by Sloan Storm
As soon as I uttered those words, I noticed Don lean forward over the conference table and drop his forehead into his hand.
However, at this point, I simply didn’t care.
“So, as of now, I am withdrawing my offer to you. You’ve made it more than clear you don’t believe in what we’re doing, and that’s not the kind of investment partners I’m interested in.”
Without another word and without giving any of them a chance to respond, I disconnected the conference call.
Don shot to his feet, “Jesus Christ, Gabe! What the hell was that? Now what are we going to do?”
I waved him off. Disgusted beyond belief at the lack of faith shown by the investors, I said, “They can all go fuck themselves. I don’t want to talk about this right now, Don. We’ll discuss it later. Take your team and get out.”
Flabbergasted, Don motioned for all of them to gather up their things and go. In less than a minute they’d filed out of the conference room, all of them that is, except for Don. He stood in the doorway and turned towards me.
“What’s gotten into you, Gabe? This isn’t like you.”
I shook my head as I looked at him.
“Not right now, Don. As I said, we can talk about this later.”
Don walked through the doorway of the conference room and closed the door behind him. Now left alone with my thoughts, I realized how stupid I’d been to let my temper get the best of me.
At the same time, I wasn’t about to sit there and be insulted.
For a moment, I even considered getting on the phone and calling each of them myself to extend an apology. But the more I considered it, the more I realized it would just come right back to the same issue…
When will the Link Protocol be ready?
There was only one person in control of that outcome… and it wasn’t me.
FIONA
We were as close as we’d ever been to a breakthrough.
With the help of Amanda and Melissa’s replacements, the lab team pulled together as never before, and after several final confirmation tests, I’d gotten the answer I’d wanted.
“Are you sure this is correct?” I asked as I brandished the test results in front of my team. “If I take this to Gabe, he’s going to run with it. This is right, isn’t it?”
After a series of collective head nods from the assembled group, I tucked the paperwork underneath my arm and made my way out of the lab to give Gabe the good news. After exiting the elevator on his floor, I walked towards Holly’s desk.
“Is he available right now?” I asked, as I looked at her.
“It’s… really not a good time, Fiona. He just got off a terrible conference call with the investors.”
As she finished speaking, a hollow pang hit my stomach. Was I too late? Was everything in ruins now with the investors? For Gabe to be this upset about something… Well, it had to be bad.
As I stood there thinking it over, Holly spoke once more.
“Let me try him.”
I nodded, and a few moments later, Gabe picked up the phone.
Holly placed her hand over the mouthpiece and looked up at me from behind her desk.
“Is it urgent?”
“Yes, it is. Absolutely.”
After conveying my statement, Holly placed the phone back down in its cradle and gestured with her head in the direction of his office.
“Go ahead.”
I smiled and hurried past her desk, opening Gabe’s door with a flourish. As I entered, the first thing I noticed was his posture. In a semi-slumped position, Gabe sat in his executive chair, mindlessly tapping a pen on the top of his desk. Closing the door behind me, I frowned as I looked at him. With the results still under my arm, I walked towards him.
“What’s the matter?” I said, as I neared his desk. “What’s happened?”
Gabe let go of the pen, flipping it casually in the air. It rattled to a stop on top of his desk, and he leaned back in his chair, interlocking his hands behind his head.
“You don’t want to know. Trust me.”
“Why do you say that?” I began, as I grew more concerned. “You can tell me anything.”
“Hmm…” he muttered, as he narrowed his eyes at me. “Let’s see. I just had a meeting with the investors and basically told them all to go to hell.”
Taking a seat across from him in one of the chairs, I felt my eyes widen in their sockets as I looked at him.
“Why would you do that?”
Gabe shook his head.
“It doesn’t matter, Fiona. I don’t want to talk about it.”
The look in his eyes was something I’d never seen from him before. He seemed… defeated. Unwilling to let the issue go, I sat forward in the chair and pressed him on it.
“Is this about the delays in the lab?” I asked. “Because if it is, I have something to tell you and…”
Gabe snapped at me, in the first flicker of anger I’d seen from him in quite some time. “I said I didn’t want to talk about it, okay? I mean it.”
His aggression caught me by surprise. I swallowed and eased back into the chair.
As I did, Gabe let out a deep exhale.
“I’m sorry, Fiona I didn’t mean it. I’m frustrated, and I shouldn’t have lashed out at you like that. What do you need?”
Although he wouldn’t say, I assumed that whatever happened between him and the investors may have put the entire future of the Link Protocol at risk.
If it had, the idea of it made me nauseous. All the weeks and months of endless work, by not only myself but everyone involved, would be for nothing. Not only that, but I felt bad for him. Gabe put everything on the line for this project. I only hoped the news I had to share with him hadn’t come too late.
“Why are you here, Fiona?” he asked, as I sat there in silence.
I reached under my arm. Grasping the results in my hand, I passed them to him. After I slid the pages across his desk, Gabe placed his palm flat on top of it and looked at me.
“Is this what I think it is?”
A broad smile stretched tight across my face as I nodded.
“Yes. But it sounds like it might be too late. I hope it isn’t.”
“Mmm, hmm…” he grumbled as he broke eye contact with me and began to thumb through the paper.
He read in silence for at least a minute or so, before at last looking up to me once again. After picking up the same pen he tossed on the desk earlier, he pinched it between his thumb and index finger and tapped on top of the results.
“Is this… Is this right?”
By now, my smile was so wide it had begun to hurt my cheeks. At the same time, overcome with pride, I felt warm pools of wetness begin to collect in my eyes. All the hard work and all of the effort had finally paid off. Just then, a single tear fell from my eye and streaked down my cheek. I wiped it away as I looked across the desk at him.
Sniffling, I answered him with a whisper. “Yes, it’s right.”
Gabe dropped the pen on top of the paper once again. Only this time, it wasn’t in disgust. Slamming his palms down on top of his desk, he pushed himself into a standing position.
“Yes! Yes! Yes!” he chanted at the top of his lungs.
Sharing his excitement, I shot to my feet as well and hurried towards him. As I did, Gabe opened his arms and I crushed my body against his, burying my face in his chest. By now, the tears flowed without restraint and for the next minute or so we hugged, overcome with the joy of achievement. Afterward, Gabe reached for my upper arms and gently pried me away from his torso.
“You are absolutely brilliant, Fiona. What an amazing fucking woman you are.”
I smiled at his compliment, and as I smeared away the remnants of my joy from my cheek, I replied, “It’s all because of you, Gabe, and your vision. Without it, none of this would be here.”
As I finished speaking, Gabe shook his head.
“Well, my vision got a little cloudier today.”
“The investors you mean?�
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Gabe just shook his head.
“Look, let’s not discuss it. Right now it’s time to celebrate. I’ll figure something out. It’s my mess and I’ll clean it up.”
GABE
In the aftermath of Fiona’s breakthrough, I picked up the phone an hour or so later and summoned Don Cabot to my office. Feeling exuberant, I decided to have a bit of fun with my senior executive.
And so it was, fifteen minutes later I sat across from him at the conference table.
“Do you know why I’ve asked you to my office, Don?” I began. With the lab results face down on the table in front of me, I folded my palms over the top of them as I continued. “You must have some idea.”
“Well, I’m assuming it has something to do with that disastrous teleconference.”
I nodded as I looked at him, framing my expression with a solemn look of concern.
“Yes, Don, that’s exactly right. What we’ve got to do right now is to figure out how to get them back on board.”
Don wrinkled his brow as he scoffed at me.
“Get them on board? Gabe… Do I need to remind you what you said to them?”
“No. I’m well aware of what I said. I meant every word of it.”
Don let out a long exhale.
“Gabe, listen, you and I have worked together for many years. I respect you, and believe me when I say that I understand why you did what you did. But, be that as it may, the simple fact is that I think you were out of line.”
“I’m listening,” I began, as I gestured for him to continue. “Please tell me where you think I went wrong.”
Don cleared his throat and leaned over the conference table.
“Well, Gabe, I think that flying off the handle like you did at them just wasn’t necessary. I get you’re frustrated they don’t seem to be supporting you as they once did, but let’s be frank here. The Link Protocol is… a disaster. You know it, I know it and they know it. There. I’ve said it. I think we all wanted to see the company grow and flourish as a result of it, but Gabe, there’s a time when you just have to let things go. You’ve got to accept this failure and move on. And don’t burn every bridge you have while doing it.”
I smiled as Don laid out his thorough line of reasoning.
“I see.”
Before I could get another word in, Don continued, “Gabe, not everyone wins, not even you. It’s okay to lose—it happens to all of us.”
When he finished speaking, I began to lean back in my chair. As I did, I grasped Fiona’s report between my fingers, flipped it over and tossed it across the table to Don. He watched the stack spin in place and come to a stop directly beneath his face.
He glanced up at me. “What is this?”
I smirked at him. “I don’t lose Don. Not ever.” Grasping my pen in my hand once again, I pointed it at him for emphasis. “You, of all people, should know that.”
He looked at me in silence for a moment and then began to thumb through the pages. Within seconds, I watched his grim expression brighten. Without even reaching the end of the results, he snapped his head up and locked eyes with me.
“Is this a joke?”
I shook my head back and forth.
“No, it isn’t. The game is on, Don. Now let’s make this happen.”
A smile came to Don’s face.
“Incredible, Gabe. Wow, I’m speechless.”
By now I’d fully reclined in my chair. I wrapped my hands around the arms of it and winked at him.
“There’s a first time for everything I suppose.”
Don chuckled. “Fair enough. So what does this mean?”
“Well,” I began, as I reached up and stroked my chin. “I’m going to make some phone calls and see if I can patch things up. In the meantime, I want you and your team to arrange for another outing in St. Barth’s.”
“You sound optimistic.”
Nodding, I gestured towards the paper in front of him with my chin.
“I have every reason to be, don’t I?”
“If this is right? Damn straight you do.”
“Oh, it’s right, Don. It’s right.”
Several hours later, I’d placed a series of phone calls to the investors I had the most rapport with. It was bumpy at first, but now that we had the results, I had no question lining up the funding would be simple—a lay-down deal. As the minutes and hours ticked by and I brought more and more of them back into the fold, I was all but convinced our second trip to the islands would be the smashing success the first one should’ve been.
In fact, things went so smoothly there was a part of me that was a bit resentful.
It’s hard to explain, but even though I realized we’d been slow with our progress, I never lost faith we would get the job done. If nothing else, I learned an important lesson about my partners. It’s a shame they didn’t share my confidence, but so long as we could move past it in a professional way, I decided not to shut them out of the deal.
Once I’d wrapped up my calls, only one thing remained and that was informing Fiona the presentation was back on. I asked Holly to get hold of her and bring her to my office so I could discuss the plan in detail. After she arrived, I offered her a seat across from my desk, and as she took it, I slid into my chair.
“Fiona, I’ll keep this brief. Because of what you were able to accomplish, I’ve managed to salvage things with the investors.”
Fiona smiled, and with a tone of exuberance in her voice, she replied, “That’s wonderful to hear, Gabe. That makes me so happy and…”
I raised my hand. “Hear me out. You may not be so happy after I’m finished.”
As soon as the words tumbled from my lips, Fiona’s look of excitement melted into an anxious grimace. She slumped in her chair and looked at me as if I were about to send her to the electric chair.
I spent the next several minutes explaining everything that had happened, and how I’d managed to convince them all to return to St. Barth’s. Once we all gathered there again, she’d be doing the presentation as we planned it all along. I’m not sure what she was expecting me to tell her, but to my surprise, Fiona didn’t seem upset about the news.
Her reaction confused me, so naturally I asked her about it.
“Well, Gabe, the reason I was anxious about it before was because the data was incorrect. Don’t you remember? Now that it’s fixed and we know it’s correct, I’m more than ready to do it as I promised.”
I smiled as I looked at her. She really had come a long way. Not only was she willing to go back to the islands and do the presentation but she was doing it with enthusiasm.
And, as if that weren’t enough, it seemed things between us were better than they’d ever been before. It felt as if she might finally be trusting me. I couldn’t explain it, but things just seemed different somehow. As I saw her out of my office and closed the door behind her, I paused for a moment.
Never in my life could I recall going to such lengths for a woman.
None of them ever held my interest for this long, and no matter how hard I tried to understand why, the answer eluded me. Something about her made me want to be by her side. It was a feeling I’d never experienced, a new sensation, and I had no idea where it would go next.
FIONA
It seemed as if things were at last going my way.
Starting with the breakthrough we had with the Link Protocol and Gabe’s subsequent successful efforts to rekindle interest from the investors, I had the sense business success was inevitable.
At the same time, I had my doubts about what was happening between Gabe and me. I had no question about my own feelings for him. I was in love with him. There was zero doubt in my mind about it.
Yet, I couldn’t say the same thing about Gabe—not even close. Yes, he’d been much more kind to me, much more affectionate towards me, and in general, acting the way you would expect when you care for someone.
However, he’d never told me how he truly felt. The very last thing I wanted to do at
this point in my life was set myself up for a big fall. I didn’t think he was using me—that’s not the kind of doubt I had inside.
In fact, in spite of his inability to communicate it to me, I had the inkling he did love me. The emotion of love had always been a source of pain in my life. After all, everyone I’d ever loved died.
Of course, when it came to men, my experience with romantic love was nonexistent. Knowing Gabe like I did, I had little doubt he would use our next trip to the islands for more than just business. But in the weeks leading up to, and even after, my grandmother’s death, I’d grown weary of the cat and mouse nature of our relationship.
What I needed now more than ever was some clarity about the situation. I was too close to it. Everything about my life involved Gabe in one way or another. I’d been so buried in work I hadn’t spoken to any of my friends since my grandmother’s funeral. And even though I was uncertain as to what might come of it, I reluctantly decided to ask them for some advice about him.
And so, about a week or so before we were scheduled to return to St. Barth’s, I joined all of my friends at the same restaurant where Gabe and I met months ago. After ordering a round of drinks and taking a couple of healthy gulps, I decided to just get it over with and more or less told them everything that had happened between us.
Afterward, I spent the next hour or so answering a seemingly endless string of questions. Most of them revolved around why I would want to be with someone like him. I’d confided not only his kinder, gentler side, but also the side of him that was more irrational and unpredictable. Far more experienced than myself when it came to matters of dealing with men like Gabe, the girls issued stern warnings to me about him.
Suddenly on the defensive, I tried to convince them my feelings were not purely emotional. Yes, things started off rocky between us, but in recent times, especially the past couple of weeks, our relationship was entirely different.
No sooner had I said that than the challenges came at me from all directions.
