Special Relationship (18 page)

“I just wondered if we could meet up in the week and maybe do a bit of socialising, like non-business stuff in town.”

This was Alex's chance to kill the serpent before it left the egg.

“Nick, I think we move in different circles. I like greasy-spoon cafés, fish and chip shops and curry houses. You are smart hotels and restaurants, fancy cars and penthouses.”

Tentatively, and screwing her face as she tried to be delicate, she added: “I just think we best keep everything just on a business, rather than social, footing because, she went on, thinking that she didn't want to lose her contract, “that's where everything seems so...
err...uncomplicated and easy.”

“So what time shall we meet tomorrow?” he ignored her.

She couldn't help but smile.

“Mr
Hensen, I don't do all those fancy things that you do. Since I moved to London, all I've wanted is a simple life, to just be normal. You are not normal,”

“Thanks,” he replied.

“Not normal in that you earn vast amounts of cash and live in a totally different world to the one I live in.” She then thought about adding, “and the one I'd want to live in,” but decided that would not only be rude but overly presumptuous, even though she was now certain that he was pursuing her either romantically or sexually.

“I'll get a car to pick you up at eight. We can have a breakfast meeting and then you can totally go back to the office afterwards. Or we can walk the streets of London and I'll show you Buckingham Palace and other things tourists like to see.”

Alex smiled. “OK, breakfast, and then I'm going back to work on your contract. And don't worry about Buckingham Palace – I've seen it.”

“That's a done deal then. Dress smart,” he said.

Well that resolution didn't last long, she thought after he'd rung off.

Later that day, Nick took a call from
Tavis who told him that everything was all clear with the New York flat, no bugging devices there – and the results guaranteed by The High-Tech Security Company who had charged an eye-watering fee for services rendered in such a quick time.

Tavis
said any bug could have been removed and he was now working on who might have had access to the apartment between him leaving for the airport and before the flat had been scanned.

Nick called Katherine into his office to tell her of the development.

“Nothing on the scan, but Tavis has asked the management company of the block to provide CCTV tape of the time that it could have been removed. So after that has been looked at, we'll know more.”

“And if there was no bug?”

“Then either one of us must have told someone, or Elroy or someone was hiding in the wardrobe and we didn't notice. Which seems very unlikely to me.”

Katherine rubbed under her eye. “I don't know, Nick. I just don't know.”

“Does it matter?” he asked.

“Well, obviously, Jonathan won't be best pleased if he finds out what happened. But otherwise I suppose not, just that there might be some freak out there who is spying on us and then using information he discovers for reasons we can't yet work out.

“And, also - and I don't know how to put this delicately – if it wasn't directly a third person it was one of us who passed on the gossip, however inadvertently.

“I didn't tell anyone, Katherine, inadvertently or not.”

The markets were down that day and the fund had a bad position in the dollar against the yen but Nick couldn't concentrate on the screens. Katherine and, in particular, Alex were monopolising his thoughts.

His minder in London was Jamie Thompson, an ex-Special forces man who was always proud to remind him that he had yet to lose a single private client. “There's always a first,” Nick was keen to remind him.

Despite Jamie's record, Nick managed to leave the office without him noticing, and was soon walking along Piccadilly, towards the Circus, to gather his thoughts and break free from the constraints his wealth had imposed on him.

It was still hot and sunny and the tourists were again out in vast numbers.

He thought the famous road would be a disappointment to most of them. The head offices of East European, Middle East and Russian airlines were probably far busier in the pre-internet days. Then there were the few chain bars and the shops selling very expensive rugs to the gullible and those who had enough money not to care about the price tag.

Leicester Square was a hub of tacky souvenir shops selling cheap memorabilia of the city. The cinemas were showing the worst that Hollywood could offer and fast-food chains occupied every corner.

Even Chinatown was more quick, convenience food than the authentic experience he used to remember. The only thing that broke his feeling of depression was the thought that tomorrow he would be enjoying breakfast with Alex.

Walking round London took the place of him needing gym membership. He'd discovered that fast walking was more effective at losing weight than all the strenuous stuff on treadmills and exercise bikes and even this part of London made the whole experience a lot more interesting, if not always in a positive way.

His phone buzzed again, and he checked the list of missed calls. Jamie, Katherine, a few investors wondering why they were still long the dollar against the yen. And Alex.

He hit her number. “Hi, you called?”

“When you say smart, how smart?” she asked.

“Oh, The
Wolseley is meant to do a very nice breakfast. So Piccadilly smart, if you can manage, although I haven't totally decided on the venue yet.”

“And you are having a good day, making enough money to pay for such luxury?” she teased.

“Not really, I'm in the Charing Cross Road about to visit a bookshop or two to see if they have anything on life improvement.”

“Perhaps you should write it yourself,” she suggested.
"You know, like 'Rich Dad, Poor Dad'. You could make a lot of money.”

“I'll bear it in mind, thanks,” he replied.

“Eight's not too early is it?”

“Nope, look forward to it. And, you know, I might tak
e you up on 'London for Dummies' if I find breakfast agreeable.”

“You will, Alex...you will,” he smiled while wondering why her outlook seemed altogether more positive.

The answer was Kerry. “It's not a big deal, honey,” she'd told Alex. “Just breakfast and a bit of sightseeing afterwards. You think he is a nice guy and if there are any problems make your excuses and come back to the office. Just chill for the day, you deserve it.”

When the car turned up the next morning, and the doorbell rang, Alex was putting the finishing touches to her makeup. “Not bad,” she thought. But she worried about the logistics of a tourist trip that might follow breakfast. She decided she'd have to come back and swap her smart suit for jeans and casual jacket.

The driver greeted her at the door. “Good morning, Miss Anderson. The car is just on the other side of the road, not much parking space, I'm sorry.”

Alex followed the portly figure to the Mercedes and, though she always thought sitting in the back was far too formal, she decided that on this occasion, sitting in the front next to a driver she didn't know would be unusual.

After a few minutes she realised that they were travelling away from Piccadilly.

“Excuse me,” she said. “I thought we were going to The
Wolseley.”

“I think Mr
Hensen had a change of mind regarding venue, madam. But we shall be there in a few minutes.”

“Where's 'there'?” she asked.

“Mr Hensen asked me to keep it a secret. He said he wanted to make it a surprise.”

What the hell is he playing at? thought Alex.

“How far is it?” she asked the driver.

“I promise you we will be there in ten minutes, madam. Mr
Hensen, I think, is having a little joke with you. But don't tell him I told you.”

The car pulled up outside Frank's Café in Bermondsey Street which was busy with builders and market traders setting themselves up for a day's work.

“Mr Hensen is in there?” asked Alex incredulously.

“Yes, Miss Anderson, in Frank's. He is waiting for you. ”

She walked into the café and ignored the wolf whistles and “babe” comments from the patrons.

On one of the smaller tables, she spotted a casually-dressed Nick looking at her with a wide grin on his face.

“You bastard,” she said.

He laughed. “Not The
Wolseley, I know, but they do a really good breakfast here and I thought that this might be the sort of place you'd like.”

“It is. But do you not think I'm a little over-dressed, you idiot,” swiping him with the Financial Times he had been reading.

She overheard one of the customers whistling the tune to “West End Girls” with laughs and jeers from his workmates and sat down quickly to avoid the attention.

“I recommend egg, bacon, chips and beans, two slices of toast, and a mug of tea.”

“Nick, you are one complete sod. I can't believe I'm here, dressed like I'm going to one of The Queen's garden parties.”

“Just wanted to prove that I'm down to earth too,” he replied, still enjoying the joke.

“You should be
under
the fucking earth, Nick Hensen.”

“I'll order,” he smiled, shrugging off the complaints.

“I don't think they do waiter service here, so if you let me know what you'd like, I'll organise everything.”

“Full English breakfast and a Blue Mountain coffee, please,” she said, trying to get her own back.

“I think they might be out of the Blue Mountain, but they do a nice instant,” he laughed.

As he went to order Alex thought that, as amazing as it seemed, there might be something about this ultra-rich fund manager that she really liked. Blueberry cheesecake all the way from New York and now a fry-up in a greasy-spoon café. Previous boyfriends had adhered to the program, smart restaurants, buying he
r roses and sending her cards. This man was confident and self-assured enough to break all the rules.

They ate their breakfasts, even the baked beans, while talking about the benefits of The
Wolseley against Frank's Café.

“So, do you come here often?” Alex asked sarcastically.

“Only when I have a meeting with someone special.”

“So why I am here?” she replied, realising after she'd said it that if this were a game of tennis she had just left him with a simple shot for match point.

Thankfully, he didn't take it. “I hope,” he said, “that we'll get to know each other a lot better, and become good friends.”

“For why?”

Nick looked at her, flabbergasted. “It's not a binding contract, Alex. If you find you hate spending time with me, and I call you to see a film or something, you can pretend you are washing your hair.”

“Sorry
, what I said came out the wrong way. What I really meant in 'for why' is more about me than you. I know it sounds very sad but I don't really do big friendships.”

“You must have friends?”

“Well, Kerry, of course, and we go out one or two evenings a week. And obviously I get on well with Suzanne and Adrian, but we don't really socialise outside work hours. And all the other people I know are just business contacts and, you know, just casual acquaintances.”

“The more I find out about you the more confused I get,”
he said. “Don't you get lonely?”

“Anyone can get lonely, Nick, no matter how many friends they have. I was in a long-term serious relationship back home...sorry, London is my home now... back in the States...and I'd never felt so lonely in my life.”

He looked at her, wondering what it was in her past that had damaged the most beautiful person he had ever met. But maybe this was neither the time nor the venue to be probing further.

“So what do you fancy, art
gallery, museum, one of Tavis's pub crawls around Soho?”

“You know what I haven't done since I've been here?”

“Go on.”

“I've always been meaning to take the boat to Hampton Court Palace and since it looks like being another very nice day...”

“Sounds good to me. But first I think we need to sort out your dress. Think you might have overdone things.”

“I've got a mean right hook, you know.”

So Alex could mingle with the other tourists without looking like someone who had got lost on the way to a high-level business meeting, they went on a dress-down mission. She wanted to go back to her flat to change but Nick suggested she took advantage of his company's clothing accounts with a couple of shops in the Fulham Road.

“Tax deductible, And with all the bad press we have got from the government over the last few years, I don't mind fiddling them for a few quid,” he confessed.

“Evil bankers.”

“No, just my little revenge against all those politicians who have fiddled far more expenses than I ever have.”