At about nine o’clock in the morning, Red had his laptop open and he was playing a streaming Internet program called The Street Sweep, a show about the stock market. It was a repeat of yesterday’s show, since right now it was about three in the morning back in the U.S.
While the Internet show played in the background, Red and Nicole were eating the breakfast they’d ordered from room service.
Red was having eggs Florentine and Nicole was eating the Eggs Benedict. They were sitting at the small table in the living room next to a large picture window overlooking the street.
It felt very European, Nicole thought with a smile, as she sipped the delicious dark German coffee. She’d never even had room service before in her entire life.
She took a forkful of egg and dipped it in the hollandaise sauce, savoring the bite as it melted in her mouth. “This might be the best breakfast I’ve ever had,” she told him.
“I’m not going to mention that to Chef Roland, he’d be very hurt,” Red replied with a wry grin.
Suddenly she had a thought that bothered her a little. The thought was that, as fun as eating breakfast in a fancy hotel room was, she didn’t want it to become her entire life. Casually, she said, “I’ve been thinking your mother might have made a good point.”
His eyes narrowed a fraction. “What do you mean?” he asked.
“How she said this life gets boring.” Nicole toyed with her eggs briefly. She wasn’t even sure why the thought had come up in her mind. After all, she was having a grand time in the scheme of things. Sure, there was a lot of stress right now about Red’s company, but flying around the world, eating different cuisine, meeting people from different cultures—Nicole found it all exciting.
But she wondered if long-term, it would really be enough.
“Boring?” he said, sitting back with his coffee cup and taking a dramatic sip. “Was last night dull for you?”
She felt her face flush as she recalled what he’d done to her in the middle of the night. Even thinking about it got her wet, and right now she was only wearing a hotel bathrobe. Nothing at all underneath. “Last night wasn’t boring,” she said, smiling and avoiding his gaze. “What I meant was that maybe after some years, it could get repetitive. There has to be more to life, don’t you think?”
He put his cup down and looked at her. “Of course there’s more to life. That’s why I have you.”
She smiled again, but shook her head. “No, that’s not what I mean either.”
“Well, then, what exactly are we talking about?”
Finally Nicole met his eyes. “I mean a family.”
Red nodded, considering the question for a while. Nicole started to wonder if she was scaring him off. They’d never ever discussed the idea of children, and this was probably a bad time to bring up the subject. “I want to have a family some day,” he said. “I never really thought much about it until you came into my life. I never really had an answer in my mind until this very moment, sitting and looking at my beautiful fiancé.”
“I don’t want you to do it just for me,” she said.
“It wouldn’t be,” he said. “But I’d never met anyone that made me think I wanted to have children until you came along. I know you’d be a loving, kind mother. You’re gentle and sweet, and I think I’d like to see a little girl version of you running around our house.” He smiled.
Nicole’s heart was beating faster. “I’m not saying we have to do it anytime soon.”
“I wouldn’t mind trying right now,” he said, his eyes hungry as he looked her up and down.
“Red,” she giggled.
And then they heard someone on the Internet radio show mention “Red Jameson’s free falling company.” Both of them fell silent.
“You know every day,” the radio announcer said, “I like to talk a little bit about stocks that are going to have a lot of action. Sometimes it’s because they’re announcing positive earnings, or it could be a piece of street gossip.”
Red glared at his laptop. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“In this case,” the host went on, “it’s a mix of two pieces of information that have hit Wall Street. Red Jameson and his billion-dollar business, Jameson International, have rarely taken a wrong step since he started the company nearly a decade ago. But recently, things have turned ugly. For the first time last quarter, they posted earnings significantly below what was projected. And then, Jameson spent almost a hundred million dollars to acquire a German advertising firm, which was since reported to have lost nearly two-thirds of its top executives to European mogul Kane Wright. And now it’s being reported that Kane Wright’s firm has also stolen Jameson’s biggest German advertising client, and the company is on the brink of collapse. As a result, we expect that tomorrow’s trading will show a huge downturn for Jameson International’s already ailing stock price…”
Red turned the show off with a quick motion and got up from the table, muttering and swearing.