Winner Takes All (24 page)

Loretta nodded approvingly. “Yes, do leave a message with Mrs. Hemingway.”

There was a wry note to her voice, but Eva could find nothing insincere about her look. “And speaking of the Hammond collection,” she said, rather unsubtly bringing the conversation back to a more respectable topic, “I should have contracts for you by the middle of next week. I’ll alert the legal department today.”

“Excellent,” Loretta said, unfazed by the rapid topic change. “I’ll have Cassandra provide you with all the particulars. I’d like to sort all this out right away—with a proper attention to detail, of course. I won’t have this affair be done shoddily, but I am eager to sell off the paintings and disperse the money.”

There was a sadness beneath the society matron’s calm exterior, and Eva realized it was because of the collection. Disposing of her dead husband’s art was hard for her and she obviously wanted to have it done with as quickly as possible—like pulling a bandage off with one swift tug. “You must miss him very much,” Eva said, leaning forward. She had the urge to take the other woman’s hand in comfort, but one simply didn’t do that with Chanel-wearing matriarchs.

“Yes, I do,” she said.

Eva had learned from experience that contrary to conventional wisdom people actually like talking about their deceased loved ones. It made them feel closer. So she asked Loretta about her husband—when had he started collecting, which artist was his favorite, etc.—and the lunch passed quickly.

Loretta Hammond was a wonderful woman who loved her husband and doted on her son, and Eva knew she’d have a great time working with her.

***

Reports of her success traveled quickly through the office. Wyndham’s had been a player in the auction market for more than two hundred years, but it was always rather minor, picking up the commissions that Davidge’s or Brooks’s were too busy to bother with. But with the Hammond collection it had officially entered the big leagues.

“How does it feel?” David asked enviously. It was the end of the day, and he was tired of working. Another five minutes and he’d be out of there.

Eva looked at him over her computer, unsure what he was talking about. “How does what feel?”

“To be the conquering hero.”

“Come on,” she said, “it’s not as bad as that.”

He raised his eyebrow and looking pointedly at the giant bouquet of English roses on her desk, which Wyndham the elder had sent.

“All right,” she conceded with a smile. The roses from Elliot Wyndham were a big deal. “It feels pretty darn good.”

“Going out to celebrate?” he asked as he shoved the current issue of
Rolling Stone
into his already stuffed backpack.

“Some friends are taking me out to dinner,” she said, wondering when Ruth would call back. She’d left her a message teasing the good news hours ago.

“So, d’you think you’ll be here much longer? You should go out now and have a drink.”

Eva stopped typing and smiled. She knew what he was about. David didn’t like to be the first one out of the office at six, so he always waited until someone else left first. “I will, I promise. I just have to finish this email to legal. I should be done in twenty minutes.”

His face fell and he turned to Martin, the man in the cubicle on his other side to ask him if he was done with work yet. Eva was laughing when the phone rang.

“Eva Butler,” she said.

“Hi, Eva. I just wanted to congratulate you on a job well done.”

She tightened her hold on the receiver. This was the first time she’d spoken to Ethan since their disastrous dinner meeting. For all intents and purposes, he seemed to have taken her rebuff in stride, but she was still wary of him. “Thank you, sir,” she said.

“My parents are ecstatic with the news. This is the highest-profile commission we’ve ever gotten. I believe my father mentioned that he would be sending you flowers.”

“I have them right here,” she said, fingering the delicate buds. She usually didn’t go in for roses, preferring less blatant flowers like daisies or hydrangea, but these were beautiful. She couldn’t wait to see them brightening up her kitchen. “They’re positively stunning. I’ve already dropped a thank you note to Elliot in the mail.”

“My, always so correct,” he said quietly, so quietly she wasn’t sure she heard him correctly. “Well, keep up the good work.”

“Yes, sir.” She was relieved by the finality in his tone. When she’d realized who it was, she’d been afraid he’d want to take her out to celebrate. She’d have gone, of course, but her guard would have been up the entire time and she wouldn’t have enjoyed it. “I certainly will.”

“Good, good. And thank you again for doing such a fine job representing Wyndham’s. I will personally make sure you get what you deserve.”

Eva knew she was beaming but couldn’t help it.
Get what you deserve.
Now she would be admitted into the inner sanctum and it would have nothing to do with the sexiness of her legs. “Thank you.”

She hung up feeling giddy and excited, and she wished Cole were in New York so she could tell him the fabulous news. Her phone rang again, and she picked it up hoping it was he. It wasn’t.

“Hey,
guapa,
what’s all the excitement about?” Ruth asked. “Don’t tell me you’ve suddenly realized that you’re in love with your best friend, too?”

“No, that’s just you, Ruth,” she assured her. “But I got the Hammond commission.”

Across town, Ruth squealed. “That’s fantastic. I knew you would. Now we really have something to celebrate tonight. Why don’t you call that man of yours and invite him along?”

Eva had told Ruth several times that Cole was not that man of hers, but she refused to listen. As soon as she’d sorted out her feelings for Mark, she’d called Eva to find out exactly what was up with the naked man in her shower. Ever since then, she’d been acting as if Eva and Cole were a couple. Which they weren’t.

“He’s still in Japan,” she said. “But even if he were here, I wouldn’t invite him.”

“Why not?”

Eva shrugged, trying to imagine urbane, sophisticated Cole sipping wine at Flea Market, their favorite hole-in-the-wall French restaurant in the East Village. “I don’t know. Somehow it just doesn’t seem to be his thing.”

Although she couldn’t see it, Eva knew that Ruth was rolling her eyes. Ruth had done it enough times in her presence for Eva to know when it was happening. “How can this not be his sort of thing? It’s a celebration. Everybody loves to celebrate.”

Rather than argue, Eva changed the subject. She asked about her friend’s lunchtime shopping date and listened with a happy smile as a besotted Ruth went on at length about how great Mark looked in everything he tried on.

***

The ringing phone didn’t wake Eva. It was the sound of Cole’s voice on the answering machine that did.

“Eva, pick up.” Silence. “Eva, if you’re there, pick up.” Then, muttered under his breath: “You damn well better be there.”

His voice quickly penetrated her unconsciousness, and she sat up, expecting to find him sitting on the edge of her bed or standing in the doorway. But he wasn’t, and she stared ahead, trying to figure out where his voice was coming from.

“Eva, for God’s sake, pick up the damn phone.”

Of course, the phone! She reached for the receiver, but it wasn’t on her nightstand where it usually was. It was probably on its cradle. Damn it. She climbed out of bed and walked into the living room. She flipped on the light as she reached for the phone. “Hi, I’m here,” she said, as her eyes adjusted to the sudden brightness. It’s too early for this, she thought, as she checked the time on the microwave: 3:56. “I’m here.” Her voice was soft and husky from sleep.

“It’s about time,” he said angrily. “I’ve been trying to talk to you for days.”

“You have?” she asked, still too sleepy to make immediate sense of his pronouncement. Could she have missed his call? She hadn’t noticed any unusual numbers on her cell phone.

“It’s this damn time difference,” he announced, “and the interminable fucking meetings. Every time I picked up the phone, it was either the middle of the night there or I got called into another meeting. It’s been endless.”

The frustration in his voiced warmed her heart. “You could have left a message.”

“No, I couldn’t,” he said simply. “I wanted to talk to you, not to a machine. You could have called me, you know.”

His voice was almost petulant, and Eva had to smile. Who knew billionaire playboys could be sulky?

“No, I couldn’t,” she protested. There was no way she was going to leave a lovesick message with Mrs. Hemingway. It was unlikely such a message would have gotten to him anyway. The way that pinched-face gatekeeper felt about her, she probably would have burned it. “Because you never left a message with your number.”

“I did leave my number. Didn’t Olivia give it to you?”

Eva almost asked who Olivia was but then recalled the soft-spoken woman who had phoned to say Cole would be out of town for a few days. “She gave me a number, but I thought it was her line. She said I should call if I had any questions. I didn’t have any questions.”

“That was my cell, you idiot, not my assistant’s.”

“Oh,” Eva said faintly, not at all offended by the insult. She was too busy wondering if knowing this info would have changed anything in the last five days. Would she have called him to chat in the middle of all those fucking interminable meetings? Probably not.

Cole laughed. “Oh, indeed. And here I’ve spent days cursing you silently for not calling. I finally got fed up enough to call in the middle of the night. What time is it there? Two
A.M.
?”

She sat down on the couch and curled her feet underneath her body. “Actually, it’s four.”

“I know I should apologize for waking you up, but I don’t care. I’m too happy to hear your voice.”

Deciding that chatter might be exactly what he needed, she leaned back against the cushions and said, “Tell me about the merger. Hammond Communications is trying to buy a Japanese hotel chain, right?”

“It’s really very boring.”

“I don’t care,” she said, genuinely curious about the details. She was fascinated by the sort of problems an international business tycoon encountered and she was fascinated by him. “Tell me about it.”

“All right, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

For the next half hour he delved into the issues involved with the merger, explaining the obstacles and emphasizing his concerns. He had a meticulous, insightful mind, and Eva loved listening to it work.

“See?” he said, in the silence that followed his monologue. “Very dull stuff. Tell me what you’ve been up to.”

“Well, I had lunch with your mother today,” she said.

“Yeah? It’s Tuesday, which means you must have gone to the Plaza. Mother always lunches there on Tuesdays.”

It was clear from this statement that he didn’t know about her coup yet. Eva was suddenly ridiculously happy that she got to be the one to tell him. “Wyndham’s did it. We got the Hammond collection.”

“Eva, that’s wonderful.”

“I know,” she said giggling.

“I knew you’d get it. Your presentation was by far the best. The cut commission rate was the big thing. Nobody else would budge.”

“And here I thought you had nothing to do with the selection,” she said, the suspicion creeping into her voice only to tease him. She had enough faith in Loretta Hammond’s integrity to believe that she’d won the account on the strength of her presentation.

“I didn’t, really,” he assured her. “I’m only repeating what my mother said.”

“It was a pretty good proposal, if I do say so myself.”

“And so you should. Damn, I wish I were there so we could celebrate.”

Eva tightened her grasp on the phone as her heart jumped at his words. “So do I.”

He was silent for a moment. “Tell me what you did,” he said, his voice oddly husky.

“What I did?”

“To celebrate.”

“Well, I got a beautiful bouquet of roses from Mr. Wyndham.”

“Mr.
Ethan
Wyndham?” he growled.

“No, the flowers were from the elder Mr. Wyndham. Mr.
Ethan
Wyndham called to say good job.”

“And?” he asked warily.

Eva didn’t understand. “And?”

“What else did he call to say?”

Eva laughed. She could hardly believe that Cole Hammond, several thousand miles away, was jealous. “And nothing. He said good job and implied that I’d be rewarded. Then he hung up. It was all very circumspect, I assure you.”

Cole harrumphed, causing Eva to laugh again. “Then I went out with Mark and Ruth. You remember Ruth, don’t you? She’s the one who discovered you at my apartment en dishabille the other morning. The second you left she started throwing bagels at me. It was wonderful,” she recalled fondly.

“She threw bagels at you and it was wonderful?” There was a doubtful edge to his voice.

“Of course, she thought I was involved with Mark, you see, and that wouldn’t do at all—for me to be sleeping with you
and
Mark at the same time.”

He growled again. “No, that wouldn’t.”

“Don’t worry about it. There’s never been anything between me and Mark. It was just a scheme to make Ruth jealous and it worked,” she said, still ridiculously pleased with herself.

“Did it?”

“Yep, as soon as Ruth was done throwing bagels at me, she rushed over to Mark’s apartment.”

“Tell me about this scheme,” he said. “I want details.”

Eva looked at the clock. It was already 4:45. “I should probably let you go—no doubt you have a pile of work to do. What time is it there anyway?”

“Quarter to seven in the evening. And I don’t care. Tell me about Ruth and Mark. And please note that I haven’t reciprocated with an equally polite gesture offering to let you go. I don’t care that you’re going to be yawning all day. Now that I’ve finally got you, I’m not letting you go. So tell me about Ruth and Mark.”

Her legs were feeling stiff, and Eva switched positions as she began telling Cole about Mark and Ruth and how she brought them together—finally. She went into detail but not enough to satisfy Cole, and he interrupted several times to ask questions. He even wanted to know about their college days.