Page 64 of One Good Reason
“But it was the time and place for you to invite yourself?”
Pulling back, I laughed. “If you must know, I was invited by Rossi earlier.”
“Remind me to have a talk with him.”
“Why are you furrowing your brows at me? All I’m trying to do is apologize Talitha and take you out for dinner.”
“Fine.” She groaned. “If I agree to have dinner with you, would you leave?”
“I will.”
Sucking air into her lungs, she pushed it out before finally agreeing. “I’ll have dinner with you, Lawton.”
“We could’ve gotten this solved earlier. But… I’ll take what I can get.”
“I don’t think you have much of a choice,” she sassed.
“Tomorrow night at eight. Pick a restaurant and I’ll secure a reservation.”
Removing my hand from her back, I stood and pulled my phone out of my pocket. After firing off a text to Baker, I gathered my blanket. “Text me the details.”
By this time, I had Rossi and Marsha’s attention.
“Leaving so soon, Mr. Harvey?” Marsha asked.
“Yes. I just wanted to stop by and drop that off to you guys.” My head nodded to the bag. “I’ve gotta get home and turn down for the night. Tomorrow is a very busy day for me.” When I said the last part, I tossed my glance down at Talitha who was nibbling the corner of her lip. I knew her ass was pissed but she would get over it.
“Aww man. I thought you would at least have a drink with us.”
“Raincheck Rossi. I’ve gotta get going but the three of you have a good time. Talitha, if you need anything don’t hesitate to reach out.”
Squaring her shoulders, she slanted her eyes. “I think we will be just fine.”
“Then my time here is done.” I knew she was being smug, and I would let her have this moment; after all I was the onein the wrong. “See you tomorrow night. Ladies and gentlemen, enjoy the rest of your evening.”
Paying Talitha one last glance, I walked away from the trio and to the entrance of the park where Baker had the truck waiting.
All day today, I had been wrapped up in meetings. Doing my due diligence, I ordered lunch for the staff at the youth center and had it delivered. I was sitting behind my MacBook in my third meeting of the day when a chat popped up from Talitha thanking me for the lunch. She wanted to let me know that the team really enjoyed it.
Of course, I told her to tell them they were most welcome, but I also used that moment to remind her that I had yet to receive the restaurant of her choice. The afternoon was slowly turning into the evening and I needed to secure a reservation before everything was unavailable.
It took her about thirty minutes to respond with a name. Excusing myself from the meeting, I walked out of the room and put in the call. After getting a confirmation, I rejoined my staff in the conference room and messaged Talitha back, letting her know what my arrival time would be to pick her up.
Her defiant ass told me she was going to drive and after I threatened to call Gema, she relented like I knew she would. Talitha was on my mind heavily, so much so that I’d failed to hear my assistant calling out for me.
“I’m sorry Chari, what was that?”
“You asked me to pull quarterly earnings.” Passing the stack of papers off to me, she exited the room.
Flipping through them for a brief minute, I gathered enough information that I needed to continue my meeting.
“Your subscriptions are down fifteen percent from last quarter, Mr. Guillot. Without you completely redoing your app, I don’t see how we would be of service.”
“I know… which is why I came to you. I’m out of options. Nothing is driving consumers to the app anymore. On the retail side, we’re profiting but this is my baby and to see it going down in the dumps is starting to upset me.”
“That’s to be expected. You’re trying to sell an app similar to Amazon, but your prices are more expensive. You’ve gotta either bring them down to meet the competitor or offer some type of incentive that’ll make them want to subscribe. We can make it happen, but it’s up to you to figure out which way you’re leaning.”
Mr. Guillot was the latest person to reach out to me about developing or should I say revamping his app. The G Spotwas an app geared toward books. Everyone knows that Amazon’s Kindle apphad the highest number of subscribers which is why Bezos and his team had recently raised their prices. What Mr. Guillot was offering his subscribers wasn’t even a fraction of what the Kindle app offered.
