Scandalous (32 page)

In his head, Sasha’s voice taunted him:

You set yourself up.

You’re lazy and arrogant.

You think the board doesn’t know?

Too wound up to go home, he headed to the nearest bar.

Lottie sat at the kitchen table in her Brooklyn apartment, checking her messages on Facebook. “Update your status!” the home page invited her. “What are you doing right now?” After the words “Charlotte Grainger is,” Lottie typed “…wondering if it’s ever going to end.”

It was Friday night, so officially her
weekus horribilis
had ended. But the aftershocks kept coming. Her kiss with Jackson—the kiss—had only been four days ago, but already it felt like a lifetime. Lottie hadn’t seen him this afternoon since he got back. Understandably, he had bigger fish to fry. Like
trying to strangle Sasha with the nearest electric cord, presumably. Lottie was torn about the MBO and Ceres’s violent birth. On the one hand she saw what a huge opportunity it was for Sasha. For some reason that Lottie had never understood, Sasha was obsessed with making money. Not just massive-salary-great-apartment-wardrobe-full-of-designer-clothes amounts of money. But serious, game-changing, corporation-controlling amounts of money. Enough money to wield “real power,” that was how Sasha described it. But power over what? Over whom? In any event, Ceres clearly represented a giant leap in the right direction, and to that extent Lottie was pleased for her friend.

On the other hand it meant that the two girls would no longer work together. And then of course there was Jackson. Lottie tried to believe that Sasha’s coup had not been intended to wound Jackson personally. But given their history, she wasn’t sure. What she
was
sure of was that the whole Ceres debacle had damaged Jackson’s standing at Wrexall. Folk stories about exactly
where
Wrexall’s not-so-golden boy had been while his former employee was busy taking apart his company had already begun doing the rounds on Wall Street. One of them involved a pair of Czech twins and a pet poodle. Another featured Senator Davis’s soon-to-be-ex-wife, Alana, a chalet hot tub, and an overeager paparazzi. All of the stories left poor Lottie feeling as if she were undergoing open-heart surgery without anesthesia.

Closing down Facebook, Lottie clicked on to Outlook and was astonished to see a new mail from Sasha flashing at the top of her inbox. Shouldn’t she be on her way to a TV studio somewhere, or sipping champagne with that sleazeball Foman, toasting Ceres’s future success?

In typical Sasha style, the e-mail was two words long. It simply read, “Join us?” A few moments later, a second message arrived: “Name your price. S xoxo.”

Lottie flushed with pleasure, as if she’d just done something naughty but wonderful. Of course, she hadn’t actually
done
anything.
I didn’t say yes. I just read it.
She was flattered to be asked, and tempted, not just by the idea of working for Sasha but by the “name your price” part. That had an excellent ring to it! But of course it would mean leaving Wrexall and the chance to work every day alongside Jackson as the new Park City ski resort took shape.

Shutting her computer, Lottie put her coat on. A walk would help to clear her head. Even in March, the grayest and drabbest of months, neither winter nor spring, Lottie adored her Brooklyn neighborhood. Her apartment was the top two floors of a once-grand old brownstone on a broad, leafy street that seemed light-years away from the Sturm und Drang of Manhattan. She’d first moved across the bridge in her early twenties, when it was all she could afford. Now she easily earned enough to move to the West Village or some trendy loft in the meatpacking district, but you couldn’t have paid Lottie to leave Brooklyn. As much as New York ever could be, it was home.

Turning the corner, she pulled up the hood of her jacket against the biting wind and trudged in the direction of the 7-Eleven, keeping her head down.

“Look where you’re going, would you?”

She’d collided with a drunk, heading down the hill toward the subway.

“Sorry,” she began. “I didn’t see you. I…Jackson? Is that you?”

“Lottie. Hello, Lottie!” Jackson grinned down at her like a simpleton. Dangerously underdressed for the weather in jeans and a crumpled Spurr shirt, he reeked of whisky, swaying from side to side like a seasick sailor. “I was trying to find your street, butIgodabidlost,” he slurred. “But you’re here. Thass amazing! I must be getting warm, right?”

Not sure whether to feel excited (that he’d come to find her) or depressed (that he only ever seemed to come to find her when he was three sheets to the wind), Lottie wrapped a steadying arm around his waist and led him back to her place.

“It’s not much,” she mumbled awkwardly, kicking a pile of mail off the floor in the entryway and moving a cold, half-drunk mug of this morning’s coffee off the stairs before Jackson sent it flying. “But at least we can warm you up. I’ll make you some coffee.” She led a shivering Jackson into the kitchen and left him there while she disappeared to find a blanket. She returned to find him standing exactly where she’d left him, like a lost child at a railway station. “Here.” She wrapped the blanket around his shoulders and pulled out a chair. “Sit down. Tell me what happened.”

While Lottie brewed some fresh coffee, Jackson poured his heart out. About Sasha and what a fool she’d made of him. About his father taking Sasha’s side and going behind his back. Finally, he spoke about his own guilt, and fury at himself for not having been on the ball.

“I know I party too hard. I’m not stupid,” he said, chewing idly on a stick of stale French bread that Lottie had left lying around. “I guess I just thought, after my big success in Park City, I could kick back a little, you know. Is that so terrible?”

“Hmmm,” said Lottie.
You mean
our
big success in Park City. I was the one who clinched us that deal. But you didn’t see me “kicking back.” It’s back to work as normal for the rest of us lesser mortals.

Reading her face, Jackson said, “You think I’m arrogant, don’t you?”

Lottie poured the milk. “Well, I…maybe a little. Sometimes.”

“You think I’m arrogant and lazy and I don’t care about my team.”

Lottie blushed. “Sugar?”

“Oh God.” Jackson put his head in his hands. “That’s what hurts the most. Everything that bitch Sasha said to me is true. I set myself up. I did. I
let
this happen, and all for a few hours of lousy sex with a pair of…”

“OK, enough.” Lottie clamped both hands over her ears. “I don’t want to know.”

Jackson looked taken aback.

“I’ll try to be your friend and to listen. I’ll try to give you advice, if that’s what you want, not that you ever listen to it, and I’ll happily make you coffee and lend you my blanket, but I
will not
stand here in my own kitchen while you talk about your…your”—she struggled for the appropriate word—“your
sexploits
with God knows who, twins or whatever ridiculous thing it was, I mean, really.
Really.
I don’t want to know.”

She was so awkward and outraged and sweet, Jackson couldn’t bear it. He moved toward her, an unmistakably predatory look in his eye. “You’re lovely.”

“No.” Lottie backed away. “Stop it. You’re drunk. This isn’t fair.”

“I am drunk,” Jackson admitted. “But I’m drunk for the last time. As of today, I’m gonna be a changed man. No more booze. No more partying. No more
sexploits
.” He was still moving closer. Lottie pressed her back against the kitchen counter.

“I’m happy to hear that, Jackson, I really am. But…”

He kissed her. “I think we should be together.” Lottie started to protest, but he stopped her. “Please, hear me out. You’re good for me. When I’m around you I feel calm. I feel content.”

And when I’m around you I feel like I’m about to burst into flames. Oh God, Jackson, I want you so much, can’t you see it?

“I thought you said you’d make a lousy husband?” Lottie whispered. Jackson’s body was pressed against hers now. She could feel what little resolve she’d had crumbling like stale wedding cake.

“We’ll work up to the husband part.” He grinned. “One step at a time.” Slipping a hand under Lottie’s sweater, he reached for her bra strap, unclasping it with consummate ease. Lottie tried not to think about how many times he’d done that before and with how many women. There were a hundred and one reasons not to do this: Jackson was her boss, he was drunk, he was vulnerable, he was an inveterate womanizer who would sleep with
her once, regret it, and move on. Then his other hand slipped beneath her panties and none of the reasons meant anything.

“Jesus.” He looked up at her, startled. “When did you get that done?”

Lottie blushed. She’d forgotten about the rather extreme Brazilian wax she’d had in Park City, the same day she dyed her hair. She’d been on such a high that day. But perhaps it
was
a bit slutty. “Don’t you like it?”

Jackson grinned. “Are you kidding? I love it. It wasn’t what I was expecting, that’s all.”

Lottie closed her eyes and surrendered herself to the heavenly feelings washing over her. “That makes two of us!” she gasped.

Those were the last words either of them spoke that night.

Across town, Sasha lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling, whip-sawed with frustration. It should have been one of the happiest nights of her life, the start of an exciting new chapter. But instead of focusing on her bright future, Sasha’s head was full of images of two men.

Professor Theo Dexter: still happy, still rich and famous and successful, still living the dream that he stole from her.

And Jackson Amory Dupree, who’d kissed her, whose lips she could still taste on her own, whose body heat still burned every inch of her skin. Jackson who had threatened to destroy her.

“I’m going to crush you. I’m go to blow Ceres out of the water.”

Sasha closed her eyes and said a silent prayer, the same prayer she’d said every night for the last ten years.
Help me, Lord. Help me to destroy Theo Dexter.
But this time she added a codicil.
And if it’s not too much trouble, Lord, help me forget about Jackson Dupree.

Tokyo, five years later

Theo Dexter looked straight at camera, raising one eyebrow like Roger Moore’s Bond and smoldering as only he knew how.

“
Driven
,” he whispered huskily, holding up a bottle of cheap-looking cologne. “The smell of success.” He stood for five more seconds, his face frozen midsmolder, till the energetic Japanese director yelled, “Cut!” Instantly Theo’s features relaxed into their more familiar petulant scowl.

“Very good, very good.” The director clapped his hands enthusiastically, and the Japanese crew did the same. “All finish. Very good take, all finish.”

Thank Christ for that.
Theo loathed Japan. A few years ago, Asia had excited him with its otherworldliness, its air of adventure. But by this point in his career, the novelty had well and truly worn off. If he closed his eyes and said the word “Asia”, four things sprang to mind. Humidity, cockroaches, stinking traffic, and carbohydrates. (How the Japanese stayed so thin was a mystery to Theo. They seemed to eat rice or noodles with everything. He’d even come across a chicken noodle toothpaste, although that might have been intended as a joke item. You could never tell
in Japan.) Despite staying at the uberluxurious Park Hyatt, the hotel featured in the movie
Lost in Translation
, in a penthouse suite with spectacular views across the city all the way to Mount Fuji, he felt distinctly hard done by. Not least because Dita and the children were with him.