Tara Quinn - My Babies and Me

If Michael had ever allowed himself an idol, Coppel would have been it.

The coffee was delivered and with one polished wing tip resting on a suited knee, Michael sat back to calmly sip the dreadful stuff.

“How old are you, boy?”

“Thirty-nine.” Legally, Coppel had no right to ask that kind of question, and .they both knew it.

“And you’ve been with Smythe and Westbourne for how long?”

Michael would bet every dime of the half million he’d saved over the past seven years that Coppel knew exactly how long Michael had been with the Coppel Industries’ investment firm. To the day.

“Seven years.”

“And in that time you’ve gone from director of finance of one branch to financial director of the entire operation, showing a three hundred percent increase over the past two years.”

“Yes, sir.” Michael was damn proud of those figures. They’d cost him. A lot.

“Mind telling me your secret?”

Michael knew he’d finally been asked a legitimate question. A question he could answer with deceptive simplicity. “Integrity toward the customer.”

Coppel snorted. “I run an honest ship, young man. Always have. How do you think Coppel became the name it is? Honest business in a dishonest world. That’s how.”

And that was something Michael had known. Even before he’d earned his MBA, Michael had chosen the company for which he wanted to work. And set about being the candidate they’d choose when the time came.

“I take that one step further, sir,” he said now, no longer aware of the opulence of the room or the other man’s stature.

He had Coppel’s complete attention.

“Each customer is different, with individual needs. My teams have been taught to treat the customer as a person, to sell him not what we have to sell—not what, in the short run, makes us the most profit—but what he truly needs. It hurts the small picture, sometimes, when we don’t make a killing right off the bat. But in the big picture—”

“They go away happy,” Coppel interrupted him, eyeing Michael with interest. “They come back. They bring their neighbors with them.”

“Over and over again,” Michael said with the conviction of seven years’ worth of figures to prove his theory.

“Lose money to make money,” Coppel said.

“Sometimes.”

“Building a whole new level of trust, a new approach to doing business—which, I suppose is really an old-time traditional approach.”

“At least at Smythe and Westbourne.”

The other man nodded. “So you think you can determine what the customer wants.”

“I do.”

“How?” Coppel might be testing him, but he was intrigued as well.

“By becoming the buyer instead of the seller.”

Coppel nodded, his brow clearing. “You put yourself in the shoes of the consumer.”

“And realize that just as all people aren’t the same, all consumers and their needs aren’t the same, either.”

Looking down at some papers spread in front of him, Coppel said, “You appear to have a real talent in this area.”

Michael didn’t know about that. He thought his real talent lay in profit-and-loss margins and personal infrastructures.

“What about your family?” Coppel asked. “How much of your time do they require?”

And for the first time since he’d been summoned to this interview more than a month ago, Michael allowed himself to hope. He wanted a move up to one of the bigger, more diverse companies in the Coppel holdings. He needed a new challenge.

“None, sir,” he said with the confidence of knowing he had the right answer. “I’m divorced.”

“No children?” It was a well-known fact that Coppel didn’t believe a man should desert his children. Which was why he’d never had any of his own.

“None.”

Nodding, Coppel broke into a small, satisfied smile.

“You have anybody else who might want a say on your time?”

You got a lover? Michael read into the question.

“No.”

He saw women occasionally, but he’d been sleeping with Susan again, on and off, over the past three years, although they’d been divorced for seven. He couldn’t seem to find a passion for anyone else.

“Any dependents at all?”

What is this? Michael shifted in his seat, suddenly uncomfortable. He sent a sizable amount of money to his parents and brother and sisters back in Carlisle, but that was nobody’s business except his.

“Why?”

Eyes narrowed, Coppel sat forward. “I’m thinking about offering you a new position, a move from a subsidiary company to Coppel Industries itself.”

Michael didn’t move a muscle. Didn’t breathe.

“But the position I have in mind would require constant travel, and I won’t even consider offering it if that meant you’d be shirking personal commitments. I don’t break up families.”

Coppel had come from a broken family, had his father run out on him, been forced to quit school and provide for his ailing mother. He’d entered high school at nineteen after his mother passed away. He’d put himself through college exterminating bugs, and the rest was history. Not only history, but public knowledge now that Coppel was one of the top businessmen in the country.

“I have no one,” Michael said.

HE MADE HIMSELF WAIT until he was pacing the gate at the airport before calling Susan. Just to keep things in perspective.

Only to find that she wasn’t in her office. A hotshot corporate attorney, Susan was out slaying dragons as often as she was in.

Picturing his ex-wife in her dragon-slaying mode, he grinned as he hung up the phone.

“I WANT to have a baby.”

Seth spit the whiskey he’d been sipping, spraying it across the table. “What?”

Laughing, Susan wiped a couple of drops of Crown Royal from her neck. At least her silk blouse and suit jacket had been spared. “It’s not like you to waste good whiskey,” she admonished. Actually, she was a little concerned on that score. It was still only eleven. A bit early for her brother to be hitting the hard stuff. He’d ordered a drink the last time they’d met for lunch, as well.

Leaning across the table, Seth whispered, “Are you out of your mind?”

“Not as far as I know.”

“Susan.” He sat upright, every inch the imposing engineer who flew all over the country inspecting multimillion-dollar construction sights. “Be serious.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever been more serious in my life.” She was still grinning, but mostly because if she didn’t, she might let him intimidate her.

“Why?”

“I’m thirty-nine.” Neither of them touched the sandwiches they’d ordered.

“Yeah. So?”

Susan shrugged. “If I don’t do it now, I’ll have lost the chance.”

“That’s no reason to have a kid. You’re supposed to want it.”

“I do.” Oddly enough.

Picking up a fry, Seth still looked completely overwrought. “Since when?”

“Since I graduated from law school.”

He stared at her, fry suspended in midair. “No kidding?” She’d obviously surprised him.

“I have it all written down.” She spoke quickly, eager to elaborate, to convince him that her decision was a good one. The right one. To win his approval. How could she possibly hope to convince Michael if she couldn’t even get the brother who championed everything she did on her side?

“Before I married Michael, I spent a weekend at a lodge in Kentucky, assessing my life, my goals, my dreams. Life was suddenly looming before me and I was scared.” She warmed beneath Seth’s empathetic gaze. “Frightened that I’d lose myself along the way somehow.” Her brother nodded, looking down at the plate between his elbows.

“By the end of the weekend, I’d mapped out all my goals, both short- and long-term, in chronological order.” Seth was staring at her again, his expression no longer empathetic. Unlike the sophisticated lawyer she was, she rushed on. “It was the only way I could be sure I wouldn’t let myself down, wouldn’t end up sixty years old and regretting what I’d done with my life—when it was too late to do anything about it.” Like their mother, she wanted to add but couldn’t. The boys didn’t know about those last hours she’d spent with their mother before she died. No one knew. Except Michael.

Seth continued to stare silently. “I wrote down career goals first,” she said, then took a sip of her brother’s whiskey. “Where I wanted to be by what time. Financial goals. Work goals. Personnal goals. For instance, I wanted to be able to play the violin by the time I was thirty-five.”

“That’s why you took those lessons?”

“Because I wanted to learn how to play? Yes.”

“But did you still want to play the violin when you got to that stage in your life?” Seth asked, pinning her with a big-brother stare he had no right to bestow on her. “Or did you just take the lessons because you’d written down that you had to?”

“I wanted to learn to play.” She’d just been unusually busy that year, which was the only reason she hadn’t enjoyed the experience as much as she’d thought she would.

“When was the last time you picked up your violin?”

That was beside the point. She’d been too busy these past four years.

“I wanted to travel to Europe by the time I was thirty-six.” She steered Seth back to the original conversation. “And,” she added before he could grill her, “I loved every second of the month I spent there.”

Of course, she’d been with Michael, and as a general rule, she loved every second she’d spent with Michael, period. They’d even made getting divorced fun. They’d rushed straight home afterward, tripped over his packing boxes on the way to their bedroom and made love furiously until dawn.

Seth chomped on a couple of fries. Brooding. His classically golden good looks were broken by the frown he was wearing.

“I’ve always known I’d have a baby by the year 2000,” Susan said softly, seriously, begging her brother to understand.

“Listen to you! Learn to play an instrument, go to Europe, have a baby by the year 2000. It’s ludicrous, Susan.” When his intensity didn’t sway her, he slowed down. “What happens after you have this baby?” he finally asked.

“Then I raise him or her.”

“You can’t just bring a child into the world because some stupid plan tells you to, Susan.”

“Who says I can’t?” Not exactly an answer to be proud of, but he was making her defensive.

“You aren’t mother material, for God’s sake! Can’t you see that?”

She opened her mouth but couldn’t speak. Not one word came out. She just sat there, mouth gaping, staring at him.

Until her eyes filled with tears. “How can you say that?”

“I’m sorry, sis.” He glanced away, took a sip of whiskey. “I love you, you know that.”

She’d thought she did.

“Look at your life, Susan, all mapped out, running right on schedule. The last thing children do is follow your schedule. They shouldn’t have to. They should be free to follow their own way, their own hearts. And they need parents who can give them the time, the freedom of choice to do so.”

“Like you’d know?” she asked, still hurt by his sudden abandonment.

He acknowledged his own lack of family with a nod. “I do know,” he said, surprising her with his fierceness. “Which is exactly why I’m so goddamn alone.” He finished off his whiskey with one swallow.

“Seth?”

There was a lot more going on here than she knew. A lot more that she needed to know.

“Not now,” was all he said, flagging down the waitress for another whiskey.