Page 5 of In Bed with the Enemy
The girl's eyes widened upon hearing his name and, presumably, his room number. From what I'd seen of it, it was definitely a large suite and I knew my little standard reservation wasn't going to win out.
"Right this way," she said, grabbing two menus.
"Suddenly, I'm not hungry," I said, walking in the opposite direction and away from the restaurant.
"You're going to regret that," Ethan said as I walked off. "Gotta keep your strength up, especially for the competitive round."
"There is no 'competitive round,'" I said, trying to act like his words didn't scare me.
"That's what you think," he laughed before following the hostess to a table in the restaurant.
I groaned and slid my hands down my face in a combination of exasperation and exhaustion. A few people passing me gave me a weird look, but I was past caring at the moment. My normal meek personality had given way to the more intense side of me that only came around when I was really excited about something or really upset about something.
Knowing I needed to eat something, I made my way to the little hotel store and grabbed a granola bar and a bottled iced coffee before making my way towards where I was supposed to be presenting. The conference was only two and a half days long, with the introductions being Wednesday afternoon. I was really looking forward to listening to some of the other presentations, but for right now, I wanted to make sure that mine went smoothly.
I shoved what little breakfast I managed to get into my mouth and got to work checking that my PowerPoint materials had been uploaded and were all working on the screen. It only took about thirty minutes for me to verify everything. So, I sat off to the side and watched the clock click down the time until my presentation was about to start while sipping my iced coffee.
As the last half an hour clicked by, more and more people filtered into the audience. I tried not to care about whether Ethan was going to attend. If anything, I absolutely did not want him to attend, because, while I was at least better prepared to answer any questions today, I had no doubts that he would try and stump me on purpose. I really just did not need that sort of thing right now.
When it was finally time to get started, the announcer introduced me and I breathed a sigh of what I tried to convince myself was relief at the fact that Ethan hadn't shown.
4
ETHAN GREENE
She really was an incredible woman. Despite her short stature and young look, she carried herself extremely well and spoke to the crowd with poise and authority. I stood at the threshold to the auditorium, tucked away into a corner so that she couldn't see me. I listened to her presentation carefully, soaking in everything that she was saying.
The more she spoke, the more respect I had for her. And, the more I regretted my behavior yesterday. Worse than that, the more I dreaded what I knew I needed to do. The thing was, that my brother and I were majority shareholders of Standard Energy, a longstanding oil and natural gas company. It wasn't cheap to suck fossilized dinosaurs up from the ground and convert them into a liquid that people could put in their cars.
It took an incredible amount of infrastructure and resources to make something like that happen. And we were the best at it. And had the most of everything. Except, the winds were changing. And I didn't choose those words lightly. Conferences like these used to only ever be about technology improvements in drilling or fracking equipment. Now, all of the sudden, the organizers were inviting people like Amy Reid to speak about the new technology she'd been working on.
My brother and I had tried to put as much pressure on the conference organizers as possible to keep things the way they were, but they weren't having it. They blamed the media and public perception, but that was all bullshit. I knew what was up. There was money to be made in alternative energy.
But, unfortunately, my company wasn't particularly poised to jump on that wagon just yet. So, the Board and I had made a careful decision to try and delay this sort of technology from becoming widespread until we could get ourselves switched over.
It's not that we were against progress. It was merely a money question.
Self-preservation and all that.
Stockholders generally liked it when you continued to pay them dividends. But, that was hard to do when you had to hire a shit ton of scientists and blow up your research and development budget. Far better for everyone involved to just slow things down a bit.
And so, that had been my mission during this conference. If the presenters weren't going to stop Amy Reid from telling the world about how her new little invention could be rolled out at a fraction of the cost and provide just as much energy as Arctic drilling with minimal pollution, I would.
I'd wanted to see just what sort of woman Amy was, as well. It's why I'd slipped the hotel receptionist a couple of hundred dollars to let my assistant send her up to my room. Her reactions, her responses, her fight, all of it surprised me. She was a fireball of the best kind.
Which was very bad for my company.
She finished her presentation. It was thoughtful and comprehensive and the crowd was mostly silent at the beginning when the floor was opened up for questions. To be expected, she'd addressed anything they might have a thought about.
But, I'd come prepared. I'd had someone pull every patent application the little minx had filed and I'd worked with my best engineer to go over what it was she was trying to do. Her invention was clever, but it wasn't without its own issues.
Mainly, she had created a type of device that could transform UV rays, so it would work even on cloudy days and wasn't affected by temperature. However, the converter device’s principal component was Mercury. Nasty stuff if it leached into the groundwater.
Now, of course, her design had protections to prevent something like that from happening. However, if someone were to come take a sledgehammer to it, there wasn't much one could do to stop it from leaching out. And, these solar arrays were often built in rural areas with very little security. Totally different than the sorts of operations Standard Energy engaged in.
It wasn't much, but it's what I had, and I was going to make good use of it.
Even if I hated doing it.