Part 11: THE PRICE OF SUCCESS
The phone rings on the secretary's desk at Powers & Lambert.
"Hello, this is Powers & Lambert, how may I help you?" Barbara Richy answered the phone lines at the company. She was a tall black and big boned woman who ran the office like clockwork. She had a slight limp from injuries incurred during a fatal car accident some years ago in which she lost her husband of 20 years. She loved her job and was especially proud to be working for a successful minority company, which was reflected in her impeccable work. She had a natural affinity toward Elana and felt that she was almost like a daughter to her so she took great pains to make sure that everything worked smoothly and made Elana and Jonathon Lambert look good.
Charlotte was on the other line asking to speak to one of the partners. "Yes, this is Crealite, Inc. calling to speak with whomever is in charge of new contracts."
"Ah, that would be Ms. Powers. She should be available, could you hold, please?"
"Yes, thank you." Charlotte was put on hold as Barbara switched to Elana's line to ask her to take the call.
"Ms. Powers, there is a call for you on line one. It's from Crealite, Inc., would you like to take it or do you want me to take a message?"
Elana sat in her newly renovated office filled with cherry wood fixtures and plush hunter green carpeting. She was stunned at the company name Barb had iterated to her and could not imagine why Crealite would be contacting her. She only associated it with Sean Logan, the man from her distant past, which she could never have and thus had earnestly tried to erase from her memory.
"Ms. Powers, what would you like for me to do?"
"Oh, Barb, I'm sorry, uh... I'll take it. That was line one you said?"
"Yes"
Elana dropped the line to her secretary and hesitantly pushed the button for line one. Swallowing deeply before she answered she said, "Hello, this is Elana Powers, may I help you?"
"Hello, Ms. Powers. My name is Charlotte Braumly, and I am Mr. Logan's secretary here at Crealite. I have called to inform you that our board of directors has selected your company to perform our business reengineering and I would like to set up a meeting at your convenience to speak with Mr. Logan regarding these matters."
"Business reengineering?" Elana was confused, but at the risk of sounding as if she didn't know what she was talking about, she conceded and as she flipped through her Franklin daily planner she continued. "Ah, yes. You need a meeting time. Let me see here. Ok it seems that we will be available this Monday at around 8:30am."
"Mr. Logan generally does not get in until around 9:30am could we make it later?"
"Did you not just say that this is at our convenience? If it was otherwise, you should have indicated that."
"Um, yes I did say that, but most people don't start business until 9:00am so I thought, you would not want a meeting earlier than that." Charlotte was taken with Elana's brazenness and found that she was now on the defensive.
"Well, Monday morning at 8:30am is the most convenient for us. If your employer can not make it, please return the call and my secretary will arrange another meeting."
"Yes, I will inform Mr. Logan. When you come in Monday, please ask for Mr. Phillip Logan and you will be directed to his office."
"Thank you for calling." Elana said as she hung up and quickly began to rummage through the paperwork on her desk.
There she found a few RFP's that had been left on her desk to review. Evidently, these were proposals that her partner Jonathan Lambert had responded to in the past two weeks, while she was doing an independent annual audit of Kellogg. When she came across the RFP for Crealite, her heart stopped. She did not want to remember that name, but it was branded in her mind as sure as her own name was. She quickly got up from her seat and headed for Jon's office. Knocking on the door, she was beckoned to come in and she rushed straight toward him and slammed the packages hard on the edge of his desk.
"Why did you not inform me of what RFP's you were going to answer. You know we agreed that both of us would be reviewing these things as they came in?"
Jonathan Lambert sat elegantly in his high-back leather chair. He wore a pair of Bill Blass eyeglasses that rested in the middle of his nose as he looked up at Elana through his dark gray eyes. She stood before him expertly dressed as usual wearing her signature tailored suit. It was burgundy and the jacket had a dipping V neck front, buttoned down the middle and hugged her slim waist, then laid smoothly around her hips. The skirt hugged her thighs and stopped mid thigh to reveal her silk stocking legs and a pair of matching pumps. She wore her light brown hair up in a perfectly manicured French twist and Jon smiled at her as she flashed her fire-laden, light brown eyes at him in anger. She was the picture of beauty, sophistication and professionalism. Jon enjoyed these frequent spats with her where he could admire her without seeming too obvious. "Now Elana, how was I supposed to discuss it with you when, you were busy with the Kellogg account. You knew about these two, but the Crealite proposal came on the day you went on site, and as you see, the deadline was three days after I received it. What's the problem? These are great companies and we have an opportunity to put ourselves even more on the map if we get these three contracts and succeed."
"You are right John, but I would appreciate being informed of things like this. I don't like being left in the dark."
"You weren't left in the dark. I had the RFP's put on your desk."
"Yes, Jon, but as you said earlier. I've been out for the past two weeks, so I was not aware of any of them. You should call me or have Barb call me and give me an update or something. You can't just run things the way you want without consulting me and then make me play catch up when I come back off of a site. "
"Why are you so bent out of shape. You have the RFP's and you can now take the time to review them."
"Yes, Jon I can. In the meantime I have to do a full study of Crealite, Inc. because they just called and informed me that we have been awarded the contract to reengineer their business!"
"Really, that's great! Do you know how much that contract is for? What's your problem woman? This is good news."
"Yes, it is and even better news is that I'm not doing it, you are! Make sure you're there bright and early Monday morning at 8:30am." She turned to walk away as Jon caught her attention.
"Um Ms. Powers I'm afraid you are wrong about that, because I just started on the Coca-Cola account and I have to be in Terrytown, New York to do that."
"What are you talking about? That contract was not supposed to start until two months from now." Elana said as she turned around putting her hand on her hip, thinking that Jon was trying to pull her leg as he did often to get out of the accounts he had no interest in other than the money.
"Well apparently they wanted to get started sooner so they called last week and needed someone to come in and do the preliminaries. You weren't here, Sheila is on another project and Matthew is too inexperienced to send out alone, so I went myself.
"Man. I guess that leaves me stuck with this one." Elana was frustrated and couldn't fathom facing the Logan's again. She slumped down into the leather couch next to the door in Jonathan's office
Jonathan got up from his desk and walked over to the couch and sat down next to her, "What do you mean stuck? Crealite is a great company, why are you so down on it? Elana you really have got to lighten up some. You're such a ---a..."
Elana folded her arms at his pending description of her character. She had heard some of the names he and the other employees would call her and now she confronted him with it. "A stiff or is it uptight or is it one of the more decorative words you all use to describe me?"
"Look Elana, you just need to stop working so hard and have some fun or something. Life isn't all work and no play"
"If I left it up to you that's all I'd be doing and we wouldn't be where we are today. Somebody has to take things seriously around here."
"Yes, and I am going to continue to leave that part up to you because you do such a good job of it. I, on the other hand, try to be personable with people. So you see Elana we're both working together, just on different ends of the spectrum. You do things your way and I'll do things mine. It would help you out if you smiled a little more and stop worrying so much about other companies and how they don't want to accept us because we're a minority company. The last time, I looked we weren't doing so bad. The truth is companies recognize that we're a minority, but after they look at our accomplishments they have to throw their prejudices out the window so that they can improve their own bottom line."
"Yeah that's true Jon. I'm just cautious and I do worry about loosing everything sometimes because of this racial divide, but we are making great progress." She eased her defensiveness and smiled slightly at him, while he began to expound on why they were not going to loose anything, but continue to grow.
Elana couldn't ignore how strikingly handsome Jon was. He was tall and had a body built like a brick house. He dressed like he was made of a million dollars and when he spoke he commanded attention. His dark gray eyes were a striking contrast to his flawless light brown skin. Any woman would be happy to claim him for her own and many women had tried. He was a looker, but he knew it and took advantage of it at every opportunity. Elana recognized this about him right away because every secretary she hired, Black, White, Chinese, Portuguese, it didn't matter, would eventually start riding in to work with Jon. This is why she hired Barb because she needed someone who could handle administration without being preoccupied about 'why Jon wasn't in yet' or 'who that woman was calling Jon'. He was one of only a few men, Elana found herself attracted to since Sean, but he like all the others would never reach her heart and she did not want to complicate their business relationship with a personal one. Since the inception of their partnership he had pursued her, but she continually resisted him in hopes that he would eventually forget about it, but it hadn't happened yet.
Moving in closer to her on the couch, Jon leaned in and said, "Now what you need is a boyfriend to help relieve you of some of that stress. I'd be happy to help you out with this. In fact I am so turned on by you right now that..."
Before he could finish, Elana had jumped up and was at the door. "You know our rules on dating partners, Jon and we will not be breaking them any time soon."
"As far as I remember those were your rules. That's ok. You just run on because I know you want me and it's just a matter of time Elana." He said with a sly grin teasing her.
"Don't hold your breath because I don't want to have to look for another partner." She said as she walked out of his office and slammed the door.
Barbara noticed Elana's frustration and stopped her before she entered her office.
"Is that Jon trying to get in your business again?"
"You know it Barb." Elana said as she stopped at Barb's desk area and put her elbows on the counter. "What am I going to do about him? He can be so forward. I've tried everything to let him know I'm not interested, but he just turns every situation around to him and I getting together."
"He ain't nothin' but a man, Elana and whenever he's around a pretty woman he can't help himself. It's like an instinct he has. I don't think he ever learned to turn it off, he just follows it where ever it leads him."
"Well, I wish it would stop leading him to me."
"You can do something about that, you know."
"I know, I know. Get myself a man and he'll back off. You always tell me that."
"It don't make no sense for you to be by yourself Elana. You're an attractive girl and you have a lot to offer a man. I've only seen you go on a handful of dates since I've been here these last 5 years and never with the same guy three times. What are you holding out for?"
"I don't know. I just can't click with men. I see them as a threat to my progress. When I think about being committed to a man I see some of my freedom being taken away and I have to be able to do what I have to do without worrying about whether someone else will think it's ok or not. I guess I'm just too independent right now."
"Well you ain't getting no younger, honey just meaner. It seems like you just haven't found the right man. When you do, you'll be looking for reasons to be with him and make him love you and all of this success you're seeking won't mean nothin', unless he's happy. I hope you find that soon. And when you do, hold onto it and cherish it because you never know how much time the good Lord will give you."
"I don't know sometimes if the Lord is going to give that to me at all Barb. I think I'm destined to be by myself."
"There is no predestination in life because life is what you make it and God doesn't program us to live a certain way. He gives us free will to make things happen for ourselves, so you have the potential to find a good man. You got a good head on your shoulders and you've proven that you aren't gonna let no man take advantage of you, but you need to also, look for the good in men and experience the joys a man can bring in your life. It ain't natural for a pretty young woman like you to deny herself those joys, if you know what I mean?" Barb winked at Elana and they both snickered at her comment.
"Yeah, I know what you mean and on that note let me get back to work. I'm going to be so busy all weekend on this new account so could you please hold all of my calls,
and I'll return them on Monday afternoon or afterwards."
Barb agreed and Elana went back to her office. She sat in her chair and turned to look out the window contemplating what she and Barb had talked about. She wanted someone in her life and she also wanted children one day. She was 30 years old and it had been too long since a man held her in his arms. Even though she had become self sufficient, she had sacrificed her womanhood for success. At first there was the grueling schoolwork and her determination to be the best and to prove to herself that she could do it. Then there was graduate school where she received her MBA and passed the CPA exam, both while working as a junior accountant in the accounting department of her father's company. Again her time was filled with studies and hard work and thus no time for a relationship.
There was one attempt to have love, but she messed it up. She remembered dating Henry Jamison during her last year at the University of Pennsylvania where she attended graduate school. He was studying for his Ph.D. in psychiatry and worked at her father's company as a real estate agent in Philadelphia. He would have been the perfect man for her and she had decided to surrender her virginity to him, but during their first time together, all she could think about was Sean. As Henry devoured her body under his soft kisses she remembered the brief interlude she and Sean had shared and suddenly Henry disappeared in her thoughts and Sean consumed her. As she anticipated Henry's entrance into her celibate body she called Sean's name and said she loved him. Needless to say Henry went limp and was unable to perform, knowing that he was not the one she was in love with. That was the end of that. Afterwards Elana went into a deep depression about leaving Sean and buried herself again in her school and work to hide her anguish. Many times she fought herself to keep from calling Sean, so she never did because of a promise she had made to protect him.
Now she was to come face to face with the man who had been instrumental in her departure and she wondered how she would hold up. Then there was the question of how would she react if she saw Sean again. She reasoned that Sean had to be married with a few kids by now so that he could carry on the infamous 'Logan Legacy' as they called it.
As she settled on this thought, Elana knew she would have no problem keeping her composure because if there was one thing that she did not mess with that would be another woman's man and surely Sean belonged to someone. Elana convinced herself that Sheridan Winthrop probably had finally gotten her claws into him because after all she was always all over him during high school and afterwards. If it was not Sheridan then it definitely was someone else. Elana also reasoned that actually seeing Sean and knowing that he had a family would probably allow her to have some closure and possibly open her up to be able to find someone herself without comparing them to Sean.
Now reinvigorated by her personal deception, she went to work on learning everything there was to know about Crealite and preparing a strategy to get the work done as fast as she could so that she could finally close that chapter of her life and move on to find a man who she could love as much as she had loved Sean Logan
The phone rings on the secretary's desk at Powers & Lambert.
"Hello, this is Powers & Lambert, how may I help you?" Barbara Richy answered the phone lines at the company. She was a tall black and big boned woman who ran the office like clockwork. She had a slight limp from injuries incurred during a fatal car accident some years ago in which she lost her husband of 20 years. She loved her job and was especially proud to be working for a successful minority company, which was reflected in her impeccable work. She had a natural affinity toward Elana and felt that she was almost like a daughter to her so she took great pains to make sure that everything worked smoothly and made Elana and Jonathon Lambert look good.
Charlotte was on the other line asking to speak to one of the partners. "Yes, this is Crealite, Inc. calling to speak with whomever is in charge of new contracts."
"Ah, that would be Ms. Powers. She should be available, could you hold, please?"
"Yes, thank you." Charlotte was put on hold as Barbara switched to Elana's line to ask her to take the call.
"Ms. Powers, there is a call for you on line one. It's from Crealite, Inc., would you like to take it or do you want me to take a message?"
Elana sat in her newly renovated office filled with cherry wood fixtures and plush hunter green carpeting. She was stunned at the company name Barb had iterated to her and could not imagine why Crealite would be contacting her. She only associated it with Sean Logan, the man from her distant past, which she could never have and thus had earnestly tried to erase from her memory.
"Ms. Powers, what would you like for me to do?"
"Oh, Barb, I'm sorry, uh... I'll take it. That was line one you said?"
"Yes"
Elana dropped the line to her secretary and hesitantly pushed the button for line one. Swallowing deeply before she answered she said, "Hello, this is Elana Powers, may I help you?"
"Hello, Ms. Powers. My name is Charlotte Braumly, and I am Mr. Logan's secretary here at Crealite. I have called to inform you that our board of directors has selected your company to perform our business reengineering and I would like to set up a meeting at your convenience to speak with Mr. Logan regarding these matters."
"Business reengineering?" Elana was confused, but at the risk of sounding as if she didn't know what she was talking about, she conceded and as she flipped through her Franklin daily planner she continued. "Ah, yes. You need a meeting time. Let me see here. Ok it seems that we will be available this Monday at around 8:30am."
"Mr. Logan generally does not get in until around 9:30am could we make it later?"
"Did you not just say that this is at our convenience? If it was otherwise, you should have indicated that."
"Um, yes I did say that, but most people don't start business until 9:00am so I thought, you would not want a meeting earlier than that." Charlotte was taken with Elana's brazenness and found that she was now on the defensive.
"Well, Monday morning at 8:30am is the most convenient for us. If your employer can not make it, please return the call and my secretary will arrange another meeting."
"Yes, I will inform Mr. Logan. When you come in Monday, please ask for Mr. Phillip Logan and you will be directed to his office."
"Thank you for calling." Elana said as she hung up and quickly began to rummage through the paperwork on her desk.
There she found a few RFP's that had been left on her desk to review. Evidently, these were proposals that her partner Jonathan Lambert had responded to in the past two weeks, while she was doing an independent annual audit of Kellogg. When she came across the RFP for Crealite, her heart stopped. She did not want to remember that name, but it was branded in her mind as sure as her own name was. She quickly got up from her seat and headed for Jon's office. Knocking on the door, she was beckoned to come in and she rushed straight toward him and slammed the packages hard on the edge of his desk.
"Why did you not inform me of what RFP's you were going to answer. You know we agreed that both of us would be reviewing these things as they came in?"
Jonathan Lambert sat elegantly in his high-back leather chair. He wore a pair of Bill Blass eyeglasses that rested in the middle of his nose as he looked up at Elana through his dark gray eyes. She stood before him expertly dressed as usual wearing her signature tailored suit. It was burgundy and the jacket had a dipping V neck front, buttoned down the middle and hugged her slim waist, then laid smoothly around her hips. The skirt hugged her thighs and stopped mid thigh to reveal her silk stocking legs and a pair of matching pumps. She wore her light brown hair up in a perfectly manicured French twist and Jon smiled at her as she flashed her fire-laden, light brown eyes at him in anger. She was the picture of beauty, sophistication and professionalism. Jon enjoyed these frequent spats with her where he could admire her without seeming too obvious. "Now Elana, how was I supposed to discuss it with you when, you were busy with the Kellogg account. You knew about these two, but the Crealite proposal came on the day you went on site, and as you see, the deadline was three days after I received it. What's the problem? These are great companies and we have an opportunity to put ourselves even more on the map if we get these three contracts and succeed."
"You are right John, but I would appreciate being informed of things like this. I don't like being left in the dark."
"You weren't left in the dark. I had the RFP's put on your desk."
"Yes, Jon, but as you said earlier. I've been out for the past two weeks, so I was not aware of any of them. You should call me or have Barb call me and give me an update or something. You can't just run things the way you want without consulting me and then make me play catch up when I come back off of a site. "
"Why are you so bent out of shape. You have the RFP's and you can now take the time to review them."
"Yes, Jon I can. In the meantime I have to do a full study of Crealite, Inc. because they just called and informed me that we have been awarded the contract to reengineer their business!"
"Really, that's great! Do you know how much that contract is for? What's your problem woman? This is good news."
"Yes, it is and even better news is that I'm not doing it, you are! Make sure you're there bright and early Monday morning at 8:30am." She turned to walk away as Jon caught her attention.
"Um Ms. Powers I'm afraid you are wrong about that, because I just started on the Coca-Cola account and I have to be in Terrytown, New York to do that."
"What are you talking about? That contract was not supposed to start until two months from now." Elana said as she turned around putting her hand on her hip, thinking that Jon was trying to pull her leg as he did often to get out of the accounts he had no interest in other than the money.
"Well apparently they wanted to get started sooner so they called last week and needed someone to come in and do the preliminaries. You weren't here, Sheila is on another project and Matthew is too inexperienced to send out alone, so I went myself.
"Man. I guess that leaves me stuck with this one." Elana was frustrated and couldn't fathom facing the Logan's again. She slumped down into the leather couch next to the door in Jonathan's office
Jonathan got up from his desk and walked over to the couch and sat down next to her, "What do you mean stuck? Crealite is a great company, why are you so down on it? Elana you really have got to lighten up some. You're such a ---a..."
Elana folded her arms at his pending description of her character. She had heard some of the names he and the other employees would call her and now she confronted him with it. "A stiff or is it uptight or is it one of the more decorative words you all use to describe me?"
"Look Elana, you just need to stop working so hard and have some fun or something. Life isn't all work and no play"
"If I left it up to you that's all I'd be doing and we wouldn't be where we are today. Somebody has to take things seriously around here."
"Yes, and I am going to continue to leave that part up to you because you do such a good job of it. I, on the other hand, try to be personable with people. So you see Elana we're both working together, just on different ends of the spectrum. You do things your way and I'll do things mine. It would help you out if you smiled a little more and stop worrying so much about other companies and how they don't want to accept us because we're a minority company. The last time, I looked we weren't doing so bad. The truth is companies recognize that we're a minority, but after they look at our accomplishments they have to throw their prejudices out the window so that they can improve their own bottom line."
"Yeah that's true Jon. I'm just cautious and I do worry about loosing everything sometimes because of this racial divide, but we are making great progress." She eased her defensiveness and smiled slightly at him, while he began to expound on why they were not going to loose anything, but continue to grow.
Elana couldn't ignore how strikingly handsome Jon was. He was tall and had a body built like a brick house. He dressed like he was made of a million dollars and when he spoke he commanded attention. His dark gray eyes were a striking contrast to his flawless light brown skin. Any woman would be happy to claim him for her own and many women had tried. He was a looker, but he knew it and took advantage of it at every opportunity. Elana recognized this about him right away because every secretary she hired, Black, White, Chinese, Portuguese, it didn't matter, would eventually start riding in to work with Jon. This is why she hired Barb because she needed someone who could handle administration without being preoccupied about 'why Jon wasn't in yet' or 'who that woman was calling Jon'. He was one of only a few men, Elana found herself attracted to since Sean, but he like all the others would never reach her heart and she did not want to complicate their business relationship with a personal one. Since the inception of their partnership he had pursued her, but she continually resisted him in hopes that he would eventually forget about it, but it hadn't happened yet.
Moving in closer to her on the couch, Jon leaned in and said, "Now what you need is a boyfriend to help relieve you of some of that stress. I'd be happy to help you out with this. In fact I am so turned on by you right now that..."
Before he could finish, Elana had jumped up and was at the door. "You know our rules on dating partners, Jon and we will not be breaking them any time soon."
"As far as I remember those were your rules. That's ok. You just run on because I know you want me and it's just a matter of time Elana." He said with a sly grin teasing her.
"Don't hold your breath because I don't want to have to look for another partner." She said as she walked out of his office and slammed the door.
Barbara noticed Elana's frustration and stopped her before she entered her office.
"Is that Jon trying to get in your business again?"
"You know it Barb." Elana said as she stopped at Barb's desk area and put her elbows on the counter. "What am I going to do about him? He can be so forward. I've tried everything to let him know I'm not interested, but he just turns every situation around to him and I getting together."
"He ain't nothin' but a man, Elana and whenever he's around a pretty woman he can't help himself. It's like an instinct he has. I don't think he ever learned to turn it off, he just follows it where ever it leads him."
"Well, I wish it would stop leading him to me."
"You can do something about that, you know."
"I know, I know. Get myself a man and he'll back off. You always tell me that."
"It don't make no sense for you to be by yourself Elana. You're an attractive girl and you have a lot to offer a man. I've only seen you go on a handful of dates since I've been here these last 5 years and never with the same guy three times. What are you holding out for?"
"I don't know. I just can't click with men. I see them as a threat to my progress. When I think about being committed to a man I see some of my freedom being taken away and I have to be able to do what I have to do without worrying about whether someone else will think it's ok or not. I guess I'm just too independent right now."
"Well you ain't getting no younger, honey just meaner. It seems like you just haven't found the right man. When you do, you'll be looking for reasons to be with him and make him love you and all of this success you're seeking won't mean nothin', unless he's happy. I hope you find that soon. And when you do, hold onto it and cherish it because you never know how much time the good Lord will give you."
"I don't know sometimes if the Lord is going to give that to me at all Barb. I think I'm destined to be by myself."
"There is no predestination in life because life is what you make it and God doesn't program us to live a certain way. He gives us free will to make things happen for ourselves, so you have the potential to find a good man. You got a good head on your shoulders and you've proven that you aren't gonna let no man take advantage of you, but you need to also, look for the good in men and experience the joys a man can bring in your life. It ain't natural for a pretty young woman like you to deny herself those joys, if you know what I mean?" Barb winked at Elana and they both snickered at her comment.
"Yeah, I know what you mean and on that note let me get back to work. I'm going to be so busy all weekend on this new account so could you please hold all of my calls,
and I'll return them on Monday afternoon or afterwards."
Barb agreed and Elana went back to her office. She sat in her chair and turned to look out the window contemplating what she and Barb had talked about. She wanted someone in her life and she also wanted children one day. She was 30 years old and it had been too long since a man held her in his arms. Even though she had become self sufficient, she had sacrificed her womanhood for success. At first there was the grueling schoolwork and her determination to be the best and to prove to herself that she could do it. Then there was graduate school where she received her MBA and passed the CPA exam, both while working as a junior accountant in the accounting department of her father's company. Again her time was filled with studies and hard work and thus no time for a relationship.
There was one attempt to have love, but she messed it up. She remembered dating Henry Jamison during her last year at the University of Pennsylvania where she attended graduate school. He was studying for his Ph.D. in psychiatry and worked at her father's company as a real estate agent in Philadelphia. He would have been the perfect man for her and she had decided to surrender her virginity to him, but during their first time together, all she could think about was Sean. As Henry devoured her body under his soft kisses she remembered the brief interlude she and Sean had shared and suddenly Henry disappeared in her thoughts and Sean consumed her. As she anticipated Henry's entrance into her celibate body she called Sean's name and said she loved him. Needless to say Henry went limp and was unable to perform, knowing that he was not the one she was in love with. That was the end of that. Afterwards Elana went into a deep depression about leaving Sean and buried herself again in her school and work to hide her anguish. Many times she fought herself to keep from calling Sean, so she never did because of a promise she had made to protect him.
Now she was to come face to face with the man who had been instrumental in her departure and she wondered how she would hold up. Then there was the question of how would she react if she saw Sean again. She reasoned that Sean had to be married with a few kids by now so that he could carry on the infamous 'Logan Legacy' as they called it.
As she settled on this thought, Elana knew she would have no problem keeping her composure because if there was one thing that she did not mess with that would be another woman's man and surely Sean belonged to someone. Elana convinced herself that Sheridan Winthrop probably had finally gotten her claws into him because after all she was always all over him during high school and afterwards. If it was not Sheridan then it definitely was someone else. Elana also reasoned that actually seeing Sean and knowing that he had a family would probably allow her to have some closure and possibly open her up to be able to find someone herself without comparing them to Sean.
Now reinvigorated by her personal deception, she went to work on learning everything there was to know about Crealite and preparing a strategy to get the work done as fast as she could so that she could finally close that chapter of her life and move on to find a man who she could love as much as she had loved Sean Logan