Jim didn’t respond but chuckled at her.
“Why not?” she asked, a few moments before they came to the top floor, “I mean, it’s reputed that he knows everything. Therefore, he must be at least a century old. I’m hoping that if I make it to that age, I’ll get a God-like title as well.”
She missed Jim’s astonished expression because the doors opened and they walked out into the subdued atmosphere of the executive floor. It was dramatically different on this floor, Darcy thought as she made her way down the hallway behind Jim who obviously knew where Michael Attracelli’s office was. Her office was on the sixth floor and was filled with mostly technical people. They called to each other with their ideas or barged into offices unannounced to bounce ideas off of each other. Some people didn’t even bother with going to an office. They would just shoot ideas to a co-worker in the hallways. There was a great deal of joking and letting off of steam when the tensions rose or deadlines drew near.
On this floor, it was very quiet. The doors were mostly closed and people scurried about busily, looking very important and harried. She suspected that no one really joked on this floor and meetings were scheduled to discuss ideas, not tossed about while walking to get a cup of coffee. It was very serious business up here on the fifteenth floor.
They stopped in an impressive lobby-like area with a secretary quickly typing on a computer. She looked up when Jim entered and smiled her greeting. “He’s waiting for the two of you. Just go on in,” she said, waiving towards a double door that was open on one side.
“Thanks, Donna,” Jim said and nodded for Darcy to follow him through a set of closed double doors.
Jim knocked, but didn’t wait for a response before entering. They walked into a large office filled with modern, steel and glass furniture. Off to one side, a small grouping of brown leather chairs and a sofa surrounded a low coffee table. Jim stopped in the middle of the room, politely waiting for the man behind the desk to get off the phone.
Darcy was behind him, taking in the impressive office space. She was lucky to have a small round table in her office that she used for conferences with her technical leads but it was nothing like this, she thought, looking around the room and noting the panoramic view of the Washington, D.C. skyline. It was twilight so the sun was just on the horizon, setting down between the tall buildings and monuments of Washington, D.C.
“Jim, how are you?” a deep voice said.
Darcy looked up and felt her mouth drop open. The most incredibly gorgeous man she’d ever met in her life was walking towards Jim, his hand outstretched to shake Jim’s.
“Doing well, thanks. How about you?” Jim asked.
“Not bad,” he replied.
Darcy felt the man’s dark blue eyes move her way and snapped her mouth shut. But not in time. One dark eyebrow went up when he caught her shocked expression. Thankfully, the handsome man didn’t comment on her open mouthed expression.
Jim cleared his throat. “This is Darcy Madison. She has the great ideas I was telling you about earlier. Thanks for taking the time to hear her out,” Jim was saying.
“Great. I’m eager to hear them,” the gorgeous man said. “How about if we sit down?” he asked, waiving his arms to indicate that they should sit down the sofa and chairs versus the desk with chairs in front of it.
Darcy shook herself mentally. So he was stunning. What did she care? She was here to do a job and a handsome face can be seen on any magazine cover, she told herself.
They all sat down, then the two men turned to Darcy expectantly. Darcy blinked, realizing that they wanted her to start her arguments.
“Shouldn’t we wait for Mr. Attracelli?” she asked, trying to be diplomatic but not wanting to go through this twice.
After a pregnant pause, Jim laughed self consciously. “Um…Darcy, this is Michael Attracelli,” he said simply.
Darcy’s eyes snapped back to the man who was now trying to hide a smile. “Oh,” was all she could say while her face turned pink in her embarrassment. Her mind just wasn’t working. Well, who could think with that man staring at her so expectantly, she asked herself.
“I think Darcy was expecting an older man,” he explained to Michael.
“Ah,” was all he said and turned back to face Darcy, waiting expectantly.
Shaking her head, she pushed the man’s physical attributes aside, reminding herself that this man had turned down her idea for bidding on a very strategic project. It was something she felt confident the company could win and would place them in a good position for future work in an area she thought was not very well tapped yet. “Well, then. Here’s my idea for the project. I know this work is a little different than what we normally do, but if we go a little bit to the left in our processes, you’ll see that my ideas really will work” she stressed, warming to her topic.
“If you’ll turn to page three,” she said, handing them a copy of a briefing she’d done for Jim and some others last week, “you’ll see what I have in mind. If we don’t use the normal DOS operating system, then we can sidestep many of your concerns about….” Darcy explained, addressing each of the issues she’d heard about and how she would circumvent any problems.
She talked and answered questions for over an hour from both Jim and Michael, showing them that she had done her homework and knew the subject. What she was proposing was dramatically different from what she suspected the competitors would be offering but by going with a different operating system, she knew that ATI could do the job for much less money and create a much more stable system with double the flexibility. The down side would be that ATI would have to do most of the development work ahead of time in order to prove to the client that it would work. That created a huge risk. Not many companies, ATI included since they rejected going for this work initially, would put up thousands, potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars to work without a contract from a client with the hopes that they would be so impressed with the solution they would buy it after the fact.
The up side would be, if they won the work, they would be perfectly positioned for millions of dollars in contracts that would feed off the work.
She finally finished her briefing and sat there, waiting in the silence as Michael considered various aspects of her idea.
The silence was broken a moment later as Jim’s cell phone went off. He looked at the number on the screen and sighed. “I’m sorry, I need to take this. It’s a client,” he said and walked out of the office. She could hear him talking in the lobby, and then his voice trailed off as he moved down the hallway.