Pipe Dreams(39)

"Okay," she whispered, snuggling closer. She fell asleep to the sound of his breaths evening out beside her.





TWENTY-TWO


NEW YORK, NEW YORK

MAY 2016


All the way home from Florida, Lauren felt pregnant with a secret, if  not necessarily with a baby. She sat with Mike and his teammates in the  airport's charter terminal on Saturday morning, sipping coffee and  listening to the players' smack talk. They all looked a little bleary  from partying.

Except for Mike, who just looked happy. He gave her a secretive smile  every time their gazes met. She felt those smiles like a soft breeze  against her skin.

She stared out the window on the way home, thinking optimistic, sexy thoughts.

On Sunday evening, Lauren received an unexpected delivery from Eli's, an  upscale gourmet food store on the Upper East Side. It arrived in a  small cooler with a shoulder strap, which was completely odd. After she  verified that the delivery was actually for her (from one Mike Beacon)  and tipped the delivery man, she unzipped her gift.

Pickles and chocolate ice cream.

She groaned, and then laughed. The text she sent him was only a few words long. "Thanks? Awfully sure of yourself, though."

"My stats are excellent. I bat 1000."

"We'll see," is all she replied. Many couples took a year or more to get  pregnant. And when Lauren tried to picture herself a year from now in a  relationship with Mike, it wasn't easy to do. When they were together  before, she'd been a planner-she'd allowed herself to picture the  future. Then he'd blown up their life together, and for two years every  thought of him caused her almost physical pain.                       
       
           



       

So picturing the future again? It could wait. She did however sample the ice cream he'd sent. It was excellent.

When she woke up on Monday morning, her Katt Phone was glowing red  around the edges, indicating an urgent message. Someone is showing us an  offer on the router division, Nate had texted. Need you in Manhattan  today.

The text gave her an honest-to-god shiver of excitement. Forty minutes  later she was skidding toward the security turnstiles in the lobby of  the office building. She passed her ID over the laser eye and heard the  satisfying beep which indicated she was still employed by one the  coolest companies on the planet.

Given her month-long absence, her desk on the thirty-seventh floor  wasn't as big a disaster as she'd expected. Her little team had done a  good job keeping the place running smoothly while she was pinch-hitting  in Brooklyn. At eight A.M. a phalanx of investment bankers arrived to  brief Nate on the offer they were receiving.

"Lauren," Nate said, breezing in just before the meeting began. "I want you to sit in today."

"All right?" she said, a little surprised by this demand. She usually ran his office from outside the closed-door meetings.

"I know we haven't gotten around to talking about what jobs you might  pursue after graduation. But I have some ideas. And sitting in today  fits with one of them."

She grabbed a notepad and stood immediately and followed him into the conference room.

"Everyone signs a nondisclosure agreement," a banker said at first, handing over a form for her to sign.

Since Lauren was part of Nate's inner circle, she'd signed dozens of  these already, promising not to reveal the terms of various potential  transactions.

The meeting lasted two hours as the bankers described the terms by which  a company called iBits desired to acquire Nate's router business. It  wasn't an ordinary purchase though. iBits wanted contracts for a  ten-year relationship between the division and Kattenberger Technologies  whereby Nate would continue to license his software to the company.

Lauren tried to guess which of his tech executives he'd need to meet  with later today, and she scribbled pages of notes while the bankers  delivered their specs.

After they left, Nate's chief technology officer ran off to arrange for  various engineers to attend a one o'clock meeting where they discussed  the technical aspects of the relationship, while Lauren asked one of her  minions to order sushi for her and Nate so they wouldn't starve to  death while they scrambled to assemble all the specialists required to  analyze the offer.

"It's a lot of money," Nate said when they were alone in the conference  room. He kicked his sneakers onto the polished table and leaned back in  his chair.

"True," Lauren hedged. "But I can think of a dozen problems already."

He looked up in surprise, because she didn't usually volunteer that sort  of opinion on a business matter. "Me, too! Let's hear yours. Sit."

There was a certain giddiness she felt when some new development at work  made them all scramble around, trying to make the most of it. It fizzed  in her veins as she sat on one of Nate's couches. She'd been wondering  how it might be possible to transition from office manager to something  more. That's why she'd worked so hard to get a degree, right?

As she leaned forward to tell Nate what she thought of the iBits offer,  moving up in his organization suddenly seemed possible. "The ongoing  contract they need will prevent you from working with any of their  competitors in certain lines of business."

"Right?" he said, tucking his hands behind his head. "That bothers me. A lot. What else?"

They exchanged notes right through lunch, until Nate had to depart for another meeting.

"I hope you didn't have plans tonight, because we're going to be sorting through this for hours," he said.

"No problem," she said quickly.

"And I'm going to send Becca to Detroit with the team. I need you here on the iBits deal."

"Oh," she said, startled. This was finally it-a return to normal. She'd  been waiting for this moment for five weeks. "So Becca is feeling  better?" Lauren should be jumping up and down right now. So why wasn't  she?

Because the team would start the third round tomorrow night, and she wouldn't be there to see it.

"She's . . . okay," Nate said slowly. "She wants to get back to work. So  I asked Hugh to send an intern with her, because she still tires  easily."

"Good idea," Lauren said, having no idea if it really was. She was too  busy scrutinizing Nate's face for more clues about the Becca situation.  As usual, he revealed nothing. Working for the world's most stoic human  wasn't easy.                       
       
           



       

Then she forgot all about Becca because Nate said, "There's a job I need  from you-something a little different. I need a dossier on iBits."

"Sure," she said immediately. "Although . . . you have a team of  I-bankers who can give you chapter and verse on that company. Do you  really want me to duplicate their efforts?"

"Yeah, I do. They'll give me all the numbers. But I want you to figure  out how things really are at iBits. I don't know this company at all.  Are their employees happy? What do people say about them? Do your  special Lauren thing and tell me all the dirt you can find. They want a  ten-year contract, so I need to know if these are people I'd look  forward to working with, or people I'd rather strangle. Nobody knows me  as well as you do, right?"

"Okay. I get it," she said. A dozen ideas bloomed in her mind at once.  What did iBits sound like on social media? When people left the firm,  where did they go? What was their maternity leave policy?

That last question was a little gift from her subconscious. She pushed the thought away. "I'm on it," she told her boss.


• • •

The next night Lauren was still in the office at ten P.M.

Earlier she'd turned in her full report on iBits to Nate. Then she'd  taken a break to go to the gym and pick up some dinner for herself and  her boss. The two of them had tuned in to watch the Bruisers defeat  Detroit in the first game of the Conference Finals series.

Now they were sitting on opposite sofas in his office, empty Diet Coke  cans strewn about. They'd spent two very long days getting their heads  around iBits and its offer. This morning, Nate's friend Alex had called  with her own offer, too.

"Alex won't pay as much," he grunted now, his hands behind his head. "But her offer doesn't require a ten-year contract."

". . . Which you wouldn't mind giving Alex anyway because you already know her company," Lauren pointed out.

"Right." Nate laughed. "I don't know which offer I'm going to end up taking. Thanks for all your help this week."

"My pleasure."

He turned to look at her. "We need to talk about the future."

Lauren felt herself fading. "It's ten o'clock, Nate. It's already the future."

He grinned. "You know what I mean. Your graduation is next month. You're going to get job offers. If you haven't already."