
“No, sir.” Michael paused. “I—”
“You want a raise, then,” Coppel nodded toward the seat in front of his desk. “Fine, sit, we’ll discuss it,” he said.
Michael remained standing and that was when Coppel noticed the envelope clasped between his fingers. Coppel froze, his gaze moving slowly from the envelope in Michael’s hand to his face and back again.
For the first time in Michael’s acquaintance with Coppel, the older man looked unsure, giving Michael pause.
“That better not be what it looks like,” he finally said.
“It’s a letter of resignation, sir.” He’d thought the words would be harder to say, had expected them to stick in his throat.
They didn’t.
“No, it isn’t,” Coppel said, snatching his hands off the desk as Michael reached over to pass him the envelope.
“Yes, sir, it is.”
“I’m not accepting it.”
For a moment, as his life sped before his eyes, Michael turned cold. Was he making a horrible mistake? Acting rashly? Irrationally?
“Whatever the problem is, we’ll fix it,” Coppel said, as though he could sense Michael’s split-second waver.
In that instant, Michael felt a peace he’d never known before. He was already fixing the problem.
“I’m going to be a father,” he told the billionaire—the man he’d always aspired to be. “Of twins.”
Coppel paled. Sinking back in his chair, he stared at Michael, his shoulders falling with disappointment. He suddenly had nothing to say. To Michael, he looked, for the first time, like what he was—an old man. A lonely old man.
“I’m sorry,” Michael said. And he was. But not for himself. He was sorry for a man he still admired the hell out of, but one he now knew he never wanted to be. Because life held far more riches than the billions James Coppel possessed.
Laying the envelope on the older man’s desk, he walked silently out.
THE NEXT two and a half weeks flew by. Michael spent about eighteen of the twenty-four hours in each day on the telephone in his condo, leaving only long enough to get more coffee and toilet paper.
He spent hours on conference calls with the Miller family. After he’d resigned, they’d finally turned down the offer of a buy-out. He didn’t feel morally correct in assisting them with the financing to accomplish on their own, on a smaller scale, what Coppel would have done with the company. But he felt great about turning them over to Melanie at Smythe and Westbourne. Coppel Industries still got a piece of the pie. And the Miller family had their lives back.
The rest of the time he spent calling every contact he had in the finance industry, setting himself up, laying the groundwork for the rest of his life.
But as his plans fell into place, he found he wasn’t nearly as anxious as he would have expected, no matter how things fell out. He loved finance. But he no longer had to be in finance. He had enough money already; if he invested it properly, he could actually retire now. Or he could go into the cartoon business...
One person he didn’t call was Susan. Not until his plans were solid. Until he had a complete package to sell her. He wasn’t going to take a chance on another rejection.
Finally, when all he had left to do was wait for return calls, he phoned his father. At the gas station. He’d done that purposely, so he’d have his father to himself. Sam Kennedy deserved to be able to express the disappointment that would be coming—something he never did in front of Mary.
“I’ve left Coppel, Dad,” he said, getting the job done right off.
“Oh?”
