The Ex Factor (The Dallas Connection #3)

1. Sujit

SUJIT

I t was the second time the word Dallas had crossed my desk that morning.

I stared at the screen before me, trying to read the code again. I knew it like the back of my hand, but it looked Greek to me. Scratch that. I had taken courses in modern Greek in college, so that language actually made sense to me. What script was Greek to me?

Telugu, my mother tongue. That script was definitely alien to me. I wondered why my parents hadn’t insisted that I learn to read Telugu. Although I understood the language and could speak it, my English and French were more powerful than my mother tongue.

I was aware this was a distraction tactic, trying to avoid going back to that wedding invitation tossed into my desk drawer.

Not with hatred or resentment, just put out of sight so I could hurt less.

Or so I had convinced myself. It hadn’t worked.

I was still obsessing over the glossy ivory cardstock embossed with the tasteful, delicate paisley while pondering existential conundrums like why my Greek was better than my Telugu reading skills.

With one eye on the clock in the top right corner of my laptop screen, I was also trying to see how long I would last before giving in and reaching for the invitation once more.

Devi saved me from that embarrassment when she placed a single knock on the glass door and walked in without waiting for my response.

“Did you take a look at the document?” she asked in her usual calm demeanor.

“What document?” I peered at her over the metal rim of my glasses, a frown of confusion creasing my brow even though I knew exactly what document she was referring to.

The document that had the word Dallas scrawled all over it.

As my executive assistant, Devi was used to my absent-mindedness.

She leaned across the desk, pulled a thick set of papers stapled together from under my laptop, and placed it on the keyboard.

I preferred to read everything digitally, but Devi was old school.

She preferred paper. She insisted that this was the most effective and efficient way of getting things done right.

If it was tangible and in your hand, you couldn’t avoid it or put it out of sight.

She waited patiently while I picked up the document and went through it page by page again for her benefit.

It wasn’t the first time I was reading it, but having it in print did have a poignant impact.

Devi was right about that. I glanced at her before tossing the stack across the desk.

She knew the exact reason for my reaction, and I heard her pull in a soft breath.

“It’s finally happened,” I said, mildly annoyed. Although, at this point, I couldn’t pinpoint the exact source of my annoyance.

“Yes, as Walt told us months ago,” she reminded, shuffling her planner from her left hand to her right.

While everyone else had moved on to iPads and tablets, Devi trusted her paper pad, her paper planner, and the power of her colorful pens.

“Walt’s a good man,” I observed absently.

“Yes,” she said.

“But this is unacceptable.”

“Again, as Walt warned us when he sold this property.”

“To some swanky realtors based in Texas, I see,” I said with a gentle frown.

She knew I had omitted the name of the city for a reason. They all knew. For months, I had drowned in shame and embarrassment before they teamed up to convince me that I’d come out swimming at the other end, happy and intact. I had yet to reach that promised land.

“To call them realtors is like calling Lata Mangeshkar a singer. She was an institution, as are they. I think empire might be a more appropriate term.”

Devi was teasing, but her tone might as well suggest she was rendering a vital consultation on a global crisis.

I frowned at her. “Oh good, royalty! They can be so accommodating.”

I picked up the papers again and reread the terms while she stood with the stoic face I hated, the pen steady in her hand. That was the face she made when I went on a rant, and she waited for me to be all vented out.

Devi was smart, capable, efficient, and my sister-in-law’s best friend from college, so she could take liberties with me that others wouldn’t dream of.

Not that I was particularly hard-ass, but I could be difficult.

Mainly, though, the deference and respect I garnered were on account of my success and the wealth I had amassed in the short time since I’d founded my first start-up.

“So, what now?” I asked.

“We need to renegotiate the lease and sign a new contract.”

“For a higher rent?”

“You can bet on it. I’ve already sent El a heads-up.”

Eleanor headed our accounts department. For all intents and purposes, she was the accounts department.

I pushed the papers away with a frown. “How’s Kitty?”

Devi greeted that with a disapproving sigh. “You know she hates it when you call her that.”

“She’s seven, and she loves it. You hate it,” I said while she kept her dazzling glare trained on me.

“ Katyayani is better. It turned out to be a sinus infection,” she said.

“Good. And her useless father?”

“He’d come over on the weekend for his bi-weekly visit.”

“Did he behave?”

“He has no choice if he wants to keep seeing his daughter.”

“And you?”

“What about me?” Devi asked.

“How are you?”

She gave a slight nod. “I’m financially secure and have a beautiful daughter. If he wants to spend his life with that woman, that’s his choice. I’m happy without him.”

“Good,” I said and picked up the papers again. “That’s good.”

“They need your approval to move ahead with the renegotiations,” she reminded me as I read the document again.

“Is there a way out of this outrageous rent hike?”

Devi’s lips curled up as if this was the question she was waiting for. She took a step toward me and tapped her pen on her colorful planner. This year’s planner was floral. Peonies. “There is. Meet with them and present our case.”

I frowned like she knew I would, but before I could get a word in, she contended, “It will give our case credence, you know, coming directly from the boss, someone as influential as you.”

My frown deepened. I didn’t have time for unnecessary meetings, especially when they involved drawing on my limited resources to ingratiate myself for the sake of my business.

Not that I wasn’t good at it. I just hated doing it.

I had done a lot of it during the early years when I was looking for angel investors and VCs.

But I didn’t think I would need to do it at this stage in my career.

“That’s our final resort, Sujit,” Devi declared, and I glanced at her as she gave me a pointed look.

She only called me by my name when she stepped into the role of an adviser, and she was a darn good one.

I let out a deep sigh and returned the papers back to the desk. “Alright, set up a meeting with this new real estate whatever. Let me talk to them. But if I’m getting involved, I don’t want their minions. I want to talk to the boss.”

Devi grinned. “You’re in luck. She arrived this morning. I’ve emailed her assistant for a meeting.”

“You knew I’d say that?”

“I knew I could talk you into it. You’re so easy,” she teased sans a smile. “I’ve only known you since you came to work in shorts and a T-shirt like a college kid.”

“I was a college kid!” I cried with a defensive frown.

This time, she graced me with her warm smile before leaving my office.

I was a college kid when I started tinkering with the idea of starting a software company.

I use the word “kid” loosely because I was in the final year of my master’s degree when the idea materialized.

Three years later, the company took off successfully, but jeans and “tees” remained my ensemble of choice, as it is for most engineers.

When we feel desperate enough to don a three-piece suit, we shift gears and go to business school.

I chuckled again, aware of the fact that every thought finding passage through my mind right now was only to distract me from thinking about the heartache rolled up in the word Dallas. My mind raced back to the card locked up in my desk drawer.

Stepping over to the glass wall of my 22nd-floor midtown suite, I gazed down at the Manhattan streets, always busy, always alive.

My office was silent as a smile, but I could hear the city’s buzz in my head.

The constant chatter of people on the streets, the shouts of panhandlers, resident New Yorkers cursing bloody tourists for messing up the flow on the sidewalks.

I could hear the drills and the thrills that made this city my home.

The fall had set in hard, and it would be only a minute before it dragged in the cold, harsh winter.

I sighed, setting my gaze at the horizon.

I’d started the company in a shed in Brooklyn, but moved into this uppity building at the insistence of my angel investor.

Over the years, I had leased a total of four floors in the building, Walter’s reasonable rents being one of the incentives.

Walt had held on to this property because it was his father’s choicest possession, but as his age advanced, the kind man saw no other option but to sell it off to someone who had a more proficient management team.

He was getting ready to retire to Florida and had sold the building to a real estate company whose headquarters were in Dallas.

I hadn’t shown Devi the bitter bile-like taste that erupted in my mouth when I first read that, but I knew she knew. I was grateful she was kind enough to underplay it.

Back in my chair, I finally succumbed to the temptation and pulled open my desk drawer to retrieve the wedding invitation. I allowed my fingers to glide over the embossed gold paisleys and the gold leaf motif adorning the border of the card.

Mrs. Rekha Kadam and Mrs. and Mr. Pavan Rehani

request the honor of your presence

at the wedding of their children

Tara

And

Sameer

I dropped the card back in the open drawer with haste and banged it shut.

About six months ago, my then-girlfriend Tara went to Dallas for a consulting job and reconnected with her ex, Sameer.

Tara was the art consultant I’d hired to help decorate my expansive upstate vacation home.

I found myself taken with her since our first formal meeting.

She was smart, beautiful, humble, gracious, and kind.

Everything good rolled into one, and I thought I was in love.

Until she returned halfway into her assignment to tell me, she still had feelings for Sameer and wanted to see if things could work out between them.

This was after I’d introduced her to my family at a surprise birthday party I’d planned for her.

She’d been the first woman to meet my family, and by that evening, we were broken up.

So, yes, whenever I heard the word Dallas , my recoil was involuntary.

It wasn’t that I hated Tara. On the contrary, some part of my heart still belonged to her.

It would have been so much easier to deal with the heartbreak if Tara was a horrible, conniving liar.

But she wasn’t. The only hitch in our relationship had been that she didn’t love me enough.

At least not more than she loved her ex.

To her credit, she’d been honest about her feelings, forthcoming about her dilemma and guilt.

At our final meeting, I’d magnanimously declared, despite the gaping hole in my heart, that I was reverting our status back to friendship. The jubilant card in my desk drawer was a testament to this changed status quo.

My eyes darted to the papers on my desk, and I released a sigh as the office phone lit up.

“The Congressman is returning your call,” Devi said from her desk outside my office. “And Mr. Roth from Direct Solutions is here for the next meeting.”

I put the papers in a drawer and waited for Devi to connect me to the Congressman.