Free Breaking the Bro Code by Stefanie London Page B

street.
    Col’s phone vibrated, bringing his attention back to the present. ‘Hello?’
    ‘Hey, man.’ The voice of his friend and head of PR for Hillam Technologies came down the line.
    ‘Pete.’ Col grinned. The heavy New York accent always put a smile on his face. ‘Have you landed?’
    ‘I landed this morning, but it was stupid early.’ Pete yawned. ‘I’m thinking it’s beer o’clock by now. We should meet so I can go over the conference schedule with you.’
    ‘I’ll meet you at the hotel.’
    Half an hour later Col and Pete were seated at an open-air bar close to the hotel, two pints of pale ale and a full itinerary for the conference in front of them. Though Pete might have looked like the kind of guy who lived a laid-back lifestyle—with his overlong blond hair and lazy smile—he ran Col’s public relations department with the kind of militant attention to detail better suited to an intelligence operative.
    The itinerary was highlighted and labelled with colour-coded tabs. Pete’s precise handwriting added extra notes and instructions.
    Col took a swig of his beer. ‘It looks like you’re planning to break into Fort Knox.’
    ‘You don’t pay me to wing it.’ Pete’s eyes wandered as a waitress in a pair of tiny shorts walked past. ‘And this conference is a big deal. The kind of exposure we’re going to get is massive. This could be what helps us break into Asia.’
    Pete’s eyes glittered and Col thought to himself, for what must have been the hundredth time over the last five years, that he was glad to have met him. Hiring him was an even better decision.
    With the way he’d left things in Australia, Col’s friendship with Rich hadn’t exactly been in the best condition. As the years had crawled by they’d spoken less and less, and Col couldn’t even ask after Elise without her brother making a snide remark about broken promises. Pete had been Col’s first friend in America; he was the wacky guy who lived in the apartment next door and who was always spouting grand plans and ideas for business world domination.
    Turned out, some of those ideas were actually pretty lucrative. When Col’s previous PR manager had left to join Google he’d hired Pete and never once regretted it.
    ‘I can feel in my gut, man.’ Pete slapped his palm against the table, causing some of his beer to slosh over the edge of the glass. ‘Your keynote speech is going to set the tone for next year. I can see TED talk invitations, LinkedIn will be after you for their influencer program...’
    ‘Let’s take it one step at a time.’
    Close as they might be, Pete was unaware of Col’s issues with public speaking. He had assumed that, like many technologists, Col was a bit on the introverted side. But the two men often battled about whether or not Col should get more active in the media, and Pete was dogged in his attempt to turn Col and Hillam Technologies into the IT company of the social-media generation. Unfortunately for Col, that meant constant requests for him to appear in the public eye as not only the face of the company but as an industry personality.
    ‘How’s everything going with your dad’s stuff?’
    The sudden change of topic caught Col off guard and he clutched his beer for a moment while he thought how to answer the question.
    ‘It’s...’ he sighed ‘...getting there.’
    Pete chuckled. ‘That was a non-committal statement if I ever heard one. Don’t tell me your reluctance to talk has something to do with a certain female.’
    ‘A certain female?’ Col zeroed in on his friend. He’d never mentioned Elise before, at least not to anyone he worked with.
    ‘An ex-ballerina, perhaps?’
    ‘How do you know about that?’ He took another swig on his beer, wondering why his life was of so much interest to others. Couldn’t they just leave him alone to do his own thing?
    ‘That darling assistant of yours mentioned something about having to get all PI and find a phone number for