were always oversubscribed. They’re trying to justify their greed, thought Sasha. She herself had no need of justification. She knew exactly why she wanted to be rich. She woke up every morning and looked at his picture, Blu-Tacked to her bathroom mirror.
While the rest of her classmates partied and slept around, availing themselves fully of the wild nightlife that Harvard had to offer, Sasha became more and more reclusive, studying by day and waitressing by night to help pay for her tuition. ‘Help’ being the operative word. HBS was prohibitively, insanely expensive – another difference with Cambridge. After three years, becoming rich was no longer an option for most students but a necessity, to pay off their six-figure student loans. At Sue’s Steak House, the restaurant where Sasha worked, customers hit on her nightly. Some of them were good-looking guys, but Sasha wasn’t interested. After Theo Dexter, her libido seemed to have evaporated completely. She’d had sex twice in four years, both one-night stands, both deeply unsatisfying. After that, she gave up.
I’m a born-again virgin. But who cares? I don’t need a man to keep me warm at night. I have the flames of my hatred and the fire of my ambition. I’m complete.
Already a Baker Scholar after her second year, no one was surprised when Sasha Miller graduated top of her section. Least of all Sasha herself. By the time her results came through, she’d already accepted a job at Merrill Lynch in New York. Not because she had the remotest interest in investment banking, but because it offered the highest starting salary and fastest track to directorship of anything else she’d been offered.
‘Miss Sasha Miller.’ The Dean’s voice rang out around the auditorium. Sasha turned and smiled at her parents, seated a few rows behind. This wasn’t their dream, any more than it was hers. But they were here, and proud, their love for her unwavering. One day, Sasha thought, I’ll repay them for everything they’ve done for me. The little cottage in Frant where she’d grown up, and once been so happy, felt farther away than ever. It was almost inconceivable to think that tomorrow Don and Sue would be on a plane back there. And Sasha would be on a plane to New York.
All eyes were on Sasha as she made her way to the podium. One pair of eyes in particular thought, Now that’s a great-looking girl. Why haven’t we interviewed her? If she’s the brightest HBS graduate, she should be with us.
Jackson Dupree made a note in his BlackBerry. ‘Sasha Miller.’ He would make her an offer she couldn’t refuse.
Jackson hadn’t really enjoyed his own years at Harvard. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he was killing time, spinning his wheels until the real work of his life began, at Wrexall. What he had enjoyed was the sex. All the girls from Harvard College and Wellesley wanted boyfriends from the biz school, rightly perceiving them to be the next generation of American super-rich. Of course, New York had no shortage of stunning women. But at Harvard, the girls had been stunning and bright. Occasionally, bed-hopping from one airheaded Elite model to the next, Jackson missed his college lovers.
That was why he was here. He’d met Rachel at a party in the Hamptons last summer. She was eighteen then and due to start Harvard in the fall. After two blissful weeks of screwing in her stepfather’s guesthouse, they’d parted ways, but Jackson made a point of keeping in touch. When Rachel called him last week to invite him up for the end-of-term celebrations, he’d jumped at the chance. After successfully quashing Bob Massey’s would-be coup and winning his place on Wrexall’s board, he deserved a vacation. The end-of-year celebrations at Harvard were always fabulous, debauched parties on the boathouses along the Charles, drunk, celebratory students running half-naked around Harvard Square, enjoying their brief window of freedom between their finals and the imminent beginning of working life. If he stopped by the Business School to do a spot of recruiting, he could even write it off on expenses. How much would Massey and his cronies love that?
Landing on the lawn outside Spangler Hall in a royal blue Wrexall Dupree chopper, Jackson arrived minutes before the graduation ceremony was due to commence. For once he’d dressed formally, in a dark Armani suit and grey Hermès silk tie, his wild black curls slicked into place and a crisp white handkerchief peeking the regulation half-inch above his breast pocket. All the graduating students and their guests on the way to McCollum Hall turned and stared as Jackson jumped nimbly to the ground, the women lustfully and the men enviously.
‘Who’s that?’ Don Miller asked Sasha. ‘He loves himself a bit, doesn’t he?’
Sasha shrugged, bored. Over the course of the past three years she’d grown used to watching handsome young Americans chest-beating their way through college. Admittedly landing a helicopter on the lawn was pushing it to new extremes. But these men were the golden children, the chosen ones, and they knew it. Showing off was a way of life for them.
‘Some trust-fund brat, I expect,’ she said dismissively. ‘Come on. Let’s get you seats before all the good ones are taken.’
After the ceremony, Sasha put her parents in a taxi back to the hotel. Her mum was still jet lagged and wanted a catnap before they met up again for dinner. She was just heading back to her own rooms in Baker Hall when she felt a tap on her shoulder. Spinning around, she found herself face to face with helicopter guy.
‘Sasha, right? Sasha Miller?’ Up close he was even more ridiculously handsome. And even more self-satisfied. ‘I’m Jackson Dupree.’
He didn’t elaborate. If the name was supposed to mean something to Sasha, it didn’t.
‘Can I help you?’
‘Actually I have a feeling I might be able to help you.’ Jackson fixed his mesmerizing almond eyes on Sasha’s dispassionate, pale green ones and waited for this to have the usual effect.
Nothing.
‘I’m on the board of a little company named Wrexall Dupree. You may have heard of us?’
Sasha gave him a look, as if to say, And?
‘Here.’ Jackson handed her a business card. ‘Meet me for dinner tonight and I’ll tell you a little more about us. For now, suffice it to say that we’re the best in our field. And we make it our business to hire the best. I know you’ll have had other offers, but I’m confident we can more than match them. I’m staying at the Ritz Carlton on Newbury Street. Shall we say eight o’clock?’
It was so breathtakingly arrogant that for once in her life Sasha was speechless. Not that it mattered anyway. By the time she’d come up with a suitably withering reply, Jackson had walked away, jabbering into his cellphone nineteen to the dozen.
Dickhead, thought Sasha. No amount of money on earth would persuade her to work for a man like Jackson Dupree. Besides, she was already committed to her job at Merrill. She walked back to her rooms without giving him a second thought.
‘I don’t understand, Jacks. What sort of business? This is your first night. I made plans.’
Rachel pursed her adorable, cupid’s bow lips into a pout and tousled her honey-blonde hair in irritation. They were in Rachel’s dorm room – her roommate, Helen, had thoughtfully agreed to evaporate for the four nights of Jackson’s visit, and Rachel had made the place as love-nesty as possible, throwing all her clothes into the laundry hamper and lighting scented candles on every inch of surface not covered with vases of flowers. Jackson walked over and slipped his hand inside Rachel’s American Apparel tanktop, cupping a small but perfectly formed breast and gently caressing her nipple with his thumb. Despite herself, Rachel closed her eyes and moaned with pleasure.
‘I promise you,’ Jackson whispered, nuzzling her neck and softly kissing her earlobe, ‘this is the last piece of work I have to do here. I’ll be an hour. Two hours, tops,’ he promised, mentally calculating how long it would take him to woo Sasha, get her up to his suite at the Ritz Carlton, fuck her and persuade her to come and work at Wrexall. ‘After that I’m all yours.’
‘What about before that?’ Rachel’s lips parted, her pupils dilating with lust.
Jackson grinned, pushing her down on the neatly made