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She yanked her arm free, wouldn’t look at him. “There’s nothing to talk about.”
“Only everything.”
“That didn’t happen.” She patted the air with both hands, emphasizing each word. “It did not happen.”
“It happened.”
Squeezing her eyes shut, she shook her head furiously. “No, it didn’t. I—” She covered her mouth with her hand to catch a sob. “Oh, my God.” Spinning away from him, she walked quickly to the door.
He lunged after her, but she was out like a flash.
“Laura!” he shouted.
She didn’t look back.
CHAPTER
18
FOSTER WAS ON THE TELEPHONE WHEN LAURA CAME INTO HIS office. She hesitated on the threshold, but he waved her in. Her arrival gave him a welcome excuse to conclude his conversation with one of the board members. It had begun to bore him.
Running the airline wasn’t as much fun as it used to be. Key personnel were so good at their jobs, they could do them without his supervision. From a management standpoint, it was gratifying to know he’d made wise choices in hiring them. But their reliability made him superfluous.
These days he often felt like the token handicapped employee.
He wrapped up his phone conversation with a promise to continue it soon. Laura was standing with her back to him, staring out the window. “To what do I owe this honor?” he asked. “You’re usually too busy to pay me a call during business hours. Or is this business? Are you here as department head or wife?”
“Wife. Do you have time for me now?”
“Always.”
She’d taken his rejection of SunSouth Select hard, harder than he would have guessed. Since joining the executive ranks of the airline, she had been overruled and outvoted on numerous issues, but she took those small defeats in stride and ultimately gave wholehearted support to the majority rule.
Not this time, and with reason. Although she’d given others credit for creative and informative input, Select had been her vision, and he had essentially squelched it. Judging from her mood over the past couple of weeks, she had regarded it as a personal rejection.
The subject had come up only once in the meantime. Last week during an executive meeting, Joe McDonald had mentioned Select in passing. Laura had shot him a warning look that said: Don’t talk about that. It hadn’t been spoken of again, at least not in Foster’s presence, and he didn’t think it was being whispered about behind his back. Nowhere in the building had he seen any of the materials Laura had used for her presentation. He got a sense that, since he hadn’t taken up the baton, everyone considered it a dead issue.
He had snuffed SunSouth Select while, actually, the prospect of offering alternative carrier service was exciting. Unbeknownst to Laura, he had been thinking about it himself and doing his own research into that growing market, assessing how he might claim a large segment of it.
He’d studied the new superlight jets and considered ordering a fleet of them with which to begin a top-notch charter service. He’d even given thought to doing as Laura suggested and starting an off-shoot of SunSouth.
But whatever form the innovation took, it would be his conception and his design. Not hers or anyone else’s. He would be the leader, not the crippled has-been.
He’d given her space and time to nurse her wounded pride, basically by pretending not to notice her dejection. Was this unscheduled visit to his office a sign that she was finally climbing out of her funk? One could hope.
He said, “You didn’t bring wine this time.”
She turned around and looked at him quizzically.
“Has it been so long ago that you’ve forgotten? You surprised me with lunch here in this office. To celebrate our three-month anniversary.”
“Four-month. And it was champagne.”
“Was it? What we drank isn’t the part I remember. However, I vividly recall dessert.”
She smiled and modestly ducked her head. “Fun times.”
“I miss them.”
