I freeze. “We’re going to be…acquired?”
“It’s not ideal.” Tracy reclines in her chair and crosses her fingers in her lap. “An acquisition would tear the heart and soul of this company apart. We’d have redundancies. Some of our magazines would remain unaffected, but others… Well, their company already has their own version.”
“Wait.” I hold up a hand. “Those redundant magazines would just… cease to exist?”
“Eventually. We’d attempt to mesh our assets, but a large portion of our staff would get laid off. I’m predicting a little less than half.”
“A little less than half?”
Brijesh.What ifFood Babyis a redundancy and Brijesh gets laid off? What ifIget laid off? Or Fari, or Don? And Benny—surely the acquiring company already has their own Benny. Plus, ifTake Me Theregets dissolved, what the fuck am I even working toward in London? Will they close that office completely?
Little Cooper isn’t just a place I work. Certainly, it has its own set of corporate problems I won’t ignore, but still, I’mpartialto it. Ibelievein it. And so does Fari, because she chose this place out of a dozen, and so does Alex, because he said the scope of what he’s doing here feels endless.
When my mom was twenty-four and fleeing London in the eighties, she was partly running from a receptionist position at her father’s wealth advisory firm. (Alex’s trust fund is undoubtedly somewhere very similar.) And even though I love numbers, and even though I work in finance, I have always,alwaysunderstood why Mom couldn’t be there anymore. Dad says she described it as soulless.
Visions fill my head: getting to London only to be laid off right away, while I’ve fallen so hopelessly in love with the city that I’d do anything not to leave yet. Crawling to Notting Hill, the front door of Gran’s—a pinched-up woman I haven’t seen since Mom’s funeral—and asking her meekly if that receptionist position at Grandfather’s old business is still available.
“Is the acquisition Dougie Dawson’s idea?” I ask Tracy.
She shakes her head. “The offer came to us. We didn’t seek it out.”
“Who’s it from?”
“Can’t tell you that. I’m crossing a line as it is.”
“Are you going to say yes?” I ask.
“We have a fiduciary duty to consider it. The offer ishigh.Much higher than our company is worth. I have to decide on the best financial solution and present it to the board, emotions and people and personal feelings aside.” Tracy shrugs.
I’m angry at her, even though IknowI have no right to be. Last we talked, Tracy admitted she didn’t think Dougie was fulfilling his own fiduciary duty, so I can hardly blame her for stepping up to the plate now. But I literally don’t know how to process this, and I don’t understand how it ties back to Robert Harrison. Did he leave so he wouldn’t have to witness the fallout? Did he not want the association of another failed company after his Harvard start-up flopped? And why did Robert challenge his son to see the BTH launch through if heknewthis was a possible outcome? For Christ’s sake, Dougie now has a personalanda professional reason to obliterate Alex’s whole purpose here.
“Why are you telling me this?” I ask.
“I know you’ll keep it to yourself.” Tracy leans forward, lowers her voice. “Also, I’m kind of hoping someone in the weeds of our numbers might spot a solution I can’t.”
Challenge accepted. I’ll do anything possible to keep this acquisition from happening. I don’t want the heart and soul of ourcompany to be torn apart. I wantBite the Handto launch. I want my friends to keep their jobs. And I want to go to London on my own terms, no one else’s.
But if I go to London without Little Cooper, there won’t be a single familiar thing.
I’m sitting outside Saanvi’s office when Alex sprints around the corner, bottled tea in one hand, his notebook in the other, dressed in an Orvis half-zip and gray slacks. He’s panting just a little, lips parted, and when our eyes catch, all the nerves in my body concentrate in suspect places.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hi,” I say back, and my heartthump-thump-thumps. Definitely not because Iwantedto see him. More likely, it’s because I was dreading it. My conversation with Tracy has been following me like Eeyore’s dreary rain cloud since yesterday, and the sight of his trusting face might as well be a stab in the heart.
I want to warn him that his odds of a successful launch forBite the Handhave gotten even slimmer. I want to apologize for using him for information when I’m not even sure what purpose it served Tracy at all.
I want to kiss him. Like, really badly, I want that.
Alex deposits his things on the table and sits down beside me in the other waiting chair. He peers through Saanvi’s glass walls where she’s speaking with Andre, Eric, and another salt-and-pepper-haired man I’ve never met.
“How was your weekend?” he asks.
“Lamer than yours. I’d give anything to experience the Cape Cod Target.”
“Be that as it may, we did eat enough seafood to kill you.”
“Charming.”
