Page 5 of The Tryst

“Aww, did I ruin your coffee?” I ask, faking remorse.

After he takes the final drink like a stoic bastard, he sets it down on the table next to him with a loud clink. He lies back on the lounge chair, parking his hands behind his head. “My morning was more peaceful when you were in the pool doing laps.”

“Ah, it must be good to live the unexamined life.” I toss the towel on my chair and sit down at the end of it, lifting my face briefly to the gorgeous orb in the sky.

“Maybe I’ve been examining your phone,” Finn counters.

That reminds me. Enough lounging. Stretching my arm, I grab the silver device from the table next to him. “Doubtful. It’s only got a twenty-five-character password.”

“Tech geek,” he mutters.

“That’s me,” I say dryly. More like finance geek. But I invest in tech so I can’t entirely dispute his accusation. As I tap in the twenty-five characters—memorized, since it’s not that hard to commit twenty-five characters to memory—I ask, “Did anyone call while I was swimming?”

“Am I your secretary?”

“I hope so.”

“Were you expecting your conference hookup to call?”

An image from yesterday flashes past me. Blonde hair. Red lips. A fearless gaze. Temptation personified. And a helluva test.

I shove that image away. “I don’t mess around at conferences. It’s distracting,” I toss back as I type.

“It might loosen you up a little bit,” he suggests, the jackass.

“I am not tightly wound,” I reply.

“Did you or did you not ask if anyone called the second you got out of the water?”

“That’s the normal time to ask,” I say. A lot can happen during a forty-five minute swim. I can’t afford to miss a deal, a chance, an opportunity.

“That’s tightly wound. That’s obsessed with business,” he says, like he’s offering a character assessment in a court of law, when the fucker’s exactly the same way. Hell, he runs in the same business circles I do.

But rather than fire off atakes one to know onereply, I simply shrug, owning my one true love—this company I built from the ground up over the last few years, thanks to my blood, sweat and tears. “Guilty as charged,” I say, sliding open the missed calls and hoping one of them is the one I want. “Anyway, I’m pretty sure hookups text instead of call. But that’s irrelevant, since the call Iamexpecting is from Vault saying yes to the term sheet we offered yesterday.”

I feel pretty damn good about that offer. It’s the kind that says we want to be your investor, we believe in your tech, and we will all get motherfucking rich off this deal if we play it right. If a term sheet could swagger, this one would.

I check the string of missed calls, and hallelujah. The first one’s local, from the hotshot twenty-five-year-old CEO of the encryption technology firm I met with yesterday.

Quickly, I read the voicemail transcript.

This is Jared Song calling to say we accept your venture firm’s offer.

“Hell yes,” I say, pumping a fist.

Finn sits up again, eyes sparking. He mouths an appreciative “nice”then offers a high-five.

I smack back as I read the next voicemail transcript.This is Valeria from the Innovation and Technology Leadership Summit. We spoke yesterday when you were part of our VIP one-on-one sessions.

We’ve found we have a bit of a situation. Our closing keynote, Mikka Halla, came down with laryngitis this morning, and we are desperately in need of a dynamic, engaging speaker for our final session late this afternoon. You were so terrific yesterday. Is there any chance we could convince you to fill in last minute? We’re happy to pay a speaker stipend.

I scratch my jaw.

This summit is full of up-and-coming tech stars, newly launched startups, and partners they need to do business with. Honestly, the organizers should have asked me in the first place. But I’ve learned that nothing is handed to you in life. Everything is earned.

And sometimes, you earn it by capitalizing on someone else’s bad luck.

This is a golden chance to put the Alpha Ventures name in front of the industry.

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