to be here," Ted added.
Ron knew that. He'd always used that as one of his selling points. Once you had his company, you had his undivided personal attention until everything was worked out and the last paper signed. That he never tried to handle more than one job at a time was a signature of his style.
He had sensed the resentment in Schmidt and Wasserman the minute he'd returned to the table that morning. They hadn't displayed any emotion. They simply rejected everything he said with icy politeness. This blanket refusal to listen to anything he said had stymied him until he realized their fear of the election was at the root of their refusal to be swayed by his arguments.
"You have to be so brilliant they won't remember I'm not here," Ron said as he grabbed his coat. "You've got to keep them coming back to the table until we can find the one piece of information that will change their minds."
He was at the doorway when an idea hit him. "Has anybody surveyed the workers?"
"That's their biggest argument," Ted said. "The workers are afraid they'll lose their jobs."
"Has anybody actually asked them? I don't mean the managers. I mean the men who bring their lunches in a pail."
"They say - "
"I could be wrong, but I smell the hand of the Arneholdts here. Maybe they don't want anybody to know what the common man thinks."
"That could take weeks, even months."
"We don't have weeks. We might not even have days. By tomorrow I want people at the gates of plants all over the country. Go into the countryside. Ask a cross section. I want reports every day. If we see a trend developing, we can use it."
"What if everybody's against the merger?"
"Then we have to find out why. That may be even more important."
"We'll have to stay up half the night."
"If you want my job, you'll have to stay up all night," Ron said as he passed through the door and sprinted for the elevator.
He clutched the bulging briefcase to his side as he settled into the limousine. He was uneasy about leaving the meeting. It wasn't merely that the negotiations might fail. His reputation was at stake. It wasn't written into the contract that he would be present at all negotiations, but that was his reputation. People expected it. And not delivering on an expectation rendered his personal integrity vulnerable. And his personal integrity had been the cornerstone of his success.
He had to weigh that against his daughter's happiness. He knew she could work everything out without him. She might do so more easily, but that wasn't what he wanted. He wanted the improvement of their relationship to be part of the solution. If Kathryn was right, Cynthia's having this baby was a cry for the love and affection he hadn't given her. Cynthia had made the mistake, but it had been his neglect that drove her to it.
The feeling of guilt, or responsibility, weighed heavily on him. He'd always planned everything he did in meticulous detail, worked at it with unremitting effort, had used each success to build even greater success the next time. He'd never failed.
Now he had.
Then there was Kathryn. He didn't know quite what to make of her or of his reaction to her. At first he had felt simply irritated by her assuming control of a situation that was none of her business. Then he felt a need to make her prove he could trust her to take care of Cynthia, even for a short time. Finally he had surprised himself by asking her to teach him how to become more sensitive toward Cynthia and women. Had he expected her to fail? Had he feared he might? Even though any success on her part meant a past failure of his own, he wanted her to prove she had analyzed the situation correctly and knew how to fix it.
But there was something about Kathryn that tugged strongly at him beyond the situation with Cynthia, beyond even his physical attraction to her. And while this - whatever it was - was intriguing, it was also irritating. He didn't need something else pulling on him right now. Cynthia and the merger were already pushing him into a corner. Still, he couldn't help thinking about Kathryn. She was tough and vulnerable, that rare combination he found most exciting in a woman. Kathryn wouldn't back down when she thought she was right. She didn't pull punches and she