Scandalous (15 page)

The truth was that while Jackson Dupree had the charm of the devil when he wanted to, and was undeniably good at his job, he could also be insufferably arrogant. At twenty-eight, Jackson was a decade younger than the youngest Wrexall MD, but he’d never made so much as a token effort at humility. Swaggering into the office at ten or eleven in the morning, having clearly just rolled out of some model’s bed, he would typically put in a few hours of phone calls (at least half of them to women), before taking off for some spurious lunch meeting from which he frequently never returned. The fact that he made as much money as his superiors while blatantly putting in a fraction of the effort did not endear him to anyone.

Tonight, reading the company statutes, Jackson had a rare moment of self-awareness.
I fucked this up. All twelve of them hate me.
But he didn’t dwell on it. Getting out a pen and paper, he made a quick calculation. There were two weeks to go until his board appointment was supposed to become official.
How much more revenue do I need to bring in to stop the veto?

He wrote down the number. It was huge. Short of selling a hotel chain for twice what it was worth, he had no chance of…a slow smile spread over Jackson Dupree’s face. He picked up the phone.

Bob Massey stretched out his short legs, leaning back smugly in his leather-backed chair. Today was the day he was going to nail that arrogant little turd Dupree’s balls to the floor. Jackson was late for the meeting as usual, but this time Bob Massey didn’t care. Nothing could dim the pleasure he was going to have in bursting the boy’s bubble once and for all.

At first Bob Massey had worried he might not have been able to persuade the whole board to back him. Especially Lucius Monroe, the chairman. Lucius was an old friend of Jackson’s father, Walker. Doing the dirty on Walker Dupree’s only son might make things a little awkward at the golf club. Then again, it might not. Old man Dupree was said to be wildly disapproving of his son’s dilettantism, however much he might love him. But Lucius, like the others, had needed no persuading.

“The boy’s a liability. He’s crass, he’s flashy. Did you see that piece on page six last week? About Jackson driving away naked from Senator Davis’s mansion?”

“Oh God, yes.” Dan Peters frowned disapprovingly. “The senator came home to find Dupree in bed with his wife
and
the Puerto Rican housekeeper. At it like rabbits, the three of them. Davis came at him with a shotgun, apparently.”

“I don’t blame him. Wasn’t Jackson dating the daughter at one point? Lorna? Lorretta?”

“Lola. Lola Davis. Yeah. That was the week before.”

Jackson’s embarrassing public sexploits gave the board the moral high ground. The company statutes gave them the legal high ground. But everyone knew the real reason behind Bob Massey’s coup: Jackson Dupree was an insufferable, arrogant prick. This would be the last day they’d have to put up with his entitled, self-satisfied swagger. The last day they would have to hear their secretaries salivating over how much they wanted to go to bed with him. The last day…

“Sorry I’m late.” Jackson loped into the boardroom with his usual sheepish grin. He was wearing torn drainpipe jeans, a vintage T-shirt, and a black Spurr jacket. His dark hair was even more wildly disheveled than usual, and a dark shadow of stubble matched the circles under his eyes. He couldn’t have looked more postcoital if he’d come in wrapped in a sheet and holding a used condom. “Rita Halston got into town last night. She needed a lot of entertaining.”

Twelve pairs of envious eyes bored into Jackson as he took his seat. Rita Halston was a well-known “adult entertainment” actress. There wasn’t a man in America who hadn’t fantasized about banging Rita, and the Wrexall board members were no exception. Her body was a Manga cartoon made flesh, and her face, with those ludicrously full lips and innocent Bambi-brown eyes, made Angelina Jolie look sexless. Since she’d bought a string of West Village townhomes last year, Rita Halston was also officially a Wrexall client. Specifically, she was Jackson’s client, which meant spending the morning in bed with her could be classified as “work.”

Gloat while you can, jerk-off
, thought Bob Massey.
By the end of this meeting we’ll have wiped that smile off your face.

Lucius Monroe launched into the order of business. Most of Wrexall’s profits came from US commercial real estate:
time-share condominiums in Florida; strip malls and business centers across the country in Denver, Dallas, Atlanta, Seattle; prime retail in Manhattan and Beverly Hills. Occasionally they did residential work, like Jackson’s acquisitions for Rita Halston, or took pieces of real estate deals abroad, in Europe or Asia. Around the table, each board member updated the group on his division’s progress. At the end of the meeting, Jackson’s accession to the board would be formally ratified.
Or so he thinks.
It was all Bob Massey could do to not rub his hands together with glee.

At last Darryl Jeffries finished his deathly dull update on the latest retail deal. It was time. Bob Massey glanced triumphantly at Jackson. He was furious to see that the boy had fallen asleep at the table and was snoring quietly with his head in his hands.

“Are we boring you, Mr. Dupree?” Lucius Monroe’s voice shook with anger.

“Huh? Oh, sorry.” Jackson grinned disarmingly. “I must have nodded off. Is it time yet, for the big announcement? I guess we should get this over with. So, I’m very grateful to all of you, yada yada yada, it’s a huge honor and all that. But I’d
really
like to get back to bed.”

Prick.

Bob Massey stood up. “Actually, Jackson, there’s been a change of plans.” The smile he’d been suppressing for the last hour and a half spread across his face now like a fungus. “You may not be aware of this, but in the company’s founding statutes there are a couple of stipulations concerning your appointment to the board.”

“There are?” Jackson feigned ignorance.

“I’m afraid so. One of them concerns the ratio of your revenues to earnings.”

“You don’t say. Well, what does it say?”

Bob Massey lifted a piece of paper from the pile in front of him. He began to read, slowly, savoring every word. Around the table, his colleagues smiled and nodded. By the time Bob had
finished, they were positively glowing with triumph. “I have your numbers here, Jackson. And I’m sorry to say, they don’t look good.”

Lucius Monroe got to his feet. “Well, in the light of this, I suppose it’s my duty to put Jackson’s promotion to a vote. Would all those in favor of appointing Jackson Dupree to full membership of this board, with immediate effect, please raise their hands now.”

Nobody moved.

Bob Massey looked as if he might spontaneously combust with joy.

“I see. And all those against?”

Twelve hands shot into the air.

“Well,” Lucius Monroe sat down again, “I realize this must be quite a shock for you, Jackson. You’ll need some time to consider your options. Whether you wish to continue at Wrexall, in a more junior position of course, or…”

“If I could just interrupt you there, Lucius.” Jackson got calmly to his feet. “No discredit to the detailed research that you’ve obviously done, Bob.” He smiled sweetly at Massey. “But I think you’ll find you’ve made a small error in your figures.” The door opened, and Liana sashayed into the room, carrying twelve newly bound documents. “Thank you, angel.” Jackson kissed her on the cheek, eliciting a blush of pleasure. He passed the documents around the table.

“What’s this?” Bob Massey snarled. He’d been over those figures hundreds, thousands of times. There was no mistake.

“A new transaction I’ve been working on, turning around a chain of failing beach hotels in Hawaii. Great land, crappy businesses. I didn’t tell you because I wasn’t sure I’d be able to pull it off. But as you can see, it’s a whopper. Two hundred and eighty-five million dollars, to be precise.”

Jackson watched as the twelve men turned the pages. With each line they read, more color drained from their faces. Fucking
Rita Halston last night had been fun. But it was nothing compared to this.

“But how…” spluttered Dan Peters.

“This price…it makes no sense,” said Darryl Jeffries. “Why would anyone pay that for these hotels? They’ve been making a loss for five years.”

“Yes. It
was
rather a good price, wasn’t it?” Jackson beamed. “I had to put in a lot of…what should I call it?
Groundwork.
Yes. A lot of groundwork with the buyer. But she was happy to do the deal in the end.”

She. Of course it was a she.

Bob Massey’s face had turned a color that Jackson had never seen before. He was pretty sure it didn’t occur in nature.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said through tight lips. “It’s too late. The deadline for your revenues to improve was this morning. There’s no way the funds could have cleared in that time.”

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” said Jackson. “But Alana’s been terribly organized about it all. We closed the deal on Wednesday. The money hit Wrexall’s account at eleven o’clock last night.”

“Alana?” Lucius Monroe looked up. “You don’t mean Alana Davis? Senator Davis’s wife?”

“That’s right.” Jackson smiled. “It turns out she’s hugely wealthy in her own right. Why? Do you know her? I’m meeting her tonight, as it happens, for a celebration dinner. I’ll give her your best, shall I?”

Later that night, in bed at Jackson’s apartment, Alana Davis closed her eyes and tried to remember the last time she had felt so alive. Feeling Jackson’s huge dick inside her and his powerful thighs clamped around her own, rippling with strength and power and virility and
youth
, she gasped with pleasure, surrendering to her third orgasm of the night.

“That was incredible, baby,” she purred.

“You’re incredible,” said Jackson, nuzzling into her neck.

At forty-five Alana Davis had believed that the days of mind-blowing sex were behind her. But in the space of a few short weeks Jackson Dupree had changed all that. On the nightstand, her mobile phone started to buzz. Alana turned it off.

“The senator?”

“No. My lawyer. He’s been getting dreadfully antsy about this hotel deal. You are going to do that buyback on Monday, aren’t you darling?”

“Of course,” Jackson assured her. “As soon as my board approval’s official, I’ll take them off your hands. I’m sure I can turn them around for a small profit eventually. Somewhere in the twenty million range with any luck.”

“If you turn
me
around”—Alana looked at him naughtily—“you can make a big profit right away.”

Jackson Dupree grinned. It was the perfect ending to a perfect day.

T
HERESA
D
EXTER STROLLED
across the UCLA campus toward the parking lot, where her hundred-thousand-dollar Mercedes convertible gleamed in the sunshine. Above her, a perfectly blue California sky stretched cloudlessly to the horizon. Theresa thought,
I’ve just given a seminar on Shakespeare to a packed lecture hall. I’m rich. I’m healthy. I’m doing my dream job in a beautiful, sun-drenched city, and I’m married to the most gorgeous man in the world.

She had never felt more unhappy in her life.