A Kept Woman (33 page)

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was sensational. To prevent tOO many whistles, Diana reached for her latest toy, a three-quarter-length, sixties style coat in white leather by Stella McCartney. It had bi oversized buttons and looked like something Mary Quant might have made. The girl in the mirror was all curves and legs and flashes of pink and gold and white. Diana smiled, flashing her perfect pearly teeth. If this little number didn’t knock Michael out, nothing was going to.

It really shouldn’t have to be this much of an effort, but she was up to it, 5Diana thought. Day by day, she was falling more in love with him. He blazed through life like a stallion, thick-bodied, powerful, reckless and single minded. She loved to see how the guEs in the office leaped around him. The women pressed closer and closer each day. She thought they were only deterred from outright pursuit by the thought of being fired and banished from his presence. Everything female just loved to flirt with him. Fifty and matronly, thirteen and menarchal, it didn’t matter. Married, single, anything short of an actual nun just loved to bat her eyelids at him. Even old ladies would stare in the street. Despite his roughness and his bluntness he was a natural leader. He was everything her ex-husband hadn’t been. And he was a dream to touch. All the fighting stopped when she got him into bed and she could no longer be cool around him. It was hard trying to keep that up, to match his reserve, even when they were fully clothed. Diana thought she would expire of shame if he knew how obsessed with him she had become, while he was still parcelling out the compliments like rations on a battlefield.

The doorbell rang and she hurriedly spritzed herself with Hermes, 24 rue Faubourg. It pitched itself as a sunny day in Paris, and for him, that was what Diana longed to be.

‘Coming,’ she said.

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Michael just stared.

God, she was something else. Young, vibrant and all body. It didn’t matter what your personal tastes were, Diana gave you something to drool over. Like breasts? He’d known guys obsessed with breasts who would have followed Diana around like parched dogs with their tongues on the floor. If only they could see what they looked like when you peeled off the shimmery dress and the lacy brassiere, they’d propose on the spot. Like a small waist? He could almost fit his hands around Diana’s. And her butt was the stuff of poetry. In that d.ress, you just didn’t know where to look first. Would his eye trail lovingly up the sexy curved calves and toned thighs that seemed to stretch up like a skyscraper? Or would it burrow into the small hint of warm, freckled cleavage, or try to fix on the smooth curves of her ass under the fluted flickering hem of her dress? She had no make-up on other than a hint of peach lip-gloss, and she looked like a sixties model - except that she didn’t resemble a park railing but had urves like Raquel Welch. He wondered how those strappy bits of canary nothing that threw out her ass and aligned her whole body in that sensational way could bear the weight. It was a mystery a man would never understand.

She twirled for him, and the white leather coat and curly hem bobbed in the warm light of the candles. Her place was beautifully decorated in the kind of quiet way

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that society women were always overpaying their decorators in order to emulate. Usually fruitlessly. Diana had achieved it probably without effort. He was a man, and couldn’t be bothered with decor, but the neatness and rightness of her colour scheme took his eye. It was a soft scheme in understated tones of palest yellow and cream; a perfect antidote to the boring all-white or all-beige minimalism you saw everywhere in New York. Her paint job seemed to Michael to be sunny and relaxing. Though she couldn’t stock it with the kind of pieces he’d seen at Ernie’s joint, she still managed to make you feel like the place had been in her family for a hundred years, instead of being a luxury development put up in the nineties. And

still, she’d decided to go out dressed like this.

‘What do’ you think?’ she asked.

He tho.ught he’d need his karate tonight. Kicking the

crap out of all the lowlifes who would approach her. ‘Not bad,’ Michael said.

Diana smiled to stop her face from falling. Damn the man. What was he, made of stone?

‘I booked a spot at Balthazar’s,’ he said, after a pause. ‘Let’s go.’ He offered her his arm and she took it. ‘Maybe we can avoid shop-talk tonight.’

‘But I don’t know what you mean by inadequate,’ Diana said sharply. They were Sitting at one of the nicer tables in the ultra-hip restaurant, eating French cuisine that really wasn’t bad for New York, and fighting bitterly. Diana pushed her rocket and goat’s cheese salad around on her plate and thought how aggravating Michael was. She’d just finished the office decor and now he was telling her it was inadequate?

‘I mean in terms of size. We’re going to need to expand.’

‘Why don’t we wait and see what our sell-through is’

like,’ Diana said, spearing her salad like she had a personal grudge against it.

Michael regarded her. Great, now she was going to tell

him his business. It wasn’t enough that he had to deal with all the waiters staring at his date. He swore guys were getting up and going to the bathroom like women just so they could get a shot at trying to look down the front of her dress. Diana was eye candy, and they just couldn’t get enough. She irritated him and fascinated him, and he wanted her badly. He wanted to punch out the lights of any man who even looked at her. And he wanted to finish up his meal so he could get her the hell home. Into bed.

‘I’m going down to Wall Street tomorrow. I’d like you

to come with me.’

‘What for?’

‘An exploratory meeting at Goldman Sachs. This is confidential, by the way.’

Diana felt her annoyance blossom into anger. Confidential? ‘What, you think I’m some ditzy girl who’s just

going to tell all the other secretaries by the water cooler?’

‘I’m just making sure.’

‘Making sure of what? That I have a brain in my head

even though I have a pair of breasts?’

Cicero stared at her. ‘What are you now, some kind of feminist?’

‘I love the way you say that like it equals “moron”,’

Diana shot back. ‘Maybe I am a feminist. I’m enough of a feminist to know that you talking down to me is getting tiring.’

Michael crunched into his roast beef with walnuts and

took a large swallow of red wine. Maybe it would relax

him. It didn’t much.

‘Could you be a little louder, babe? I think maybe a

table on the next block missed you hectoring me. I hate it

when women get strident.’

2.82.

‘And I hate it when men get smug.’

‘I’m not talking to you as a woman, Diana, OK? I’m talking to you as a director of Imperial. This is business.’

Diana frowned. That was it; she’d had enough. She loved Michael, but if he didn’t love her back there was zero point in sitting here and being insulted. She had a good thing going with him business-wise. Why jeopardise both relationships?

The sensible little voice in her head told her it was time to bail out. There was no husband to pay her bills if Michael gave her the boot.

‘If it’s business,’ she said coldly, ‘it belongs in the office. Which is where our relationship belongs - in the office. OK?’

‘Fine with me,’ Michael spat.

Diana shatched up the bill. ‘As this isn’t a date any more, I’ll get it. I can write it off against tax.’

She turned on one of the itsybitsy heels and strode out, away from him, and every guy’s eyes followed her out.

Michael forced himself to sit there and finish his meal. Deliberately, he took his time with the wine and the coffee. He had just been dumped in public in front of the whole room. He didn’t like it. He didn’t like it at all.

‘Your cash flow’s good, but you’re going to need some serious numbers to finance an expansion. An IPO could do that for yon.’

Diana leaned forward over the mahogany table in the Goldman Sachs conference room. A posse of hip young number-crunchers, most of them men, and a slightly older guy, Richard Demotta, had done a tap-dance for Michael for the last half-hour. The dollar amounts they kept throwing out were so large they seemed like long distance telephone numbers with a few zeros attached. And yet he still didn’t seem to be sold. The stubborn bastard.

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Diana had spent yesterday night crying herself to sleep and she was resolved it wasn’t going to happen again. This morning, she’d risen and selected the best suit she owned - a Vera Wang champagne-coloured skirt that hovered on the knee, and a jacket with sassy three quarter-length sleeves, teamed with Charles Jourdan pumps and good pearls. Add a simple cream silk blouse and a little make-up and she seemed to have walked right off the cover of Forbes.

Michael’s eyes flickered across her body when she got into the office, but he was all efficiency and respect. Somehow it was even worse than his treatment of her last night.

Diana told herself that was OK. He was a good boss. Everything else was a momentary lapse, a spell of adolescent foolishness that would now be behind them.

‘But say we do take the company public,’ she said, boldly.

The eyes of the M&A specialists flicked across to her. They would ignore a woman here if they could, she knew. Diana wasn’t about to give them that chance. She was a director of this company, and she would start out as she meant to go on.

‘What are the chances that Mr Cicero would lose control? And how long would our investors wait for a return on their investments? What profits would we need to post, and how soon, before they started dumping us?’

throat.Eyebr°ws were raised. Then Demotta cleared his

‘If I may address your concerns, Mrs Foxton,’ he

began.

Diana held up one manicured hand. ‘Ms Verity. Diana

Verity. I go by my maiden name.’

She caught Michael’s sharp look of annoyed surprise

and grinned to herself. When I was a kept woman, Diana thought, I hated anything feminist. But now I’m doing

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well for myself it’s rather - Well - she searched for the word. What was it exactly?

Fun. That was it. Yes, she was actually having furl. ‘Certainly, Ms Verity,’ Demotta agreed smoothly, and started to outline the risks. This time he included her in what he was saying.

Ernie chewed down on his cigar and blew out a long, thin stream of smoke.

Lunch at the Voyager Club was something he always enjoyed. It was one of Wall Street’s oldest clubs and the members were very old money indeed. Bankers, shipping magnates, select judges and landowners all rubbed shoulders and networked here in a subtle fashion. The only women they let through the door wore short black skirts and’ white aprons as they served the drinks. Members’ wives could not accompany their husbands further than the lobby. The Voyager had resisted every attempt to bring it into the twentieth century. Ernie fondly hoped to be made a member some day soon. Every time he got a crony to put up his name he was blackballed. But Ernie had no shame. He wanted in and he was prepared to wait.

His host, Chester Bradfield III, nodded and smiled and thought what an insufferable little man his client was. It was common knowledge around the club that Foxton was banging on the doors to be let in. He’d go fishing for rainbow trout in the Hudson before that happened. Still, he liked to invite Foxton here for drinks, to romance the limey jerk and make him feel comfortable. Foxton’s stock was on the rise as Blakely’s cut back costs. His venture with the Italians had been well received. Wall Street was always on the look-out for a new Ted Turner or Richard Branson. He didn’t think Ernie Foxton was it, but Bradfield hadn’t gotten his Park Avenue town house and estate in Dutchess County by burning his bridges.

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Foxton and his lawyers were a new client of Bradfield

and Smith, the investment banking firm which he had the pleasure of chairing. Ernie seemed eager to acquire new companies, and Bradfield loved nothing better than hostile takeovers. They were great for business, so refreshingly eighties. In exchange for his custom, who wouldn’t stand Ernie Foxton roast beef, port and Stilton once in a while, and give him the snippets of information he seemed to lust after so much?

‘I spoke with Jack Fineman,’ Chester said. Fineman

was a good lawyer, too discreet to complain about the client he was saddled with. ‘He said you were interested in the progress of Imperial Games?’

Ernie leant forward in his seat. ‘Oh, yeah. I am. You

got anything to tell me?’

‘Nothing important. But they seem to be talking to

people about an IPO.’

So it was happening. Ernie felt a rush of adrenaline

that made him almost lightheaded. ‘And what do you

thirk about that?’

‘Only that you’d be advised to buy a piece of the stock

once they do sell.’ Bradfield knew Foxton loathed the man who ran the two-bit little games company, and he enjoyed needling him. ‘It’s a small outfit, but well fancied. Into e-business. Could do well.’

Ernie forced his body to relax. ‘Maybe I will. What

exactly makes this firm so special, though? Our new

games outfit’s doing OK.’

‘I agree, very respectably. But you make games. Shoot

‘em ups, or whatever they call them. Michael Cicero,

that’s the name, I.think—’

‘It is.’

‘Smart kid. Going places. Buzz on him. Anyway, he

makes educational software, games that teach kids how

to learn. The products rate higher than the usual

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academic CD-ROMs because they’re fun to play.’ Brad field shrugged. ‘When I was a kid we played with toy soldiers, but whatever floats the tiny demograph]c’s boats.’

He sat back, rather pleased with this. The Englishman

looked shrunken, almost drawn-in upon himself. ‘Do you know the timetable for the launch?’