hated Sasha, loathed her enough to want to hit her, to hurt her. Not just for today and what she’d done to him: landing a body blow to Wrexall and turning the board, and even his own father, against him on what ought to have been his, Jackson’s, day of triumph. But for all the bickering and sparring and fury of the last few years. Once upon a time she’d tried to destroy Theo Dexter’s career and failed. Now, it appeared, it was Jackson’s turn. What kind of a psycho was this woman?
But another part of him, a part he’d been denying since the day Sasha rejected him at Harvard all those years ago, another part wanted her so badly it made Jackson want to cry. It’s not love, he told himself. It’s lust. The competitor in him wanted to beat Sasha, wanted to win. He knew that the only way he would ever truly win was when he had her in his bed, naked and longing, begging him for more. Just picturing it now was giving him an incipient hard on that only added to his fury.
In his head, Sasha’s voice taunted him:
You set yourself up.
You’re lazy and arrogant.
You think the board doesn’t know?
Too wound up to go home, he headed to the nearest bar.
Lottie sat at the kitchen table in her Brooklyn apartment, checking her messages on Facebook. ‘Update your status!’ the home page invited her. ‘What are you doing right now?’ After the words ‘Charlotte Grainger is’ Lottie typed ‘… wondering if it’s ever going to end.’
It was Friday night, so officially her week-us horribilis had ended. But the aftershocks kept coming. Her kiss with Jackson – the kiss – had only been five days ago, but already it felt like a lifetime. Lottie hadn’t seen him this afternoon since he got back. Understandably, he had bigger fish to fry. Such as trying to strangle Sasha with the nearest electric cord, presumably. Lottie was torn about the MBO and Ceres’s violent birth. On the one hand she saw what a huge opportunity it was for Sasha. For some reason that Lottie had never understood, Sasha was obsessed with making money. Not just massive-salary-great-apartment-wardrobe-full-of-designer-clothes amounts of money. But serious, game-changing, corporation-controlling amounts of money. Enough money to wield ‘real power’, that was how Sasha described it. But power over what? Over whom? In any event, Ceres clearly represented a giant leap in the right direction, and to that extent Lottie was pleased for her friend.
On the other hand it meant that the two girls would no longer work together. And then of course there was Jackson. Lottie tried to believe that Sasha’s coup had not been intended to wound Jackson personally. But given their history, she wasn’t sure. What she was sure of was that the whole Ceres debacle had damaged Jackson’s standing at Wrexall. Folk stories about exactly where Wrexall’s not-so-golden boy had been while his former employee was busy taking apart his company had already begun doing the rounds on Wall Street. One of them involved a pair of Czech twins and a pet poodle. Another featured Senator Davis’s soon-to-be-ex-wife Alana, a chalet hot tub and an overeager paparazzo. All of the stories left poor Lottie feeling as if she was undergoing open-heart surgery without anaesthetic.
Closing down Facebook, Lottie clicked onto Outlook and was astonished to see a new mail from Sasha flashing at the top of her inbox. Shouldn’t she be on her way to a TV studio somewhere, or sipping champagne with that sleazeball Foman, toasting Ceres’s future success?
In typical Sasha style, the email was two words long. It simply read, ‘Join us?’ A few moments later, a second message arrived, ‘Name your price. S xoxo’.
Lottie flushed with pleasure, as if she’d just done something naughty but wonderful. Of course, she hadn’t actually done anything. I didn’t say ‘yes’. I just read it. She was flattered to be asked, and tempted, not just by the idea of working for Sasha but by the ‘name your price’ part. That had an excellent ring to it! But of course it would mean leaving Wrexall, and the chance to work every day alongside Jackson as the new Park City ski resort took shape.
Shutting her computer, Lottie put her coat on. A walk would help to clear her head. Even in March, the greyest and drabbest of months, neither winter nor spring, Lottie adored her Brooklyn neighbourhood. Her apartment was the top two floors of a once grand old brownstone on a broad, leafy street that seemed light years away from the Sturm und Drang of Manhattan. She first moved across the bridge in her early twenties, when it was all she could afford. Now she easily earned enough to move to the West Village or some trendy loft in the meatpacking district, but you couldn’t have paid Lottie to leave Brooklyn. As much as New York ever could be, it was home.
Turning the corner, she pulled up the hood of her jacket against the biting wind and trudged in the direction of the 7-Eleven, keeping her head down.
‘Look where you going, would you?’
She’d collided with a drunk, heading down the hill towards the subway.
‘Sorry,’ she began. ‘I didn’t see you. I … Jackson? Is that you?’
‘Lottie. Hello, Lottie!’ Jackson grinned down at her like a simpleton. Dangerously underdressed for the weather in jeans and a crumpled Spurr shirt, he reeked of whisky, swaying from side to side like a seasick sailor. ‘I was trying to find your street, butIgodabidlost,’ he slurred. ‘But you’re here. Thass amazing! I must be getting warm, right?’
Not sure whether to feel excited (that he’d come to find her) or depressed (that he only ever seemed to come to find her when he was three sheets to the wind), Lottie wrapped a steadying arm around his waist and led him back to her place.
‘It’s not much,’ she mumbled awkwardly, kicking a pile of mail off the floor in the entryway and moving a cold, half-drunk mug of this morning’s coffee off the stairs before Jackson sent it flying. ‘But at least we can warm you up. I’ll make you some coffee.’ She led a shivering Jackson into the kitchen and left him there while she disappeared to find a blanket. She returned to find him standing exactly where she’d left him, like a lost child at a railway station. ‘Here.’ She wrapped the blanket around his shoulders and pulled out a chair. ‘Sit down. Tell me what happened.’
While Lottie brewed some fresh coffee, Jackson poured his heart out. About Sasha, and what a fool she’d made of him. About his father taking Sasha’s side and going behind his back. Finally, he spoke about his own guilt, and fury at himself for not having been on the ball.
‘I know I party too hard. I’m not stupid,’ he said, chewing idly on a stick of stale French bread that Lottie had left lying around. ‘I guess I just thought, after my big success in Park City, I could kick back a little, you know. Is that so terrible?’
‘Hmmm,’ said Lottie. You mean our big success in Park City. I was the one who clinched us that deal. But you didn’t see me ‘kicking back’. It’s back to work as normal for the rest of us lesser mortals.
Reading her face, Jackson said, ‘You think I’m arrogant, don’t you?’
Lottie poured the milk. ‘Well, I … maybe a little. Sometimes.’
‘You think I’m arrogant and lazy and I don’t care about my team.’
Lottie blushed. ‘Sugar?’
‘Oh God.’ Jackson put his head in his hands. ‘That’s what hurts the most. Everything that bitch Sasha said to me is true. I set myself up. I did. I let this happen, and all for a few hours of lousy sex with a pair of …’
‘OK, enough.’ Lottie clamped both hands over her ears. ‘I don’t want to know.’
Jackson looked taken aback.
‘I’ll try to be your friend and to listen. I’ll try to give you advice, if that’s what you want, not that you ever listen to it, and I’ll happily make you coffee and lend you my blanket, but I will not stand here in my own kitchen while you talk about your … your …’ she struggled for the appropriate word, ‘… your sexploits with God knows who, twins or whatever ridiculous thing it was. I mean, really. Really.