My Babies and Me

“Hello?” She grabbed it after the first ring, eager for distraction, praying it wasn’t Michael calling to wish her a happy birthday. She wasn’t ready to speak with her ex-husband. Not yet.

“Hey, old woman, how about lunch?”

“Seth?” Holding the phone away from her ear, Susan grinned. “You in town?”

“Haven’t missed a birthday yet, have I?”

“Well...” Susan used her best corporate attorney’s voice to disguise how thrilled she was that he’d made it back. “I seem to recall there were those first two...”

Seth snorted. “Before I was born doesn’t count.”

Annie rose slowly and lumbered out to the hall, and as loneliness invaded the room, Susan’s spirits plummeted again. “Lunch would be good. Can you go now?” she asked.

“At 9:30 in the morning?” Seth laughed, then stopped abruptly. “Something wrong?”

“Nope. Just don’t feel like working today.” Which was something wrong.

“I’ve got one call to make, and I’ll be there,” Seth promised immediately.

“Thanks.” Tears in her eyes, Susan hung up the phone. As much of a pain as it had been growing up the only girl with five brothers, Susan was glad she had Seth. He was two years younger, the brother who came directly after her. She’d picked on him all the years they’d lived at home. She’d known she could get away with tormenting him. After all, Susan was the girl, the princess. And while she wasn’t allowed to do any of the fun things they did—like go to the batting cages or play catch or go golfing—the boys were all under strict orders not to bully her. So she’d bullied Seth relentlessly. Even when he’d topped her by a foot and forty pounds.

She wasn’t sure just when she’d started leaning on him instead.

“THANKS FOR meeting with me, Michael.” James Coppel, of Coppel Industries, offered Michael Kennedy his hand.

“I’m happy to be here, sir,” Michael shook his hand before taking a seat in Coppel’s penthouse office suite. He’d just flown in from Chicago.

Although he was careful to do it covertly, Michael took in the opulence around him, his heart rate quickening. Susan should see this, was his first thought. Only his ex-wife could understand the importance of his being there, in that affluent Georgia office suite. Only she would know what it meant to him. He caught a glimpse of himself in an ornate, gold-framed mirror that took up most of the opposite wall and was surprised by his reflection. Well-groomed, dark-haired, he looked...at ease. As if he belonged there.

“Would you like some coffee?” Coppel asked, relaxing in his chair as he surveyed Michael. The man’s hair might have grayed, his skin wrinkled, but he’d lost not an inch of his imposing six-foot height in the seven years Michael had known him.

“Certainly,” Michael replied. He wasn’t a coffee drinker, didn’t like what the stuff did to his stomach, but he’d been in business long enough to know that he had to appear as relaxed as his boss.

Though close to seventy, Coppel was a legend. A genius. The man had never missed a beat in the forty years since he’d purchased his first exterminating franchise. He’d built an empire that had interests in just about every industry in the country. Other than film. Coppel had even been smart enough to stay out of Hollywood.

If Michael had ever allowed himself an idol, Coppel would have been it.

The coffee was delivered and with one polished wing tip resting on a suited knee, Michael sat back to calmly sip the dreadful stuff.

“How old are you, boy?”

“Thirty-nine.” Legally, Coppel had no right to ask that kind of question, and .they both knew it.

“And you’ve been with Smythe and Westbourne for how long?”

Michael would bet every dime of the half million he’d saved over the past seven years that Coppel knew exactly how long Michael had been with the Coppel Industries’ investment firm. To the day.

“Seven years.”

“And in that time you’ve gone from director of finance of one branch to financial director of the entire operation, showing a three hundred percent increase over the past two years.”

“Yes, sir.” Michael was damn proud of those figures. They’d cost him. A lot.

“Mind telling me your secret?”

Michael knew he’d finally been asked a legitimate question. A question he could answer with deceptive simplicity. “Integrity toward the customer.”

Coppel snorted. “I run an honest ship, young man. Always have. How do you think Coppel became the name it is? Honest business in a dishonest world. That’s how.”

And that was something Michael had known. Even before he’d earned his MBA, Michael had chosen the company for which he wanted to work. And set about being the candidate they’d choose when the time came.

“I take that one step further, sir,” he said now, no longer aware of the opulence of the room or the other man’s stature.

He had Coppel’s complete attention.

“Each customer is different, with individual needs. My teams have been taught to treat the customer as a person, to sell him not what we have to sell—not what, in the short run, makes us the most profit—but what he truly needs. It hurts the small picture, sometimes, when we don’t make a killing right off the bat. But in the big picture—”

“They go away happy,” Coppel interrupted him, eyeing Michael with interest. “They come back. They bring their neighbors with them.”

“Over and over again,” Michael said with the conviction of seven years’ worth of figures to prove his theory.

“Lose money to make money,” Coppel said.

“Sometimes.”

“Building a whole new level of trust, a new approach to doing business—which, I suppose is really an old-time traditional approach.”

“At least at Smythe and Westbourne.”

The other man nodded. “So you think you can determine what the customer wants.”

“I do.”

“How?” Coppel might be testing him, but he was intrigued as well.

“By becoming the buyer instead of the seller.”

Coppel nodded, his brow clearing. “You put yourself in the shoes of the consumer.”

“And realize that just as all people aren’t the same, all consumers and their needs aren’t the same, either.”

Looking down at some papers spread in front of him, Coppel said, “You appear to have a real talent in this area.”

Michael didn’t know about that. He thought his real talent lay in profit-and-loss margins and personal infrastructures.

“What about your family?” Coppel asked. “How much of your time do they require?”

And for the first time since he’d been summoned to this interview more than a month ago, Michael allowed himself to hope. He wanted a move up to one of the bigger, more diverse companies in the Coppel holdings. He needed a new challenge.