A Midnight Miracle by Gary Parker

Author:Gary Parker [Gary E. Parker]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781441239228
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group

Sitting in his small office, across the table from two men in three-button suits and a woman in a tailored navy pants-and-jacket outfit, Rem drummed his thumb on the table and tried to figure out what to do. The truth was, he didn’t want to sell the software program he and Lisa had developed, but he didn’t see a way to avoid it. They had more debt than assets, more expenditures than income, and a slew of competitors who might come out any day now with a product that did exactly what theirs did. If he got what he needed, selling made a lot of sense, maybe the only sense.

“Okay,” Rem said, gazing steadily at the woman in the navy outfit, a high-powered executive named Holly Stanfield. “You’ve examined the software; you know the strengths, the weaknesses. It’s still got a few bugs, but those are solvable in another couple of months. It’s a quality program; we all know that. So let’s say we cut to the chase. What’s the best offer you can make?”

Stanfield smiled slightly, but Rem kept his face blank. He’d learned in his two other meetings with Stanfield—a woman in her midthirties with a body that looked like she worked out at least two hours a day—that her smile masked a heart as single-minded as a calculator. She liked the facts and nothing but the facts.

“I agree you’ve written a quality program,” Stanfield said. “But you’re not the only one trying to do this. We’ve examined three similar programs in the last two months, all of them also first-rate products.”

“I know we’ve got lots of competition,” Rem said. “But if you didn’t see something worthwhile in our efforts, you wouldn’t be here right before the holidays talking to us. You’d be in somebody else’s office making the same speech to them.”

Stanfield tilted her head, then leaned to the man next to her and exchanged a few whispers with him. Rem drummed his fingers and wondered if Stanfield was married. She wore no ring, but he knew that didn’t always matter these days. Stanfield glanced his way and smiled again, and he sensed that maybe she was flirting with him. He considered the possibilities for a few seconds but then dropped them. Stanfield’s smile brought no warmth with it. It seemed more like a painting of a smile than the real thing. The man next to her took an envelope from his suit jacket and handed it to Stanfield. She slowly opened it, pulled out a slip of paper, and slid it across the table to Rem.

Rem took the paper, nodded at Stanfield, and turned to Lisa. He opened the paper and held it so both he and Lisa could see the information printed on it. Keeping his face as blank as possible, he studied the figures for several seconds, then handed the paper to Lisa and looked back at Stanfield. She licked her lips, and he wondered again if she thought her charms could actually make a difference in a business negotiation.

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