Read The Game Online

Authors: Camille Oster

The Game (3 page)

BOOK: The Game
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The
phone rang and she was expecting her mother, but was surprised when Mr. Carmichael’s name came up on the screen.

“Jane, dear, could you come see me?” he said.  It
sounded like a question, but it was an order.

“Of course, now?”

“Yes, I am at Carlucci’s, come on down,” he said and hung up.  Carlucci’s was down by the marina.  Taking the train this time of night wasn’t a great option, so she would have to call for a taxi.  She would just have to slip the expense by Martha.  Martha did not put up with frivolous expenses, or so she termed it.  If you wanted to put anything on the company credit card, you had to make a good case for it, especially taking taxis home at night.  Damon D’Arth would never be queried on his expenses, but life was different for her.  Then again if Martha was responsible for accounting for his expenses, he would probably get an earful too.  The thought of Martha interrogating him made her smile.  Small victories counted.

It was a busy night at Carlucci’s and Jane was not dressed to fit in with this crowd.  Jane didn’t even have clothes to fit in with this crowd.  This was where the old money hung out.  They kept themselv
es separate by the sheer price of the meals.  There was the odd civilian celebrating a special birthday, but normal people didn’t put up with these prices.  Normal people would feel that they were being taken advantage of.  Old money paid to be with their social group.   This was not the group Damon hung out with.  He was with the young and famous set, he would likely eventually graduate to this set, but he wasn’t there yet.

“Jane, dear.
  Thanks for coming down.  Would you like a drink?” Edmund asked as she joined him at a table with a spotless white linen table cloth.  Real linen too.  A drink was being presented to her without her ordering one - a gin and tonic.  Her preferred drink, which apparently the waiters knew about her.  A little creepy if you weren’t used to it, she conceded.

“Now Jane,” he said in his usual steady manner.  “I think it is important that we work with Clarion.”  He’d obviously heard the outcome of the team meeting that had been held this afternoon, and she hadn’t had a chance to tell him.   This meant he was getting information from other sources as well.  “I have set up a meeting with the Vice President of Asia.  This is an important man and getting in his ear is a bit of a coup.  Unfortunately we mu
st move quickly, and he only has a half hour tonight.  I need you to get Damon on the phone with him tonight.”

“I can call him,” Jane offered.

“He is at an event, and he is not answering,” Edmund said patiently.

“Of course,” Jane said feeling a little stupid.

“I need you to go get him, we cannot miss this call.  Go now; I understand he is at the Hyatt tonight.  You’re a good girl, Jane.  I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”  Jane appreciated the sentiment, but she knew it wasn’t strictly true.  If Edmund Carmichael needed something, it didn’t matter if it was the middle of the night or the weekend, but that was just part of the job and she didn’t mind.

She walked out of the restaur
ant and flagged down a taxi, with a driver that was less than pleased at a fare that only ran around the city centre.  That was not her concern at the moment, chasing down Damon D’Arth was her only objective.  Unfortunately, the Hyatt had many function rooms so she wasn’t sure where to find him.  Maybe he was even in one of the hotel rooms, although that wouldn’t make sense as he had a rather nice apartment nearby.

She couldn’t see him in the lobby so she studied the events boards trying to imagine what kind of event he would be at.  There was a launch of some kind of IT sounding company, which she dismissed.  Not his cup of tea.  An Amway sales conference and a hospital fund raiser.  It had to be the fund raiser and she tried to find the room.  As she got close she guessed she was right.  These people were dressed to the nines, which was his kind of crowd.

She made her way into the room and a woman gave her an empty glass thinking she was part of the waiting staff.  Now she was stuck carrying this glass as she had nowhere to put it.  She searched the crowded room for Damon, but she was having trouble seeing him.  Then she finally spotted him across the room and she started to make her way toward him.

He was talking to this gorgeous woman who had on some kind of flowing go
wn with a green jungle print, a dress that would likely cost more than Jane’s entire wardrobe.  It was gorgeous though, if you had the figure to wear it, which few people in this world could manage.

Damon
turned his head sideways and caught a glimpse of her.  His eyes narrowed.  He was less than pleased to see her.  He was formally dressed in a tux.  She’d seen him dressed like this in photos, but never in real life.  It was nothing but flattering for his physique.  Her grandmother would call him dashing.

“What are you doing here, Jane?” he said sharply.
  The tall gorgeous creature next to him turned to look at her too.  She was almost as tall as he was.  They looked like some high end Italian advert for a luxury brand standing there next to each other, looking fabulous.  There was nothing crass looking about the girl; she had silky light brown hair that went perfectly with her flawless tawny skin.  An impossibly perfect girl with her large eyes and exquisite bone structure.  People like her couldn’t possibly be real, Jane thought to herself.  What would life be like for a girl like that?

“I need to have a word,” Jane said
feeling intensely uncomfortable as Damon’s unrelenting stare seemed to challenge her right to breathe.

“It
’s after hours,” he said coldly.

“Are you being stalked?” the perfect leggy creature said with amusement.

“It’s important,” Jane said.  The creature looked like she didn’t believe a word.  Damon looked unconvinced as well.  “Seriously, would I be here otherwise?” Jane bit out.

Damon
turned to his girlfriend or whatever she was and said, “I’ll just be a minute.”  The girl gave him a withering look.  It was good to know he got those looks as well as dished them out.  “I’ll be right back.”  The girl turned her attention to Jane and narrowed her eyes.

Whatever, Jane thought as she turned to follow
Damon who was walking toward the door of the large ball room.  He kept walking toward the lobby and placed himself in a chair facing a table.  A waiter came over before Jane had a chance to sit down.  Really, these waiters were eager, or maybe they were just used to impatient clientele.


Why are you here?” Damon said after ordering a scotch on the rocks.  He didn’t bother ordering her anything, which further established his disrespect for her.  She was completely capable of ordering her own, but she didn’t want to stay longer than she had to.  She didn’t quite know how to say it, she’d been so focused on trying to find him that she hadn’t prepared how to broach the subject.


There is a conference call tonight,” she started tentatively.  She knew he was not going to receive this well and she was trying to find some way of making it sound like a suggestion rather than an order.  “One has been organized with Martin Southall, the VP of Asia at Clarion.”

“We’re not dealing with Clarion,” he said sharply.

“Perhaps it would be a good idea to hear them out,” she suggested.  This was an intensely uncomfortable discussion.


Carmichael thinks it’s a good idea,” he stated.  He was challenging her attempt to make this seem like a natural course of action.  It was also blatantly a statement that she was a mere go-between in this scenario.  She wasn’t entirely sure she minded, as it was true.


Mr. Southall has a free half hour in forty five minutes time,” she continued while finding the carpet suddenly interesting.  Well, she had delivered the message.  There was nothing else for her to say.  On one level, she wanted to sympathize at being ordered around, but on another, this was playing on a level she had no business being on.  She could just as well emotionally stay out of it and let them play politics between each other.  “I’ll leave you to it,” she said and got up.  He didn’t follow suit, just took a swig of his scotch.

She escaped out of the hotel as fast as she could.  Luckily a taxi was sitting outside waiting for someone making a quick exit.  She couldn’t wait to get home and into her sweats again.  That’s w
here she belonged, at home in front of the TV, not at some high society party with black tie dress code.  Damon did look awesome in a tux.  It showed off his trim waist and muscular thighs very nicely.  She suspected there was nothing about him that was soft and cuddly, he was all hard muscle.  Between him and his girlfriend there wasn’t an ounce of spare fat.  Then again she could not imagine those two creatures cuddling; certainly not sitting in front of the TV with a pint of ice-cream. 

There was a definite call for ice-cream that night.  She would have to go for a run tomorrow to make up for it, but it was worth it.

 

The office was busy when she got in the following morning.  The late night meant that she’d slept a little longer than usual and she’d had to take a later train.  She carried her ham and cheese croissant to her desk, having skipped her breakfast at home.

She took a bite out of the croissant while she turned on her computer and let it load up.  Looking around the office, she saw Sarah sitting at her desk doing whatever it was she did in the mornings, while waiting for her boss.  She was speaking on the phone and Jane wondered if she was speaking to Damon.

She wasn’t entirely sure what the call last night had included
, or the implications for the deal they were working on.  She didn’t even really know if Damon had conducted the call like he was supposed to.  Maybe it would be her fault if he had just blown it off.  Maybe she should have stayed and made sure he did it.  She hoped not.  Surely he wasn’t petulant like a child and refused to do something a Board member asked him to.  She rubbed her temples, it was only early and already she had a tension headache.

There was nothing in her inbox tha
t indicated that things had gone astray, or even if things had gone well.  It was only a few minutes until the first planning meeting of the day, Damon still hadn’t arrived.

“You
coming?” Rachel asked as she got up.  That didn’t Rachel was the self-important project assistant whose job was pretty much confined to taking minutes.  She acted like she ran the show, but who was Jane to argue?  “You have two minutes.”

“I’ll just be a second,” Jane said and tried to
organize her notes ahead of the meeting.  She took her tablet in case there were some bits of the meeting that were completely irrelevant to her, that way she could get out an email or two.  The problem with all these meetings was that they got in the way of her actual work.

She had to hurry to get there in time.  Everyone was seated around the table when she got there, but
Damon wasn’t there so the meeting hadn’t started.  This didn’t stop Rachel from giving her a dirty look.  Rachel came from the Symax part of the company, like Damon, so Jane had only worked with her for a month or so.  They graduated at the same time and Jane suspected that Rachel felt her promotion to an analyst role wasn’t entirely deserved or justified.

It took ten minutes before
Damon walked through the door.  He looked cool and collected as always, but he was rarely late.  Somehow she doubted he had slept in, there must have been something going on that morning, something she hadn’t heard about.  She wondered if Mr. Carmichael knew.  Maybe they had met. 

“It seems that Clarion wants to play ball,”
Damon said to the room.  “They’ve indicated their interest to us last night, and apparently they’ve been talking to certain members of the Board ahead of that.  I think we need to be wary of them, I’d bet quite a bit on the probability of them working with one of our competitors on this deal.”

“So they’re hedging,” someone said.

“Probably,” Damon confirmed.  “We’ll hear them out, but we’ll keep hammering out a deal with Sovent in the meantime.”

Jane felt her heart beat faster, he was dismissing them.  He intended to listen politely and then do what he wanted.  He knew
Mr. Carmichael wanted to work with Clarion and he didn’t care. 

“Perhaps it would be best to run a contestable process,” Jane said to the group.  If she’d thought about it she would probably chicken out.  It was part of her job to watch out for
Mr. Carmichael’s interests in this company. 

“Is that what you think, Jane?” he asked with an edge of steel in his voice.

“Yes,” she said clearing her throat, “that way, each proposition can be judged against a pre-determined set of criteria and each can be judged on its merits.  We can also justify the decision to anyone based on a more formal evaluation.”  She tried to sound matter-of-fact, but she was full on challenging Damon D’Arth.  Hopefully no one in the room other than him and her would be aware of the fact, but she had just challenged his dismissal of the Clarion proposal.  She had at least reminded him that there were parties that were very interested in seeing what they were prepared to offer.

She wished she could look away, but she had to stand by her own proposition.  She could see the muscles of his jaw working.  He wasn’t happy, but he smiled tightly.

“I guess you are volunteering to run that process then,” he said slowly.  He looked at her deliberately and then looked away.  “Now let’s get on with the main points of the bid.”  The conversation moved on and Jane tried to think through what had just happened.  He could be just humouring her by letting her run the process.  The fact that he let her run the process indicated that he didn’t take it entirely serious.  Performance analyst did not run proposal evaluation processes. 

BOOK: The Game
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