15. Lawton #2
Removing my hand from her back, I stood and pulled my phone out of my pocket. After firing off a text to Baker, I gathered my blanket. “Text me the details.”
By this time, I had Rossi and Marsha’s attention.
“Leaving so soon, Mr. Harvey?” Marsha asked.
“Yes. I just wanted to stop by and drop that off to you guys.” My head nodded to the bag. “I’ve gotta get home and turn down for the night. Tomorrow is a very busy day for me.”
When I said the last part, I tossed my glance down at Talitha who was nibbling the corner of her lip. I knew her ass was pissed but she would get over it.
“Aww man. I thought you would at least have a drink with us.”
“Raincheck Rossi. I’ve gotta get going but the three of you have a good time. Talitha, if you need anything don’t hesitate to reach out.”
Squaring her shoulders, she slanted her eyes. “I think we will be just fine.”
“Then my time here is done.” I knew she was being smug, and I would let her have this moment; after all I was the one in the wrong. “See you tomorrow night. Ladies and gentlemen, enjoy the rest of your evening.”
Paying Talitha one last glance, I walked away from the trio and to the entrance of the park where Baker had the truck waiting.
* * *
All day today, I had been wrapped up in meetings. Doing my due diligence, I ordered lunch for the staff at the youth center and had it delivered.
I was sitting behind my MacBook in my third meeting of the day when a chat popped up from Talitha thanking me for the lunch. She wanted to let me know that the team really enjoyed it.
Of course, I told her to tell them they were most welcome, but I also used that moment to remind her that I had yet to receive the restaurant of her choice. The afternoon was slowly turning into the evening and I needed to secure a reservation before everything was unavailable.
It took her about thirty minutes to respond with a name. Excusing myself from the meeting, I walked out of the room and put in the call.
After getting a confirmation, I rejoined my staff in the conference room and messaged Talitha back, letting her know what my arrival time would be to pick her up.
Her defiant ass told me she was going to drive and after I threatened to call Gema, she relented like I knew she would. Talitha was on my mind heavily, so much so that I’d failed to hear my assistant calling out for me.
“I’m sorry Chari, what was that?”
“You asked me to pull quarterly earnings.” Passing the stack of papers off to me, she exited the room.
Flipping through them for a brief minute, I gathered enough information that I needed to continue my meeting.
“Your subscriptions are down fifteen percent from last quarter, Mr. Guillot. Without you completely redoing your app, I don’t see how we would be of service.”
“I know… which is why I came to you. I’m out of options. Nothing is driving consumers to the app anymore. On the retail side, we’re profiting but this is my baby and to see it going down in the dumps is starting to upset me.”
“That’s to be expected. You’re trying to sell an app similar to , but your prices are more expensive. You’ve gotta either bring them down to meet the competitor or offer some type of incentive that’ll make them want to subscribe.
We can make it happen, but it’s up to you to figure out which way you’re leaning.”
Mr. Guillot was the latest person to reach out to me about developing or should I say revamping his app. The G Spot was an app geared toward books.
Everyone knows that ’s Kindle app had the highest number of subscribers which is why Bezos and his team had recently raised their prices. What Mr. Guillot was offering his subscribers wasn’t even a fraction of what the Kindle app offered.
Where Kindle Unlimited had him beat was their flat rate monthly fee allowing the subscriber to read unlimited books as long as they were free.
The G Spot had a monthly membership fee on top of subscribers having to pay anywhere between two to ten dollars for each book.
If he didn’t change that, me revamping the app wouldn’t do shit for him.
“I want my app to be the next best thing, Mr. Harvey… and I heard you were the person to see.”
“I could take your money and redesign it. I have no problem doing so. But, I didn’t get where I am today by doing shady business.
Before my team puts their hands on anything, we at least try to see if it’s worth the money that we charge. I mean, you came to me for help, not the other way. I can develop just about anything but without the foot traffic, you’ll be losing money.”
Closing my laptop down, I packed it away and stood. “How about when you’ve figured out what direction you’re wanting to go in, you reach back out to my assistant? We can go over the logistics later.” Tapping the conference room table, I rounded it and motioned for my assistant to follow.
“You know all he’s going to do is reach out to someone else.” She finally shared after we had made it back to my office.
“And just like I told him, all they would be doing is taking his fucking money.” I laughed.
“He’s arrogant. I could tell that from the way he talks.”
“Very much so. Like I said, I’ll do the app for him but when his shit tanks I don’t need the backlash being kicked this way.”
“I think you made the right decision.” She laughed.
“I know I did. How are things coming with the dating app. Have you heard anything from the developers?”
“Last we spoke, everything was going good.”
“That’s what I like to hear. Set me up a meeting with them, I’ve got something I wanna run by them.”
Looking down at her iPad, she tapped on the screen and asked, “You wanna meet today?”
“Nawl.” My head shook. “I’m getting ready to leave for the day. I’ve got dinner plans later and can’t afford to be late.”
“Okay. When I get a date and time, I’ll forward it over to you.”
“Thank you so much, Chari.”
“You’re welcome, Mr. Harvey.”
After Chari left the office, I texted Preme and Drix. An idea came to me the other night while I was laying up in bed and I wanted to run it by them before moving forward, especially since it heavily involved one of Preme’s guys.
Now that business was done for the day, I needed to head home to prepare for my date with Talitha. Hopefully by the end of the night, I would be back in her good graces.