In his late thirties, he already had the kind of success people dreamed of. Redwood was a household name, and our annual revenue reports practically printed money. Shareholders, the board, absolutely everyone loved him.
“What are you doing here?” I asked him, then skimmed the calendar I kept open on one of my three monitors. “You’re supposed to be sipping overpriced tequila at Gjelina.”
Simon smiled. “I blew it off. Couldn’t wait to get a download of the Silverbridge Group meeting.”
He blew it off.
It felt meaningful. But I reminded myself the meaning was rooted in the presentation he had missed. The Silverbridge Group had the ability to pump an eight-figure round into Redwood’s next phase of growth. His was the first plane out when the snow finally lifted, but he had still missed them by an hour or two. Now, the look behind Simon’s eyes was loaded with anticipation.
“They’re in,” I said, unable to keep my smile small.
“Yeah?” He grinned with quiet satisfaction. “Well done, Este.”
This was our ritual—me delivering good news, him rewarding it with attention. As if I was some kind of barely domesticated animal, leaving dead mice on its owner’s kitchen mat. I liked the hunt, in part, because I knew I would be able to show off what I had snared to Simon.
Sometimes that meant I won his praise. Sometimes it meant something else. I liked both. Maybe more than I should have.
Because the thing I didn’t tell Gemma, the thingnobodyknew, was that I was sleeping with my boss. By that point, I had been sleeping with Simon for about six months.
“You want to get out of here?” he asked, with a touch of flirtation in his eyes. “Go work on that presentation?”
This was our code. When Simon or I used the word “presentation” in the vaguest sense with each other, it was an invitation to meet at his place.
I wasn’t in love with him. I was in love with my career. And sleeping with Simon made me feel like those women I used to admire—poised, important, a little untouchable.
One stuffy afternoon in high school, buried in some New England library, I read that Oscar Wilde once said, “Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.” I didn’t get it at the time. But I did once I met Simon.
Our relationship didn’t start out so close. But one night—about three years into my job—we were at Simon’s houseworking on an actual presentation, and my arm brushed against his. Maybe it was the static in the air or the scent of his cologne that set things into motion. But one minute, we were going over a meeting agenda, and the next, he kissed me. In the following days, Simon panicked, saying he had never done anything like that before. He asked if I wanted to leave Redwood and offered to help me find something new. But I told him I didn’t want that.
I wasn’t naïve enough to think that sleeping with my boss would lead to a promotion or a diamond ring. I didn’t want a boyfriend. Most of the guys my age were either intimidated by my job or too busy building their own empires to return a text message. While my friends were cycling through first dates with guys more obsessed with their fantasy football draft than with romance, I was finally being seen by someone who mattered. And it felt like a drug.
The only thing I ever asked Simon for was discretion, something that protected us both.
I knew how it would look if word got out about us. I would be a walking cliché. But our arrangement didn’t feel cliché. Simon was sharp, magnetic, and hot. And I liked pillow talk that bled into conversations about work and industry events.
So a few nights a week, I stayed over at his place in Bel Air. And in the morning, we split back into our work roles—no affection, no lingering glances. It wasn’t cold. It was professional. Strategic. Like everything else in our lives.
“Hey, can you look into InfoSynth for me?” he asked as he walked me out.
“I think I have something on that,” I said. A few weeks ago, I had read a piece on the AI technology Beau Walker was developing at InfoSynth. Over the next weekend, I had gone deep into a research spiral—compiling notes on filings, interviews, and anything else I could find on the company. I beamed at the thought that I could slide my research to Simon tonight. Making it look like I had read his mind yet again.
Later that night, in Simon’s bed, I flipped my phone around to show him my InfoSynth notes. “Here’s everything I’ve found.”
The dim evening light cast soft shadows across the room. I letmy eyes drift over his bare chest and the chiseled lines of his profile.
He was sitting beside me in pajama pants. In the evenings I slept at his place, I got Simon’s full attention. He would ask my thoughts on who he’d met with that day or what new tech start-up was catching his eye, and we would sift through our phones, clearing out emails.
“The founder is a little aloof—probably working overtime to create the illusion of being hard to get to,” I said as he looked over my screen.
Simon passed my phone back to me, looking skeptical. “Like he’s holed up in a Bahamian compound somewhere?”
“No.” I shook my head at the conjuring of Bitcoin bros. “Beau Walker is the real deal. No fancy degree or pedigree—only honed raw talent. Barely thirty, Walker has earned a reputation for having a special sort of alchemy—both architect and strategist. And with the adaptive pattern recognition tech of InfoSynth, he’s poised to be a market disrupter. Think, smart disaster response. Even in-home support for people with medically complex needs. In-home systems could anticipate when residents might need help.”
Simon’s lips curled into a wolfish grin. “It’s sexy when you pitch a business proposal.”
“Don’t swoon just yet. I still have to tell you James got you an interview onCBS News Sunday Morning,but I turned it down. You’d be better off being a bartender onWatch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen! At least his viewers know how to work their phones.”
“You watch Bravo?”
