overweight, but looking expensive and self-assured in his three-piece suit, Jason said, “We have a problem.”
Dean motioned for Kristen to take a seat and buckle in. “I suppose we do if you flew the whole way to Europe rather than phone me.”
Jason caught Dean’s arm and moved him to the back of the plane before he whispered, “While you were in meetings yesterday, I got word from a few investment firms that our stock’s about to be downgraded and they’re going to advise investors to sell.”
Forgetting all about Kristen Anderson, he gaped at Jason. “Sell?”
“Tech Junkie ran an article about you. They suggested that the new product is late because we don’t have one.”
“That’s absurd!”
“Oh, it gets worse. They said you’re so far removed from real life and so far removed from real people that it’s a miracle you came up with the original operating system and games that you did. They claim being out of touch with real people means you can’t figure out what they want because you’re not one of them.”
“How I live has nothing to do with my abilities.”
“Not according to the pundits quoted in the article. They say your reign is over. That you had five or six good ideas and exhausted them.”
The urge to shake his head at the stupidity of some people was nearly overwhelming. He was a genius, for crying out loud. Of course he didn’t live like a normal person.
“I spent my childhood poor, looking for ways to entertain myself. I know software. I know games.”
“They say that’s what got you here. But your ideas are gone.”
He tossed his hands in frustration. “We have a fantastic series of games in the works!”
“In the works for three years. Too long in this market.” Jason snapped his fingers. “Everything’s all about speed these days.”
“The series has to be perfect before I can even talk about it, let alone roll it out.”
“Then you’re pretty much screwed.” Jason’s gaze strayed to Kristen. “Who’s that?”
He didn’t like explaining himself to anybody. Not even his best friend—especially since he wasn’t entirely clear why he was willing to hear Kristen Anderson’s pitch. Every time he looked at her, he got a “there’s an opportunity here” feeling. Which made no sense since Alex Sancho was married to her boss. Couple that with the way he kept noticing all the wrong things about her, and being around her was tempting fate. Which was absurd. He did not tempt fate, push envelopes or even take risks. He was cautious. That’s why he was rich.
Yet here she was in his jet.
He held back a wince as he said, “She’s a girl I met at the hotel.”
Jason’s eyes widened. “Really?”
Deciding to let honest and genuine Kristen explain this, he turned and started up the aisle to the four plush seats. “Kristen, this is Jason Wilson, my second in command.”
Kristen jumped off her seat and extended her hand. “Kristen Anderson. I work for Princess Eva of Grennady.”
Jason’s gaze walked back to Dean. “Prince Alex’s wife’s assistant is your new girlfriend?”
She laughed. “No. I’m not his girlfriend. My country wants your company to consider relocating to Grennady.”
The pilot’s voice came over the speaker, advising passengers to buckle seat belts and get ready for takeoff.
Dean caught the gaze of Kristen’s happy green eyes. An unwanted tingle of attraction zipped through him, but so did that damned feeling that she, somehow, was important.
He said, “You buckle in,” then he faced Jason. “Let’s take this discussion to the office.”
He followed his friend down the aisle to the compact room. As they fastened their seat belts, Jason said, “So, who is she really?”
Dean focused his attention on his cantankerous buckle so he didn’t have to look at Jason. “She told you. She’s from Grennady. Her country wants us to consider locating there.”
Jason’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t like her?”
He did actually. Even if he paid no attention to the “she’s important somehow” feeling or the way her physical appearance kept tempting him, she was smart and ambitious. She was also totally inexperienced, but that might be why she was such a curiosity. She wasn’t a shark. She wasn’t a schmoozer. She was too naïve, clearly too green to be either of those. She was just a woman trying to do a job. If the royal family had an agenda in sending her, he didn’t think she knew it.
“If you’re asking if I want to take her out, the answer is no.” He might be attracted to her, but he didn’t date. And she was too naïve to fit the role as his lover. “I told her I’d listen to her pitch in the car, but got caught up in a phone conversation with Stella. So I told her I’d listen on the plane. When we land in New York, the plane will turn around and take her home.”
Jason said, “Okay, fine,” as the jet taxied. “As long as this mess with investors comes first.”
“Of course.”
When they were in the air, climbing to cruising altitude, he and Jason began a discussion of how to combat the Tech Junkie article. But in hours and hours of studying schematics, employee reports and his own damned business plan—which was shot to hell because the schedule was now almost two years behind—all they could come up with was a stopgap measure: contact the most influential brokerage firms and ask them to delay advising their clients to sell to give Suminski Stuff time to get the games to one more set of beta testers.
They made a list of firms to call when they got to New York, and created a script of what they would say, but Dean knew brokers were right to be concerned. The games they’d been working on had had one setback after another because the series was too ambitious. No one really knew how far away it was from rollout. The staff had gotten tired, worn down, and everything was now taking longer than it should.
He’d been warned. But he’d gotten arrogant. His staff could do anything...
Or so he’d thought. And now they were in trouble because he couldn’t even give a hard date for when it would be ready for another round of beta testing, let alone a hard date for when it would be for sale.
When the script was ready, Jason scrubbed his hand across his mouth. “So this is what we say?”
Dean shrugged, then leaned back in his comfortable chair. “Yes. If the brokers listen to us, I think we’ll buy about six weeks. But we’re going to have to do some hand-holding. And at the end of that six weeks, we have to have something—even if it’s only a date for when it can go into beta testing again.”
“Christmas is smack-dab in the middle of those six weeks. Then New Year’s.”
“So we’ll cancel Christmas.”
Jason laughed. “We can’t cancel a holiday.”
“No, but we can cancel vacations and leave.”
“They’ll hate you.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not feeling warm and fuzzy toward them right now, either. Three years they’ve been working on this. If anybody’s got a right to be disappointed, it’s me.”
The pilot announced that it was time to buckle in for landing and Dean wasn’t surprised. The flight to New York had felt like the shortest of his life because he’d spent it figuring out how to keep investors from dumping his stock, when, really, if he was one of them he’d drop his stock like a hot rock.
He and Jason buckled in. The jet landed and taxied to his private hangar. They unbuckled their seat belts and stepped into the