“Slightly,” she admitted. “My eyesight isn’t bad, but the light—”
“Do allow me.” He offered her a firm handshake. “My name’s Brad Bailey.”
“And mine’s Diana Verity,” she said. He was confident, and she liked that. He had an open smile and an easy manner. And he was at least four inches taller than Michael, not that she was going to think about Michael.
“I know.” Brad grinned at her. “I’ve seen your picture around. And that accent is beautiful.”
“Thank you.”
“I hope you don’t mind that I took the liberty of introducing myself. I just remembered that joke in Ten Little Indians, ever seen that movie?”
She shook her head instead of saying no so that her diamond earrings caught the light. It was easy to like this man.
“You should, it’s real funny. Anyway, this Irish guy says he’d heard two Englishmen were stranded on a desert island for five years and never said a word to each other because they hadn’t been introduced.”
Diana laughed.
What a stone-cold fox, Bailey thought, with a body that could make a dead man rise and do the mambo. He loved her dress, her loose, long, brown hair, the delicate scent of flowers that hung about her. And the way she talked. Those English broads just exuded cool. Look at Princess Diana. The woman actually had a nose like a Concorde, but she had borne herself with such confidence and classy style that she had been thought the most beautiful woman in the world. This girl was the same way. Brad indulged in a little fantasy of Diana in tennis whites, sipping a lemonade on the court of his country club.
“I’m afraid we can come across as rather stuffy, but on the other hand, we produced the Beatles and the Stones. So you work it out.”
“I’d love to,” he said, smiling down at her. “But I think I might need some time to do it. Say, dinner?”
“Maybe,” Diana said, surprising herself. “First I have to find my place at this dinner.”
“Excuse me for just a second,” he said, bowing slightly and moving away.
Diana’s eyebrow lifted. He was chatting her up and then excused himself? So be it. After Ernie, she was in no mood to play games. Seething, she bent closer to the table plan and found her name. Table eighty-nine. Now she had to look on the floor plan and see if she could find table eighty-nine, wherever it was. There were enough tables in the ballroom to stock a branch of Ikea, except that these particular tables would not be found there. Solid mahogany and gold accents weren’t their style. She scanned the picture, ignoring the flautists and girls in robes with miniature harps who strolled behind her. Eighty-nine … but Elspeth wasn’t there. She must be ill. Diana frowned lightly. She would have to make conversation on her own, and—
“I’m back.” Brad Bailey tapped her on the arm.
“So you are,” Diana said evenly.
He admired her. Damn, she was cool. An American girl would have harangued him, or batted her eyelids in the face of his money and pretended not to care.
“Please excuse my abandoning you,” he said. “I had to speak to Fred Layton, he’s organizing stuff here. I promised him an extra donation if he would alter the seating plan a little.” He leaned forward and struck through her name on table eighty-nine. “You are here now on table three. With me.”
Diana’s delicate eyebrow lifted. “You got the seats rearranged? I’m sure I’m not worth such trouble.”
“It would have been worth a good deal more than that,” Brad told her, thinking of the eight grand he’d had to promise to compensate for the last-minute chaos, the hasty apologies made to the wealthy dowager who was being ejected from her prime seat next to him. He crooked his arm and hoped an English gentleman would have done it in the same fashion. “Shall we go to dinner?”
Diana’s reservations melted. He was funny and charming and solicitous. I deserve someone like this, she told herself.
“Thank you. That would be lovely,” she said.
*
Brad was good at introductions. Even Diana was impressed by the rest of their table. There was Fred Drasner, owner of the News, on her left, and the governor’s wife on his right. Two film stars and a princess of Monaco were broken up by a Nobel Prize winner and a huge, tall basketball player. She wondered where Felicity Metson was sitting. She would gnaw her heart out if she could see Diana now.
She greeted everyone politely, curtsied to the princess, and settled down to wonder about her escort through the speeches that were bound to follow. Brad Bailey? He knew everybody, he was well liked, rich went without saying. He had a nice body, a gym-lover’s body, even if he didn’t lift many weights.
“You have the advantage of me,” Diana said. “You know who I am, but I can’t say the same.”
He nodded. “I’m in real estate. I own Bailey Realtors. You won’t have seen the name because we don’t advertise much. Mostly we deal in high-end properties in Manhattan, Westchester and Long Island, with a little work upstate.”
“What qualifies as high end?”
“Anything from eight or nine million up, basically.”
Diana studied her menu. Caviar blinis followed by duck with a fresh pea confit, then apple charlotte with vanilla-scented cream.
“How did you get into that?”
“It’s a family business. My father built it up.” Brad shrugged apologetically. “I can’t claim to be a self-made man.”
“Let me guess.” She found she was teasing him. She leaned closer, and he breathed in the perfume of roses and tried not to stare at the freckled slopes of her glorious tits. “A large family house in Brooklyn Heights, and pony lessons at weekends?”
“Almost. A country estate in Westchester, a townhouse in the city, and stables with horses.”
“And a private jet,” Diana suggested.
“Of course,” he said seriously.
She swallowed. “It sounds pleasant.”
“It is. I tend to commute in from my place at Scarsdale in Westchester these days, though. I like waking up to greenery.”
“I can understand that,” Diana said faintly.
“It gets me out of the city. I go to things like this because I suppose I have to.”
“Where else would you find people that want to buy and sell places starting at eight million?”
“Exactly,” he said, pleased at her perceptiveness. “You’re a businesswoman, too, I know.”
“A headhunter, really. And—it’s not quite so high powered,” she said dryly.
“I hope your schedule will spare time for dinner?” he said hopefully.
She gestured to her plate. “Aren’t we having dinner?”
He looked forlorn. “Ah. You’re going to tear a new hole in my heart.”
Diana laughed again. “Come, Brad. You must have a million girls chasing you.”
“I do,” he said factually. “But I don’t like girls who chase. I like girls who are chased.”
“Like me?”
Brad gave her another warm smile. He was golden, she thought, all-American, tanned and healthy.
“Exactly like you. So please put me out of my misery. Say yes.”
THIRTY-FOUR
Michael was out running at quarter to six in the morning, the wonderful dawn hour when the city that never sleeps actually sleeps. Apart from the odd cop coming off the night shift and the fresh-produce men driving to the markets to pick up the day’s selections, the wide concrete canyons of Manhattan were deserted. He had a membership to several fancy gyms now and kept up the karate, which was good to work off his frustrations over Diana, that ice-cold English bitch. But nothing blew the cobwebs from Michael’s mind like running in the empty city. He pounded the concrete and leapt between cross-streets down which no cars were coming. The clean open lines of the New York grid almost pulled his feet along them, challenging him to go faster and harder. Most city joggers preferred the park, but that was far too bland for Michael. Why circle around and around a fairly ordinary lake when you could be plunging through the
shuttered record stores of the East Village, or past the manicured gardens on West Eleventh? Why bother with a hundred other runners on the same beaten track when the Museum Mile, with the stunning apartment buildings of Park Avenue, was so close and could be your exclusive playground? And best of all was midtown, where the giant glass and slate towers jabbed up into the sky like so many accusing fingers. He liked to time his run so that, whatever the route, he finished up with a dash through Times Square, with its massive billboards and scrolling lights dominating the morning sky. Times Square used to be a spot for hookers, but the city crackdowns had tidied them all away. Now it was a place for chic little hotels, huge chain stores and theme restaurants. It was still the neon, beating heart of his city. Cicero thought of New York as modern man’s answer to the pyramids. He liked stopping, drenched with sweat, the muscles of his legs worked out, all his tension driven into the ground, to gaze up at the colossal billboards. It was one of the best parts of the day.
But not today.
Today, when he glanced up, he felt anger seethe in the pit of his stomach like molten acid. He found his normal deep breathing was ragged. He frowned, wiped the sweat from his forehead, and frowned again.
EDUCATION STATION, said the caption. The words were emblazoned over a sweet little kid with a pudding-bowl haircut smiling as he glanced at a paper marked “A.” Underneath that was a blow-up shot of a CD-ROM called Scientist Sam. The cute Muppetlike animal that represented Scientist Sam was a total rip-off of Gecko, the character star of his bestselling game.
Michael digested the ad for a few seconds, then turned around. Usually he walked home after his run. Today he was going to wing it. He didn’t have time to walk.
*
The phone purred by Diana’s bed, and she reached out a languid hand to pick it up. She was tired; last night Brad had taken her ice-skating at a private rink on the Upper West Side, and then moved her into Le Cirque for dinner, before finishing off with a nightcap at his house on East Seventieth. He’d been funny as usual, urbane and sophisticated, and very solicitous about her wants. He didn’t push himself forward, and after taking her home, had actually asked her permission to plant a kiss on her cheek. His lips were soft and gentle.
He was almost a dream, she thought. So clean-cut and good-looking he could be a male model if he wasn’t a super-successful real-estate broker. Elspeth Merriman had been in fits about the fact that he had asked her out.
“My dear,” she said, placing one wizened hand, glittering with diamonds, over Diana’s soft one, “you must secure him as fast as you can. What a triumph! The Baileys are quite the people around town. She is a much sought after hostess and he’s retired now, of course, but Bradley has been doing so well. And still single. Every mother in New York has been after him for years, he dated a couple of times, Camilla Vendela, I think, and Tina Fellows…”
“I’m not after him,” Diana protested. “Come on, Elspeth. The world isn’t like that anymore.”
The thought of her first marriage flickered into her mind, but she ignored it.
The old woman snorted. “Of course it is. Tell Felicity Metson the world is not like that anymore.”
Diana smiled and said nothing. That was the wisest tack. But Elspeth did have a point, and Claire reinforced it. How would Felicity take her waltzing off with Brad Bailey, the last single man worth anything on the scene?
“I’m just enjoying his company right now,” she said finally.
Elspeth leaned forward, her crisp Chanel tweed bunching. “You do that, dear. You enjoy his company. Just make sure he enjoys yours.”
Well, last night had been very enjoyable. She almost didn’t want to go to work. But the telephone was ringing, and she had to answer it.
She lifted the receiver. “Hello, Michael.”
Who else would it be at six fifteen A.M.?
*
After briefing Diana, Michael showered, dressed and prepared to walk around to the office. He had no cell phone and this might be the last minutes of the day he could spend quietly. There would be a frenzy of calls and recrimination later, Goldman Sachs wailing, the marketing people yelling at their contacts, why hadn’t anybody gotten wind of this earlier? He could see it now, and he knew how it would end. Ernie Foxton had what they lacked: money. He hadn’t needed to float in order to get cash for distribution and marketing. That deal with the Italians, that Michael had read about and dismissed, that was his footing in toys. And he knew the devious twists of that little fucker’s mind. Foxton would have spent heavily on this launch. That billboard wouldn’t be a one-off.
He set out at a fast clip. It cleared the mind to walk. This would ruin the IPO; he realized that straight away. Their product was no longer unique. Without ad-spend or awareness from Joe Public, they looked as though they had come late to their own party.
It was almost as if it was deliberate.
He turned the corner onto West Fourth and mulled that over. Deliberate? Ernie Foxton had certainly enjoyed firing his ass and cheating him of his millions. But would he come after him further? Was this an intentional attempt to ruin him?
Michael’s thoughts slid to Diana. Ernie had divorced her and had hooked up with some new gold-digging broad, but Michael had given Diana a job. When the company, and she, had started to take off, maybe it had pissed him off.
They did say you hated the people you had harmed worse than the people who harmed you.
He thought about that ad. It wasn’t just a kids’ educational CD-ROM. It was a total rip-off of Imperial’s own ground-breaking product.
Plenty of his best people—Diana’s best finds—were staying with his comparatively small salaries because they expected a big pay day. From the start it had looked like Imperial would float. All the staff had small stakes. They would all have become rich to greater or lesser degrees when the IPO went through. But that was over now.
Michael thought it through. They would walk, and he couldn’t fault them. This was a business, not a charity. If he was a top-grade code writer, or a marketing hotshot, he wouldn’t take thirty grand a year less than he was worth with no trade-off. A big staff hemorrhage would gut his company. Product would be late and less good. Distributors would fall away. It would be back to square one.
Anger closed a cold fist around his heart. Fuck it. If Ernie Foxton thought this would kill him off, he was mistaken. And if he wanted war, he was welcome.
*
“So what’s the news?” Ernie said. It was a great morning, he thought. Jung Li had been superbly vicious, the little bitch, this morning. She’d broken in a new pair of steel stilettos on his back. Felicity had kept out of his way, apart from sending up his favorite breakfast, and there was the news from the lawyers.
Goldman Sachs was pulling back from the Imperial offering. The word was out, Fineman said. The ad spots they’d run last night had done well and been noticed. Clearly Imperial was no longer the only player on the scene. The market hated uncertainty and would wait to see how Blakely’s did.
“The offering’s postponed. Which means they don’t have money.”
“They’re dead,” Ernie crowed. “Little cocky bastard.”
“Er … quite,” Fineman agreed. “Certainly I foresee a good many problems for them.”
Ernie hung up whistling. He was a king of the bloody universe. It was great to have cash in New York. He was Ernie Foxton, he could make men and break them. Michael Cicero once objected to dancing to his tune. Diana the same. But I don’t take crap, Ernie told himself importantly. This would show the world that if Ernest Foxton struck you down you stayed down.
It pissed him off that Diana had apparently taken back her own name. Felicity had come in after the Elspeth Merriman party, whining and carrying on about her. Ernie made her understand that he didn’t want to hear it. He hated the idea of public fights. Everything around him should be smooth. That was his image. He had to keep up the image.
But Diana Verity? What the fuck was wrong with Foxton? She was lucky
she’d ever been his wife. It bugged him that she had the balls to do it.
He pulled himself back to the present. Pleasant reflections on the shitty day Michael Cicero would be having couldn’t last forever. He had the monthly review meeting. Davits, Norman Jackson, his new adult-fiction chief, and Emma Datson, who ran marketing, were all lined up around the table with the flunky suits from their departments whose names he didn’t bother to remember.
“Lawrence Taylor is going so well,” Emma gushed. She was a beautifully put together forty-something and therefore of no interest to Ernie. Women for him stopped at thirty-five. However, she had survived his purge by being too good to sack. So far. That could change at any second.
“We expect him to go well. He’s our biggest author. Gimme the breakdown of the list,” Ernie said.
There was a moment’s pause. His executives were looking a bit shifty, Ernie realized suddenly. Staring down at the table, and that.
“Out with it,” Ernie snapped. “I asked for a fucking breakdown. Capisce?”
Mrs. Datson swallowed. “Well … there has been a teeny sales problem with some of our new signings.”
Ernie blinked. His new signings were the big-ticket names, the trashy novelists for whom he had cleared out all those literary fuckers and whiny poetry writers. He had spent heavily on ads, mostly using the money he’d saved by firing all the deadwood, the old sales reps who weren’t making their quotas, the tweedy fucking American gentlemen editors in the history department, the men who started spouting crap about what the publishing house should be giving back to the community. It was a pretty penny altogether, had done fantastic shit for the bottom line. It was how he got his ruthless reputation. The stock had soared, too.
He was pleased he’d taken out the trash. The star-author drive was part of that. Their blaze of posters, radio ads, in-store dump bins, pro-PR campaigns and talk-show appearances had produced six new bestsellers that had taken turns at the top of the New York Times list for the last six months.
“What are you talking about?” He lectured Datson like she was a particularly stupid child. “Lawrence’s book is number fucking one. The rest are doing good, too. No?”
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