‘How much did you offer?’
‘Five hundred thousand. They wouldn’t even speak to us.’
If you want a job done properly…‘Set me up a meeting. I’ll close it.’
‘We’ll need a lawyer,’ Williams says. His voice is wary. As it should be. I know what he’s thinking.
‘Then find one.’ I glare at him, daring him to challenge me.
‘What about?—’
‘No.’
Lawrence breaks the stand-off by announcing the next company on the agenda. I watch the slides flick over to another financial graph that I’ve already seen. I know all eyes are trained on me as I push out my chair and move to the window. The room gets back to business as I stare at the first drops of rain dusting the glass pane in front of me. Shethinksshe loves me. She doesn’t know me. She knows the man who gets impossible tickets to the Dame Judi Dench play she’s desperate to see, the man who whisks her away to a vineyard because she used to enjoy fine wines with her father, the man who flies her to the opera.Idon’t even know where that man came from.
She doesn’t knowme. Maybe I should go to Dubai and tell her. Tell her everything. Tell her who I really am. Then she’ll see that I’m not a man to be loved and I’m a man who can’t love. I should’ve told her. She wanted to know. She kept pushing and I was too… what… afraid? If I’d told her, it would’ve ended us. I wanted to. God, I wanted to. Just like I wished I’d left her alone after she first pitched to be my lawyer. But I couldn’t.
Who am I kidding? She’ll have moved on. I’m the fucking idiot still pining after a woman who I knew for a matter of weeks. Soon, I’ll have been without her for as long as I was with her.
A sudden ache strikes my chest and I hold my fist against it.
‘Do you have a view, Gregory?’ Zara is watching me expectantly when I turn to the table.
‘We’ve discussed this before,’ I tell her, forcing myself to remember her last item on the agenda. ‘Your role is to head up Corporate Social Responsibility within the remit I give you.’
‘I appreciate that, Gregory, but we’ve followed the same charities for four years running. I think it would be a positive message if we spread our funding to some other areas of need, open up to a fair procedure, ask charities to pitch to us.’
‘No. We stick with the children’s hospital and domestic violence in Africa. Consider that item closed.’
Her mouth opens and for a split second, I think she considers challenging me but wisely backs down.
She thinks I’m a dick. Good. I am.
Lawrence closes the AGM and dials reception to have lunch brought through. I don’t hang around for small talk.
Loosening my tie a notch, I take a seat behind my desk. The live feeds to the Dow Jones, FTSE and other markets in which I dabble are playing on flat screens around the room. On my screen saver, Scarlett looks truly mesmerising in her black gown, the diamond choker around her neck outshone by those devastating eyes. It’s a press shot. We’re on the red carpet outside my mother’s house. The annual gala.Thatnight. I remember how awkward she felt, how she didn’t want to get out of the Bentley. She was nervous that she wasn’t good enough to be on my arm. What a joke! She was the most beautiful woman at the gala. Screw that, she’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known, inside and out.
That fucking constant dull ache starts throbbing in my chest again.
‘Greg.’ Williams opens my office door and walks straight in. ‘Where were you today? Because you weren’t in the AGM.’
I sigh, not shifting in my chair. ‘I’d already seen the papers.’
He takes a seat on the opposite side of my desk.
‘I’m not in the mood, Williams.’
‘Well, you’re never in the mood, so now seems as good a time as any. Amanda speaks to her every day, Greg; she’s a mess. She loves you. She’sinlove with you.’
She doesn’t know me.
‘It’s over, Williams. Done. She’s better off, she just doesn’t know it yet. Now, we need to talk about that hair of yours.’
‘Changing the subject?’
‘Too right, changing it to something youcancontrol. That hair has got to go before you’re a dad. You look like a fucking gap-year student.’
He chortles and, despite myself, my lips turn up, too.
