John shook his head in disgust, thinking what a schmuck he was. "No problem Michael. Have a great evening I'll see you at eight thirty sharp." After hanging up the phone, John sat down on the bed, suddenly very sad. He was glad for Jennifer that Michael was finally spending some time with her, but he wished it were himself that was having dinner with her, as selfish as that seemed. The longer he sat there, the more he didn't want to go out to dinner. It would be just his luck to pick the same restaurant that Jennifer and Michael did and then he would have to sit there looking at them together all night. He decided to order room service and then go to bed early so he could forget about his problems.
John came down and met Michael a few minutes before eight thirty after getting a cup of coffee from the lobby restaurant. The company driver picked them up again in front of the hotel. They arrived a few minutes later at the Rome office. They were scheduled to have a production scheduling meeting with most of the company's senior level people today.
They were escorted into a large conference room. John and Michael sat together in the middle of the long table as other men and a few women came in, most holding notebooks or laptop computers. The last two to enter were Vittoria and a man named Dino, he had met him at the first day's meetings also. He noticed that Vittoria was still wearing the green earrings that Michael had given her. Dino called the meeting to order. He went around the table and introduced all of the people and described their area of responsibility to Michael and John.
They discussed most of the details of the production schedule, Michael had done most of the answering of contract questions at first then it was John's turn as they discussed more technical points. They asked him about his visits to their manufacturing facilities. John assured them that everything was to his liking. They ended the meeting and everyone got up to stretch their legs as John walked over to get another cup of coffee. Several of the men came over to John and shook his hand and talked to him. In a few minutes Vittoria walked over to him.
She reintroduced herself to him. She spoke very good English with a nice Italian accent to it. Looking at her closely and watching her as she spoke, he understood why Michael had been attracted to her, she was very beautiful, but so was Jennifer. "It's very nice to have you here with Michael so that all of our technical questions can be answered quickly. I understand you have been doing a bit of sightseeing in your spare time. How do you find our city, is it good for you?"