Loved Me Once (Love, Romance and Business)

by Gail Hewitt

  She reached over and retrieved the little recording device and replayed what he'd had her do. She had to concede that Tom was right. As an introduction to an unknown group, this was better. She sounded exactly as she should: cool, calm, and in control. It was a hard admission to make, for she still resented his telling her what to do. He wasn't the communicator; she was. It was, she thought, going to be difficult to accept that, in this situation, it was Tom who would always be the expert because he automatically preempted that role, the primary perk of the one who sat at the head of the table because it was his table.

  Successful end result or not, she felt very uncomfortable with what had happened tonight. She felt disrespected and disregarded. She felt like a kid on a learning tricycle when she knew she was ready to ride the big girl's bike. Wasn't that what proved that Miles had been wrong in his assertion that Tom's agenda was strictly personal? No one could have witnessed what had taken place tonight and doubted for a second that Tom viewed her as anything but a slightly dense, fashion-clueless nerd who had to be coached in the simplest of activities. She should, she thought even as she knew she wouldn't, text Miles and tell him so. Not only was Tom showing her no favoritism, he was insulting her in every way. Becoming established at TTI, she now realized, was going to prove a difficult adjustment.

  Picture Perfect?

  Maggie's first TTI meeting, held in a discreetly placed function room at the Princeton Club, was much as she'd suspected it would be. The full contingent was there, sleek with concepts and expensive clothing. Lucy Underwood, handsome African-American IBM escapee with a master's in philosophy and a doctorate in economic development, wore Armani on her tall, angular body. Annbeth Deerfield, the petite blonde educational theory guru, was in Versace, which somewhat surprisingly suited her curvy plumpness. As for the men, the look was custom-tailored traditional suiting for Bill Wragg, the technology maven whose spiky hair looked as if he'd accidentally plugged himself into an electrical circuit, and Hamilton Vandergrif, the lobbyist and fundraiser who resembled a circa 1970 Robert Redford. Even TTI coordinator Jameson Halbrooks, the Mr. Rogers look-alike, had exchanged his trademark camel-hair cardigan and loose chinos for a well-cut tan cashmere blazer and black slacks. Only Tom had elected to appear in his usual garb of jeans, white shirt, bomber jacket and cowboy boots. He was already seated at the head of the table, talking with Jameson Halbrooks, who was leaning over him. When Maggie entered, he gave her a quick but thorough appraisal and lifted his eyebrows, then motioned for her to sit at his right. Maggie wondered if this were a conscious choice on his part. Had he deliberately put her where the female guest of honor usually sat in relation to the host? Was that, in this instance, a good thing or a bad? Once Maggie and Halbrooks were settled in their seats, Tom rapped sharply on the table.

  "Good morning, I'm glad to see that everyone made it on time. We have a lot of business to get through, and I have to be on a plane by two p.m. First, I want to say that I've read your reports. Impressive stuff, guys. I can see you're really getting this where we need it to be. I have questions about a couple of things, which I'll address during our one-on-ones. Next, I want to introduce you to our newest team member, Maggie McLaurin, who will be responsible for communicating our concept in the broader world. First, let's give her an idea of what we're about." He went around the table and provided a one-sentence introduction for the participants, each of whom nodded and managed to look at least professionally welcoming.

  "Now," Tom continued, nodding in her direction, "let's give Maggie a chance to introduce herself."

  Maggie stood, more nervous than she'd expected.

  "As Merriman said, I'm Maggie McLaurin. I'm an award-winning trainer and motivator with a background in meshing corporate goals with social initiatives. My goal at TTI is to empower your concepts in the community that TTI will serve. I've read your analyses and found them extremely helpful. I'll be in touch with each of you to get further input. It's a pleasure to be part of the TTI team, and I'm looking forward to working with all of you."

  As instructed, she kept it neutral, then closed with a big smile and sat down. She half-expected someone would try to ask her a question, but their gaze barely lingered in her direction before returning to the man at the head of the table. It was clear, she thought, that this lot knew exactly who was paying the bills and took all cues from him.

  Tom looked around the table, his expression serious. "Finally, I know that you have been reading about the financial meltdown and the forced closure of several foundations with educational missions. I want to reassure all of you who may have wondered about this in relation to TTI, that we are securely funded. It is difficult for me to envision a scenario in which that will not continue to be the case. Should it happen, however, you can be sure you will first hear of it from me and not from inadequately researched conjecture in the business press."

  There was nervous laughter around the table.

  "Now," Tom continued, "Jameson has a couple of items to discuss with the at-large group."

  Jameson stood up. "First, I want to remind everyone that the controller needs your end-of-year expense reports no later than 10 January. Let's get that paperwork in by that date, ladies and gentlemen, if you expect everything to be paid or reimbursed in a timely manner. Then, I would ask each of you to fax me your recommendations regarding the agenda for our next meeting. I have a couple of additional items to take up with one of you, but we'll do that in private session."

  He sat down and turned back to Tom, who suggested that everyone take a ten-minute break then regroup in the conference room at ten, when the one-on-ones would begin.

  The other two women left the room. When Maggie rose to follow, Tom put his hand on her arm. "You did fine. You can see why the longer approach wouldn't work – it breaks the pattern we've set for these meetings. They're really just jumping-off places for the real business, which takes place one-on-one and afterwards, when everyone's returned home and had a chance to think about issues that arise in the one-on-one sessions."

  Then Halbrooks claimed Tom's attention, and Maggie left the room, in search of the women's restroom. When she walked in, it was full, save for the handicapped stall at the far end, which made her feel faintly guilty but did not stop her from entering and locking its door. Something had been sticking in her side throughout the meeting, and she realized she must have overlooked a label or tag. She had removed the black-and-orange print blouse and was examining the seams of the new camisole when she heard Lucy Underwood's rich contralto.

  "New girl seems pretty sharp, I thought."

  "What do you want to bet Scott is boffing her?" responded a more silvery voice which Maggie recognized as coming from Annbeth Deerfield.

  "Or wants to," Underwood laughed. "But that's not her fault."

  "Good-looking suit she has on," Deerfield said.

  "Must be making big bucks," Underwood agreed. "But then who isn't of this crowd?"

  "The gig pays extremely well for the time required. No one can say Scott's anything but generous," Deerfield agreed. "Good thing, too."

  By the time Maggie had snipped off the offending label with the nail scissors she carried in her case and refastened the blouse, they'd departed and she was left alone to ponder what she'd inadvertently overheard. Not too bad, all things considered. Tom had evidently been right about the tone her remarks should take. As for Deerfield thinking she and Tom were an item, that assumption was par for the course and would — she knew from past experience — disappear as she proved herself. But what had Deerfield meant by it being a "good thing" that Tom paid handsomely? It almost sounded as if the completed sentence would have read, "otherwise none of us would touch this." If so, that didn't bode well.

  Back in the conference room, Maggie was surprised to see that the individual sessions with Tom would take place at one end of the long table, while everyone else waited his or her turn at the other. It amused her when she noticed that at least two of the waiting participants had binders, wh
ich they were examining with care. Evidently Tom was a harder taskmaster than she'd thought to this point. Beforehand, they were as focused as school kids dreading an exam. During each person's time with Tom he or she appeared enthusiastic, yet defensive, and it was with a definite air of relief that all of them left the one-on-one, wasting no time before gathering up belongings and heading for the door. Evidently, once that part of the meeting was done, the participant was free to go.

  By 1 p.m., Maggie was the only one remaining, other than Halbrooks, with whom she sat at the end of the table. Tom stood up and gestured peremptorily toward the two of them.

  "I've got to fly to Boston. You two come with me."

  "You mean now?" Maggie was surprised. She'd half-promised Martha she'd be in that night for dinner and The Golden Compass.

  Tom gave her a quizzical look.

  "Yes, now," he said, as if to a dense child. "Grab your case, we've got to go."

  Downstairs, a limo was waiting for the three of them and Jack Holt, Tom's seemingly ever-present Chief of Security. Tami Lane was nowhere in sight, so Maggie assumed her presence was not thought to be needed. Sitting on the limo's second seat, Maggie worked on the way to the airport, quietly making calls: one to Martha about the dinner to be missed; another to Amanda Perry for a status report on any calls she'd made concerning repairs to the house; and the last to Hillary Ames to make sure that her WHT mail was being properly forwarded.

  On the bench at the rear, Tom and Halbrooks continued to talk in low tones. Maggie took out her iPod headphones and scrolled to a rock playlist. At the airport, there was a repeat of the Christmas Day scenario save that this time the limo carried its passengers to the foot of the gangway.

  Aboard the plane, Jack Holt took up a position next to the entrance, and Tom told Lars to make Ms. McLaurin comfortable as Maggie went automatically to the seat she'd occupied the week before. Tom and Halbrooks went to the Plexiglas-enclosed conference area and began to speak intently. Maggie ordered a lime Diet Coke. A few minutes after takeoff, Halbrooks came to the door of the conference room and beckoned Maggie. She grabbed the Prada Messenger Bag she'd carried to the morning's meeting and joined the two men. Tom wasted no time in getting to what he wanted.

  "Now's your chance to use some of that material you've generated in the last few days regarding what you see as the need for more research," he told her. "Here's what we want to know: (1) What exactly do you want to do and where? (2) How do you propose to go about it? (3) What does TTI gain from your doing the research?"

  Maggie took a deep breath and plunged in. "To begin with, I want to hold four focus groups in each of the counties TTI is targeting. Two of the groups should be in the county seat, which I assume is usually the location of the largest high school in the county. The other group should be in a more-rural area. That's thirty-six focus groups, which I anticipate will require approximately nine weeks to conduct, allowing four groups per week — one group in the morning and one group in the afternoon in each county seat, with the same time arrangement in the rural area. The groups should be conducted in as neutral a location as possible, that is, not in a school or on the premises of a business or industrial concern — I prefer something like a conference room in the courthouse or even the meeting room of a benevolent association or lodge. I've got a list here of possibilities as to location. As to participants, for this round I'd like for the morning group to consist of parents and the afternoon group of teachers and counselors. We can get the principals to select the teachers and counselors, and involve the PTA to get parental involvement." She handed the list across.

  Tom ignored the list, which Halbrooks at least looked at intently.

  "As for how I propose to go about it," she said, "I'd use the standard group approach, which is to take as a starting point what it is we need to know and then devise a scenario designed to elicit the information from the participants." She looked at the two men sitting across the table. Tom appeared to be almost hostile, while Halbrooks was obviously puzzled. "As for what TTI will gain from the research," she continued, "the answer is twofold: efficiency and effectiveness when it launches."

  "You obviously know how to conduct research," Halbrooks began, still looking mystified, "but what I don't see is why we need to do this. We already have a plan. You said you'd read the TTI mission binder. Surely you saw the outline of the initiative."

  Maggie nodded, forcing herself to restrain her impatience. "I did, and it sounds wonderful. I especially like the idea of using teachers and counselors as talent scouts and also allowing students to self-select."

  "Then why do we need to do this?" Halbrooks asked. "Everyone to whom we've shown the initiative outline has had the same positive reaction. I don't think we've had a single negative comment."

  It was then that the horrible truth hit Maggie. "So your assumption is that, as soon as you fine-tune the process until it's exactly what you want, all you have to do is to announce it and everyone will immediately sign up? Principals, teachers, counselors, students, parents, local businesspeople — all of them?"

  "Of course. It's of obvious benefit to all concerned," Halbrooks said. "The students get a better education and more opportunities to use it, which has to please both the young people and their parents. The teachers have the satisfaction of seeing their best students succeed and also personally get both recognition and incentives for promoting the process. The schools get incentives for encouraging the teachers and students. Local businesses get a better applicant pool. The area gets the benefit of the students working there to enhance its economic development prospects."

  He looked at Maggie almost defiantly. "Why wouldn't everyone want to cooperate?"

  Maggie shook her head, unsure of where to start. "In an ideal world, Jameson, everyone would, but I know from my experience at BellSouth and with the Atlanta Chamber community initiatives that isn't the way it works. We have to market this in order for it to work the way Tom wants it to."

  "But BellSouth had an entirely different situation," Halbrooks protested. "TTI is in no way comparable."

  Maggie nodded. "That's true. No one's heard of TTI, whereas BellSouth was probably the best-known company in the state — with a high approval rating, a strong local presence, a highly proactive public relations machine, and deep pockets. And, even then, we had to promote community initiatives in order to get the kind of participation we wanted. And even then it didn't always work. Even allowing for the constraints placed on public utilities and even assuming that we might not have promoted as well as we could have, that convinced me that just because a thing is good for an area doesn't mean the area's residents will automatically embrace it and get behind it. People are suspicious almost to the point of paranoia about anything new. Even worse, they're easily distracted, and TTI will be competing with a lot of priorities for parents, schools, teachers, and — especially — the kids themselves."

  The two men looked at each other. They had evidently not considered the possibility that the world was not waiting with baited breath for whatever TTI would propose.

  "Granted that you are correct," Halbrooks said, "I don't see what focus groups will do to help with that."

  "You use your scenario to get honest opinions from the participants as to their concerns regarding these young people, as well as their hopes and dreams for them," Maggie explained. "Then you introduce the TTI program within a context of what they themselves have indicated to you that they want for their children and the area in which they live."

  "That's pretty damn obvious, it seems to me," Tom protested, "without going through all this rigmarole. Most parents want their children to grow up to be successful, and they want the area to be prosperous."

  He was almost glaring at her. Maggie knew she had unknowingly touched some sore spot in regard to his grand vision, as if in pointing out that it could be made to work more effectively she had somehow compromised its integrity. She would, she knew, have to be very careful in how she laid out her reasoning.
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br />   "That's true," she admitted after a moment. "The issue lies in the definition of success. To the three of us, that probably means the chance to use talents and effort to meet certain psychic needs and to make money. To some parents, however, the definition might be very different, almost the opposite of what we think. Maybe, to them, success might mean finding a job that pays well enough to live without requiring any more time than absolutely necessary, or a job that commands a lot of respect in a community of which they wish to be or remain a part."

  Maggie could see that Halbrooks was really beginning to listen. Tom, if anything, looked more stubbornly resistant.

  "As for the economic development aspect," she continued, "that has two sides too. Local businesses may be afraid that new business or industry may undermine their ability to draw on the best of the local applicant pool or even their ability to get locally sourced raw materials at a good price."

  This time, Halbrooks actually nodded in agreement when she looked at him.

  "All I want to do in these groups is to get a feeling for what matters most to these people right now," Maggie explained. "Then we can present your program in a way that it makes perfect sense to them. That way, they'll cooperate with you much faster and more easily."

  "Even granting that what you say is true," Tom frowned, "why do you need to do so many groups? Aren't you going to get more or less the same information from all of them?"

  "To some extent," Maggie admitted. "In fact, that's the point of the broader-based research. We want to make sure that we focus on the key elements that matter to just about everybody, wherever in the nine-county area they live."