“I would, thank you.” David smiled.
April’s eyes, hard and blue as glacial ice, told me a different story, however.
Adam and I led the way while David deliberately hung behind to walk beside his daughter. “Rebekah was wondering why you hadn’t answered her last email.”
“I told you. I’ve been busy with work.”
I stepped up the pace, feeling like an eavesdropper. Adam followed my lead, but they stayed right behind us. “She wants to know if you’re coming down for Yom Kippur.”
“I’ll, um, let you know. I have a lot of work coming up.”
Adam turned his head and said over his shoulder, “You can have that day off, April. It’s no problem.”
Corporate policy. Of course she’d get that day off if she requested it. But I suspected she didn’t want to request it. I peeked and saw April staring at Adam’s back with a clenched jaw. “Okay, thanks.”
“I’ll tell her you’re coming, then?”
“We’ll see. So why are you here?”
“Adam invited me. I think he’s cooking up some kind of plan. He’s always got secret plans. Like that time he ditched me to start his own company…”
“Hey,” Adam said with a smile. “I do recall you gave me your blessing.”
And I suspected that David must have bought in with a fat wad of cash, too, or he was about to. His company, Sony Online, it was rumored, was preparing to be spun off and sold, even as they worked on their “next big thing” that might give us a run for our money if it ever got off the ground. It was sad, because his company had been among the most innovative in the industry, at the forefront of massive multiplayer online role-playing games less than two decades ago.
But time, and progress, stopped for no man—or company. I suspected that David knew the bright new future when he saw it and had probably been following Adam’s progress very closely. There could be no other reason why a man would let someone as brilliant and talented as Adam leave to go start up a rival company with his blessing.
Of course, I couldn’t approach him about the rumors, and they were just that—rumors. But I read up on the industry every day. This community was not very big and we often exchanged employees. Basically, everybody was all up in everyone else’s business.
As if to illustrate that point, David made the quiet allusion, once we were in a private room outside of development, to the forbidden subject. “So, uh, forgive me for asking, but…what’s all this about a sex video involving the company?”
Adam’s face betrayed nothing, but he did pale a bit. I swallowed and studiously avoided his daughter’s gaze. She had frozen beside him.
I spoke up. “A couple employees goofing around, nothing more—” And the minute they escaped my mouth, I wanted to grab those words and shove them back inside. Fuck. Fuck. Fucking fuck.
“We only know that one employee was involved, actually,” Adam corrected quietly, managing, to his credit, not to throw me one of his dark, correcting glares.
“And this person has been fired, I hope?”
Adam and I locked gazes nervously. “Their identity hasn’t yet been discovered,” Adam said.
April fidgeted at her father’s side but kept her eyes down, saying nothing.
David looked skeptical. “You’ve got the situation under control, though, right? I’ve been through this process before and those bankers are a skittish bunch. They’ll bolt at their own shadows.”
“I have the bankers rounded up and on our side. We’ve done damage control, and the situation has pretty much blown over,” I said.
David seemed to accept that and we concluded our tour without any further mention of it, thank goodness. April seemed to want to avoid her father’s invitation for lunch, but, not having much choice, grabbed her purse and, with rounded shoulders, followed him out.
As soon as she was out of my sight, I went back to my office, pulled out my phone and sent her a text message.
Can we talk after work tonight?
An hour later, while I was standing in Adam’s office waiting for the photographers to set up their backdrop for the cover shoot, my phone chimed.
Yes.
I heard some weird chatter about the cover story being labeled, “Tech World’s Most Eligible Bachelor Millionaires.” But Adam set them straight and said he wanted none of that—most especially because he wasn’t eligible anymore.
I could only imagine Mia’s face when she saw an article like that. I hoped to God he wouldn’t throw me under the bus to get himself off the hook.