ROMANCE: THE SHEIKH'S GAMES: A Sheikh Romance (40 page)

Another participant had just dialed in. "Good afternoon. May I have your name and title?"

"Bill McConnell, CEO."

"Thank you, Mr. McConnell, you are now checked into the sub-conference. Is there anything you need?"

"I was about to ask you the same question. Do you have everything you need?"

"Yes, thank you sir, I believe I do." The IR guy and call leader, Donnie Kingman, had spent ten minutes giving her updates to her script and griping about how much he hated earnings calls. She didn't say that, though. Rather she replied, "I have all the updates Mr. Kingman, and nearly all the participants have checked in. I expect the rest will be dialing in any moment now."

"Good. Good. And your name is?"

"Amanda." She could hear the scratch of pen on paper.

"I like to know so we can use your name during the call, Amanda" he explained. "I think it makes us seem friendlier, more personal."

"I agree, sir."

"This is your first time with Forlanie, isn't it? Are you new?"

"Yes, sir. And this is my first earnings call," she said, neatly avoiding the wider aspect of his question. It was her first week working as a conference operator. This was, in fact, her first really big, important call. She'd done a couple of inter-office calls for various companies, but that was just signing people in and making sure the right people got heard at the right time. This call was different, and though she'd never have admitted it to a stranger, particularly one who was paying her salary, Amanda was a little nervous.

"Don't let anyone rattle you. Sometimes the callers can be aggressive. Just be firm with them. Donnie will give you your cues. He's very good about that even if he does come across like a cranky bear."

"Good to know. Thank you." She did appreciate the pep talk and the humor. Mr. McConnell had a nice, baritone voice, and it calmed her.

"Good, well done. I'll let you go about your business, now, and talk to you on the other side."

"Thank you, sir."

Once she'd put him on music hold, Amanda went down her checklist of things to do. She double-checked the script, signed a few more people into the conference, and went over the company roster of speakers. It lacked a minute to the start time, and one of the management speakers still hadn't checked in with her. At ten she made a quick announcement about checking in more participants, and paged Donnie Kingman, a tenor with a light Texas accent and a gruff manner.

"Are you not ready to start?" he asked. He sounded miffed.

"Mr. O'Dowd hasn't checked in yet, Mr. Kingman." she told him. O'Dowd was the Chief Operations Officer.

"Oh for Chrissake, he's forgotten to dial in again. I'll take care of it."

A minute later the COO dialed into the sub conference, and Kingman said, "Let's get rolling. Time is money."

Amanda took a deep breath. "Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Forlanie Resort Group's twenty-fifteen fourth quarter and year-end earnings conference call," she said into her microphone. "At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the opening remarks, management will be available for questions. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. And now I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Donald Kingman, Director of Investor Relations for Forlanie. Please go ahead, Mr. Kingman."

"Thank you, Amanda," Kingman said, and Amanda switched off her mic and sat back with a sigh. She'd done it perfectly and had sounded very professional. She was grateful to have done a little voice-over work in commercials in the past. It had taught her how to read through practically anything.

She listened to the opening remarks, following the outline she'd been given. After Kingman spoke, Mr. McConnell took the floor. He had a nice voice, too, kind of dark and a little rough as if he'd just been sipping brandy. She was sensitive to voices because she'd done so much voice work over the last few years. Bill McConnell could have done voice-overs if he wasn't CEO of some big company. If he was ever desperate for money he could record sexy audio books. Not that a guy as wealthy as Bill McConnell would ever have to scratch for a living.

The financial guy spoke after McConnell. He had an unfortunate voice thanks to a combination of a heavy New York accent, and a tendency to speak much too fast. He also sounded kind of spitty to Amanda, the sort of guy who sprayed when he talked. By comparison to McConnell, the poor guy sounded like someone's idiot cousin.

Someone else spoke after Mr. Spitty, and then turned the call over to McConnell for a few final remarks. When he finished, she would be starting the question and answer session, so she perked up a bit.

"And now we'd like to open up the call to your questions," McConnell said. "Over to you, Amanda."

"Thank you, sir," she said. She gave the instructions and introduced the first caller in the queue. While she was checking in another research analyst, she heard McConnell's voice sharpen, and her attention snapped back to what was being said.

"I think we've answered that same question several times, Duncan. If you haven't got anything else, we need to move along, and give someone else a chance to ask a question."

The analyst kept on talking, becoming increasingly hostile and demanding.

Kingman paged her and said, "Cut off Duncan Lansdale and don't let him back into the queue."

"Yes, sir." Amanda hit the disconnect button and grabbed her list. "And the next call is from the line of..." She read the name and affiliation, and connected the caller. Her heart was racing, but she'd done just what she'd been asked. She felt like she was part of the team now.

The call went on for another quarter of an hour, though without any further incidents, until there were no more callers in her queue. Lansdale had dialed in twice after being disconnected, but Amanda simply closed the line on him.

"I'm showing no further calls at this time," she announced. "I'd like to turn the call back to Mr. McConnell for closing remarks."

"Thank you Amanda. And I'd like to thank..." She was almost there. The call was nearly over, and she hadn't made any gaffes. McConnell finished, and Amanda slipped back into the conference with a serene closing.

"That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for attending, and have a wonderful day." She clicked the music back on, and sat back with a sigh. That was it. She'd done it. Her first real conference call and she'd come through like a trooper.

Someone was paging her. "Yes? Hello?"

"It's Bill McConnell again. Thanks for all your help."

"It was my pleasure, Mr. McConnell."

"You're a very good operator."

Amanda could feel her face grow hot. "I appreciate that, sir."

"You have a good voice, too, trained. Are you an actress?"

“Not really. I’ve done a couple of commercial voice-overs, but nothing more."

"Do you have ambitions in that direction?” he asked.

“No. I’m content to use my voice when I need to, but the acting life isn’t really for me.”

There was an awkward pause. "Well, I wanted to say thank you, and well done."

"Thank, you sir. It was a pleasure."

He closed the connection. Amanda was surprised to find that it made her a little sad to hear him go. He had such a nice voice.

"Why are you staring at the strawberries?" Helen was looking over Amanda's shoulder. "Oh gosh, I can smell them from here. You should get some. I'm going to."

"I haven't been able to afford them for so long," Amanda said.

"All the more reason." Helen grabbed a box and inspected it. "They look nice, too. Nothing mushy on the bottom. That's the worst."

"Y'know," Amanda said as she chose a box of berries for herself. "I didn't really mind being poor, and I sure don't mind working. I think everyone needs to work. But I just hated working and being poor."

Helen smiled and nodded. She'd been there, too, but had moved on from waiting tables to a fairly well-paying job at an insurance company. They shared an apartment, and for months Amanda hadn't been able to do more than pay her share of the rent and utilities.

"Those days are over, sweetie. I have a good feeling about this operator gig."

It wasn't what Amanda had really wanted to do, but it paid a living wage, and the hours were pretty regular. There were worse ways to live. "Me too," she said. "Let's get some ice cream to go with these."

She had a long list of things she needed to buy with her first paycheck, most as basic as toilet paper and detergent. Helen argued with her, but Amanda insisted. "You've been paying for all that for months now, the whole time I was working at Crud-Mart. It's my turn."

"I don't really mind, Mandy."

"But I do."

"Okay, okay. But I'm buying the wine for dinner tonight. We have to celebrate your first paycheck!"

Helen had been an awfully good friend to Amanda, sharing what she had, taking up the slack without ever making Amanda feel small. When she cooked, she always cooked enough for several meals and then told Amanda, "I made way too much spaghetti; can you help me eat it?" or "I got the wrong kind of soup. Do you want it?" or just, "I just don't like leftovers very much; can you finish this?" Amanda had promised herself that one day she was going to do something super nice for Helen, something to say "thank you" for all the kindness.

And tonight she was going to make dinner. She was buying a roasting chicken, some new potatoes, and fixings for a big, beautiful salad. With Amanda's wine, it would be a feast. And there would be strawberries and ice cream for dessert.

Life was starting to seem good again.

On the way home Helen said, "So you're going to have to tell me all about the jobs you did. Do you have any stock tips? Were you privy to any insider information?" she teased.

"Buy low, sell high."

"Rude thing."

Amanda laughed. "Mostly it was me trying not to screw anything up. It's fairly dull stuff."

"You think of all that money being glamorous, and the people--"

"It's really not." Amanda told her about the Forlanie call, and imitated Mr. Spitty. Helen got to laughing so hard she could barely get her shopping bags up the stairs. "It was actually kind of interesting, though," she admitted. "They talked about their resorts; they have them all over, the Caribbean, Mexico, the Canadian Rockies, Hawaii, even in Japan and a couple of European spots. Very nice places. High end, you know?"

"Hey, maybe you can get an employee discount."

"Even if I worked for them I probably couldn't."

"Damn."

"I know, right? But it was kind of fun to listen to them talk about their resorts and the amenities at each one, like the spa they're building at their resort in Japan where you'll be able to bathe in thermal pools all winter, even with snow on the ground. I Googled it, and it's a really gorgeous area, but now I've forgotten the name of the town. It's outside Tokyo, I think, in the mountains."

"That sounds great. Hey, maybe someday, right?"

"Yeah, we can put that on our To Do list, right under World Peace." Amanda didn't say that she'd also looked up Bill McConnell, too, and had been a little disappointed to find some photos that suggested that he was about sixty. Nice looking and all, but not really fantasy material for her, though she knew a few women who would have been willing to overlook his age for the kind of money he must have had.

She and Helen had a nice dinner, cleaned up the kitchen, and put a DVD on. "Ah, this is the life," Helen observed.

"Right, stuck at home with me on Saturday night."

Helen shrugged. "Sometimes it's good to hang out with your girls, y'know. Anyway, I'm in no hurry to get back out there after Todd."

They both chugged the rest of the wine in their glasses. It was part of the Todd drinking game. One drink when his law firm was mentioned, two when the phrase "ambulance chaser" came up, and if anyone mentioned his name, they chugged. Helen said it was one way to make the memory of her time with him tolerable.

"Still, it's not time to settle down with cats."

"Oh you don't know that for sure. We all have our internal clocks, Mandy, and mine may be ticking down towards a comely Maine Coon, or a Siamese with shapely ankles."

"I'm still hopeful."

"And so you should be. You're only thirty. You're not over the hill yet, like me."

"You're only thirty-one!"

"A well-seasoned thirty one."

"You're a nut," Amanda told her, but it was said with great fondness.

When she arrived at work on Monday, Amanda was surprised to find a note from her supervisor stuck to her monitor. "Come see me," it read.

Okay
, she thought, and tried to tell herself that he was going to congratulate her for a great first week. She stowed her things, then went to his office.

"You wanted to see me?"

"Yeah, I did. What went on during the Forlanie call?"

"I... I'm sorry, I don't understand the question."

His already small eyes narrowed alarmingly. "I've gotten two calls about you, one from a research analyst who says you cut him off, and the other from the assistant to the CEO wanting to know your name. So what went on?"

"The CEO dismissed that analyst, and Mr. Kingman told me to disconnect him and not to allow him back in queue, so nothing that happened there was my doing, sir," she said, trying to sound firm and unruffled. She wasn't sure she was succeeding, but she kept her chin up, and forced herself to look Mr. Kolin in the eye. The small, evil-looking eye.

"And the CEO wanting to know your name?"

"He already knew my name. He asked me before the call began. He said he liked to use the operator's name to make the company seem friendlier. I have no idea why anyone would call to ask. Did they say anything else?"

"No, but that was enough to raise a red flag." Clearly Kolin didn't like being questioned in return.

"A red flag for no reason?"

"Now look, Missy--"

"Mr. Kolin, I didn't do anything I wasn't told to do. You can listen to the recording of the call if you don't believe me. I was told to get rid of that analyst, and I don't know why the Forlanie people called here."