Chapter 116 Pleasure Doing Business
The agents left.
Eira went back to the team’s table. Lunch was on the same floor as the company reps and the room was packed.
Results at two. Everybody waiting.
Nobody was talking about the contract, though. They were talking about Alpha Sebastian Hale and Serena Winthrop.
A leak investigation was bad. A married CEO covering his girlfriend’s condo was worse. Half the room was already running the numbers.
The other half was running numbers on Alpha Killian Sterling.
He hadn’t said a word in public. He’d walked into a federal bid with a file and let it do the work.
When he came through the room the greetings started up on both sides, Mr. Sterling, Mr. Sterling, and there was something careful in every one of them.
He didn’t answer any of them. Then he saw Eira in the middle of the project team and slowed down.
Miles followed his boss’s eyes.
Miss Crawford wasn’t a guest here. She was seated with the team, and Miles knew the guy next to her from a gala last year. Whatever her title was, it wasn’t small.
So that explained the lobby this morning. Why Alpha Killian hadn’t pushed when she passed on the elevator.
"Seats are up front, Alpha." Miles kept it quiet, and it meant something else.
Don’t stand here looking at her. There are forty phones in this room.
Alpha Killian turned and kept walking.
Eira glanced up and caught the side of his face going past.
Her phone buzzed.
Lila: Eira!!! Are you watching this? My brother’s bidding on Dr. Thorne’s chip project today. Whole family’s parked in front of the TV. I might throw up.
Lila: No clue if he’s got it. They announce this afternoon. Fingers crossed.
Lila: Also I still don’t know who took over the project after Dr. Thorne died and it is EATING ME ALIVE. Whoever it is has to be scary smart. Tried to pry it out of people at the gala and got nowhere. Not dropping it this time.
Eira: Saw it. And then what?
Four seconds later:
Lila: Then I track them down and make them build a custom chip for my robot. I’ll pay. I’ll beg. I have no shame.
Eira’s mouth twitched.
Eira: Busy for a bit. Talk later.
She pocketed the phone and finished eating.
At two, the press came in.
Reporters in the hall.
The Sterlings at home, watching for Alpha Killian’s face on the feed. The Hales, watching for Alpha Sebastian and Serena to walk into frame, because that would mean they’d won.
The broadcast ran on a delay. Nobody outside the building knew a thing yet.
Inside, the institute’s director stepped up to the mic.
"Congratulations to Sterling Group."
The room let out one long breath.
You could hear it move. Every company that lost sat back at once, and then the looks started drifting toward the Sterling side of the room.
The Sterling engineers didn’t bother with dignity. Sterling Group’s R&D arm had been on this thing for two years and they were out of their chairs, hollering, grabbing each other by the shoulders.
Davies started clapping. The next table picked it up, then the next, and inside ten seconds the whole hall was going.
Alpha Killian never left his seat.
He gave the director a short nod, brought his hands up, and clapped. Unhurried. A man applauding somebody else’s news.
He found Eira without turning his head.
She looked up at the same time.
Her mouth lifted at the corner. [Congratulations.]
His eyebrow moved, barely. [You too.]
--
Signing at three, same hall. The institute wanted all the reps to stick around for it.
Alpha Killian sent Miles down the row. Ties, pens, right copy in the right folder, run the order one more time. Nothing sloppy.
Davies was doing the same thing on the other side of the room.
"Signing’s quick, nobody asks you anything. Then they do the awards, federal commendations, bonus letters, same room while the press is still here. That’s where somebody tries for a personal question."
He looked at Eira.
"You’re a federal honoree as of this afternoon. Nobody’s going to lean on you. Answer what you want, let the rest go."
Eira nodded. Then her lips pressed together. "Where’s the water?"
Davies grinned. "Nervous?"
"A little."
"I got you." Claire was already up.
Three cups later Eira had been to the restroom twice.
Coming out the second time she found Alpha Killian across the hall with his hands in his pockets. Everybody else was inside getting seated.
"Mr. Sterling."
He looked at her a second, then pulled a tin out of his jacket.
She looked at it. Didn’t reach.
His jaw tightened.
"It’s not poisoned."
A beat.
"Helps you focus."
Obviously it wasn’t poisoned. She just didn’t see why the man who’d won the contract twenty minutes ago was standing in a hallway handing out Altoids.
Before she got her hand up he flipped the lid, put one in his own mouth, took out a second, and stepped in.
It stopped an inch from her lips.
"Open."
Not a request.
Her mouth opened before she’d decided anything.
Cold hit the back of her nose and kept going.
He snapped the tin shut and walked off toward the hall.
Eira bit down on it. Her eyes watered.
[Okay. That worked.]
--
Stage lights, two rows of cameras, and a long table with a folder squared up at each end.
Alpha Killian Sterling and Eira Crawford sat down across from each other.
The institute’s contracting officer signed the first page of both copies and stepped back, and after that it was the two of them.
They signed their own copies, slid them across the table, and signed again. Someone off to the side checked both folders and gave the director a small nod.
They stood up.
Alpha Killian put his hand out first.
"Pleasure doing business, Dr. Crawford."
She took it.
"Likewise, Mr. Sterling."