What she hadn’t expected was that her dad would be informed. He’d called Greg, whom she conveniently forgot to tell about her appointment. She didn’t need a babysitter.
Greg had told his girlfriend, so they showed up for the final consultation. The bonus was her dad joined them on video chat.
She was peeved when told that Brook had insisted they all be involved. When Cassidy learned that, she okayed Greg, Joey, and her dad to be allowed in.
The news had been mixed. The vascular surgeon said everything was healing nicely and didn’t think further surgery would be required on his part. The ortho doctor also felt that she was progressing. But he showed them the results of the tests, and while the bones were healing nicely, he felt the arm still needed to be stabilized.
The choice was to put it back into a cast or allow her to wear a brace.
Joey, Greg, and her dad all voted for the cast because they didn’t believe that she wouldn’t start to try to rehab her arm. The ortho doctor had made it clear that if she did that, she could suffer permanent damage to it.
Her dad finally agreed to the brace with one condition.
She had to go see David and promise him she’d be good.
Greg was amused when he saw her calculating look turn to
defeat. Luckily, the jackass kept his mouth shut. Her dad had uncovered her one weakness: for anything important, she couldn’t lie to David. And if she gave him her word, she would keep it, even if she really, really wanted to begin rehabbing her arm.
So, she found herself at David’s dorm door. She had access through the security system, so she let herself in, only to discover Alex getting head from their maid.
“Jesus, Alex!” Cassidy complained.
“Don’t stop,” he told the maid, lifted his chin, and gave Cassidy a straight, icy gaze. “Knock if you don’t want to walk in on stuff.”
In defiance, she stuck her tongue out at him and walked into David’s room. She heard loud music through his bathroom door, with a heavy bass beat that vibrated in Cassidy’s chest.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
The music stopped, and David walked out of the bathroom a moment later. Outwardly, she kept her expression from showing her delight at seeing her friend in all his glory.
He saw her and paused for a moment before he saw her arm.
“You got your cast off,” David said as a smile bloomed on his face to show his pleasure.
“How come your dick is all red?” Cassidy asked.
“I hate shower sex. The drain hurts my dick,” David said without missing a beat.
“Slut,” Cassidy mumbled. “Put on something to cover that up.”
As he pulled on a pair of shorts, David asked, “What did the doctors say?”
She gave him the complete rundown. David asked about her other surgeries, and she told him everything was okay.
Cassidy had been given the green light from the head doctor, and her dad would let her go back to California.
She’d also had all her stitches removed from her abdominal surgery.
Finally, she wound down and mumbled her dad’s requirement.
“What did you say?” David asked.
Cassidy tossed her head back and gave him a defiant look.
“I have to promise you that I won’t try to rehab my arm until the doctors say I can.”
“Then promise me,” David said, suddenly serious.
She looked down at her hands and then back up at him.
“I promise.”
His eyes narrowed for a moment, and then he smiled.
“Have you eaten?”
“No.”
“Pick something out and order us delivery.”
Her dad had been right; she wouldn’t disappoint David.
She loved that he hadn’t lectured or tried to boss her around once she made the vow. He’d accepted her promise and moved on.
Unlike everyone else, David trusted her. It was the kind of trust that had been built over time. They’d also been in situations where their lives were on the line. Cassidy knew their bond was more than mere friendship, but it wasn’t love. Not that he didn’t love her, because David did. It was just that it wasn’t the kind of love she eventually wanted to have with him. Given time, that would happen.
◊◊◊
Chapter 30
The first task David had given Greg was to work with his dad to negotiate a deal with VRS for Dare and Corvus’s product. Greg soon figured out he was in over his head.
None of his college business courses dealt with anything like this, not even close. What kept him from throwing his hands up in defeat was that his dad, and the people that worked for him, didn’t seem intimidated.
Today, everyone would meet in a downtown hotel to hammer out the agreement. The one complication Greg had was that Cassidy had overheard what he was doing and insisted on coming along. He decided not to fight her because he could tell she needed something to do, and David would say it was fine anyway. So, he’d agreed that she could drive him to the meeting and be his ‘security.’
While he’d gone to the front desk to see where the meeting was, Cassidy had valeted the car. She approached him as the woman at the desk checked their bookings.
“We have a problem,” Cassidy whispered.
“What?”
“We’re underdressed,” she said as she pointed to his dad and another man entering the lobby.
They were in suits and ties, while Greg and Cassidy had opted for business casual. He knew he’d messed up when David walked in, also wearing a suit.
“Nothing we can do about that now.”
He was told which conference room and went to greet everyone.
“This is my brother Greg and his associate, Cassidy Hope. This is James Burrows, our attorney,” David said to make the introductions.
Miss Dixon, David’s leading lawyer, had finally settled on someone to handle David’s legal affairs while he was in
California. Greg had heard that his brother had met Mr.
Burrows at a political fundraiser.
As they walked to the meeting, David asked Mr.
Burrows, “How’s Kat?”
Greg noticed that Cassidy perked up with interest. He would have to ask her who Kat was later.
“She’s doing well,” Mr. Burrows said cautiously.
“I’m glad to hear that. Please tell her I said ‘Hi’ when you talk to her next,” David said as they walked into the room.
Greg was relieved when he saw that the two young guys from VRS were also dressed in business casual. He noted that they’d both been smiling as if they were telling each other a joke, but when they saw the suits suddenly acted entirely differently. It was a good lesson that you should dress for the occasion.
His dad told him he should kick the meeting off by throwing the ball into the VRS court to see where they were in all this.
“I understand you’re looking for money to launch the Real-Time Virtual Reality product,” Greg said.
“When we agreed to distribute and support RTVR, as we call it in-house, their team was still in beta testing,” Denzel Chu, the lead partner, said. “Through that process, it was found that rendering real-time VR means that the hardware has to be robust enough to handle it, which changes the specs of the hardware.
“Word has leaked that we will distribute the product, which requires an onsite installation and setup. The pre-orders tell us that we have to hire staff quickly for that and our customer support center.”
He then had Sunil Patel, the other partner, hand out folders with their projected needs. The two of them went into detail about what their plans were. They were offering a twenty percent ownership interest in exchange for a lot of money.