The Underwriting (30 page)

There were 328 “Likes” and 200 comments on Grace's post, the first of which was from some guy named James:
Awesome work, Grace. You are such a Rockstar!

Nick's stomach turned. He clicked on James's profile. SAE, on the golf team, last job: summer intern, J.P. Morgan. He clicked on his photos and found a whole set from some formal he went to with Grace, both of them obviously drunk and having a good time.

Nick fumed, shutting off the phone. Screw her.

The cars stopped.

“This is it?” Nick glanced out the window: the sidewalks were grimy, intersecting with concrete walls covered in graffiti. Grungy pedestrians passed by without noticing the black cars, save a girl in a flannel shirt and hat who spat on the car ahead of Nick's.

“Welcome to East London,” Beau said as the driver opened the door.

Nick hesitated before getting out. “Is it safe?”

“So long as you leave the Timbuk2 bag in the car, you should be fine,” Beau said, pointing to Nick's Hook-monogrammed briefcase. “It kinda screams ‘I'm packing Apple devices.'” The associate grinned playfully and Nick glared back. How dare he mock the CEO of Hook?

But Nick left the bag as a precaution, after pulling out his hand sanitizer, and moved quickly to follow Beau inside.

Once they got in the door, things were better, but still not to Nick's taste. They followed the hostess through the bar. The people there looked ridiculous. They wore clothes that tried too hard. Why couldn't people just wear suits, like he was?

Calm down,
Nick told himself, feeling the dampness under his arms and admitting he was nervous. They got to a private room in the back, where he took the seat at the center of the table and greeted the fund managers as they entered, relieved that they were all wearing suits.

“What is it you do?” Nick asked one of them.

“I'm at Clyde Capital,” the man said in an English accent.

Which one was Clyde Capital? Nick was losing track. He needed one of those earpieces like the president wore, so someone could feed him information and he'd always look smart.

They sat for dinner but Nick remained standing, coughing to indicate he was ready to deliver his remarks. “Juan, can you please pass out the presentations?”

Tara shook her head, but he ignored her. She'd said they shouldn't give the full presentation at this meeting, but Nick knew she was just trying to keep the attention on her. He could read the crowd, and they wanted to hear from him.

TARA

T
HURSDAY
, M
AY
1; L
ONDON
, E
NGLAND

Tara sat back in her seat and sipped her second glass of wine, careful not to drink too much even though she wanted nothing more than to be drunk enough to find this all amusing.

Nick might actually be the most annoying guy on the planet. She hadn't thought he could get any more arrogant, but man, oh man, was she wrong. The CEO title had taken his ego to astronomical heights, without lending any degree of self-awareness or sociability or skill. He'd spoken for
twenty-five
minutes at this dinner, as if any of these men cared at all about the presentation. As she'd told Nick a dozen times, they were already buying shares: she'd gotten verbal commitments from all of them, and she offered this dinner as a thank-you to stroke their egos and meet them all in person. Now she worried that seeing Nick would make them change their minds.

Rachel had been right: Shoreditch House was the perfect choice for the dinner. It was edgy enough to make the investors feel young and give them a sense of the crowd that used Hook, but the private members' club still had the kind of overpriced menu and designer hand soap in the bathrooms that made them feel comfortable. And now that the men—it was all men, of course—had had six cocktails apiece and Todd had taken center court from Nick, they seemed to be plenty comfortable.

“So there I am in Bagatelle. It's three in the afternoon and the shades are down, the music pumping, two waitresses in tight spandex dresses assigned exclusively to our table. And I'm standing up on the sofa, so I can see the talent on the floor,” Todd said, his grin broad, “and the champagne is just flowing, you know—sparklers in every bottle and all the girls just going totally nuts every time they bring a new bottle out. And Manimal is in the bathroom banging some chick—that's totally his move—and all of a sudden these two girls show up and climb on the table in front of me, but they're pissed, holding their phones in my face and showing me the identical messages I'd just sent them on Hook.”

“Shit,” a balding man with pink cheeks and a gap between his teeth said. “What'd you do?”

Todd paused and grinned. “Gave them each a sparkler and told them there was enough of me to go around.”

“You had a threesome?”

“I'm nothing if not a great problem solver,” Todd said proudly. “Though I'm sorry to say by the end of it I think they were more into each other than me.”

A short, squat man with a big nose shook his head in envy. “Hell. If I'd had Hook when I was single . . .” he mused.

“You've gotta come to Ibiza with me next year,” the American expat seated next to Todd said. “The two of us together would
crush
it. The babes there . . .” He kissed his fingers and waved them in the air. American expats in London were the worst.

“Miss Taylor?” The waitress entered the room and the men catcalled to acknowledge their approval of her physique.

Tara looked up. The waitress gave a tired smile. “Mr. Rees is here,” she said to Tara.

Tara checked her watch. It was eleven thirty. How was it already eleven thirty? “Thank you,” she said. “Gentlemen, you'll have to excuse me.” Tara smiled as she stood from the table.

“Oh, don't leave,” the pink-faced, gap-toothed man said. “You were the only thing worth looking at at this table.”

“Don't be silly,” Tara said without a hitch. “Todd's far prettier than me.” She winked at her colleague and the table laughed merrily at her willingness to play along.

“At least you were keeping us in control: no telling where this night will end now,” another man said, reaching around to grab her hand as she passed behind his chair.

She gritted her teeth and forced a smile. “So long as you buy lots of Hook shares, and have these boys on the plane tomorrow”—she pointed to Todd and Nick—“I genuinely don't care what you do tonight.”

“At last, the perfect woman,” the balding man joked to the rest of the men, who all nodded in agreement.

“Good night.” She waved and turned to the door.

“You scored with that one,” she heard someone tell Todd.

“I'd rather be the one scoring with her now,” another said.

She closed the door and rolled her eyes. Had it always been this bad? She sighed and let it go, allowing herself to be happy about the night ahead.

She checked her e-mail as she walked to the elevator: fifty-eight new messages during dinner. She scrolled through, looking for urgent flags, and stopped when she saw the subject line: “KELLY JACOBSON.”

She opened the e-mail and read:

Tara—I'm Kelly Jacobson's brother, and I'm writing to you because . . .

“Tara,” Todd interrupted, touching her shoulder. “What's wrong?”

“Oh, I—” She looked up, then quickly put the BlackBerry away. “Nothing. What's up?”

“Where are you going?”

“To meet a friend,” she said, pressing the button for the elevator.

“Why don't you bring your friend to the club with us? Be a team player?”

Beau had organized bottle service at a club in South Kensington for Nick and the team after the Shoreditch House meeting. No one ever slept on road shows. When there were only five hours between when the last meeting ended and the car left for the airport to head to the next city, it was easy to think there wasn't much difference between two hours' sleep and four.

“I think I'll pass,” she said. “Though watching Nick try to pick up foreign women does sound terribly amusing.”

“Who's your friend?” Todd pressed, stepping to face her so their bodies were close in the narrow hallway. She could smell the scotch on his breath and see the laugh lines starting to show on his cheeks and forehead. They made him look less like a Ken doll and more like a man.

His blue eyes stared into hers, the way they had when they'd slept together so many years ago, asking silently if she was okay as he pressed inside of her.

What had happened to make him the guy who bragged to investors about threesomes at boozy Meatpacking clubs? Did he really still think that was impressive?

“I'm meeting Callum,” she said, taking her eyes away from his.

“What are you doing, Tara?”

“It's none of your business.”

The elevator doors opened and Tara stepped inside.

“Don't you think you deserve better?” he said, putting his hand out to block the doors from closing.

She searched his eyes for meaning.
Better?
she thought.
Like your one-night stands, or Mr. Catherine Wiley's public drunkenness, or Phil Dalton's homosexual affairs?

“There is nothing better, Todd,” she said. “I'll see you in the morning.”

He stared at her for a moment before moving his hand. She let the doors close, grateful for the few moments alone.

She was going to sleep with Callum, she'd decided. It had been almost a year since she'd had sex—a drunken night out at a bar where she ran into a guy she knew in undergrad and let loose for a night—or, rather, two hours, after which she'd taken a cab home to sleep in her own bed. But she was a grown, single woman, and it was normal for people in her position to have sex with people they found attractive. And she did find Callum attractive, and so she was going to sleep with him, like a normal person, and not worry about what people might say if they ever suspected it.

“How was it?” Callum greeted her as she stepped off the elevator, standing by the front desk in his jeans-and-leather-jacket uniform.

“How do you think?”

He kissed her cheek, letting his hand reach lightly to her waist, inside her open suit jacket. “Full of drunk Englishmen hitting on you?”

“They were more in love with Todd.”

He held her hand and led her outside, where a black Aston Martin coupe was waiting.

The car zipped through East London, silencing the sounds outside. It was the closest she'd ever felt to feeling invisible, in a superhero kind of way: looking out the window at the busy streets and traffic and knowing they ought to be accompanied by noise and bad odor and the tenseness of keeping your purse close, none of which existed behind the steady purr of the performance engine.

“So what'd you have to miss to hang out with me?”

“Bottle service at Boujis.”

“Of course they're going to Boujis.” He laughed, bemused.

“Where are we going instead?” she asked.

“What are you in the mood for?”

“Oh, I don't know.”

“Liar.”

“What?” she asked innocently.

“I'm not so dumb as to believe a woman like you hasn't thought this night out.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“If you knew you had one more hour to live, but you had to spend it with me, and you could be absolutely certain I'd say yes, what would you propose?”

“I—”

“Be honest.”

“I can't say it.” She laughed.

“I'm going to make you.”

“Fine. If I could have anything, I guess I'd want to . . .” She rolled her eyes, blushing furiously. Why was it so hard? “Be . . .” She emphasized the word—that was the right word, right? “. . . with you.”

Callum grinned and his eyes darted coyly. She laughed, relieved. “Back to mine, then?” he asked.

“Sure.” She nodded. He shifted the gear and placed his hand casually on her leg, and her skin tingled.

They circled back toward Shoreditch and he pulled into the garage under a large block warehouse, where he helped her out of the car.

“Where are you taking me?”

“Scared?” He lifted a brow.

The elevator shaft was naked, a series of exposed beams in the corner of the garage that clanked and screeched as they rode it to the top floor. But the doors opened onto a spotless, spacious loft enclosed by floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out on the London skyline and the twinkling lights of cars on the street below.

“Wow,” she said, stepping into the room.

“Views are one of my indulgences,” he said. “Can I get you a glass of wine?”

“Sure,” she said, moving to the window. She'd thought the view from Shoreditch House was nice, but this was another level. The Gherkin twinkled like a diamond egg, glistening against the dark night sky, mocking the ordinariness of the other buildings.

“My dear.” Callum handed her a glass of red wine and stood by her side, taking in the view. He pulled a stool from the aluminum bar and perched on its edge.

“Do you worry it'll get old?” she asked, imagining what it was like waking up to this view, day in and day out.

“If it does, I'll move,” he said simply.

“Do you think there's anything that doesn't get old, after a while?”

“I think that fear is not a good reason to avoid things that are novel to you.”

“But what if—”

“Shhh . . .” He put his finger gently on her lips. “Stop talking.”

He pulled her hand up to his and kissed her fingers, keeping his eyes smiling on hers, before putting her hand behind his neck and moving his own to the small of her back.

Their lips pressed together and her body melted.

He lifted her onto the stool so their faces were on the same level. She hooked her heels on the crossbeam and let her skirt slide up so his torso rested between her legs. His lips moved to her neck and a shiver ran down her spine. She'd forgotten how good it felt to be kissed, and knew it had never felt like this.