Legal Prejuduce 3 - Lessons In Life

Chapter 23

Leaving Margie at home with the girls, Allie drove everyone else over towards the south and the headquarters of Aviemore Health. The plan was a lunch followed by a loosely structured two hour meeting for Cannon, Aviemore and their respective legal teams to meet and outline the areas they would work through. Simon Ettingham was travelling up from London to join them, and Max was interested to meet him in person. They arrived deliberately early so they could catch up with Simon at the hotel he was staying in that night for coffee before heading into lunch.

When they arrived Simon was already there and he stood up smiling to meet them. Chris was struck by how formal Simon was in comparison to the style he was used to, but he shook hands with them all warmly. They sat down in the lounge area and he said to Allie, "So how is it being home?" She smiled and answered, "It's always nice to visit, but home's California now because that's where all the people I care about are." Simon nodded slightly dazzled but also intrigued by this polished group, and wondering how they would work together. Nigel had out and out told him that Allie was manipulative and used her feminine charms to get Max and Daniel to do her bidding. He painted the two men as foolishly blind to her mediocre abilities, but Simon had been impressed so far by their interactions and had a feeling Nigel's view was driven by whatever personal animosity he had towards this girl. Max smiled and added, "We've made this a bit of a family trip because we've brought my wife and Dan and Allie's two daughters." Simon's face brightened, "Oh how lovely, how old? My three are twelve, ten and seven. All boys." Daniel sucked in a breath, "You have your hands full!" He caught Allie's eye making her face light up and said, "Allie and I have Emmie who's nearly ten and our little wild child Rose who's four." Simon didn't miss the looks that passed between Daniel and Allie and he was a little startled by the overt chemistry between them.

They'd brought the bigger hire car which was a seven seater so Simon jumped in the back seat next to Daniel while Chris took the very back row. Max was next to Allie in the front and he turned to tell Simon, "No matter how many times I come I can never get used to Allie's driving over here. I'm sure she tells the hire company to make sure they give us a shift so she can freak me out." Simon laughed and Allie turned to reverse saying, "I have to admit it's nice to do some proper driving with a clutch. I mean it's like driving a go cart back home." Simon laughed out loud in response and Allie said smiling, "Max would you put the post code into the satnav for me?" It was only a ten minute drive to Aviemore's headquarters and flagship hospital which were on the same site.

When they arrived and had signed in, they took their visitor passes and were shown into a large boardroom where lunch was being laid out at the back of the room. Richard Bittencourt, his finance lead Ben Rodriguez and Antonia who had taken the role of medical lead on the acquisition were already there. Taking their seats the Aviemore CEO Greg Parsons provided a brief welcome and suggested they went around the room for introductions before they ate lunch. Max smirked inwardly at the advantage flying out late Friday rather than Sunday had given them, noting how tired Richard, Ben and Antonia looked.

After lunch they moved into the business end of the meeting and the HRM legal team laid out the approach and scope for each of the agreed work streams. Max gave an introduction then passed to Dan and Allie to outline each of the work streams, with Simon taking the employment one and explaining the interlock between the US and UK law teams due to the complexity of the arrangements. They had a slightly nervous Chris run through one of the smaller work streams to build his experience. Feeling on firm ground and anchored by Max and Dan, Allie relaxed in spite of Antonia's presence. As this was an introductory session there wasn't the usual number of questions to answer, she unconsciously addressed the information to the appropriate directors of each area, on both sides of the deal. Max had a growing sense of satisfaction seeing that intuitively she was building relationships before the real work had even begun, and the Aviemore team noticeably relaxed towards Max and Dan as a result of Allie's familiar Britishness. He knew this would yield benefits as the deal wore on and the demands increased. Antonia listened intently, interjecting in her forthright way around the elements where her medical input would be required, and highlighting areas she'd like to cover on the tour they were taking around the medical side of the site the following day.