Speak of the Devil

by Shari Shattuck

  The deal had helped her professional career, there was no doubt about that, and career advancement had been the sole focus of Leah’s life in the past couple of years since her divorce. She knew that her clout in the banking community had risen considerably with the Golden Door deal and several others, and she was utterly amazed at the absolute lack of satisfaction she had received from it. She had achieved one of her many goals, branch manager, and was well on her way to rising again in the corporate ranks, yet the victories felt hollow. She wondered, as she sat across from the accomplished Susan Hughs, if it was different for her. After all, Susan had a husband, a partner, someone to share her triumphs and her life with.

  Leah shook herself out of it and tried to focus on the deal. She was vaguely aware that Susan had been telling her that phase one was almost sold out and they had begun presales on phase two, which offered even better views because of its superior location.

  “Of course,” Susan was saying, “only the homes on the south-facing streets will have that view, but we’ve graded the hillsides so that each street has a seventeen-foot-altitude increase, and the homes are placed the minimum required feet apart, maximizing the number of homes that can take advantage of the view.”

  “And your profit,” Leah said, trying to make it sound like a compliment.

  Susan took it as one. “Naturally.” She winked. “We’re not in this just for the fun of it.” Leaning forward, she placed one hand on the table and said conspiratorially, “Are we?”

  Distinctly uncomfortable, Leah looked down again at the proposal in her hand; a request for twenty-eight million dollars and change, on a ten-year loan. “I take it you’ve got the zoning approval in place?”

  “I will,” Susan said with iron in her voice. “There’s one detail I have to sort out, but it won’t be a problem.”

  “My understanding,” said Leah, fully aware that she was voicing more of a personal concern than a business one, “is that the city council was concerned about traffic and emergency vehicle access. Since there will be only one route in and out of the entire development.”

  “Oh, I’ve got that worked out,” Susan said dismissively, standing and closing her slim Prada briefcase. “You deal with the bank’s board of trustees, and I’ll take care of the city council.” She reached across the desk and shook Leah’s hand with so much confidence that Leah had to exert considerable pressure to equal the force of the squeeze. “We’re a good team,” Susan was saying. “I really enjoy working with you.” She paused and took a moment to give Leah an approving look. “You’re going to go far,” she said. “I can see that.” Then, with a last nod, she turned and left the office.

  Leah, who had risen with her client, stood watching the door after it had closed behind Susan with the distinct knowledge that she’d just been worked. While she felt the compliment of being told she would be successful by a woman who clearly knew what that meant, Leah wasn’t stupid or näïve enough to think that Susan Hughs was a woman who handed out compliments just to be nice. There was no doubt in Leah’s mind that the woman who had just left her office did absolutely nothing without knowing the cause and effect back to herself.

  With a sigh Leah realized that Susan was exactly the kind of woman she had always envisioned herself becoming. Susan Hughs was beautifully presented, sharp as a rapier, and uncompromisingly aggressive, and she made it all seem effortless, a trick Leah had yet to pull off. Leah had made progress, but it had always felt like a muddy, uphill struggle in heavy rain. This woman was a doer and a leader. There was absolutely no question that Susan Hughs was—and would continue to be—a success. She was everything that Leah had always wanted to be.

  So why did she find the woman so distasteful?

  As if to escape the uncomfortable thought, Leah left the office with the pretense of checking the floor. She went out into the tellers’ area, sectioned off by thick bulletproof glass and a buzzer door to the main floor. Three tellers were at their stations, and as she watched their performances with an appraising eye, the street doors opened and someone new entered.

  Something about the new arrival’s shape and walk arrested Leah’s attention. Her head shot up to stare at him, and her mouth fell open in amazement as she watched Weston Oakmont look around the floor, then walk to the desk where Leah’s friend Towler, recently promoted to new accounts, sat across from an elderly couple.

  She couldn’t hear the following exchange across the room and through the glass, but she saw Weston address Towler, who then looked around and spotted her. He gestured Weston to one of the couches on the side of the room, then seemed to excuse himself from the couple seated with their backs to her. With his eyes fixed on Leah, he pointedly picked up his phone. She heard the buzzer on the phone go off in the office behind her.

  Back behind the desk with her door firmly shut, Leah fumbled to pick it up and tried to sound casual. “Yes?”

  “Hi, it’s me,” Towler said. “There’s someone asking for you.” He made the statement sound like a playground tease.

  “Oh? Who?” Leah struggled to maintain her calm.

  “He gave his name as a Mr. Oakmont, but personally I think he must be some kind of minor deity once removed. Don’t you dare pretend you didn’t see him.” Towler, who was gay and never missed a chance to comment on the physical attributes of the bank’s more attractive customers, had been trying to entice Leah to get out and improve her social life for the two years he had known her. Since Leah hadn’t dated since her divorce, he’d had scant opportunity to exercise his prowess with licentious jibes, a skill he’d been perfecting since his early teens. She could hear his pleasure in the rare occasion now.

  “Towler, are you being professional?” She tried to sound stern, but she couldn’t help but forgive him. He’d always been a splash of colorful fun on an otherwise spanking-white environment.

  “Certainly not!” he snorted. “I consider that I have maintained my amateur status. But I’d go pro for this one.”

  “Please ask him to wait. I’ll be right out.” Leah hung up the phone and took a few deep breaths. Why was Weston here? Could he have come in for business reasons? Maybe he wanted to open a local account while he was here, or cash a large check and was hoping for her to approve it. But that didn’t make any sense; his check would be government issued and therefore cash-able at any bank. Could he have come in to see her personally? Leah found she was hyperventilating, and she had to put her head down between her legs for a few moments. She hoped that no one would come in and see her in this undignified position before she could pull herself together.

  But the door remained mercifully closed as she sucked air into her lungs until she was able to slow her breathing and regain at least a semblance of control. A debilitating panic had risen unreasonably in her. It wasn’t him, of course; she didn’t know Weston personally, but her last experience with a man had been so bad, so abusive and violent, that . . .

  “Okay,” she told herself out loud. “Get it together. It’s just a guy, albeit a very cute guy. You manage a bank, you own a home, you can prorate annuities at a variety of interests. You can do this.”

  She didn’t really believe it, but having no choice, she checked her lipstick in a small vanity mirror that she kept in her desk, paused for a deep calming breath, and then threw open her office door, asked a teller to buzz her out, and strode onto the floor with all the bravado she could muster.

  But as she went, she couldn’t stop comparing the walk to a quick trip down the plank. She was painfully regretting the fact that she had chosen a rather bland outfit today: a gray suit with a white silk shirt. Weston stood as she approached and Towler swiveled in his chair to watch her as she passed, like a sunflower tracks the sun across the sky. She shot Towler what she hoped was a stern look of reproach, and then extended a hand. “Mr. Oakmont. How nice to see you again.” She was chagrined to find that his hand felt very warm and dry, which must have meant that hers was cold and clammy; she tried to ignore her subsequent mortifi
cation. “How can I help you?”

  Weston looked around at Towler and the older couple, who were clearly listening from two yards away, and dropped his voice when he spoke. “Actually, I, uh . . . It isn’t bank business.” He smiled and shrugged apologetically, and Leah thought she would melt from the charm of his obvious, and very disarming, discomfort. Was he nervous about coming to see her? “I was wondering, if it’s not too presumptuous,” he continued in something just above a whisper, causing her to lean in until she felt a blush of heat rising from her skin, “if you might like to have lunch, or just coffee, whatever, with me sometime?” He looked endearingly uncertain of her response.

  “Excuse me,” came a voice from behind Leah. Thrown, she turned to see the elderly couple rising from their seats. “Are you one of the firemen who worked on the fire up at Oak Springs?”

  Weston turned his attention and professional face to them. “Yes, ma’am, I am.” He addressed the woman, who had asked the question.

  It was the elderly man who stepped forward now, extending a hand and a warm smile from a beaming, grateful face. “We just want to thank you. It was our home that you saved, and we can’t tell you how much it means to us. You gentlemen were just amazing.”

  “Wonderful,” chimed in his wife, and while Weston thanked them and shook their hands, Leah watched with a growing feeling of exclusion. Something was being shared that she didn’t even understand, and it left her feeling dull witted, as though her head were full of sand.

  “We didn’t mean to interrupt you,” the woman said to Weston, patting his arm. “You go right ahead with your business”—she cut a sly, knowing look at Leah—“but if you’re ever up Oak Springs, you drop in for some iced tea and cake.”

  “Thank you. I’d really like that,” Weston told her, and he sounded sincere. “I’m very happy that we were able to help. It’s always good to win one.”

  Unable to restrain himself, Towler had come to join the small group, hovering just outside the circle. Now he stepped in and gestured to the elderly pair. “Leah, these are the Caseys. Emily and Larry, this is Leah Falconer, our branch manager.” Leah shook hands all around, putting off her response to Weston’s invitation and feeling his eyes on her as she went through the more familiar motions that until a moment ago had made her feel important. She asked what had brought in the Caseys today.

  “We were interested in finding out about the loan rates, and how much we could afford to pay.”

  “The Caseys don’t have a mortgage. Their home is paid off,” Towler explained.

  “And you want to move?” Leah asked perfunctorily. “I think you’ll find our rates are very competitive and—”

  “No, we don’t want to move,” Larry said quickly. “We want to stay right in the house where we raised our kids, but after that fire . . .” He shook his head. “Emily wants to find out if we could afford to, and I can’t say I blame her.”

  Leah felt a spark of something snap her professional crust like a dry twig. Instead of her usual tendency to file customers in categories of size of loan and potential profit, she looked at the faces of these simple people and was moved to think of them as, well, people, with lives and feelings. The thought took her off guard. It was apparent from their rough hands and unassuming faces that this man and this woman had worked hard their whole lives. They had built a home, paid off the mortgage, and should be able to enjoy their remaining years; that was how it was supposed to work. She felt outrage that someone could thoughtlessly, or even deliberately, rob them of their peace of mind.

  She reached out impulsively and did something she hadn’t done in a long time: She took Emily’s hand in hers. “If you decide that’s what you want to do, I promise you that we will help you find the very best rates.” She smiled at the look of relief, and surprise, on Emily’s face. With an inner shudder, Leah realized that these kind people hadn’t expected anyone at a bank to take a personal interest—and yesterday, they would have been right.

  “Oh, thank you,” the elderly woman told her, squeezing Leah’s hand gratefully. “We were starting to think that we should have taken that offer from the real estate agent when someone wanted to buy the place a year ago but we told her we’d never sell. Maybe we should have jumped at the chance. I don’t think many people these days want a place that doesn’t even have city water. Especially with all those fancy new homes going up nearby, I don’t know who’d buy it.”

  Weston spoke up now: “That’s a very beautiful spot you’ve got there, Emily. And I believe there’re still people who value peace and quiet. You might have to look for the right buyer, but I bet you’d do okay. If that’s what you decide.” He smiled reassuringly. Then his voice dropped and Leah watched him make eye contact with Larry. “But it sure would be a shame to give it up.”

  For a second, Leah thought that the old man was going to cry. Then with a sniff and a jut of his chin he thanked everyone, accepted Towler’s card, and led his wife toward the glass doors.

  Leah watched them for as long as she could before she had to turn back to the two men. Her first look was a warning to Towler. She smiled thinly and asked, “Don’t you have some papers to file?”

  “No,” he said with a bright smile. “Nothing pressing.” He looked from her to Weston and back again, openly wearing a look of enthusiastic voyeurism. The only thing he didn’t do, Leah thought, was rub his hands together or twirl his mustache.

  “Find something,” she suggested flatly.

  “Aw, man!” Towler protested comically, but he went.

  “I’m sorry for the distraction,” Leah said, and was uncertain whether to wait for Weston to repeat his request or pretend that he hadn’t made it.

  “So?” Weston asked with a small self-conscious smile.

  Damn, he’s handsome, Leah couldn’t help thinking. For the few seconds while she admired him physically, she was perfectly all right, but when she realized that a response was required and a positive one would mean spending time with a man she didn’t know, with whom she didn’t have the safety net of professional boundaries, she was seized once again by an irrational shortness of breath and nervous tremors in her chest. “Well, I, uh, I don’t really date,” she said lamely.

  “I see. I’m sorry, but your friend at the coffee shop, Jenny?” Leah nodded. “She seemed to think you might. I’m sorry if I interrupted your day.” He truly looked it.

  Leah felt as though she were standing at the edge of a bottomless crevasse and Weston, though only a few feet away, were on the other side of it. The only way across would be to launch herself out over a terrifying depth, in which lay dangers and fears—some half-imagined, some only half-hidden in the darkness below—and stepping off the edge would mean facing those things. But as he began to turn away, Leah suddenly felt that standing safely on her side would be the scariest, most terrible fate of all.

  “Wait,” she called out before he’d gone two steps. “I mean, I haven’t dated in a long time, and I’m sure I’m not very good at it, obviously. . . .” she fumbled again, feeling her face redden with the hated sensation of being out of control.

  But Weston had turned back and was waiting patiently. He said softly, “It’s okay if you don’t date.”

  I’ve blown it, Leah thought, and the disappointment was so surprisingly heavy that she bowed her head under its weight.

  “Do you eat?” Weston asked. “I mean, we don’t have to date. We could just eat a meal together. Talk a little. I’m new around here, and you probably know just about everybody and every business; maybe you could fill me in on what’s what in the neighborhood.”

  He had offered her a safe alternative. Leah looked into those late-afternoon blue eyes and said, “I could do that.” And for the first time since her horrible marriage, she believed that she could.

  Chapter 14

  “This one’s magnificent,” Sterling said to Joshua and Simon. The three of them had driven out to the phase-two site of the Golden Door development to take a look at it. The nake
d earth, stripped of any living thing, was jarring enough in small patches, but this, almost fifty acres, was disturbing to both Sterling and Joshua. Simon’s reaction was much harder to read. He hung back from the other two, following behind them as they paced along the dry, broken bits of earth, from one terraced swath to the next, and kicking at clods of dirt with a slight scowl on his face. The wind had come up again, and the dust, churned up from the defenseless ground, clogged their noses and stung their eyes.

  Below them, a Range Rover pulled up the graded but unpaved road and parked next to Sterling’s pickup. Susan Hughs got out and, shading her eyes to look up at them, gave them a wave, and then she opened the back of her car and changed her obviously expensive heels for more practical footwear. Clad in the unlikely combination of a well-tailored suit skirt and work boots, she started up the slope. “Hi! I’m glad you could meet me. What do you think of the site?” she asked Sterling when she got to the top. “Great view, huh?”

  “Yes, it’s a lovely view,” Sterling answered, sidestepping telling her what he thought of the site as a whole. “I was just commenting on this gorgeous tree. I’m glad you saved the oaks.”

  Susan looked around at the sparse spattering of trees that still stood on the crumbled, parched earth. Her pretty face soured. “So ridiculous,” she mumbled. “The county came and tagged the trees we had to leave. Now we have to work around them. I can’t tell you what that costs us.” She shook her head as though the idiocy was beyond her understanding. “I mean, we’re planning on planting lots of fast-growing saplings, maybe some pepper trees, and within five years, they’ll be as big as this one!”