No More Mrs. Nice Wife (Eleanor) novel Chapter 561

At that moment, Garrison, who’d been looking for a chance to talk to Eleanor all evening, finally saw his opening. Spotting her standing beside Ian, he approached and asked politely, “Mr. Goodwin, may I borrow Miss Sutton for a few minutes?”

Eleanor paused, surprised, but Ian just chuckled lightly. “Of course,” he said.

She turned and walked with Garrison toward the floor-to-ceiling windows.

Garrison seemed excited, lowering his voice as he spoke to her. “Eleanor, two years ago I heard rumors about a neuroscience project involving brain-computer interface research. I had no idea you were among the first group of people working on it.”

Eleanor nodded. “Yes, back then the project was still in its theoretical stage.”

“That’s incredible! I heard you managed to help a paralyzed monkey stand up again. I can’t believe—”

She cut him off abruptly, frowning. “Who told you that?”

Garrison faltered, looking at her. “Mr. Goodwin told us.”

Eleanor’s breath caught, but she quickly composed herself. If Ian had already talked to Mr. Windsor about that experiment, then he must have learned about her research results from those years ago—that must have been why he first approached Mr. Windsor.

A lot of things that hadn’t made sense now seemed to fall into place after this meeting.

He had quietly uncovered the real reason Mr. Windsor had returned to the country, then offered to collaborate on Meridian Dynamics’ project with the military, even giving up the core interests and keeping only the civilian profits—all in order to persuade Mr. Windsor to let her stay at Meridian Dynamics.

Keeping her at Meridian Dynamics made sense; private, for-profit research projects were much better suited for international collaboration. If she’d joined a national research team, her work would have been far more restricted. Eleanor’s mind raced with realization.

The real reason Ian had gone to such lengths to keep her at Meridian Dynamics was because of her brain-computer research from two years earlier.

Even if Ian was willing to give up the core technology, the civilian applications would still be highly lucrative down the line.

Eleanor realized she’d underestimated him. He had done all of this because he already knew she’d nearly made a breakthrough—and that meant the timeline for that breakthrough could be moved forward.

In the end, Ian never made a deal that lost him money.

Eleanor glanced up at Ian, who was chatting with Mr. Black across the room. Sensing her gaze, Ian looked over. There was a fleeting trace of disdain in Eleanor’s eyes.

Ian caught it, his brows drawing together for a split second.

Later, at the guesthouse, Eleanor packed for the six o’clock flight back to Ashford City. This time, only she and Byron were returning; Ian still had business to take care of in Kingston.

Meridian Dynamics.

Eleanor had taken the wrong route on her way in and ended up running late.

By the time she arrived, the morning meeting had already begun, but Byron hadn’t started things yet—he seemed to be waiting for someone.

Faye sat in the conference room, glancing around and noticing that everyone present was an engineer connected to the brain-computer project. She leaned over to Joel Kingsley and murmured, “Joel, who is VP Chase waiting for?”

Joel shook his head. “No idea.”

Byron stood by the conference room door, checking his watch repeatedly, though his expression was calm and unhurried.

For Byron to be this patient, Faye thought, the person he was waiting for had to be someone truly important. Byron was usually known for his strict, no-nonsense attitude at work.

Just then, the conference room door opened and Eleanor stepped inside. She was dressed simply and professionally, her hair a little tousled, clearly having rushed to get there.

“Sorry, there was traffic,” she said to Byron.