“WELL, THAT WAS REFRESHING.”
Coburn ignored the sarcasm in his older brother’s voice and kept walking toward the elevators. The board meeting had run long and he was late for his meeting with Diana and the lawyers.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Harrison continued, keeping step with him, “I love how progressive you’re being. God knows we need a more flexible vacation policy, but how do you think it’s going to work when all our employees decide to take the same day off? We have critical processes on the supply-chain side.”
“That won’t happen.” Coburn threw him an annoyed glance. “Employment experts have done studies on it, and it’s clear in most workforces self-ownership of deadlines will regulate all that.”
“And self-regulation will be top of mind when the Christmas holidays hit?” Harrison frowned. “You saw the board in there. You’re pushing hard and fast to make changes here, Coburn. You have a different vision, a different style of leadership. But you need to let them catch up with you.”
“They will.” He jabbed the call button for the elevator. “And they’ll be thanking me when our employee satisfaction and productivity numbers are up.”
“If they don’t revolt first.”
He gave his brother a quelling look. “I thought you were going to let me run this company my way.”
“That was before you started spouting nonsense about no formal vacation policy and the need for badge levels to incent employees. This isn’t a video game we’re playing. It’s a Fortune 500 company our family has spent a hundred years building.”
“I get that.” He stepped on the empty arriving elevator and Harrison followed. He got the pressure that was on him. He got that he was following his godlike brother in the analysts’ eyes. He got all of it until he was sick to death of it.
Harrison shook his head at him. “You make me nervous.”
“Don’t be.” He pushed the button for the executive floor. “Focus on your campaign. Shake people’s hands, pretend their babies are cute. I’ve got this.”
The elevator swished upward, revealing a panoramic view of New York. A long silence followed. “Are you sure,” Harrison ventured carefully when he eventually broke it, “your emotions aren’t a little...off with this divorce on your plate?”
Coburn glanced at his watch. “Happening in minutes. In fact, I’m fifteen of them late.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.” His brother exhaled on a long sigh. “She’d kill me if she knew I was saying this, but Frankie says you haven’t been yourself lately.”
“I have a lot on my mind.”
Harrison fixed him with that trademark deadly stare of his. “Do you still care for her?”
And wasn’t that the question of the day? He’d told himself he didn’t, had convinced himself he was long over his marital fling. But last night had proved him an exemplarity liar. To hijack his toast to Tony and Annabelle with that speech that had come out of nowhere? To sleep with the woman he was intent on wiping from his memory to bring some closure to that part of his life? Insanity.
“I am over her,” he told his brother, hoping that saying it out loud would make it so. “Making this divorce official is exactly what I need to move on.”
His brother’s gaze raked his face. “Good. I hope it gives you some perspective.”
“To what?” He and his brother were gradually restoring the close relationship that had defined their younger years after a decade of being at odds with each other following their father’s death. But lately Harrison’s preachiness was rankling him. “Do you think I should settle down like you and have the beautiful little nuclear family? You know how much that appeals to me.”
“Actually,” his brother drawled, “I was thinking more along the lines of what will make you happy. I don’t think you have been for a long time, Coburn, and I’m not just talking professionally. Climbing an avalanche-prone mountain is not thrill-seeking—it’s self-destructive.”
Yes, but on those truly brutal parts of the climb when his limbs felt as if they were going to fall off and he was so cold he thought he might expire, his head had felt devoid of anything, numb to the pure satisfaction of what he’d accomplished. It was addictive.
He lifted a shoulder. “My mountain-climbing days are over if the board has anything to say about it, so your worries are null and void there.”