Page 2 of Coming Home

Emily frowned. The Social Sciences faculty meeting was last Friday. She knew that because she’d attended on behalf of David who had recently made a large donation to the department.

“Are you sure? I can wait until you get back and we can go over these edits.”

Tamara frowned and snagged her paper and tucked it in a filing cabinet. “No. In fact, you can pick that up on Wednesday when we meet again and we’ll talk about it then. You need to take a break, Emily. And after this meeting, I have a client to meet at my place,” she said with a wink.

Emily had to stifle a smirk. Dr. Mallincoat moonlighted as a professional Dominatrix and her client would be a male submissive of some sort who was paying her all kinds of money to dominate him for the evening.

“Fine. I’ll go,” Emily said. “But I’m coming to see you tomorrow to get my paper back.”

Her friend stood and offered her a hug. “I don’t want to see you here tomorrow. I know for a fact you have no classes so stay home. We can talk about this again on Wednesday.”

Emily sighed, knowing there was no way she would win this one. She picked up her purse and watched her friend drain her glass again. “You OK? You seem stressed.”

Tamara shook her head. “I’m fine. Nothing that can’t be fixed. Now go.”

“I’m going, I’m going,” she said, heading for the door.

In the hallway, she sent her driver a text to let him know she was ready to leave campus early.

David insisted she have a driver because of some trouble their friends at Club Solitaire had encountered. There was no reason to think she was in any danger, but he would not take chances with her safety.

In the car, she pulled out her tablet and began reading over her thesis proposal one more time, but her thoughts kept drifting to David and back to Dr. Mallincoat. The woman seemed stressed over something, and it wasn’t just the poor job Emily was doing on her thesis or the fact that David was buried in work. Those things had no real effect on her. She made a mental note to talk to David about it when he got home that night.

2

“What time will the two CEOs be here, Lydia?”

“Both are slated to arrive at Two-thirty, Mr. Eastman. So you have about forty-five minutes with Mr. Yates.”

“Thank you, Lydia.”

David Eastman turned his attention to Patrick and smiled. “Do we need to go over our strategy for dealing with these companies?”

Patrick shook his head. “Not at all. I think our plan to split up and each talk to one is the best course of action until we know what they’re offering and what they’re asking for.”

David and Patrick were meeting with CEOs from two different jewelry companies to convince them to move away from mined diamonds and introduce larger lines of lab produced diamonds. The thing about these two companies was that neither would agree unless the other one did, but they were both very different companies with unique business strategies so getting both of them to agree to terms was going to be complicated. Until now, all negotiations had gone through intermediaries. Today was the first of a series of face-to-face meetings.

“Let’s talk numbers while we have some time,” Patrick suggested.

“What are our projections looking like after the Black Friday sales data is factored in?” David Eastman asked as he clicked through a document on his screen.

“Things are looking really great, David. We still have a lot of competition from mined diamond jewelers, but we’re edging closer to the seven percent market share Elijah was hoping we would be at by mid-March of next year,” Patrick Yates said from his spot across from David’s desk.

“Excellent. And how is Elijah? He hasn’t been as hands on with this project the last few months.”

Patrick nodded. “Holls is kind of taking them in a different direction for now, but he still monitors things.”

David smiled at the mention of Holly Barrett, Elijah’s wife, and Patrick’s sister. She’d brought a lot of joy to his friend, and he always enjoyed seeing his friends happy.

“We should go over our Valentine’s Day campaign strategy since we have some time,” he said to Patrick.

“Definitely. Oh, and before I forget, we’ve got our diamonds on President Donovan’s wife and most of the female cabinet members for the upcoming inauguration. Several incoming senators and representatives are also incorporating them into their outfits. You can thank Jasmine Darlington for most of that.”

“That is good news. I’m sure you and Garrett had a hand in making it happen.”

The two men went through campaign strategy for the Valentine’s Day ad campaign while they waited for their guests to arrive.

David’s phone buzzed on his desk and he glanced down at the screen. Tamara. He hit decline and went back to his computer. That was a call he could return later.

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