Page 20 of Takeover
“One forty-seven. Plenty of time before my two-thirty meeting with William.”
A long lunch, but not horribly so, given how late they both worked. Michael’s pulse still beat like he’d been working out. The warmth in his chest was gone, replaced by a cold knot. “Sam, I—”
Sam waved the words away. “You’re right. This shouldn’t happen again.” Sam paused and put his watch on. He lowered his voice. “It just complicates things.”
That was an understatement. Michael stuffed the towels and wet belt into his bag. No one would notice it missing if he left his shirt untucked. “It’s not that I don’t like it.”
Sam’s smile was slight. “I know that.” He moved to the full-length mirror and set about fixing his tie. “I was out in college—in undergrad. Dated. Marched. All that.”
So many things Michael wanted to say. He bit his tongue and finished packing his gym bag.
Sam shrugged into his suit coat and transformed back into a CEO. Except his eyes were still red-rimmed. “But the business world is very different.” Tight voice. Clipped words.
Fucking hell. Another one. “I understand.” Michael shouldered his bag. “I’ll see you upstairs.” He almost made it to the door.
“Michael.” Sam wielded the name like a whip made of silk.
He stopped and swiveled around, despite himself.
The suit spoke of power, but the raw emotion written on Sam’s face twisted the lump of ice in Michael’s chest. Complicated? Holy fuck, he didn’t want to name what he saw there. Nor what he felt in his own soul. He of all people shouldn’t have a thing for his CEO, especially given what had happened the last time he’d dated a coworker.
Sam exhaled. Inhaled. “No one has ever made me fly like you do.”
Michael backed into the door. This was worse than Rasheed. He’d been a lover and a friend, but they’d never fit together likethis. Sam—complemented him,completedhim. And the fucking man was in the closet because ofbusiness. Michael’s throat tightened so much he could barely breathe. “I have to go.” The words came out as cracked and shattered as he felt. Too many thoughts tripped over themselves on the way to twisting into his heart.
He turned and fled the locker room.
* * *
Sam’s ass hurt,but not in a good way. The chairs in the conference room must have been designed by someone who hated sitting—they numbed the limbs while driving aches up the spine. Sam didn’t shift in his seat—years of meetings like this one had taught him that a board of directors looked for those little hints that their prey was uncomfortable.
And today, Sam was their quarry—the fox running over the hills. The board knew exactly what he was going to say—he’d sent them his presentation three days ago. This meeting, with its expensive catered lunch, was designed to make Sam dance and the rest of the company’s sphincters tighten—exactly what the board wanted.
Well, how about that. Sarcasm worthy of Michael. Sam had gone completely native.
He curled his toes in his shoes because the board wouldn’t notice that.
Michael.
They still weren’t talking. Not since the shower. Just a word or two here and there. Terse e-mails about aspects of work, copied to the group. The lack of true communication hurt, in every way that was bad and far more than he thought possible. He didn’t know how to bridge the gulf that had formed between them. He missed Michael, his laugh, his grin, even his freaking parrot shirts. There was no color in Michael these days—only blues and blacks and grays.
William cleared his throat. “You’ve made good progress, Randell.”
He forced himself to relax and smile. “Thank you. The team has been giving it their all.” It wasn’t false flattery. The development and testing teams had succeeded in cleaning up the most egregious errors in the software they’d released. What remained was a set of new features their prospective buyer wanted in the product. Tricky, cutting-edge development. Hell, the IETF hadn’t even hammered out the new protocols yet. Lots of infighting among different companies.
From William’s expression, Sam knew there was a shoe dangling somewhere over his head.
“We are, however, concerned about the timeline going forward.”
And there it was, in all its hard-soled glory, falling right on schedule.
Sam let his smile fade away, but kept his expression neutral. “Concerned?”
The screen flashed up a slide with the schedule. It was aggressive, with the engineering team completing development of the new features, functional testing, and then regression testing, all in three months.
“We think you should be able to complete coding and testing in two months.” William tented his hands. Blond hair and blue eyes spoke of his Dutch ancestry, but there wasn’t any warmth at all in the man. There never had been, in all the time Sam had known the venture capitalist.
Two months. That nixed pretty much all of testing. “We can deliver the functionality in two. But unless you want the same debacle as last release, we need four weeks for testing.”
