Chapter 6
The days leading up to the weekend of the conference passed far too quickly for Connor’s liking. There was only so much time to prepare, and business needs seemed to be endless.
This kind of breakneck pace wasn’t anything new for Connor, but he could tell Nate was having a tougher time keeping his head above water. Between his own anxieties and his father’s expectations, it was a miracle he had yet to slip under.
But it didn’t take much for Nate to start drowning.
Maria Ronaldo had been down a number of times to speak directly to him regarding inter-department financial projections he would be sharing. Of course, she'd come into his office bright and early that first day, a flurry of rapid-fire Spanish as she took him through her concerns.
Or at least, that’s what he thought she might have been saying.
Connor didn’t speak Spanish–not really, at least. He knew a couple greetings, how to thank someone, and a couple numbers. Just the kind of thing you picked up naturally when living in Southern California.
Nate seemed to know only a little more than he did, dark eyes wide as if in panic as he tried to navigate this conversation with Ronaldo that was so far over his head.
Like a window had opened up into Nate’s mind, Connor watched the gears turning in his head as he tried to translate in real-time.
All the while, Ronaldo’s expectant expression did not soften. Her gaze only narrowed when Nate finally answered in slow, faltering sentences, glancing from her to Connor like there was some way out.
“Nuestra presentación es… uh, I mean, la presentación es trata de–”
Like Connor could somehow save him from this, too.
Unfortunately for Nate, Ronaldo was not a woman who hid much of what she thought. The lines in her face deepened as burgundy painted lips parted around a scowl..
“Cono, Natanael. Just say it in English,” she said with a dismissive shake of her head. “Like talking to a child.”
The sight of Nate’s shoulders slumping stayed in Connor’s mind as that morning went on. Easy for anyone to see that he just couldn’t get a win this week–not from his father, and not from Ronaldo, either.
God help him, Connor felt bad for Nate.
Obviously, Nate had been embarrassed. Called out, shamed, and embarrassed for it. He knew firsthand how terrible that felt.
And Connor knew he could be doing more. He’d all but decided on that by the time their mid-morning break rolled around.
“There’s this little Cuban cafe I found around the corner. What d’you think?” Nate offered as he pulled his wallet out from his desk drawer.
“Think it sounds better than instant coffee in the break room,” Connor said, simply because he didn’t need to say no.
“It’s good, you know. Getting outside for a bit. Seeing the sun. Vitamin D, right?” Nate half sounded like he was trying to convince himself.
“Right.”
Still, stepping outside the office often came with the expectation that they made conversation. And that conversation too often ignored the rules and norms that guided them in the office. But they were equally to blame for that.
“Not much of a Spanish speaker?” Connor asked as they walked.
Nate gave him a puzzled look.
“Ronaldo, earlier,” he clarified. Maybe it wasn’t any of his business–but what the hell, he was curious.
“Oh. Yeah. I mean.” Nate bit the inside of his cheek. “My mom tried, and my Abuela really tried. I know the basics, you know? Enough to be polite. But I can't keep a conversation going, not without using English to fill in the gaps.”
“And the rest of your family speaks Spanish?”
“Mostly, yeah.” Nate smiled, though he looked pained. “I'm the odd one out.”
Connor was still thinking about that even after they returned. Nate, sitting alone at family events as faceless people embraced and conversed in rapid-fire Spanish while he struggled to follow along.
The mental image tugged at him in a way he didn’t want to examine too closely, so he buried himself in conference preparations to keep his thoughts where they should be.
His chief priority needed to be completing Nate’s presentation for this conference.
Getting the slide deck finished and approved was the first dragon that needed to be slain, but this was Connor’s dragon and he knew exactly how to fell this magnificent beast.
By the end of the afternoon, it was finished, edited, and perfectly polished. No one was more pleased by that than Nate.
“This really is incredible. I don't know how you do it,” he’d said, shaking his head in disbelief as he scrolled through the slides. “This is fantastic, Connor. It doesn’t feel fair that you’re putting so much work into this.
“You mean my job?”
It was tempting for Connor to blow him off–because of course he did great work, he knew that better than anyone–but he couldn’t remember the last time anyone had praised his work so openly.
The last person to do so had been Devore, and even then,maybe the last time had been a year before his departure.
When they’d still been happy. When Connor hadn’t yet been willing to look in a mirror.
So the cynical response came before he could stop it, and Nate was looking up at him over his monitor.
“Come on, we both know there are people who wouldn’t put half as much care into this. I can’t believe how quickly you turned this around.” And then Nate grinned, that same grin that had the legal secretaries giggling to each other whenever the two of them passed their office on the way to lunch.
It should have been irritating, the way Nate could smile at the world and watch as everything turned to glittering gold.
So why wasn’t it?
“Thank you,” Connor only replied in a soft, sincere voice. Something delicate threatened to blossom there in his chest, but he quickly pruned it away and buried himself in his never-ending to-do list.
The rest of their time was spent where it mattered most - on getting Nate prepared. That itself was a task far easier said than done.
He looked the part just fine. No one could possibly glance at Nate Santos in his fine suits, dark brown curls, and easygoing grin and think anything else about him.
Sure, he was young, but that hardly mattered once he started talking.
He had this way of so effectively commanding attention when he spoke, leading with this genuine sincerity that seemed so perfectly polished in its warmth.
And even if he misspoke, he was attractive enough that he might be forgiven for a slip or three.
The halo effect. That’s all it was. Attractive people could get away with a little more imperfection.
Not that Connor thought Nate was attractive.
It was just something he observed, even envied while watching Nate in their weekly all-hands meetings.
The way older principals would snap to attention once he rose to speak, the way they nodded along with his explanations, his proposals for investor retention strategies.
It was a gift, one given for none other than winning the genetic lottery. And with a father like that, the rest no doubt came easily to him.
“He’s a triple threat, your guy,” Junie told Connor once after a meeting, Nate somehow holding his own against Thornton while never breaking his smile. A far cry from his first meeting with her, by a mile. “Like James Bond. Good talker, good looker. I bet he’s a good fucker, too.”
“Don’t you get any ideas,” Connor grimaced while Junie only gave him an innocent who, me? expression.
Far more pressing was the matter of Nate’s weaknesses, which proved troublesome to train out. But Connor wasn’t the type to back down without fighting back. Somehow, they needed to rid Nate of his habit of hanging himself through over-promising what Alarie Inc. couldn’t deliver.
In a meeting, sure, Connor could catch him. And he was good at that, surreptitiously signaling to Nate when he was about to go too far and promise too much. All it took was clearing his throat and shooting a pointed glare in his direction from behind one of his monitors.
“But you’re not going to be able to do that if I’m speaking to a panel,” Nate pointed out. “It would look like you’re heckling me from the audience.”
Connor could only agree.
“That’s why we’re going to run drills. We’ll get you used to confidently deflecting,” he explained, like deflection wasn’t what he’d been trying–and failing–to teach Nate for weeks now.
But they didn’t give up easily, either of them. Each morning, Connor would sit down at his desk and review key investor concerns based on email conversations and his meeting notes. From there, he started building out practice questions. A few an hour, a couple dozen by the end of the first day.
Nate gave Connor a nervous look when he flipped open his notebook one morning, catching sight of the rows and rows of wordy questions.
Drills only took a few minutes at a time. Like muscle memory, it was exactly the way Connor had studied while in school.
When he asked Nate what studying methods had worked for him in college, the blank expression told him everything he needed to know–either Nate succeeded by virtue of memorization and good test-taking alone, or by his paternity alone. Connor had a feeling he knew which one it was.
“What are your goals in light of recent ethics committee investigations of the board of directors?” He asked, reading off his notebook. Nate paced back and forth between their desks, worrying at his tie.
“I can say with certainty that we’re going to see a successful year in terms of avoiding scandal,” came Nate’s answer. Factually accurate, sure. But it was too rehearsed, too stiff. And most importantly, not confident. Not charming. Not Nate.
Connor bit back a sigh.
“Try again. That one sounds a little flat.” He was trying to be encouraging, but maybe that was falling flat, too.
And it wasn’t like Connor wanted Nate to fail. For all the resentment he found himself battling, Nate failing would inevitably come back to bury him as well at the end of the day.
The best case scenario for him–for them both–was that Nate succeed without a single hitch.