Total pages in book: 161
Estimated words: 154890 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 774(@200wpm)___ 620(@250wpm)___ 516(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 154890 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 774(@200wpm)___ 620(@250wpm)___ 516(@300wpm)
“Bullshit. How am I distracted? I’m here, playing good cop to your bad one. We’ve raised the capital and support we needed today, haven’t we?”
“Yes,” he agrees, “we have.”
“And I was there with leading counsel last week when we had that sit-down with the FCA.”
“You mean when we were handed our metaphoric arses by the Financial Conduct Authority?”
“Teething problems,” I insist. He waves my words away.
“Yes, that’s all fine,” he says as though I’m boring him. “But this person stood in front of me? Do sit down. I detest being looked down upon.”
With a snort, I pull out the chair to his right. “Better?” I mutter pointedly.
“Much. Thank you.”
As I lean back in my chair, I wonder how he makes that sound like get fucked. “You could be lying on your back in the gutter, and you’d still find a way to look down your nose imperiously at people.”
“Imperiously.” He mouths the word as though he’s never heard it before. I bet it’s mentioned somewhere on his birth certificate. “Obviously, I wouldn’t look that way at you.” Which is true, but only because I’ve made him a lot of money. “But the point I’m trying to make is you’re not the person you were a month ago. Even Olivia agrees.”
“I have a lot on my mind.”
“No more than usual, if you’re referring to work. This business has never been healthier. It has weathered storms and is now coming out on the other side. Your face should be wreathed in smiles, not full of dark looks.”
“Dark looks?” I scoff.
“Yes, I’m familiar with how that looks. I’ve seen the expression before.”
“On a hound?”
“In the bathroom mirror, actually.”
I start a little. My conversations with Beckett are always about business. We don’t share personal stuff. I don’t know what his angle is, which is why I say, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Missing meetings—”
“One-half of a missed meeting last week.” The day I decided I’d rather watch my brother hit on Mimi than leave my office. Then Friday night, I was supposed to be on the other side of London, wining and dining investors. Instead, I blew the evening off consumed by the thought that Mimi might bang my brother. And here we are, a few days later, but instead of El or Brin, she’s going to go out on a string of dates with some of London’s finest fuckwits. And I have to be all right about it or pretend, at least. When what I want to do is carry her to my bedroom and tie her to my bed until she tells me what’s going on in her head. Until she tells me—
No, that’s ridiculous.
I don’t want her to say that she loves me.
Do I?
I’m losing the plot, I think as tension suddenly tightens my shoulders. It’s just jealousy talking. But the thing is, I don’t do jealousy. I don’t do monogamy, so how can I be jealous?
Because you want that from her. Because you’ve demanded it from her.
How did I not even realize?
“I have just the thing for that.”
“What?” I look up, suddenly self-conscious. Did I mutter some confessional?
“The thing with your shoulders.”
“There’s nothing wrong with my shoulders.”
“Nothing Kerry couldn’t work out, at any rate,” he says, reaching for a nearby newspaper. Le Figaro, a French morning paper. Slipping his hand inside his jacket, he pulls out a gold Montblanc, scribbling something in the outer margin before sliding the paper my way
“What’s this?” I stare down at the scrawled UK mobile number, glancing up. “Who’s Kerry?”
“The best you’ll ever have. One hour of absolute torture where you’ll feel like you’d sell your soul to the devil just to get those hands to stop, but by the end of the experience, you’ll feel like you can take on the world.”
“Does Olivia know you engage the services of a dominatrix?”
“Kerry is an Australian massage therapist. Not a she, but a he,” he replies witheringly. “And if I were to hire a dominatrix, Olivia would only want to watch. Actually, she’d probably supply implements.”
“Ever heard of TMI?”
“Knowing my wife, she’d probably buy some awful mediaeval torture device. Thigh-high boots, too. She’s nothing if not committed.”
I chuckle because the pair argue more than any couple I’ve ever known. But the way they look at each other is what Primrose would no doubt describe as #couplegoals
I make as though to pick up my phone to take down the number, just for the sake of politeness, when I remember what a tit I was a few minutes ago.
“Take the paper,” he says. “There’s a very interesting article in it about Sergei Asmalov’s new venture.”
“Right.” Le Figaro is a French newspaper. Beckett probably speaks fluent French. These posh public schoolboy types always do.
“But getting back to the matter in hand, I guarantee there will be more in your future.”