“But you can’t keep up this kind of pace. Believe me, I know. It’s why I backed off from my law practice. Don’t you want more balance in your life?”

“With the business growing so rapidly, I simply haven’t had time to hire programmers who are at my level. I’ve hired some key staff under me to take care of implementation and testing once the software’s written, but I haven’t had the time to interview or search for the talent that I need to do the projects like I do. I have a few software developers who take on pieces of the coding, but it’s just the basic stuff.

“The Knox Project is completely new territory. Once it goes live, my company is never going to be the same, and my life will change, drastically. As it is, the press is hounding Abby and the rest of the board of directors trying to get to me.”

“Don’t you do interviews?”

She shook her head. “Not my thing. I like my privacy. Whenever there’s a press conference or some kind of public engagement that requires someone from the company to speak, I send Evan. He’s co-CEO and loves the limelight and being the face of the company. But it’s the same thing that happened with Sean. People aren’t satisfied with talking to a figurehead. They want to talk to the person generating the success.

“Plus, my time is valuable. I hardly attend customer meetings, unless it’s absolutely necessary. I do most of the meetings via conference call or email. Whenever it’s necessary to go to a company site to look over a system, I usually sneak in unannounced, get what I need, and leave before upper management has a chance to find out I’m in the building. People love to talk and hold meetings that go on and on and cover the same ground. I learned early on an email that takes me five minutes to write usually takes care of something much better than an hour-long meeting.”

“I can relate. When I meet with clients, they want to go over things again and again. I mean, they’re paying for my time, so I’m happy to talk until they feel secure that I’m doing everything I can on their case. But when I’ve said the same thing five times, I’m ready for them to get out of my office and let me do my job.”

“Exactly. It doesn’t help that I started a side business, which took off immediately, and that just added to the speculation because no one knew where the work was coming from. I hide behind the company name. More recently, the foundation I started after Sean died has gotten a lot of press for our charitable work.”

“And Margaret knows nothing about any of this.” Luke sounded surprised, but he shouldn’t be.

“She doesn’t want to know anything about me.”

“The boys must be extremely impressed.”

“Not really. I’m just Mom. They have no idea of the success I’ve had. I don’t want them seeing their mother’s face plastered all over the Internet and in business magazines. Unfortunately, I’ve made it impossible to maintain that much longer. I’m attending a charity benefit at the end of the month and the press is expecting me. Abby calls it my coming-out party. I think it’s ridiculous, but it’s good publicity.”