Indian heritage. If they ever got together sexually they’d make the world’s most beautiful kids.
‘That’s business,’ said Jackson. ‘At Ceres, Raj will always play second fiddle to Sasha. Back with us he could run his own show.’
It sounded plausible. But Lottie didn’t buy it. Out of loyalty to Jackson, she’d quietly dropped her own friendship with Sasha. There was no big bust up, no announcement. Both women understood implicitly that, after all that had happened, it was the way it had to be. Ironically, it was Jackson who kept Sasha’s memory alive, to the point where Lottie sometimes felt, like Princess Diana, that there were three people in her relationship. Jackson hadn’t seen Sasha in person for a year, but he carried her with him everywhere, lodged in his chest like a tumour. His attempts to poach back Raj Patel was just the latest in a long line of stunts aimed at hurting Sasha, humiliating her the way that she had humiliated him. Lottie prayed it wouldn’t backfire as badly as all the others.
‘About Raj,’ said Jackson. ‘I’m thinking of flying out to Barcelona next week.’
Lottie’s eyes widened. ‘You’re not serious?’ Forbes had reported only last week that Ceres was holding its first global off site at the Hotel Majestic in Barcelona, Spain. Sasha Miller was to be the keynote speaker at a real estate conference that would be attended by the biggest names in the industry. ‘You can’t hijack Raj there, it’s far too high profile. Remember what happened with Mr Cityfleet? If Raj doesn’t come back to Wrexall, you’ll end up with very public egg on your face. You’re supposed to be being discreet.’
‘I will be discreet,’ said Jackson, knocking back the last of his sake and ordering another. ‘I’ll discreetly get him to sign his offer in Barcelona. Then I’ll discreetly hold a press conference about it the morning of Sasha’s speech and pull the rug out from under her Manolos.’
Lottie sighed. There was no reasoning with him in this mood: drunk and determined. She wished she could love away all the stress and anger Jackson seemed to carry around with him, like a backpack full of cement. Like him, in her darkest moments, she feared that there was something missing between them. There had to be, or he would have let go by now, given himself to her completely. But like him, Lottie put her fears aside. I love him, she thought. He’s already changed so much, come so far from the old playboy Jackson. This vendetta with Sasha is the last piece of the puzzle. He’ll figure it out eventually, I just have to be patient.
Sasha stepped out onto her balcony into the warm, Spanish night air and sighed a deep sigh of contentment. Barcelona had been one of her favourite cities since she came here as a teenager, on a school trip with St Agnes’s. She remembered the wonder she’d felt back then, at the spectacular Gaudí architecture and the Plaça de Catalunya, not to mention the natural beauty of the ocean. There was a palpable sense of vibrancy in Barcelona, a feeling of life and youth and art that seemed to shimmer in the warm air along with the scent of jasmine and the mixed, mouthwatering smells of garlic and chorizo floating up from the tapas kitchens. As a school-girl, she and her friends from St Agnes’s had stayed in a grotty little youth hostel, but Sasha had still adored the city. Now, returning not just as an adult but as a millionairess, a success beyond her or anyone’s wildest dreams, she was staying in the most expensive suite at the Hotel Majestic, a neoclassical gem on Passeig de Gràcia that lit up at night like Harrods at Christmas time. Wealthy and famous visitors flocked to the Majestic to sample the Michelin-starred cuisine at the hotel’s famed Drolma restaurant, widely considered one of the finest in Spain, and to enjoy its dated grandeur and old-world luxury. Sasha chose it because she remembered walking past it as a kid and wondering what the views must be like from the penthouse.
Now she knew. They were spectacular.
Tomorrow she had a full schedule of team-building events with her staff at Ceres. It was hard to believe that the company was only a year old. Already they had blazed a trail through the industry so bright that competitors twice their size and with ten times their experience had been left blinded on the sidelines, wondering what the hell just happened as Ceres won contract after contract, deal after deal. The media gave Sasha full credit for their successes, hailing her as America’s new business genius, a female role model to rival Oprah or Martha Stewart. No one seemed to remember, or care, that she was, in fact, English. Not when she looked so ridiculously photogenic, standing arm in arm with her right-hand man, Raj Patel. A young woman and an Indian man; it was so politically correct, so perfect, it was as if Ceres had been dreamt up by someone at Central Casting. While the trade press salivated over Ceres’s profits and Sasha’s business acumen, the fashion magazines pored over her wardrobe choices, and the gossip rags speculated endlessly about her love life, or rather her mysterious lack thereof. A few months ago, someone had leaked the story of Sasha’s scandalous past, and her connection to Theo Dexter, to one of the tabloids. Sasha suspected Jackson Dupree. True to his word, Jackson had pulled every stunt in the book to try to undermine her, personally and professionally, since she left Wrexall, but so far Sasha had managed to stay one step ahead. The stolen-theory story could have been a serious blow to her reputation and credibility. But with the help of a woman named Gemma Driscoll, a senior partner at the PR giant Fleishman-Hillard (and as far as Sasha was concerned, a genius) the mountain had morphed back into a molehill, ‘Neutralized,’ as Gemma put it.
‘The trick is never to try to cover up a story,’ Gemma told Sasha. ‘If a dog’s got a juicy bone in its jaws and you start pulling, all he’s going to do is clamp down harder.’
‘So what do you do?’
Gemma smiled. ‘Toss him a juicier bone.’
This she did by the simple but devastatingly effective means of falsely linking Sasha romantically with a string of eligible, newsworthy men. First there was the senator whose house Sasha went to once for dinner.
‘I play tennis with his wife!’ she insisted. ‘He wasn’t even home.’
‘Ah, yes, but he might have been,’ said Gemma.
Then there was the pop star, the Broadway producer, the Italian prince and the twenty-one-year-old heartthrob from NBC’s new prime-time soap opera, Brooklyn Heights. Of course, there wasn’t a thread of truth to any of the rumours. Sasha slept alone, with only her BlackBerry for company. But the stories served their purpose of distracting tabloid attention. Gemma finished the job with a series of ‘teasers’ about Sasha and Raj Patel, photo opportunities and interviews that suggested they might be a couple. That was the most ridiculous one of all. But as Gemma pointed out, ‘The beauty of it is that it can run and run. You’ll continue to be seen together. People will keep guessing. You’re a public figure now, Sasha. You have to think of your life as a sort of reality show.’
‘Reality?’ Sasha laughed out loud. ‘But everything you’re doing is made up!’
‘Exactly. Like I said. A reality show. I write the scripts.’
It was new world for Sasha, and one that, though she loathed to admit it, she found she rather enjoyed. She’d started Ceres for the same reason she joined Wrexall, the same reason she transferred to business school and moved to America: to become rich and powerful enough to destroy Theo Dexter. But as the years wore on, particularly with Ceres succeeding so spectacularly right out of the gate, she found the business becoming more and more of an end in itself.
Then, of course, there was Jackson. Every time Sasha got close to a deal, every time she made a hire or sniffed around some land, there he would be, bribing, badmouthing, conniving, doing everything he could do scupper her chances. Ceres was on a high right now, but Sasha had no illusions. At some point their new-kid-on-the-block sheen would wear off. Wrexall had multiples of their balance sheet. There would be instances, many instances, where Jackson would be able to outgun her. The fact that it hadn’t happened yet only heightened the anxiety she felt daily, squatting in her chest like a loathsome toad, still and cold and heavy but always ready to pounce.
‘Beautiful evening.’
Sasha spun around so fast she almost jumped out of her skin. There, standing on the adjacent balcony, looking lean and tanned in an immaculately cut Spurr suit and Harvard tie,