All In

by Simona Ahrnstedt

  Well, to each his own.

  “Sorry, fuck. I know how it was for you,” Åsa said. “Sorry.”

  “No biggie,” Natalia said, but she wasn’t up to talking about kids. Not now, not so soon. It was only a year ago; she wasn’t over it, no matter what Åsa thought, not that they ever discussed it. If Åsa had any kind of slogan, it was: Never look back. Followed closely by: Never get attached to another person. They’d both been hurt by their experiences, although in totally different ways.

  “Are you interested in him?”

  “Not really,” Åsa scoffed. “He had his chance. He blew it.”

  Natalia shook her head. Åsa had a habit of dumping men as soon as she found the least little thing to criticize.

  “Because you seem interested.”

  “Not in the least. He bugs me, that’s all.”

  They sat in silence, each on her own end of the line.

  “I want to talk to Dad,” Natalia finally said.

  “About David?”

  “Right. I’m going to call my father and say I slept with his archenemy. No, about this deal. It’s just rubbing me the wrong way.”

  “But haven’t you already talked to him? And J-O?”

  “Yeah.”

  It was quiet on Åsa’s end. Then she said, “J-O is actually really hot.”

  “I think he likes group sex,” Natalia said.

  “Who doesn’t like group sex?” Åsa said. “Okay, I have to get going. I think I promised I’d go to Riche. I have a date. He’s only twenty-four. When you get tired of David, you should try a younger guy. They don’t want anything, don’t need anything. Hey, you . . . ?”

  “Yeah?”

  “This is the twenty-first century. You could actually call him, you know. Sooner or later you’re going to have to stop listening to your mother’s worthless relationship advice about keeping your knees together and waiting. You can’t sit home pining away.”

  “I’m not sitting home pining away. I’m sitting at work, managing a billion-kronor business deal.”

  “Call him, that’s all I’m saying.” Åsa laughed. “Maybe ask him if he likes group sex. That ought to get him talking.”

  “You’re disturbed.”

  “Now you’re really starting to sound a lot like my therapist. I gotta dash. Bye.”

  17

  David had already left his office by seven that evening. He was restless and anxious to get going. The heat wave wasn’t over yet. The evening was warm as he strolled downtown.

  He should go home.

  He should call Michel.

  He should work out until he was sweaty and then go to bed early.

  He should do anything other than what he was doing now: heading toward Stureplan. He quickly passed Nybro Bay, strolled past the Royal Dramatic Theater and Restaurant Riche, squeezed between tourists and regular Stockholm folks, and stopped outside Sturegallerian—the hub of Stockholm’s golden financial triangle.

  He glanced up at the façade of Sturegallerian, the shopping mall and office complex, knowing exactly where the windows of her bank’s offices were on the fourth floor. It was almost seven-thirty. Surely she wasn’t still there. And yet there he stood, trying not to feel too much like a stalker. Now what? he wondered, touching the phone in his pocket.

  “David?”

  He blinked. Natalia had materialized in the entrance to the building, and at first he thought he might be imagining her. But it was her.

  “Hi,” he said.

  She looked as if she couldn’t believe her eyes. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m not really sure,” he answered honestly. “Were you working until now?”

  “Yes,” she nodded. “It was a really hectic day.”

  “It’s a beautiful evening. Would you like to take a walk? With me?”

  Her eyes widened, but she didn’t say anything, just nodded.

  They strolled down to the water, toward Nybroplan and Strandvägen Boulevard. She walked close to him, but they didn’t touch each other.

  “How are you?” he asked. It had been so many hours since they’d parted. He regretted not contacting her during the day, not showing more consideration. She deserved so much better.

  She smiled at the question, but just said, “I’m fine. How about you?”

  “It’s been a long day,” he said, realizing that he shouldn’t mention where he’d been today. Be careful what you say, remember who she is. Think, David.

  He nodded to the hot dog stand in Berzelii Park. “Would you like one? They’re really good here.”

  She blinked slowly. The sun was low, and the golden light made her dark hair shine. Her eyes glowed. “I’ve never had a hot dog before,” she said.

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “No, my mother says it’s vulgar to eat street food. She’s very preoccupied with what’s vulgar.” She laughed suggestively. “And who’s vulgar, of course. That’s just the way she is. But yes, please, I’d love one.”

  He bought them each a spicy hot dog with lots of mustard, and they sat by the water and ate in silence, her with her back straight without spilling even a crumb.

  Afterward she fastidiously folded up the paper wrapper, wiped the corners of her mouth with her napkin, and then folded her hands over her purse on her lap. He handed her the can of mineral water he’d bought, and after a brief hesitation, she took it and drank.

  “Don’t tell me drinking water in public isn’t done either?”

  “It’s so silly, I realize that,” she said, and his eyes locked in on her mouth, those light-pink lips. He would give quite a lot to feel those lips again. On his mouth. On his skin. On his . . .

  “Your childhood was different, I assume,” she continued, and David forced himself to focus on the conversation.

  “I don’t think about that very often,” she continued, and a little wrinkle appeared on her forehead. “About how different people’s lives are.” She ran her finger thoughtfully over the can of sparkling water. “I always think I’m so liberal, but then I see myself from the outside, through someone else’s eyes, and it isn’t always flattering.”

  “It’s hard to reflect on yourself,” he said. “But, yeah, I’m guessing my childhood was a little different from yours. My mom was a single mother. She had me when she was nineteen, and she never went to college. She supported us with odd jobs. She had no one. We lived in a really tough neighborhood.”

  “And your father?”

  “He was never in the picture. He’s been dead for a long time now.”

  “That sounds rough. Both for you and for her.”

  “I didn’t make it any easier. I was a lot of trouble as a kid.”

  She held up her hand to shield herself from the sun and looked at him. Her eyes were filled with warmth. She didn’t offer any of the usual clichés, nothing about how all kids were a lot of trouble, that he shouldn’t blame himself, nothing. She just watched him somberly.

  “We moved a lot,” he heard himself say. Had he ever talked to anyone about this, about his childhood, which had actually shaped him more than he was comfortable with?

  “Why?”

  She was so seductively easy to talk to, but he got control of himself. “For various reasons,” he replied simply, cagily. “When I was sixteen I started at Skogbacka. My mom got me in on a scholarship.”

  A couple of students were admitted every year basically for free. As long as they never actually forgot their place, as long as they never forgot to be grateful. “That’s where things turned around,” he said.

  Eventually.

  “It’s hard to be different,” she said slowly. “Especially at a school like that. So many of the students there are so similar to each other. People talk about how nice the place is, how many people they got to know there, but the price is conformity. It’s complicated.”

  “Were you different?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  That one word told him so much. That’s why it was so easy
to be with her. She was an anomaly in her privileged world. And he was an outcast in his. From the outside Natalia seemed so comfortable with who she was, but she must have fought her own battles. Her father was known for his rude and sexist statements about women working in finance. Natalia must have grown up with that talk, day in and day out, absorbing it at the kitchen table. In many ways it would obviously be an asset to grow up in Sweden’s most prominent finance family; you would pick up so much know-how and such a network of contacts for free. But in another way . . . He wondered what it had done to her. Had it slowly chipped away at her self-confidence? Or had it made her more anxious to show what she could do?

  “Your boss speaks very highly of you,” David said. He wanted her to know that.

  “Thanks. It feels a little weird to sit here talking like this. Don’t you think so? I know so much about you, in a way—through the media—but I don’t know you, not actually, not really.” She furrowed her brow, and he knew that she was thinking about how they had gotten to know each other the previous night. Of how well they knew each other in that way. But Natalia was right. They didn’t know one another, regardless of what they thought they knew. He wondered if she, this super-bright woman, had as many secrets as he did. Suddenly he wanted to get to know her better, wanted to share something about himself.

  “What do you want to know?” he said. “Ask whatever you want.”

  “What’s your limit?” she asked quickly. As if the question had been buzzing around in her head for a long time. “What would you never do?”

  And David knew she was talking about work. So typical of her to choose to ask about what was dearest to them both. Because they were alike there, too—their work defined them as people.

  “I buy and sell companies. I break them up. I make them more efficient. And a lot of people have opinions about that,” he said, knowing that was a mild understatement. People—like Natalia’s father, for example—didn’t have opinions; they thought David was blasting venerable companies to bits. “But I would never speculate in schools or health care. That’s unethical.” He had never wanted to invest in those types of companies, had far too much respect for them. “I don’t think a venture capital company should be running businesses like that for profit. That would never be good.”

  She raised a dark eyebrow. The movement made her look like a curious, proper schoolteacher. Her hair, which she wore up, and her austere blouse contributed to that impression, of course. “A venture capitalist with morals?” Her voice was filled to the brim with skepticism.

  “It depends on who you ask,” he said sardonically.

  “What if I ask you?” She looked at him, and David allowed himself to be transfixed by her clear-eyed gaze.

  “I’m no better than anyone else in this world, but I’m no worse either. And Hammar Capital has never profited off weapons, oil, or tobacco,” he added, almost ashamed at how badly he wanted her to understand him, so that later on she would remember more about him than just his deceit.

  “I understand,” she said without blinking, without smiling.

  God, how he wanted her when she looked like this. Poised. Composed. Curious. He wanted to peel the layers of cool linen and expensive lingerie off her and kiss and lick and bite her until her skin was on fire. He thought back to what she felt like—warm silk, taut and pulsing, welcoming, demanding and yielding at the same time.

  He couldn’t remember what they were talking about.

  A voice said, “David Hammar?”

  David tore himself away from her eyes and looked at the man who had walked over to them, an acquaintance, scarcely even that. David quickly stood up, shook his hand, and exchanged pleasantries. Out of the corner of his eye he saw that Natalia had risen from the bench as well. In quick motions she strode off to throw her wrapper in a trash can quite a distance away.

  “You didn’t want to be seen with me,” he remarked after the man had left and Natalia had returned and they were seated on the bench again.

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t really know what this is between us,” she said forthrightly. He wondered if she’d ever lied in her whole life.

  “And I’m in the middle of a deal,” she continued. “An enormous deal. One that will affect Investum and my whole future. My father wouldn’t be happy if we were seen together.”

  “I understand.”

  “It’s actually crazy,” she continued. “I’ve tried to warn my father several times, but he won’t listen to me.”

  It took a second before he understood what she’d just said. She wanted to confide in him. Fuck, he couldn’t have this conversation with her. “You shouldn’t tell me this,” he said sharply.

  She startled and bit her lip. “I know, but you just told me how moral you are. I feel like I can trust you.”

  This was so dangerous. He didn’t want her to hate him more than was necessary; later it would be an unavoidable consequence, but not yet. So he didn’t want to hear her secrets, things that she would later think he’d used against her father and against Investum.

  He already knew everything he needed to know.

  “It’s late,” he said instead, navigating away from dangerous territory. They had been talking for a long time. The sun had started to cautiously graze the rooftops. And she’d been awake, with him, the better part of the preceding night. “You must be tired.”

  “No,” she said, raising her chin in a determined gesture. “I’m not tired. Do I think it’s inconvenient for us to be seen together? Yes. But I want to be with you.” She looked at him, her enormous eyes like molten gold, her skin so light, like carefully polished marble. “Tonight.”

  This was totally mind-blowing. Her words sank in, and David felt his body coursing with expectation. He raised his hand and placed it on her leg, cautiously stroking it over her thigh before pulling it away. He understood her fear of being seen with him. When this was over—and it had to end, anything else was sheer madness—it would be better for her that no one had seen them together.

  But Jesus Christ. Just touching her leg, through the thin fabric of her skirt no less, woke his whole body up. One more time, what difference would that make? it whispered through his head. And David couldn’t think of a single reason to say no, to deny them what they both apparently were desperately longing for.

  “Where do you want to go?” he asked. He would do this really well, he decided, so that she wouldn’t regret it.

  “I don’t have any condoms left at home. No food, nothing. And my housecleaner comes first thing tomorrow. So preferably not my place.” She blushed a little, and it was clear that she wasn’t used to talking about this kind of thing. But she straightened her back and looked him right in the eye, and David laughed. She was a brave woman.

  Hammar Capital had a guest room at the office, a refrigerator stocked with the basics, and a well-tended roof terrace with a view of the water. They could go there. But his office was also covered with plans to take over Natalia’s father’s company, so . . .

  “We could go to my place,” he said slowly, surprising himself.

  His home was extremely private. He rarely took women there. He actually couldn’t remember the last time he’d done it. He didn’t like to let people in that far, preferred to be the one who got up and left. He never had parties, didn’t socialize in his apartment, and it was closed to the media. Not even Michel had been there. It was just his. But he couldn’t take Natalia to a suite at the Grand Hôtel for a number of different reasons, primarily because it felt wrong. “We can stop on the way and I’ll pick up what we need,” he said.

  She nodded and stood.

  “Well, that settles it,” she said. She hugged her purse. He wanted to stretch out his hand, hold her hand, give her a kiss, and say that he planned to take good care of her this evening. Tonight. But instead he raised his hand and hailed a taxi, painfully aware that no matter how well he took care of Natalia, it could never compensate for what he was going to do afterward. He brushed aside these thought
s and held open the door of the cab that stopped. Natalia had been wrong about his character. When it came to taking something he wanted, then he had almost no morals, practically no qualms at all.

  18

  Natalia had almost believed David would fling himself on top of her in the cab. The air between them was so charged that she had a hard time breathing. Was this really happening?

  His hand lay on the seat next to her. Strong and broad, the hairs black against his skin. She could hardly wait until those big, capable hands were on her again. She glanced out the window, tried to steady herself. Her nipples were hard and sensitive against the inside of her bra, her thighs hot and her palms moist. She would have liked to shower before this, but somehow she hadn’t imagined that a mere hour after leaving work she would be sitting in a taxi on her way to David’s place for the express purpose of having sex.

  David told the driver to stop. He hopped out, quickly ducked into a 7-Eleven, and came back out with a paper bag in his hand. She tried her best to appear cool, as if she often traveled by cab and stopped to buy condoms.

  “Where do you live, anyway?” she asked, because she hadn’t heard the address and they were heading away from Östermalm. It occurred to her that she didn’t know anyone who lived anywhere other than Östermalm. Aside from Djursholm and on Lidingö, of course, which were even more affluent. Well, aside from her housecleaner, actually. She had no idea where Gina lived. The thought almost made her erupt into nervous laughter. Could a person be any more sheltered?

  “Here,” David answered as the cab pulled to a stop. He got out and came around to hold her door open for her. When she got out she took his hand and squeezed it hard.

  She felt him with every single one of her senses. His scent, his overwhelming size. The quiet rustling of the paper bag. The metal tinkling of his keys. He put his hand on the small of her back, guided her through a door. The stairwell with the elevator echoed. It was light and elegant but a little impersonal. No names on any placards.

  “I own the whole building,” he said briefly. “I know everyone who lives here.”