mind,’ Sasha scoffed.
‘No, really. I’m sure I’ve heard of him.’
‘You might have. When you get home tomorrow, google “ world’s biggest penis ” and see if his face pops up. I’m just going to run to the ladies. Should we get the bill first?’
Now it was Grover’s turn to look disgusted. ‘Please. I’ll get the check. I may not be as rich as your buddy Jackson Dupree, but if I take a girl out for dinner, I pay.’
Sasha smiled. Maybe dating wasn’t going to be such an ordeal after all?
A few minutes after Sasha and Grover left, laughing, into the night, Jackson was about to order appetizers when Leilani suddenly stood up.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asked. ‘You look pale. Is everything OK?’
‘Yeah. Sure. Look, I’m sorry for what you’ve been through, OK? Really. But I can’t help you. No one can.’ She started putting on her scarf.
Jackson looked blank. ‘What?’
Leilani squeezed his hand sympathetically. ‘Being gay. It’s not something you can be cured of. It’s genetic. I have two gay brothers, I know what I’m talking about.’
‘Well that makes one of us. What on earth makes you think I’m gay?’
‘Look, it’s OK, truly. Your friend told me everything, in the ladies’ room. I know you’re really super Christian, and you probably think you’re trying to do the right thing by fucking it out of your system. But if it’s Brian you love …’
‘Brian? Who the fuck is Brian? If I were going to be gay, you think I’d date someone called Brian?’
‘You need to start loving yourself for who you are,’ Leilani said earnestly. ‘And I need to do the same.’
Jackson sat and watched as she walked out into the street. Slowly, he felt his anger start to rise, like a building wave about to break.
OK, so it probably wouldn’t have worked out with Leilani anyway. Yes, she was a knockout, but she had the IQ of a small piece of cheese, not to mention that gentle, save-the-whales vibe about her that, in Jackson’s experience, invariably translated to being shit in bed. But even so. That little bitch Sasha Miller had successfully sabotaged his evening. He pictured Sasha in a cab right now, laughing at him in between getting down and dirty with Elmo or whatever the fuck the guy’s name was.
Fine, sweetheart. You want this to get personal?
Just you watch how personal I can be.
Two weeks later, a package arrived on Sasha’s desk. It was beautifully wrapped in expensive, silver paper with an oversized red silk bow on the top.
‘Where did this come from?’
Jeanne, her secretary, shrugged. A middle-aged matron from New Jersey with a sharp eye for detail and an even sharper tongue, Jeanne Grogan was Sasha’s right-hand woman. Other than Lottie Grainger, who wouldn’t have hurt a fly if it were injecting her with malaria, Jeanne was the only person at Wrexall whom Sasha totally trusted.
‘I have no idea. I was picking up a fax from the machine and when I got back to my desk, there it was. It’s not ticking, is it?’
Sasha held it up to her ear. ‘I don’t think so. Should I open it?’
‘No. You should marinade it in chilli sauce and slow roast it for six hours. Of course you should open it! What else are you gonna do?’
The wrapping was so perfect, Sasha almost felt guilty tearing into it. For a moment she was transported back to childhood Christmases in Frant, and her mother carefully saving the nicest wrapping paper, smoothing it out under the encyclopaedia to be used again another year. These days Sasha was comfortably earning seven figures a year. If I ever have children, they won’t need to save wrapping paper, she thought idly. For some reason the thought made her sad.
‘What is it?’ Jeanne’s harsh, nasal tones brought her back to reality.
‘It’s DVDs.’ Sasha sounded nonplussed. ‘A box set.’ Turning them over in her hands, she saw that she had in fact been given a ‘Best of Dita Andreas Limited Edition Holiday Collection’. She blushed.
‘Who sent me this?’
‘I told you already. I have no idea. Who knows you’re a Dita Andreas fan?’
No one. No one would have any reason to link me with Dita Andreas. Other than maybe my parents and a few old friends from Cambridge. But a friend wouldn’t send me this. Besides, there’s no postmark. It was hand delivered.
Oh shit. Her heart sank as the obvious truth dawned. Two minutes later she barged into Jackson’s office, slamming the door shut behind her.
‘Is this meant to be a joke?’ She waved the DVDs in his face. ‘Because it’s not funny.’
Jackson leaned back in his chair, stretching his long legs out in front of him. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘I’m talking about these.’ She handed him the case. ‘I know it was you who sent them.’
Jackson read the blurb on the back. ‘Midnight’s Children. Now that was a good movie. One of her best. If you haven’t seen Dita Andreas’s shower scene with Leo DiCaprio, you haven’t lived.’
‘It won’t work, you know,’ said Sasha furiously, snatching back the case. ‘These childish little mind games of yours. They won’t get to me.’
Jackson laughed. ‘Really? I’d say they already have. You know what your problem is, Sasha? You can give it, but you can’t take it.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘It’s fine for you to tell girls I’m seeing that I’m gay.’ Sasha at least had the decency to blush. ‘But when the joke’s on you, that’s childish. I must say, I couldn’t believe it when I found out. After the way you’ve looked down at me from your moral high horse these past two years, like I’m the evil, selfish playboy and you’re the perfect little saint. When the truth is you had an affair with a married man, then tried to claim his work as your own. I may be a playboy, Sasha. But I’m not a thief.’
‘Neither am I!’ Sasha was close to tears. When she moved to America five years ago, she’d tried hard to leave her past, or that chapter in it, behind. Until now, she’d succeeded. No one at Harvard Business School knew about the scandal that had ended her career as a physicist, and nor did anyone at Wrexall. In the States, the Cambridge court case was a footnote in Theo Dexter’s history, nothing more. Or so Sasha had thought. ‘Everything I accused Theo Dexter of was true. It was my theory. He’s the thief, not me. He’s made a fortune off an idea that doesn’t belong to him.’
‘Sasha, Sasha, Sasha.’ Jackson shook his head, like a disappointed parent. ‘You can’t let it go, even now, can you? So sad. I guess it’s true what they say. Hell hath no fury …’
Sasha stormed out, marching back down the corridor to her own office with Jackson’s laughter echoing off the walls behind her. If there was one person in the entire universe she would have wanted not to know about her past with Theo Dexter, it was Jackson Dupree. She might as well take out a full-page ad in the New York Times.
This is going to be bad. Jackson’s going to crucify me.
She wasn’t wrong. Over the course of the next few months, the story of her scandalous past spread not just through Wrexall Dupree, but throughout the entire real estate industry. Jackson’s taunting was relentless. Sasha would turn on her PC at work to find Theo Dexter’s face loaded as her screensaver. Amazon delivered books to both her home and office: How to Move On, The Married Man Addiction, Astrophysics for Beginners and the newly published coffee table photo book by Mario Testino, Dita Andreas: A Love Story,