“You’re still here?”
“Yes.”
“You know your jet can’t hear you working.”
“I’m aware.”
He looked at the screen.
“What are you reading?”
“My mistakes.”
He leaned against the doorway.
“That sounds productive.”
Vivian closed the laptop.
“Do you always talk to CEOs like this?”
“Only the ones trying to buy my home.”
She looked around.
“You live here?”
“House on the north edge.”
“On airfield property?”
“Yes.”
“Mia too.”
“Usually children live where their parents put them.”
She smiled.
“Dinner?”
Ethan frowned.
“I’m not asking you on a date.”
“That would be stranger.”
“I’m asking whether there is food nearby.”
“Diner closes at eight.”
“What’s good?”
“Pie.”
“Dinner?”
“Also pie.”
She laughed.
Twenty minutes later, Vivian Cross sat in a red vinyl booth at Mae’s Diner eating meatloaf while three local pilots pretended not to watch her.
Ethan sat across from her.
Mia beside him doing homework.
Vivian had never eaten dinner with a child during an acquisition negotiation.
Mia seemed unimpressed by the novelty.
“Do rich people eat meatloaf?”
Ethan closed his eyes.
Vivian smiled.
“Sometimes.”
“Do you have a chef?”
“Yes.”
Mia stared.
“At your house?”
“Two houses.”
“Two chefs?”
“No.”
“That seems inefficient.”
Vivian looked toward Ethan.
“She’s yours.”
“Unfortunately.”
Mia returned to math.
Vivian asked Ethan:
“How bad is the debt?”
He chewed slowly.
“Bad enough.”
“I can buy it from Lake Union.”
“No.”
“I mean Cross can refinance it without taking ownership.”
“No.”
“You didn’t even hear the structure.”
“Anything you do financially becomes leverage later.”
“That is not necessarily true.”
“It became true once already.”
Vivian could not argue.
“What if I stop the acquisition?”
Ethan looked at her.
“Are you going to?”
She hesitated.
“Then don’t ask hypothetical questions like gifts.”
That irritated her.
“You think this is easy?”
“No.”
“I think you’re discovering the price of decisions you delegated.”
Vivian put down her fork.
“You have no idea what it takes to run a company that employs twenty-eight thousand people.”
“No.”
“I don’t.”
“The board expects the Midwest hub.”
“Investors expect it.”
“We have supplier contracts.”
“State incentives.”
“Construction options.”
“If I kill the project, the consequences are not just to me.”
Ethan nodded.
“That’s true.”
She waited for a challenge.
Instead he said:
“And none of that makes what happened here right.”
The simplicity irritated her because it was correct.
Mia looked between them.
“Are you fighting?”
“No.”
Both adults answered at once.
Mia nodded.
“Definitely fighting.”
Vivian laughed.
Ethan did too.
The tension loosened.