This story does not stand on its own and the author suggests reading CH.1 first.
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I couldn't sleep. The walls in the hotel were too thin and kids running back and forth down the hall all night were making a ton of noise. Eventually I did doze off and without the use of the cell phone alarm feature I slept until the housekeeper knocked on my door just after eleven AM.
The realtor was expecting me today and I had overslept. I jumped to the shower and drove across town as fast as I could. Filling out the paper work in the office was straightforward enough and signed within ten minutes of me arriving. The young new sales girl April was so grateful for her first listing, especially one in an exclusive neighborhood, that she must have thanked me at least ten times.
My next stop was over to the phone carrier to replace the phone I had bounced into a hundred pieces the night before. I didn't care what model, I didn't care what color. I only cared that it had a different number. One that nobody knew.
It took a few calls to let my close friend and attorney Scott know what happened. I also called April back with new contact information. She excitedly told me someone had already called on the house.
The funny thing is that when I told Scott what happened he accused me of being short tempered. He also asked me to explain why I paid for a hotel ten minutes from my empty house? A few other questions that I couldn't answer came up before he told me to settle down, avoid coffee or alcohol and go find a park bench.
"Jim, I need you to really hold off making any decisions right now. You are hurt, you are mad, and you are still in love. Just stop until you process some things in your head. Call me if you need to decide on anything. I am here for you."
The park bench worked for a couple of hours, my laptop took up a couple of hours, and people-watching in the coffee shop eased my heart just a bit. By the end of the week April called and had found a buyer. They offered full price if I would close by the end of the year. She made it clear that the buyer wanted this house and this house only.
When the snow started falling again on the second of January I made a decision. I had run it by Scott a few days earlier. I packed everything I had into my car and started driving towards Atlanta.
Much debate was processed in my mind about the location of my next start-up company. It narrowed to Atlanta, Austin, and Denver. Austin seemed saturated with tech companies so I crossed that off early. Denver had all of the right demographics with many growing companies but would limit early morning flights to the east coast where I still expected a lot of my work to come from.
Three Years Later
Allison and Meghan had flown to New York the evening before. They were my top two client managers. We ran a security consulting firm where we were paid to analyze, perform penetration testing, consult, and implement hardened networks. We were meeting with a large international hotel holding company to agree on the scope of a pretty big project they offered us. I would go to the meeting only for the purpose of preventing scope creep where a client would keep asking for more and more to be added into a contract. Creeping requirements could kill a successful project.
When I arrived at the airport my ground transportation into Manhattan was waiting for me. We made it downtown in plenty of time for me to meet Allison and Meghan in the lobby. We had a brief chat before we headed up the elevator.
The receptionist brought us back to a conference room where our meeting was to take place. Shortly after we were seated some of the holding companies staff joined us along with Ron Cassell the COO.
"Our Vice President of Marketing is wrapping up a call with Dublin and will join us shortly." Ron said to us as he took his seat at the table.
Allison began with some formalities like introducing herself then Meghan and finally me. She went over the agenda and launched her web based presentation. We had been going over some of the general specifics of what we do and in what stages they are performed when the door to the conference room opened and a very attractive blonde woman in a professional business suit walked in.
To say I was stunned would have been an understatement. The woman was my ex-sister-in-law Shannon Morrow. Ron introduced her to everyone as she sat and readied herself for the presentation. She was unaware of me sitting there as she settled into her seat and looked at the screen trying to catch up. I am not sure my eyes left her. I would never have known I was staring until Meghan jammed her heel into my shin and gave me a nasty look to stop it.
The sudden stabbing pain of her two and half inch heel brought a slight yelp out of my breath which everyone heard. The last thing I saw was Shannon's eyes looking at me as I changed my focus to my notes. Ron motioned for Allison to continue.
Every time I looked up, Shannon was looking at me. The first hour was in a different zone, one which I was no longer in. Meghan reached over twice and turned my notes to a different page for me to follow along. She was writing on her pad for a few minutes before she elbowed me to read what she had written.
"WTF. Why are you staring at her? It is starting to freak people out. She is staring back at you and I think everyone has noticed."
"She is my ex's older sister. I haven't seen her in over three years. I sort of disappeared on them. Believe me, neither of us were expecting this. " I wrote back on her pad.
Fortunately we made it into the second hour and I avoided eye contact. When Allison was finished I stood and walked to the screen to give the corporate mumbo jumbo stuff to add to the puzzle. I then started in on some of the things we already knew that needed to be addressed starting with the Wi-Fi in the hotel rooms.
"You can't use the reservation system to verify the room occupant just to enable Wi-Fi. The data has to be on two separate networks. Allow me into one of your rooms for ten minutes and I will return with your guest list along with their room number. And from there it gets worse. That will be non-negotiable. The data has to be separated."
I went for another thirty minutes before my part was over. Allison and Meghan could handle everything beyond this point. All I needed was a couple of signatures on contracts and I would be rendered useless to my engineers.
"Now that everything is signed, I would like to offer to take everyone across the street for lunch and then we can come back and get started." Ron said.
I looked into Shannon's eyes and knew from the look on her face that we going to have to talk one way or another and over lunch would not be the best place.
"Sir if I may, is it possible that I stay behind here and talk to Ms. Morrow for a moment. I realize that some of you have detected that Shannon and I have met in the past. I want to make sure this does not impact our work here. Before you return I will write a full disclosure with her approval."
Ron looked at me and then Shannon before he nodded and left with the others. Meghan gave me a look and asked if I would be OK. I said yes and she followed them out.
With an empty room we sat across from each other looking for the right thing to say. I ended up going first.
"Congratulations. Vice President of Marketing. I remember the day we had coffee before your interview. I must say, I am very impressed, but I am not surprised. You are a very smart woman."
"Thank you, Jim. Sort of the same, only opposite. I am not impressed because you are capable of having anything you set your mind on. So I always knew you would succeed. I guess I am surprised at the fact you have now created two multimillion dollar companies and you are only thirty."
"Thank you Shannon. How are you? What is it like being a bigshot in Manhattan?"
"Everything I dreamed of but on somedays everything I dread. Lot of pressure, but a lot of pleasure. I don't know how to put it. What about you? How are you? You are in Atlanta now or are you at one of your other locations. I see you have an office in Denver."
"I started in Atlanta and then added the Woodlands in Texas before adding Denver. It was a case of having to be where the work and talent was."
We rambled back and forth about our careers for a few more minutes until Deja Vu struck. Shannon's cell rang just as it did years ago when we sat in the coffee shop.
"Are you going to get that?" I asked.
"I don't know. It is Julie!" She said in a concerned voice.
"Just answer it." I said.
It started out as the normal sister talk from what I could tell being able to only hear Shannon. She smiled and giggled a couple of times and then asked Julie to wait for a second while she put the phone on mute.
"Can I tell her you are here?" Shannon asked.
"You know I don't like secrets. You will tell her anyway so go ahead."
Shannon paused and looked at me trying to process what I just said.
"Julie, you are never going to guess who I am sitting with in the conference room." She asked her.
"Jim." She said with a smile into her phone. "Yes, your' Jim."
I didn't hear what Julie said. Shannon listened for a moment and then looked at her phone.
"I think she just hung up? She started crying and hung up."
Neither of us knew what to say next. I felt bad but what could I do or say. This isn't what I wanted either. Shannon twice looked like she was going to say something and then stopped.
