AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I wink at Wiremu, who tries to hide a smile, and fails. “Have you made your decision?” he asks.
“Yes, thanks. We’ll have the bread to start with, but we’ll skip the starter.” Alice said she didn’t want to eat too much and was happy with just a main course. “I’m going for the Fiordland venison, and the young lady has decided on the smoked beetroot risotto. We’ll also have a side of the thick cut truffle fries, please.”
“Of course.” He collects the menus and heads off.
“Please don’t tell me you’re vegetarian and I took you to a rib shack for our first date,” I say.
She laughs. “No. I have a thing about risotto, that’s all.” She holds up her champagne glass.
I raise mine. “What shall we toast?”
“Great sex,” she says.
“I’m more than happy to drink to that.” Laughing, we tap them together carefully and take a sip.
She lowers her glass and leans forward, arms on the table. It pushes her breasts together and gives her an enticing cleavage.
“Have you got something in your eye?” she asks. “You’re blinking a lot.”
“It’s taking every ounce of willpower I own not to eye-dip you.”
That makes her laugh, and she glances down, then back up at me with mischief. “Eye-dip all you like.”
I don’t, but it makes me smile. “I missed you,” I tell her again.
“I missed you, too. It’s been nice chatting most evenings, though.”
“Yeah. I look forward to it at the end of the day.”
“Me, too.” She sips her champagne again. “So… come on, tell me about Craig. He sprung that on you, didn’t he?”
I inhale deeply and blow the breath out. “I don’t want to sour the mood.”
“Aw, come on. We’re friends first, right? I like that you talk to me.”
I sigh again. “He called yesterday and told Marion he wanted to see me this afternoon. She tried to put him off until next week, but he insisted, and in the end I thought it would be best to get it over with, rather than worry about it for a week.”
“Makes sense.”
“He turned up at four p.m. with Renée.”
“Oh, shit.”
“Yeah. She basically ran the meeting. Helen—she’s our head of HR—kept trying to shut her up, but she wouldn’t take a back seat. He hardly said anything. I asked if I could talk to him alone, but Renée said no, and he refused to look at me. Helen was amazing—she kept slapping Renée down and telling her to let him speak for himself, but he just wouldn’t engage. I think Renée had forced him to go in.”
“So I guess you raised the issue of his employment at Kingpinz,” she says. “What happened there?”
“I asked why he hadn’t given me his resignation. Renée said it was because he hadn’t done anything wrong. Helen then made it clear that his behavior in the previous meeting was out of order: the way he spoke to Marama, who’s the other member of our team, as well as the fact that he accused us of ganging up against him, and also that he told a reporter we’d made a deal with Sunrise when we hadn’t. I tried to talk to him, and said we needed to find a way to work together, even though it galled me. He said things would be fine if we agreed to sell MOTHER to Renée. She then offered us fifteen million dollars.”
“Jesus. I thought Craig had agreed to ten million.”
“He had. She knows what potential the software has.”
“What did you say?”
I turn the glass in my fingers. “I said no.”
“I bet that felt good.”
