But I slowly lower my phone, deleting the message. That isn’t fair. I told Lyle that I would trust him. He believes he can turn this around in our favor, and I have to believe that he can do that.
Though…that doesn’t stop me from asking what, exactly, he said to my father today.
I dial Lyle’s number, telling myself that I won’t ask anything about what he has planned for tomorrow. I need to leave that to him.
“Hello, Amanda,” Lyle greets as he picks up on the second ring. He sounds surprisingly cheerful. “Is everything okay?”
“You tell me,” I say. “I was in the office when you called Dad, you know. He’s furious.”
“Yeah?” Lyle sounds even more pleased by this. “Excellent.”
I snort.
“I can’t see anything good about it,” I inform him. “He’s planning on breaking the deal.”
“Yeah, I figured,” Lyle said, and I can imagine him shrugging from the dismissive tone of his voice. “In a perfect world, I’ll be able to convince him not to. But, if he does, I have my people working on an alternate plan, just in case.”
I swallow. That makes sense, of course. Lyle is the owner of a huge business. He needs to have a plan for any eventuality so as not to lose money.
But this deal was important to me for other reasons entirely. It makes me feel empty to hear that Lyle is already moving on from the alliance I fought so hard for. I know he doesn’t mean anything by it, but it still hurts.
Lyle must have understood something from my silence, however, because he sighs.
“I’m sorry, Amanda,” he says.
“What for?” I ask.
“A lot of things,” he says with a laugh. “But mostly because things are falling down around you. And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the truth straight up; we would have had longer to come up with some kind of plan if I had.”
“Well, I was the idiot who decided to tell Dad about us,” I point out. “So I guess you can’t take all the blame for this one.”
“It was better for you to tell him now,” Lyle disagrees. “If he had found out by accident, he would be even angrier. And the longer it took to tell him, the worse it would get. Imagine being in the final stages of development when he found out…”
I take a moment to consider this, and shudder. That would not have gone down well.
“But, cheer up, we have a meeting to attend tomorrow, and I’m putting all my cards on the table,” Lyle continues. “I think Alan is the type of man who respects power, and having things told straight to him. Is there anything in particular that I should avoid saying, though?”
“Honestly?” I say dryly. “I really can’t think of anything that can make this worse, so say whatever the hell you want.”
“Great,” Lyle says. There’s an anticipation in his voice. “With luck, everything will work out exactly the way I want it to.”
I almost ask. I want so badly to know what his plan is, to make sure it’s all right. But I bite back the words. I won’t ask.
I’m going to trust him.
“My father and I will be there at one,” I say. “What did you even say to get him to come to your company, anyway?”
“Not much,” Lyle says. “I reminded him that my company is fully invested in this product, whereas his participation has been grudging, to the point w
here he sent a representative in his stead and only told me so the day before the original meeting. Then I told him that if he wants to cancel the deal, then he needed to come to my office and do it himself; I wouldn’t accept anything less. After that, I told him that I was free around one tomorrow if he would like to discuss it.”
“Woah,” I say, impressed. “You actually said that to him? No wonder he was a little impressed.”
“Really?” Lyle asks, interested.
“Well, I might have been imagining it,” I amend. “But he sounded grudgingly impressed by you. He said he ‘didn’t know you had it in you’.”
“Huh,” says Lyle. “Maybe tomorrow will go even better than I could hope for, in that case.”