Tilly Bagshawe 3-book Bundle: Scandalous, Fame, Friends and Rivals

‘You mean he’s off somewhere partying his ass off?’ Walker translated succinctly.

Sasha shrugged. ‘Truthfully, sir, your guess is as good as mine.’

‘I see,’ said Walker. ‘And you obviously believe my son would refuse to sign this deal if he were where he should be, at his desk? Otherwise you’d simply have moved the deadline and not bothered coming all this way to try and hoodwink me into doing it.’

Sasha was about to protest, but wisely thought better of it. ‘I believe Jackson would refuse to sign anything that he felt I might profit from. However great a deal it might be for your company. Sir.’

‘Ah.’ Walker Dupree nodded in understanding. ‘So it’s personal.’

Sasha’s heart sank. That’s it. I’ve blown it. He’s not going to sign, not if it means backing me over his own heir. At that moment Mitzi walked back in, carrying a tray of freshly baked cinnamon cookies. ‘Anyone hungry? Business talk always makes Walker hungry.’ She winked at Sasha. The smell of the biscuits took Sasha right back home to her parents’ cottage in Frant. The combination of the nostalgia punch to the stomach and her disappointment about the deal was too much for her. To her great embarrassment, Sasha found her eyes welling up with tears.

‘Oh, my dear, are you all right? Whatever is the matter?’ said Mitzi.

‘Nothing,’ said Sasha unconvincingly. ‘It’s er, it’s my allergies. Thank you for the cookies, but I think we’re done here.’ She stood up to leave. As she headed for the door, Walker Dupree called after her.

‘Haven’t you forgotten something?’

He handed her the documents. There, on the last page, gleaming in fresh, bright blue ink, was his signature.

‘I don’t believe in letting personal feelings get in the way of business. And the best deal you’re going to get is always the right deal.’

‘Thank you …’ stammered Sasha.

‘If Jackson wanted to use his vote, he should have been at the end of his goddamned phone,’ snapped Walker. ‘Maybe this’ll wake him up a bit. It’ll certainly wake up those old fuddy-duddies at Wrexall. Companies need change, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. It’s what keeps ’em ahead of the game. Good luck with your new venture, miss.’

Lying on her bed now, it was hard to believe that that conversation had taken place this morning. The rest of the day had been one of the longest of Sasha’s life, yet at the same time it had passed in a blur. As soon as the deal went through and was announced on Bloomberg, all hell broke loose in the markets, with both Wrexall and McKinley’s shares fluctuating wildly before ending the day six and fourteen points up respectively. Sasha herself had been so overwhelmed with requests for interviews, she’d had to ask Joe Foman to loan her a full-time PR person to handle it all. It had been so crazy and so sudden, she hadn’t even had time to call Lottie Grainger, the one person at Wrexall outside of her own group whom she was determined to poach over to Ceres. Reaching for her BlackBerry, ignoring the hundreds of unread messages and voicemails, she was about to call Lottie when she heard a loud banging at the door.

Instantly on her guard – no one should have been able to get up to her floor without security downstairs alerting her first – Sasha made sure the chain was on and the door double bolted before she looked through the spy hole.

It was Jackson.

‘Open the door, Sasha. I know you’re in there.’

Sasha left the chain on, unbolting the door and opening it about an inch so they could talk.

‘How the hell did you get up here?’

‘I took the fire stairs. Now are you going to let me in or what?’ He looked tired and bedraggled, with deep purple shadows under his eyes and a sweat-stained shirt still crumpled from his flight. His face was flushed with anger and exertion. Sasha contemplated not letting him in. But she knew he was stubborn enough to hammer at her door all night, and besides, she would have to face him some time. She unhooked the chain and stood back as he stormed inside, pacing her tiny entryway like a caged tiger.

‘You bitch,’ he hissed at her. ‘You set me up!’

‘I did no such thing.’ Sasha walked into the living room, keeping her cool. ‘This was a good deal for all sides.’

‘Don’t give me that shit!’ he roared. ‘It was a good deal for you, at Wrexall’s expense. My expense.’

‘Don’t take it so personally.’ Sasha sat down on the couch. ‘It was business.’

‘It was blackmail! And don’t tell me not to take it personally. You flew out to my house and turned my own parents against me. You call me unethical, but what the hell kind of a stunt is that?’ He was still pacing, his arms flailing wildly, as if looking for a suitable object to punch. ‘The old man only did it to hurt me. To try to claw back some of his power, his glory days.’

Sasha was shocked at the vitriol in Jackson’s voice. ‘That’s not true. Your father read the memo very carefully. He signed because he thought it was the best outcome for Wrexall Dupree, under the circumstances.’

‘And what circumstances were those? The circumstance of you sticking a dirty great knife in all our backs? You disgust me. You’re a total hypocrite.’

Stung, but not wanting to show him how hurt she was, Sasha lashed out.

‘You know, your father did say that he hoped this might act as a wake-up call. That it might get you to start taking your role at Wrexall more seriously.’

‘What do you mean by that? I take my role very seriously. Just because I play hard, doesn’t mean I don’t work hard.’

‘You think your father doesn’t know you were AWOL in some hooker’s bed in Utah, enjoying yourself while Rome burned? You think the entire board doesn’t know? I didn’t “ set you up ” , Jackson. You set yourself up. All you had to do was answer your phone and none of this would have happened.’

Furious, because he knew it was true – yes, Sasha had pulled a fast one, but he’d allowed it to happen, been the architect of his own undoing – Jackson instinctively drew back his fist. Sasha flinched, cowering against the wall. Jackson felt shame creep over his skin like hives. What the hell is wrong with me? What, I’m going to hit a woman now? Spinning around he slammed his fist repeatedly in the opposite wall until his knuckles bled.

‘I think you should go.’ Sasha’s voice was firm but he could hear the tremble beneath. ‘Please leave.’

‘I gave you a job,’ said Jackson. ‘I brought you into this company. I made you, Sasha. And how do you repay me? You turn on me like a viper.’

‘Bullshit! Yes, you gave me a job, and in return I made you a fortune. You’re lazy and arrogant, Jackson. Loyalty is something you earn, you can’t just demand it. My team is loyal to me because they see me work my arse off for them every single day. That’s one of the most exciting things about Ceres. It’s a real team effort.’

Jackson stepped closer to her, so close that Sasha could feel his warm breath on her collarbone. She was aware of her heart racing, a combination of physical fear – he still might try and hit her – and something else, something too disturbing for her to name. When he reached out and touched her hair, his strong hand gripping the back of her neck, she thought she might faint. He dropped his voice to a whisper.

‘I’m going to crush you, Sasha. I’m going to blow Ceres out of the water. Obliterate it into so many pieces, it’ll be like it never existed.’

His closeness, his physical presence, made it hard for Sasha to breathe. Tightening his grip on her neck, Jackson pulled her towards him and kissed her, once, on the mouth. Shocked, and horribly excited, Sasha squirmed away.

‘Get out of my apartment.’

‘Good luck,’ said Jackson as he walked out of the door. ‘You’re going to need it.’

Out on the sidewalk, the cool night air brought Jackson to his senses, as if waking from a dream. He tried to process his feelings but it was impossible. Did I really just kiss her? Part of him hated Sasha, loathed her enough to want to hit her, to hurt her. Not just for today and what she’d done to him: landing a body blow to Wrexall and turning the board, and even his own father, against him on what ought to have been his, Jackson’s, day of triumph. But for all the bickering and sparring and fury of the last few years. Once upon a time she’d tried to destroy Theo Dexter’s career and failed. Now, it appeared, it was Jackson’s turn. What kind of a psycho was this woman?

But another part of him, a part he’d been denying since the day Sasha rejected him at Harvard all those years ago, another part wanted her so badly it made Jackson want to cry. It’s not love, he told himself. It’s lust. The competitor in him wanted to beat Sasha, wanted to win. He knew that the only way he would ever truly win was when he had her in his bed, naked and longing, begging him for more. Just picturing it now was giving him an incipient hard on that only added to his fury.

In his head, Sasha’s voice taunted him:

You set yourself up.

You’re lazy and arrogant.

You think the board doesn’t know?

Too wound up to go home, he headed to the nearest bar.

Lottie sat at the kitchen table in her Brooklyn apartment, checking her messages on Facebook. ‘Update your status!’ the home page invited her. ‘What are you doing right now?’ After the words ‘Charlotte Grainger is’ Lottie typed ‘… wondering if it’s ever going to end.’

It was Friday night, so officially her week-us horribilis had ended. But the aftershocks kept coming. Her kiss with Jackson – the kiss – had only been five days ago, but already it felt like a lifetime. Lottie hadn’t seen him this afternoon since he got back. Understandably, he had bigger fish to fry. Such as trying to strangle Sasha with the nearest electric cord, presumably. Lottie was torn about the MBO and Ceres’s violent birth. On the one hand she saw what a huge opportunity it was for Sasha. For some reason that Lottie had never understood, Sasha was obsessed with making money. Not just massive-salary-great-apartment-wardrobe-full-of-designer-clothes amounts of money. But serious, game-changing, corporation-controlling amounts of money. Enough money to wield ‘real power’, that was how Sasha described it. But power over what? Over whom? In any event, Ceres clearly represented a giant leap in the right direction, and to that extent Lottie was pleased for her friend.

On the other hand it meant that the two girls would no longer work together. And then of course there was Jackson. Lottie tried to believe that Sasha’s coup had not been intended to wound Jackson personally. But given their history, she wasn’t sure. What she was sure of was that the whole Ceres debacle had damaged Jackson’s standing at Wrexall. Folk stories about exactly where Wrexall’s not-so-golden boy had been while his former employee was busy taking apart his company had already begun doing the rounds on Wall Street. One of them involved a pair of Czech twins and a pet poodle. Another featured Senator Davis’s soon-to-be-ex-wife Alana, a chalet hot tub and an overeager paparazzo. All of the stories left poor Lottie feeling as if she was undergoing open-heart surgery without anaesthetic.