Now he had a virtual army devoted to the cause, all of them wanting a piece of it. Mason glanced at his new lawyer, Camilla. Marcia was always trying to give him tricks to remember people’s names, and for the most part he ignored them. The name came to him if it was important enough, and if it wasn’t, well, enough said. But he suspected he wasn’t forgetting this young woman’s name. For one thing, she seemed very capable. Getting him through security without an ID, for example. If he’d been with Shreeman, he would have been yelling at Shreeman, who in turn would have been yelling at the guard and, in sum, they’d be a half hour late to the meeting because they had to go back to the office for some ID.
Which reminded him, he should have Marcia send a messenger with his driver’s license out to the plane.
About to instruct Camilla, the thought went right out of his head as she smiled at him. She had been so, er, nice to the guard. Marcia was right. He probably could learn from her. She smiled an awful lot. It seemed to be her de facto facial expression. And when the odd fellow in the elevator had looked down her blouse, he was disturbed to find himself in sync with it. The swell of her breasts were just visible over the cream silk. And then the fucking pearls.
He could think of someplace else to put those. Draped over her bare breasts. Between her thighs.
He snapped his attention back to the window, trying to keep his mind off that kind of thing and on the deal at hand. Unfortunately, it didn’t make him any more comfortable. It was silly really. There was no good reason to feel so ill at ease, so jittery that he couldn’t pour a cup of coffee. He just needed to get through one more meeting.
But all it took was the memory of his first presentation, with one very memorable participant, to make his palms sweat at the prospect of sitting at a conference table. She who shall not be named. As one of his initial investors, she’d insisted on attending, poring over a pad of paper she had brought along, scribbling notes as if to correct him later on. He was probably the only wanna-be entrepreneur on Wall Street who was forced to bring his mother to his financing pitch.
When the presentation was over and the group still streaming out, she approached the podium and said as loudly as she could, “Well, that was a fiasco. Back to the drawing board I guess.”
He had never enjoyed anything so much as writing her a check the next week out of the proceeds from the 100 percent investor participation after the meeting. Nothing had tasted as sweet as buying that woman the hell out of his company.
Even now, about to sit down to a meeting, he always had in the back of his mind the fear that his disapproving mother was going to show up.
The conference room door opened, and enough people to fill the UN-sized table flooded in. A crew, just as her boss had said. And every one of them, mostly middle-aged white men in suits, crowded in on Talbot in front of the window to introduce themselves. He was lost in a sea of handshakes and a flurry of business cards.
Camilla watched the fawning for a minute, but then on impulse rose from her seat and threaded her way through the gray suits. Half a dozen men leaned into her boss, all of them talking over each other with an intensity she heard before she got there. It almost looked like a football huddle, except wasn’t the quarterback supposed to be giving the orders? Talbot stood stock-still, gaze fixed on a point just over the heads of the other men, alternated with looking at his feet.
“Mr. Talbot.” Her voice was loud enough to cut through the chatter. She didn’t know about social skills, but being in a large family had certainly taught her to project, as she’d proved in the limousine.
He raised his gaze, and though his eyes were hooded, she read relief in them. She gestured back to the table. “We’re pressed for time. We should get started.”
After holding one arm out, she shepherded her boss to his seat, putting herself between him and Porter, who talked in low tones to the man at his right.
Once everyone sat down, Porter assumed control of the meeting. “For the benefit of most of you here, and so you’ll know who you’re talking to on the next all-hands conference call, let’s go around and introduce ourselves. I’m Greg Porter, Senior Partner at Bannum Strauss in Mergers and Acquisitions, and I’m the primary outside counsel for Talbot, Inc.”
He went on to list the last five deals he’d done with Talbot, Inc. in some detail. When the lawyer finally finished and signaled they would go along the table counter-clockwise, she said, “I’m Camilla Anderson, inside counsel for Talbot, Inc.”
She hoped with the one sentence to set the tone for brevity.
Everyone turned to Talbot, who was reading a few of the business cards he had been handed. There was an awkward silence. “Mr. Talbot,” she said quietly. She could feel fifty pairs of eyes focusing on him.