Page 39 of Return Billionaire to Sender

“My bored face?”

“Are you able to look bored? Can you act at all?”

Walt leans forward and says, “It’s important to have a neutral face in there.”

“Okay.” She sits up and puts on a little pout. “Wait—No.” She wipes the air in front of her face and tries it again.

“No, no, no,” I say.

“Okay, hold on.” She tries for a neutral face, but all I see is energy and excitement, badly hidden. And pale, freckled skin. There is one darker freckle at the edge of her lips, and I imagine tasting it, kissing it, or maybe just taking that entire side of her mouth into mine, and then I’d let her lips go and kiss her properly, full on. What would it take to turn her on? What would it take to get her to aim that flirtatiously witchy face at me?

“You’re an observer,” I say, forcing my attention down to my phone, “but the Germantown Group doesn’t know that. They’ll assume you’re privy to inside knowledge, and they’ll be watching your reactions every step of the way.” I look up and meet her intelligent green gaze. “An undisciplined team can undermine a negotiator’s strength like nothing else. Even if you don’t understand what’s happening, they won’t know it, and they’ll be looking at you for cues. I can’t have you muddying the water. Your poker face…no.”

She nods.

“They’re going to give you a packet of materials when we get in there. Every time you feel eyes on you, every time you think something interesting’s going on, anytime you feel anything beyond neutral, you’re to look down at that material and don’t look up. Look at the packet the whole time if you need to.”

“Okay,” she whispers.

“Good,” I say. “I’m glad we understand each other.”

Once again, her face blazes. She swallows, blinks. “Um, they say that h-he doesn’t want to sell.”

“Deep down, I suspect he does,” I say, “but he won’t take a deal that fires his truckers and repurposes his assets, and that is the only deal he will ever see. The deal he wants existed in 1989, but it doesn’t exist today. And once his kid inherits, he’d be wise to break up the company first thing while it still has value, but Gerrold doesn’t want to face that reality either.”

“Well, wouldn’t it be bad for the people to lose their jobs?” she says. “He cares about what happens to them. I think his loyalty is admirable.”

“Whose side are you on here?” I tease.

“It’s just…I’m imagining it from their points of view,” she says.

“They haven’t exactly kept the self-driving car a secret,” I say. “Gerrold knew, the truckers knew, everybody knows it’s a dying business, and it has been dying for a long time. Gerrold didn’t see what was coming down the pike, or maybe he didn’t want to see, because he needed them. It doesn’t matter. I need his infrastructure. His distribution centers, his logistics, all of it.”

“And he wants to teach his son to negotiate,” she says.

I’m pleased to see she’s gone to school on the situation. “Exactly. A bit of schooling for Junior.”

“So why are you indulging them? Why waste your time?”

I lock on to her army green eyes, pinning her with my gaze. I need to stop this madness, but I don’t seem to be able to. “You can’t win if you don’t play.”

She swallows. Nods. Freckles strewn like stars.

12

Noelle

The negotiation takesplace in the Kendrick building, a gleaming tower in downtown San Francisco that seems to have been rented out for this specific purpose. Our conference room is on a high floor with glass windows all around that overlook the city.

We all sit at a long table carved from a huge piece of wood, polished to a high gleam. Our team—Walt, Nisha, Coralee, Lawrence, and I—is on the fringes, and Malcolm and five people I haven’t met—the legal and money people, I’m guessing—sit in the middle of our side of the table across from Gerrold Jespersen Sr., owner of the Germantown Group, and his son, Gerrold Jr., and their people.

Gerrold is a sixty-something man who wears one of those black Greek fisherman’s caps. He actually looks like a fisherman, burly and bearded. His son, Gerrold Jr.—Junior, as Malcolm calls him—is in his forties, thick like his father, but clean-shaven.

I imagined a negotiation to be a tense affair, but on this first day, it’s more a getting-to-know-you session. Everyone even goes around and says their names, and some even tell a little bit of personal stuff, like one of Gerrold’s lawyers just moved out from Texas. Another of them explains his broken arm is from competitive tennis. Walt figures out that he and Gerrold’s accounts person have the same alma mater. I say I’m with HR—I was told to say that, and it’s more or less true. Training and coaching is considered an HR function.

Gerrold talks up his business—the amazing service, the human touch, the state-of-the-art distribution centers. I expected Malcolm to pooh-pooh the value of the company—isn’t that what you’re supposed to do in negotiation? Act like there are problems with the thing you want to buy? Like kicking the tires on an old automobile? But Malcolm seems to have genuine appreciation for different aspects of the company. Now and then, Gerrold looks over at the son; it’s hard to tell if the son is following along; I half suspect he’s looking at his phone under the table.

There’s even beverage service—you can order café lattes and espressos and things like that by text—and there is a giant platter of pastries in the middle of the table.

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