Page 106 of Ten Years and Then…
He shook his head. “There’s nothing wrong with your work, Nora. But your intuition could use some fine-tuning.”
What did that mean?
“Sir?”
“Must I spell it out to you?” She knew she had a blank expression on her face; it was probably all he could do not to laugh. “Apparently I do. Jessica Waybourne is pregnant, I assume you’re aware of that?” She nodded. Jessica was the editor of BioCurrent Monthly. And she was very pregnant. The last couple of times Nora saw her in the hallway, she was surprised the woman wasn’t on bed rest.
“And obviously you know—not firsthand, since you haven’t needed it yet—Livingston has a generous maternity leave policy. Starting next Friday—possibly sooner, she looks about to pop, if you’ll forgive the expression—you’ll be stepping in for her while she’s out for the next eight months.”
He wasn’t …?
Was he?
Had the last two weeks been a test? Making sure he could trust her before …?
“Are you saying you’re putting me in charge while she’s out?”
He clapped his hands. “Give the lady a cigar. Or whatever the equivalent these days is; you don’t really seem the cigar type to me.”
“You can save it for my father,” she said. At least he was down to one cigar twice a week instead of half a pack of cigarettes a day. “But—thank you so much!”
He launched into a rundown of the new responsibilities she’d have, in gory detail. She knew there was more to being an editor-in-chief than most people realized, but hearing it all laid out like this? It was … a lot.
“Two final reminders, Nora. First, this is temporary. When Jennifer returns, the job is hers again, and you go back to your current position. That said, if you excel—as I expect you to—you’ll be putting yourself in line for a permanent editorship.”
“Understood.”
“Second,” he added with an apologetic smile, “I’m afraid you’ll have to delay that cruise you won at last year’s Christmas party.”
That had been a shock; she’d never won anything before, let alone the best prize of the night. “That’s fine. I don’t have anybody to go with right now, anyway.”
And then, without warning, his name came into her mind, totally unbidden.
I wonder if Daniel would enjoy a cruise?
Daniel, January 23
It only took two hours at the public library for Daniel to confirm everything.
First was the easy part—he found Valerie in the Martindale-Hubble Law Directory. She was listed as an associate at Kane and Redfield, a big Washington, DC corporate law firm specializing in mergers and acquisitions.
The harder part was searching the Wall Street Journal archives using the library’s Lexis-Nexis terminal. It took most of those two hours, but eventually he found what he needed to know: Kane and Redfield had been retained to represent Comcast.
The final piece of the puzzle came in an article about a recent Comcast shareholder meeting. Buried near the end was a single sentence: they were planning a major acquisition to expand their business into fiber-optic networks.
They were going to buy QNS.
And Valerie was probably working on the deal. Writing the contracts, helping to structure the merger or whatever else corporate lawyers did in these situations. Which meant she hadn’t been kidding—talking to him about it was a real risk. Definitely a fireable offense, and maybe even an actual crime.
But, technically, she hadn’t actually told him anything.
When he’d asked if he needed to leave before the layoffs started, she hadn’t answered. Her silence had been all the confirmation he needed, and he’d changed the subject immediately.
If—unlikely as it seemed—anyone had overheard them, all they would have heard was two old college friends catching each other up on their lives after graduation.
There was one other detail he hadn’t given any thought to at the time. He’d gotten a call last week from a headhunter at National Technical Recruiters. Based in Washington, DC.
The headhunter said he had a client who needed someone with his skills and experience, and Daniel, thinking it was just a cold call, had blown him off.
