Prep Work

Two days later I was in the city, the night before my meeting with corporate. I really wished I could have brought Jodi with me, but there was too much at risk. Bob Burns sent his personal driver to pick me up and take me to my hotel, so the presence of a young woman who was not my wife might have gotten noticed.

The driver and I made small talk on the trip in. Surprisingly he had seen the video of my talk at conference and was impressed. He also told me that he got to overhear a lot of conversations when he was hauling Mr. Burns around, and there were a lot of other folks who were just as impressed.

He dropped me off at a five star hotel right around the corner from the office, and within a few minutes I was standing alone in a hotel suite that was nicer than my house back in the suburbs.

I had just unfinished packing my clothes for the meeting when my phone rang. It was my secretary calling for a video conference. I was hoping for something sexual, but instead she had prepared a full, detailed report on the satellite office's performance from the last year. She had it right down to the penny, including the rather impressive reversal in numbers since I had been there.

It was in that moment that I fully came to understand that Jodi's expertise went much further than just the non-sex sexual things we had been doing since I hired her. She really was a genius when it came to business. How had they been wasting her talent on a minimal job?

By the time we were done, I practical had our performance numbers memorized.

"I think you are good to go," she said at last.

"I still wish that you were here," I told her. "I know you couldn't ride with me, but we could have gotten you an Uber."

"It's too risky," Jodi said. "I almost gave in and had sex with you the other day. It would have been so easy to just pull my panties to the side and...uh...no, I made a promise to you. We can't have what we both really want until we are both at the corporate office."

"We're almost there."

"We are," she said with a smile. "And you have no idea how proud I am of you. I knew you were special when we first met, but you are much more than what I even knew."

"Same to you," I said.

Suddenly there was a knock at my door.

"Oh, what perfect timing," Jodi said. "Since I can't be there, I have arranged a surprise for you. Just sit your iPad down on the nightstand and leave the camera on."

What now? I thought with a mixture of surprise, excitement and nervousness. I laid my iPad down and headed for the door.