Who Loves You Best (13 page)

One point eight million. Felix is right. What the fuck was I
thinking
?

I stare into my whisky glass. None of this would’ve happened if it wasn’t for Clare. I just wanted to prove I could bring something to the table, too.

It started when I got this hot tip last summer. Clare was newly pregnant, and we’d just squeezed under the wire with a huge mortgage on the new house before the credit crunch hit. Cash flow was a bit tight. We weren’t desperate, but some extra cash could certainly come in handy. The tip was a shoo-in. My source was solid as a rock; I’d done business with him a thousand times. Legally, I was sailing a little close to the wind—the bank has a strict zero-tolerance policy on insider trading—but he reckoned I could make a
hundred percent return in six months. I had a couple hundred thou in bonds set aside from my last bonus. I knew Clare would never OK it, she’s anal about anything she calls “shady,” but I’d double my money and put it back before she even knew about it. On the strength of the deal, I even blew eighty grand on a top-of-the-line new Range Rover.

Then the company filed for Chapter Eleven, another victim of the sub-prime fallout. My source was mortified, but the damage was done. Two hundred twenty thousand, down the drain.

I couldn’t tell Clare. The twins were only a few weeks old, her hormones were all over the place, and anyway, I wasn’t going to run to Mummy like a naughty schoolboy, and admit I’d put my hand in the cookie jar and got caught out. She’s not a risk-taker; she wouldn’t understand. Hell, she could have a hundred flower shops up and down the country by now if she’d listened to me.

I play the markets all day for a living. I’m head of pan-European equity sales, I manage a team of forty people, I have CEOs and major hedge-fund managers on speed-dial! I generate a huge amount of business for the bank. I knew I could make back a measly couple hundred grand in no time. But I needed seed money. With annual bonuses off the table again this year, courtesy of the recession, and short-selling newly outlawed, I was screwed. Clare had her own portfolio with Coares, of course, but I couldn’t borrow against it without her signature and agreement. The house, though, was in my name; Clare’s idea, to protect us from creditors if PetalPushers ever went belly-up.

I pulled in a few favors, finagled a second mortgage—
punitive fucking rates, but what choice did I have?—and got straight back on the horse. I made everything back in the first few trades. I was riding high. I was going to give Clare a check for a million on her birthday. She wasn’t the only entrepreneur in this family.

So, I lost a few deals again. That’s the nature of the beast. It’s why you need balls to stay in this business. You don’t see many women on the trading floor.

Fucking Voyage! I’d be free and clear if they’d come through.

I knock back my drink, my head pounding in time with the music.
One point eight. One point eight
. If I don’t get out and settle the bet now, it could get much worse, but how the hell am I supposed to explain that to Clare?

It’s so goddamn
unfair
. I’ve wanted kids practically since the moment I clapped eyes on Clare. It took years to talk her into starting a family. And now that the twins are finally here, I’m too damn stressed to enjoy them.

A woman’s arms slide around my shoulders, bringing with them the stench of cheap perfume and stale sweat.

“Baby, you look like a man who needs to relax,” she purrs in my ear. “Feel those knots. You’re so tense, baby. I know how to fix that.” Sharp fingers knead my shoulders, then slide down the sides of my ribcage and reach towards my groin.

I push her away, and lean across to Felix. “I’m out of here,” I yell over the music.

“Don’t be an old woman, Elias,” Felix yells back, his eyes on the hooker. “I’ve already paid her. I want my money’s worth.”

The girl puts her hands on her knees and bends over, treating me to a peek-a-boo glimpse of her slit. Felix leans forward and puts another bill in her G-string, and she gyrates over to him. He buries his face in her silicone cleavage. Her eyes meet mine, flat and dead.

I stand up abruptly, pushing my way through the crowds towards the door. I’ve sunk a bottle of champagne and Christ knows how many shots, and it hasn’t even begun to take the edge off.

I adore my family. I only did it for them. I want the twins to have the best of everything. Is that so wrong?

It takes forever to find a taxi. I’m surprised the lights are still on when I get home, and then glance at my watch and see it’s not yet ten. It seemed much later at the club.

I dump my briefcase in the hall. Maybe if I can just explain it to Clare properly, I can get her to see where I’m coming from. She could bail me out, easy. A couple of million is back-pocket change to her family.

“Christ, I’ve had the most fucked-up day,” I call to Clare, as I go into the kitchen. I pour myself a stiff drink. This is one conversation I really don’t want to have.

Suck it up. There’s nowhere else to run
.

I tug off my tie as I walk into the sitting room. “This recession is killing us. Another two of the big U.S. banks just wrote down huge losses. We can forget about bonuses again this—”

Fuck. Fuck fuck
fuck
.

“Oh. Jenna. I didn’t realize you were here.”

“Hi, Marc.”

I wait for her to get up and make herself scarce, but she
just sits there and carries on watching television. I seethe. I should never have agreed to the girl moving in. I’ve got no damn privacy anymore. If I want a glass of water in the night, I have to get dressed in case I run into her in the hallway. It’s like having a permanent houseguest. Clare and I are reduced to whispered conversations through rictus smiles and gritted teeth. We can’t have a row and clear the air like we used to.

“I need to talk to you,” I tell Clare, nerves making my tone sharper than I’d intended.

She frowns. “What about?”

“Do you mind if we go upstairs and discuss it?”

“We’re watching
Sex and the City,”
Jenna says.

Is it really asking too much to come home after a
fucking
hard day and expect a few minutes’ conversation in private with my wife?

Strike that. What I
really
need is another Scotch and thirty minutes on my own, no phones, no interruptions. No one climbing up my ass and wanting things done yesterday. All I need is some bloody peace and quiet to unwind.

What I don’t need is to get in and find my wife glued to some subversive anti-men American shit on TV, while the bloody nanny sits there in
my
chair drinking
my
wine and acting like she owns the place.

Clare finally throws me a bone and puts down her glass. “It’s OK, Jenna. I’ll see you in the morning.”

Don’t do me any fucking favors
.

“Doesn’t she know to take a hint?” I demand. “It’s after ten o’clock! When do we get to spend time alone in our own house?”

Clare pushes me up the stairs. “Sssh! She’ll hear you. Be fair, Marc. You’ve only just got home. She was keeping me company.”

“Well, she needs to learn when to give us some privacy.”

Clare winds her arms around me. I’m uncomfortably reminded of the girl in the strip club. “Why,” she murmurs, “would we need privacy?”

I want to tell her where to stick her drunken come-on, but despite my mood, the Scotch, and
one point eight
going round and round in my head, my cock jerks painfully against my pants. Can’t help it. She’s a bit scrawny since she had the twins, but Clare still knows how to get me hot.

It was her voice that suckered me in first. When she leaped out of that crappy old van at four in the morning and started bitching at me, all I could hear was her accent. So fucking
classy
.

I’d never met a woman like Clare Sterling. At the time, I’d only been in the UK for two years. Having graduated magna cum laude from Toronto Business School with a profitable sideline brokering trades for my classmates, I’d blagged my way into a job as the new hotshot wunderkind with Canada Central Bank, and been sent straight to their London office to shake things up. I was greener than a new-mown lawn. I hadn’t left Canada since moving to Montreal when I was four. My parents had fled Lebanon when I was a kid, so that Dad wouldn’t get drafted into the civil war, and had been too paranoid to let any of us leave the country since. I spoke fluent French, Arabic, and English, but when it came to women, I wasn’t quite as
worldly-wise as I made out. My previous girlfriends had all been straightforward, wholesome farm girls from rural Quebec with pink cheeks and shiny ponytails. They put out on the fifth date, gagged on my cock, and invited me home at Christmas to meet their parents.

London girls were different. They drank beer, threw up in the street, forgot to wear knickers, and bought their own condoms. I dated a bunch of them at the same time; none of them seemed to care. Marriage and babies were the furthest thing from their minds.

Clare was in another league. I knew that straight away. The accent, the clothes—she dressed nice, but not cookiecutter preppy—the gold signet ring on her pinkie. I’d worked with enough London bankers by then to know that ring meant
family
. I nearly pissed myself when she told me her mom was a Lady, even if, as she pointed out, her stepdad had bought the title by shelling out enough cash in donations to the right government fixer. My grandfather had been a fisherman in Tyre; he’d lived and died in a one-room shack.

Dating Clare catapulted me into the same elite club as Felix and Hamish and the rest of them. In an instant, I was One of Us. And—the icing on the cake—I genuinely
liked
her. She had a Plan. She was ambitious; she knew what she wanted out of life, and how to get it. We had that in common at least.

The age thing didn’t bother me one way or the other. Sure, I got a kick out of hooking an older woman, but I didn’t have this whole Sugar-Mommy complex. She’ll be pushing eighty when I’m seventy: So what? I grew up with
five older sisters; I don’t see it as a big deal. At least, I didn’t use to. These days, the whole Clare-knows-best routine is starting to grate. It was fine having her take charge when I was twenty-three, but I’m fucking thirty years old in a few months. She needs to let go of the reins a little.

She pulls my head down now and crushes my lips beneath hers, hot and demanding. I can’t remember the last time she was this horny. I put the money out of my mind. I’m not going to ask my bloody wife for it. I’ll figure it out myself.

I press my face into her hair, wishing, just for a moment, it was the two of us again.

“Mrs. Elias, you’ve no idea how much I’ve missed you,” I whisper fiercely.

I yank up her skirt and shove her knickers aside, jamming my fingers roughly inside her. She squeals; I ignore her, throwing her down on the bed beside me. She unzips my pants and I pull her astride my cock, ripping her T-shirt over her head. Her titties leak milk, and I latch on and lap it up. I loved her being pregnant, feeding my kids. I loved her walking around with her huge belly:
I’ve been fucked
.

She starts riding my cock, taking over again, so I flip her onto her back and drill my dick hard into her. The bedroom’s the one place I’m in charge, and I know she likes it that way.

I come inside her, hoping she’s had enough wine to forget she’s not back on the Pill yet. I’d love it if she got pregnant again soon. If I had my way, she’d give me a dozen kids. I just wish I wasn’t so damn stressed out all the time. I hate myself for taking things out on Clare, but all I can think about is the money. Always the money.

After, she curls happily in the crook of my arm. I guess she came, too. Then—

“Marc? What was it you wanted to talk about?”

Christ. Why do women always want to talk
after
sex? It’s doing things ass-backwards, like putting your socks on over your shoes.

I pretend I don’t hear her. Pretty soon she’s asleep, and I stare at the luminous green figures on the clock next to my bed, knowing I have to be up again in a few hours, but unable to switch off. Sex tonight was fine, yes, but it hasn’t wiped the slate the way it usually does for me. If anything, I feel even more pissy. Clare’s changed since she had the twins; and not in a good way. I’ve watched five sisters have kids, and it softened all of them, even Rania, the wild child of the bunch—Christ, you should have seen her at sixteen. Jailbait. My father was all for sending her back to Lebanon to knock her back into line. Then she met Antoine, had the boys, and she’s blossomed.

Clare’s always been controlling (Mom considers her a bitch on wheels: She’s never approved of women who work), but it never really bothered me before. She couldn’t have achieved what she has if she didn’t have a tough, steely streak. I know she could be a great mother; you can see it in the way she fusses over her flowers. I always figured she’d relax once we had a family. You have to go with the flow where kids are concerned. Life gets messy. Rania’s three are in and out of the ER with one minor emergency after another.

But Clare didn’t even try to make it work. She simply passed the ball and brought a sub in off the bench. She’s
paying someone to mother her own babies. There are times I think she cares more about her business than me or Rowan and Poppy.

I ease my arm from beneath her head, the muscles tingling painfully as blood flows back into them. A wisp of hair falls across her face and flutters as she breathes.

PetalPushers is her real family.

For two weeks, I try to find a way out of the nightmare, but come up empty. I can’t borrow any more from the bank, I’ve already taken out a second mortgage on the house, and no one will give me a loan this size in the current economic climate. Scared shitless, I drink myself stupid, trying to block it all out, but all it earns me is a monster hangover and a slap-down from Clare when I make the mistake of trying to get it on with her.

In the end, I run out of time. When the trading floor gives you a margin call, you pay up, or you’re screwed. I have twenty-four hours to find the cash, so I do what I have to, and take it from Clare again. Where else was I supposed to get it?