Private Player

by Louise Bay

  More than that, I needed to find a hook and prove to Bernie I was capable of getting a great story on my own. I had a unique perspective on Nathan. I knew him like Craig never would. Maybe I could leverage that without compromising either of us.

  Thirteen

  Madison

  Trying to find an interesting angle for the Nathan Cove profile felt like I was picking at a roll of sellotape, trying to find the end. As we pulled up outside the children’s hospital where Nathan was getting his picture taken for some fundraising thing, I continued to lob random questions at him in the hope that one of his answers would give me something to work with.

  “You made a ton of money when Astro floated, right?” I asked.

  “Some,” he replied. “A lot of it is tied up in shares.”

  “But you could sell them.” I began to walk into the entrance but Nathan threw out an arm to stop me. I hadn’t seen the hospital porter pushing a bed toward the door.

  Even through a suit jacket, Nathan’s arms were . . . substantial. I fought the instinct to reach out and touch him. The part of my brain that still parsed the world with Rallegra readers in mind was buzzing with questions. Did he have a specific workout regimen for his arms? Bis and tris together, or was he more of a back-and-bis man? Did muscles like that run in the family? Did he have a problem finding shirts that fit?

  When the porter had passed, Nathan charged up the ramp as if he knew exactly where he was going. “Why would I sell my shares?” he asked as I caught up to him. “Astro’s performance is going from strength to strength.”

  “You could cash them in and start something new. Retire.”

  He shot me a look that told me he thought I was being ridiculous. “I’m thirty-three years old. I’m not going to retire.”

  I had to run every third step to keep up with him as he strode along the corridor. “But what keeps you at Astro?”

  Before he could answer, Nathan stopped abruptly as we approached a man in a blue shirt with rolled-up sleeves and a stethoscope around his neck.

  “Nathan?” he asked as he reached us and glanced at me. “Did we have a lunch?”

  Was it me or did this guy also have freakishly long eyelashes?

  “No, just stopping by the children’s ward. They want a photo or something.”

  “Right, you go have your picture taken.” The man grinned at Nathan as if he were ridiculous. “I’ll be busy saving lives while you pose.”

  Nathan sighed and shoved his hands in his pocket. “Madison, this is my little brother, Beau. He’s a constant pain in my arse and seems to forget that he wouldn’t be able to save quite as many lives without me paying for equipment that he needs to do that.”

  Nathan’s brother? The eyelashes made sense now.

  “He never likes to get his hands dirty,” Beau said, clearly not ever having seen his brother in action in the boardroom. “He just likes to stand back and write cheques. Are you unlucky enough to work with this guy?”

  I shook my head. “I’m a journalist writing a profile on your brother.”

  Beau’s eyes widened. “Really? Funny, Nathan never mentioned that.” He playfully punched Nathan on the arm. “You just love the attention.”

  “I think you’ve mistaken me for Jacob,” Nathan replied.

  “Speaking of,” Beau said. “Mum was asking whether you’re going to Norfolk next weekend.”

  Nathan shrugged. “Hopefully. I have a few things going on at the moment.”

  “If you make it up, I think we’ll be a full house. It will be the first time we’ve all been together since Christmas.”

  Nathan nodded. “That would be good. I’ll try. Even if it’s just for Saturday night.”

  “Do you have more brothers and sisters?” I asked. Nathan and I hadn’t really discussed his family. In fact, thinking back on our conversations, he had an uncanny ability to not talk about his family.

  “There are five of us brothers,” Beau replied.

  Crap. I guessed that’s why the rest of us ended up with stumpy eyelashes. The gaggle of Cove kids took all the good genes. “You close?” I asked, thinking I’d love to chat with his brothers and get the familial perspective on Nathan. It might be just the story I was looking for—how such an overachiever interacted with his family. Did success like Nathan’s alienate him from his siblings? Did his values around the jobs he was protecting and the pensions he was growing come from his family? If I was looking to discover what made Nathan tick, there was no better place to start than with the people who’d known him since the very beginning.

  “No,” Nathan snapped at the same time Beau said yes.

  Beau rolled his eyes. “Nathan likes to think he doesn’t need us but it’s not true. He’s a Cove even if his CV says otherwise.”

  “His CV?” What did his resume have to do with his last name?

  “He’s being an idiot,” Nathan said. “Aren’t you supposed to be responsible? In charge of people’s lives and all that?”

  “Relax,” Beau said and then turned to me. “He’s a worrier. You should put that in your article.”

  “Worrier” wasn’t the first thing that sprang to mind when I thought about Nathan. Handsome. Sexy. Successful. Check, check, check. Beau was making him out to be some kind of anxious mother hen. There was a surprising difference between the Nathan I’d seen in the boardroom and the man his brother described.

  “You like to get together as a family?” I asked, wondering if their gatherings were the kind that included people from outside the family. People like me, for example.

  “Yes,” Beau and Nathan both chorused. Well at least they agreed on that.

  “Family’s important,” Nathan said.

  “Plus, mum is the best cook,” Beau added. “Even if I hated this guy, I’d still make it back home as often as possible to eat mum’s Sunday roast.”

  “I’m going to see if she’ll make me a lasagna to take home and freeze,” Nathan said, like he wasn’t a guy who could have the best Italian in London delivered to his house by black cab whenever he wanted it.

  “Don’t be selfish and just ask for yourself. Make sure I get one too,” Beau said.

  We’d been out of the office less than half an hour and I’d learned more about Nathan in that time than I had in all our meetings this week. Apparently, he was a man who loved his mum, had four brothers, and made time for his family. This Nathan was very different from the micromanaging, super-focused partier that I’d met so far. Who Nathan was professionally versus who he was with his family could be the article hook I was looking for.

  “And you can’t ask mum for yourself? Didn’t we just celebrate your thirtieth birthday or did I make a mistake by twenty years.”

  “Mum will say yes to you,” Beau said.

  “That’s because I’m nice to her.”

  “That’s because you’re a suck-up. But then again, I guess you’re still having to make it up to her.” Beau turned to me grinning like the cat who got the cream. “Nathan’s the black sheep of the family. A constant disappointment.”

  Beau was clearly joking, but the tightness of Nathan’s jaw told me the remark hit a sore spot. He glanced up the corridor as if searching for an exit, as if standing talking to his brother was exactly the last thing he wanted to do. Interesting . . .

  “Aren’t you meant to be somewhere?” Nathan asked. “I thought you worked here, or do you just stalk the corridors waiting for donors to accost and insult?” Nathan turned to me. “We’re expected on the children’s ward. They have a photographer waiting for us.”

  “He pretends he doesn’t like the attention but you’ll figure out that he’s all about the spotlight. That’s why you didn’t end up in the family business—”

  “We have to go,” Nathan interrupted, just as things were getting juicy. He stalked down the corridor, leaving me wondering whether it was rude to ditch Nathan and question Beau about his brother, and why it was that Nathan hadn’t ended up in the family business, whatever that was.
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  I scrambled to keep up but didn’t mention his brother’s comments. I’d learned that Nathan easily shut down and I didn’t want that to happen. Craig was ready to swoop in and steal this profile from me at any moment, but I could make that harder for him by solidifying a personal bond with our subject. I wanted Nathan relaxed. The kind of relaxed he might be sitting around a table with his brothers, eating his mother’s Sunday roast. The kind of relaxed that might finally loosen those lips, and hand me the story I so desperately needed. What I needed was an invitation to the impending family reunion.

  Fourteen

  Nathan

  I never realized something so small as a button could become the biggest annoyance in my life—at least not until Madison donned her pink shirt. The third button down kept working itself loose. Despite the fact I wasn’t fourteen and knew very well I shouldn’t stare at women’s breasts—especially not women who held my career in their hands—Madison’s were like water in the middle of a desert. And I was dying of thirst.

  We’d agreed to put Saturday night behind us, to pretend it had never happened. And if it hadn’t been for that tricksy little button, I probably could have.

  “Nathan?” Madison asked.

  “What?” I said, irritated by my lack of self-discipline. I logged off my computer. It was gone eight and as long as I was in the office, Madison was here with me.

  I needed some space.

  “I’m going to take that as a yes,” she replied.

  “A yes to what?” I asked.

  “I told you that I wanted to come home with you.”

  My stomach dived into my knees. It was exactly what I wanted to hear and everything I needed to avoid. “Come home with me?” I asked, wondering if I’d heard her correctly. She wouldn’t have a particularly difficult task convincing me to strip her naked and bury myself in her again, but it was news to me that this option was back on the table. There’d been a few flirtatious glances, a few accidental touches that had Madison jumping away like I’d set her alight, but I’d thought we both agreed that our personal relationship was to remain in the past.

  “Yeah. I think it’s important for the article that I see more of you. The man behind the title and the headlines.”

  Right. She wanted to come home for the article. Not to get naked. I wasn’t sure if I was disappointed or relieved, but either way the stiffening in my cock loosened.

  “You want to come home with me . . . now?”

  “You were planning to head out, weren’t you? Or are you going to see your dentist?” She made quote marks in the air.

  “No,” I said, opening my desk drawer and pulling out my keys. “No dental appointments this evening.”

  “So, you’re worried you’ve not put out clean guest towels in the downstairs loo?”

  “I’m not worried about anything.” That wasn’t quite true. I was a little concerned that it would be more than her third button that would come undone. Here in the office, out in public, it all seemed completely realistic to keep things professional. But in private? In my house? I wasn’t sure that a few flirtatious glances wouldn’t turn into something else. And there were at least a million reasons why that would be a bad idea.

  “Perfect. I’ll even buy you takeout. I can expense it.”

  “I haven’t said yes yet.”

  “You said you weren’t worried about me coming back,” she said, following me out of my office and along the empty corridor to the lifts.

  “I’m not sure it’s a great idea, Madison. It’s late and I need to—”

  “I won’t outstay my welcome. And you have to eat. We’ll have dinner and then I’ll leave. I promise.”

  Apparently, she didn’t think she’d have any trouble keeping things strictly professional. Maybe I had misread the tension between us, or maybe I really was still a fourteen-year-old boy on the inside. But I had enough self-control not to make a pass at her while we had dinner, didn’t I? I had promised Gretel that Madison would have uninterrupted access to me . . .

  “I’m kicking you out by ten thirty. I need my beauty sleep.”

  As the lift pinged open, she grinned at me like she’d won some kind of battle. “I think you’ve had quite enough for one lifetime. But ten thirty’s a deal.”

  Had Madison Shore just called me beautiful?

  Madison was quiet in the car. Unnervingly so. I kept glancing across at her but it was her turn to have her nose buried in her phone.

  “Everything okay?” I asked, when we were just a few minutes from home.

  “Yeah. Fine,” she replied, putting her phone down and looking around for the first time since we started our trip. “We’re in . . . Camden. You live here?” She sounded shocked.

  “No but I could live in Camden.” I didn’t like Camden—full of people trying too hard to be cooler than they were. “We’re en route,” I said.

  “I thought you’d live in Mayfair.”

  “I wanted a garden.” That was one of several reasons I wanted to live a little farther out. I liked the space, the community. And I was closer to the family home.

  She snapped her head around to look at me. “Really? You have green fingers?”

  “I pay a gardener.”

  “Of course you do,” she said. “If not Camden, where are you taking me?”

  “Highgate. The wine is better,” I said.

  “Interesting,” she said, and I could almost see her making a mental note. I just couldn’t work out what that note might be.

  “Plenty of people live in Highgate,” I said, trying to see off any criticism she might have.

  “Maybe,” she said. “It’s just not where I’d pictured you.”

  I wanted to ask what that meant but at the same time, I didn’t want her to think I cared what she thought. “George Michael lived two doors down. Kate Moss the other side. Plenty of people live in Highgate.”

  We pulled into the drive and I found myself feeling oddly self-conscious. I rarely had women visit me at home.

  “Pretty,” she said, getting out of the car and looking up at the three floors of small-paned windows and red brick. “Is it Georgian?”

  “On the outside,” I said, locking the car. “Where do you live?”

  “Hampstead,” she answered as she ran her delicate fingers over the big round bell on the left-hand side of my door.

  “We’re just across the Heath from each other,” I said, nodding toward the huge expanse of green.

  “I suppose,” she said as I gestured to go in. “I’m still living with my parents.”

  “The Post doesn’t pay so well?” I asked, following her, closing the door behind us and dropping my car keys into a bowl on the hall table.

  “I’m only at the paper on a temporary contract. I’m a freelancer. I’m trying to save for a deposit on a flat so I can move out, but without a permanent job it’s almost impossible.”

  “Oh yes, I remember you saying something about your house deposit fund at the wedding.”

  “I should never have bought that dress. It cost me a fortune and it’s unrepairable.” She glanced back at me and I indicated that she needed to follow the hallway all the way to its end.

  I switched on the light in the kitchen living space that spanned the back of the house and headed to the wine fridge. “Make yourself comfortable,” I said.

  “So, no butler or live-in housekeeper? And you drove yourself?”

  “I’ll open the wine myself and get my chef to prepare us some dinner. And when I say my chef, I mean Uber Eats.”

  “No chef, either? How shocking.” She placed her palm on her chest in mock distress. “Do you have any help?” she asked. “I thought you were supposed to be rich.”

  “I have a housekeeper who sometimes cooks. I also have a mother who never lets me leave family dinners without a month’s worth of food to take home.”

  “Oh yes. The lasagna.” She laughed as she took a seat on one of the bar stools at my kitchen island. It was a warm sound that travelled thro
ugh her entire body. The way she laughed was infectious. It was as if it didn’t happen all the time and she made the most of it. “My mother doesn’t cook unless you count unwrapping cheese and putting it on a board with some crackers.”

  I grinned and slipped my jacket off. “Wine?” I asked, pulling out a couple glasses. It probably wasn’t the best choice to add alcohol into the mix tonight, but she wanted to see me at home and this was me at home.

  She nodded. “I thought you were tequila only.”

  “I confess, I’m a bit of a snob when it comes to wine. I’d rather drink nothing than something bad. What do you like?” The question seemed to crystallize the tension between us. It suddenly seemed ludicrous that I didn’t know the wine preferences of the woman in front of me but I did know the expression on her face when she came.

  “Surprise me,” she said.

  If she hadn’t been trying to get to know me for an article, tonight would have felt a lot like a date. But she was and so it . . . shouldn’t feel like that.

  I pulled out a 2010 Château Margaux and set about pouring us each a glass. “What food shall I order?”

  “I’m not picky. Pick whatever comes the fastest—I’m hungry.”

  While I pulled up a delivery app that offered takeaway from the best restaurants in London, Madison slipped off her chair and headed over to my wine fridge. It was only a small proportion of the collection that was housed in the cellar. As I ordered, she wandered over to the glass doors the other side of the sofas that led onto the garden. It was twilight and she wouldn’t be able to see much. She cupped her hands around her face to block out the lights. Her long, rioja-colored hair was swept up into a high ponytail that showed off the back of her neck. She seemed relaxed and happy enough to show herself around.

  “You like the view?” I asked. I knew I did.

  “I can’t decide,” she said, turning back to face me but her eyes searched the room.