The art of the deal.

Piya was the first to wake the next morning so by the time she woke me, breakfast had already been delivered to our room. The room was filled with the scent of freshly brewed coffee and my nose filled with Piya’s soft perfume as she climbed back into bed with me. I opened my eyes to her beautiful face shining love down upon me.

A smile lit my face as I wished good morning to Piya. She kissed me long before wishing me a good morning too.

“You seem in a happy mood today,” I told her.

“I am,” she agreed, “I feel as if a great weight has been lifted from my shoulders. I’d been dreading could happen when I told you everything. It was like a cold knife in my belly. I have been so scared that you’d be like my ex and I thought that was what guys would be like every time they found out.”

“Never. You’ve got me and you're stuck with me now. Through thick and thin,” I tell her.

“Aww, that almost sounds like a wedding vow,” Piya giggles at me.

“Through better and through worse,” I continue.

“Stop it,” she chides me.

“Through richer and through poorer!”

Piya halts my train of vows by biting my shoulder roughly and we divulge into some free-spirited play fighting. Eventually, I call a truce when Piya has managed to pin me to the bed with my head between her knees and is threatening to bite my half-aroused member through my boxers. A peace treaty is formed as we sit down at the small dining table in our room and make a start on breakfast.

As I take a bite of my toast and jam, I tell Piya, “after all the meeting today I definitely think you are going to be richer rather than poorer.”

“Both of us,” she counters, “I mean it when I said I wanted you to be my manager. I don’t have any clue on negotiations and salaries and all that. I’ve seen what you’ve done for Aor and her rum business so I know you’ll be a natural at this.”

“Yes, but I’d do this for you for free anyway. I don’t want you to pay me,” I tell her.

“We’re together. What’s mine is yours. I just want to me it official.”

“Ok but only a very small per cent. The money is yours, you’ve earnt it.”

“10 per cent.”

I try and argue Piya down but she absolutely refused to budge on this. Resigned I agree to do it for that much.

“The money isn’t important to me anyway. The only thing that matters to me is that I get to keep control over my research,” Piya informed me.

With those parameters in mind, we got ready and dressed then headed down to a media suit I had organised to use with the hotel yesterday

The first part of the day was arranged for representatives of the many different **** manufacturers to meet with Piya and discuss offers of employment or licensing arrangements for exclusive access to the four compounds she had discovered. Almost all of them offered to fly Piya business class or even first class to their laboratories and manufacturing facilities around the world in such places as Germany, France, America and India. Piya was offered numerous jobs as a small molecule **** discovery scientist or similar sounding job title. My jaw almost hitting the floor when salary offers were made in the range of 125 to 175 thousand US dollars. The companies also made bids for the **** patents. Offers ranging from 100 to 200 thousand dollars were made as well as royalty payments on the net and gross sales in the 1 to 3 per cent range. Considering Piya had found not one but four of these chemicals she had the potential for a huge payday to come.

One individual though made himself stand out for all the wrong reasons. Cocky and arrogant from the moment he walked into the room, his first few words were enough for Piya and I to decide on the spot that his company would never see a single bit of Piya’s research.

“Look I’m going to give you a cheque today for twenty-five thousand dollars for all your chemicals and you’re going to take it or my company will just find the **** themselves. You don’t have any ownership over the research so there’s nothing to stop us discovering it on our own so consider this a courtesy payment,” he said like he was the most important person in the world.

Piya practically bristled as she responded to the little fart of a man, “no ownership? When I first discovered these active ingredients, I registered the patents on each and every one of them, including the chemical process for refining them.”

“Well, we’ll just throw some money at your university and buy them off them. You just cost yourself twenty-five grand.”

“You could if I hadn’t signed a contract with my uni stating all the intellectual property from my research remained with me. I’m the one that brought the ‘Women’s Secret Friend’ and began researching it. I’m the one that keeps anything discovered,” Piya stormed at him.

His brain tried to process the fact that Piya had the foresight to lock all the rights to her research up in her name, leaving him sitting there speechless.

“And now you can leave and take your cheque with you,” Piya said dismissing him.

“But my time,” he tried to say.

“Is over,” I growled at him as I stood up, towering over him in my best bouncer look.

He hightailed it out of the media room then and Piya and I used his remaining time to duck out and grab a coffee. Feeling the need to refresh and clear our heads after the morning.

As we sipped our flat whites from their paper takeaway cups, I wanted to know what Piya thought of the mind-boggling offers made to her so far.

“I never did this for the money,” she told me, “you can give it to whoever you want for however much you want. Everything I did was to try and find a cure for myself and women like me who desperately want to have a baby but can’t.”

Knowing were Piya’s true heart lay, I knew the afternoon's meetings would be where her future work would take her.

The offers again were impressive. With Piya certain to receive her PhD and then able to perform with a full medical research doctorate. Salaries not much less than Candace would receive as an ER doctor were offered to Piya.

The stand out though was from a Japanese IVF clinic and research institution that offered Piya a position with them in Tokyo and a full research team working under her. The first year starting salary was 22 and a half million Yen and rising to 45 million within three years. Performance bonuses of another 45 million were available from the start depending on the successful application of any of her discoveries. I had to look up the exchange rate of Yen to US dollars on my phone to see where their offer sat in relation to others but it worked out to roughly 200 thousand a year, to begin with, and doubling plus the bonuses to boot.

It was an incredible offer but could I lose Piya to Japan?

We thanked the representative for his very generous offer and told him Piya would need some time to go over her options. He bowed low to us both which we copied, Piya a lot more gracefully than I, and left us to think things through.

In the elevator, on the way up to our room, I tried to get an idea of where Piya’s mind might be at. “So, what did you think of the meeting today?” I asked as we cuddle alone in the metal box.

“I think I want us to have dinner with Candace tonight,” she told me.

“I’m sure she would be happy to,” I said not pushing Piya to give her mind until she was ready. “Did you want to call her while we get ready?”

“Sure. I’ll do that,” Piya confirmed as the door opened to a bell chime on our floor.