All In (9 page)

“I work straight through, but I don't have any problem with that,” he said.

She smiled into her coffee cup.

“What?”

“I'm just the same,” she admitted.

“I know,” he said. “I can tell. Aren't you going to take any time off at all?”

“My family is going to BÃ¥stad soon, and I'll go down there for a bit too. You know my brother, I think? Peter? You studied together, didn't you?”

“Yes,” said David. “At Skogbacka.” His voice was so neutral when he said the name of the boarding school that Natalia could tell that he and Peter hadn't gotten along. She wasn't very surprised. Peter could be a real snob. And she'd never heard anyone in her family say a good word about venture capitalists in general or David Hammar in specific. It was the same old, same old: newbies, nouveau riches, blah blah blah.

She set down her fork, leaving the last of the fruit. She was stuffed. It was now or never.

“I have to ask . . . ,” she began.

He raised an eyebrow. “Well, if you must . . .”

But she didn't let him frighten her. “I don't really understand why you contacted me.” She smiled quickly to take the edge off of how suspicious she sounded. “Not that it hasn't been lovely, but I've really been puzzling over this. I wonder if you have a connection to one of my clients that I missed or some deal you need help with, but honestly I can't think of it. Is this business or—uh—well, something else?”

David sized Natalia up. She was watching him attentively, straightforwardly, not backing down. Her direct question hadn't surprised him, not really. Because Natalia didn't seem like a woman playing a game, and she had every right to wonder.

He was the first to admit that his behavior toward her was inconsistent. And now, in hindsight, sending a car for her had been a little excessive. But the hotel had a chauffeured car service, and it had felt good to send one for her. Maybe as compensation for how last night had ended.

And maybe he was lying to himself, acting as if this were all just professional courtesy. He had never sent a car to pick a woman up before.

“Honestly?” he asked.

Natalia nodded. If she had any ulterior motives she hid them well. He didn't see any trace of hostility in her face or her body language, and he was extremely good at reading people.

“I don't know,” he said completely genuinely. “It started out purely as a business meeting. I know your boss, and I try to keep tabs on the most important players in the business. That's what the lunch was about.” That was both the truth and a colossal lie. “But then . . .” He fell silent.

Then he had started to behave illogically, and now he was sitting here looking into her intelligent eyes and eating breakfast with a woman who, he had to remind himself over and over again, was extremely off-limits.

“I don't know,” he said again. “But it is stimulating to chat with you. Is that enough?”

She blushed a little but didn't break the eye contact. “I was glad you called,” she said simply. She glanced at the table, where the remainder of their breakfast was being cleared away. “And I was really hungry.”

She smiled broadly.

This was a woman born straight into the uppermost elite, he thought. But what was funny was that when he looked at her, sitting there with her hand around her coffee cup and a little smile on her lips, David knew without a doubt that she was every bit as much of an outsider as he was.

He knew all there was to know about being different, about not fitting in, but it had never occurred to him that someone like Natalia could be an outsider. But she was. He saw it.

Small giveaways and the odd word here or there told him that this was a person who'd had to fight for every single one of her choices and that it had made her both stronger and more sensitive.

He shook his head. She sounded like she'd just woken up when he'd called and he suspected that he might have woken her even though it was so late. And yet here she sat, perfectly dressed and with tasteful makeup and a spotless linen dress. Her hair was up in a glossy bun; not a lock of hair was loose. You could probably wake Natalia De la Grip up in the middle of the night and she would sit up, bright-eyed, collected, not a crack in her façade, and give a presentation.

“Did you always know you wanted to be a venture capitalist?” she asked, sounding genuinely interested.

“I wanted to be rich, as I said the other day,” he replied.

“And you've really succeeded,” she said.

He didn't hear any insinuations in her voice, no veiled disdain. Just a statement of fact, one that she was mulling over without judgment.

He nodded. But he hadn't actually given her the whole truth, just what he always said.

“I want power,” he suddenly heard himself say. He'd never said that out loud before. But it was true. He had wanted the power to control his own life. And only the truly wealthy had that.

She nodded slowly, as if she actually understood. “My family has always had money,” she said thoughtfully. “I can't even imagine anything else.”

“I was in such a hurry in the beginning,” he said, scrupulously ignoring analyzing the fact that he was getting
personal
with her. “I took completely insane risks. Risks I would never take today.”

“You were younger,” she said with a little smile, as if she too had taken risks before, risks she remembered with a certain pleasure. He wondered what they were, and then felt a surge of excitement at the thought of a risk-taking, impulsive Natalia.

“We worked so unbelievably hard in the beginning,” he continued. “Sometimes it felt like I didn't sleep for several years.”

“You and Michel? Did you know that he and Åsa, uh, knew each other?”

David shook his head. “I had no idea. They didn't seem to be finished with whatever they had started in the past.”

“No,” she pondered. “Is Michel married?”

“No. Åsa?”

Natalia shook her head, and their eyes met in mutual understanding. The sun streamed in; her eyes were almost pure gold, and he felt transfixed by them. She picked up her coffee cup and said over it, her cheeks tinged with pink, as if she were embarrassed, “Tell me, completely confidentially of course, what deal you and Michel are working on at the moment.”

David smiled. The question was funny in spite of everything—and dangerous—on so many levels. “We're looking at several different things,” he responded casually.

“
Ouch
. What a brush-off.”

He laughed, couldn't help himself. She laughed too, and something happened between them; it was so palpable that he could almost see it in the air.

His thoughts touched—more than touched—on the possibility that they could see each other again. It was summer, they were adults, and it was totally harmless, after all. He didn't want this to end, not yet.

In some way, time passed with tremendous speed when he was with her. Those clever responses, her quick wits, and that deep laugh—all of it made him lose his sense of time. When he glanced at his watch he couldn't believe it was right. “I'm sorry,” he said, catching the server's attention. It had happened again. He had lost track of time. “I have to catch a plane. But the hotel's car will take you wherever you want to go.”

“Don't be silly, I can walk.”

She didn't ask where he was going, but he told her anyway. “I'm flying to Malmö. But I'd love to see you again,” he added. “The logical progression, I think, is lunch, breakfast, and then dinner.”

She looked at him. “Yes,” she said casually. “That sounds totally logical.”

He paid and stood up. She rose as well, her purse over her shoulder. They walked through the hotel together and stepped outside. She looked at him, the sun making her squint, and he leaned in, and his mouth grazed her cheek in an almost kiss.

“Bye,” he said softly, cautiously inhaling the scent of her skin in what should have been an impersonal European-style peck on the cheek, but which turned into something else, something much more dangerous.

She stood motionless.

He turned to do the other cheek as well. And when he lingered, it felt like she was holding her breath.

“Good luck in Malmö,” she mumbled.

11

 

N
atalia was the first one at work on Monday morning, but J-O arrived just after her.

“I have the new numbers here,” she said by way of a greeting.

He took the stack of paper with a nod. Natalia waited while he scanned through the numbers.

“When do you think the deal will go through?” he asked, watching her steadily. J-O was tall and skinny. He could sail, play tennis, and ski like a pro. He'd gone to all the best schools. His parents were Swedish diplomats, and he had the manners of a classic international gentleman. But he was also one of the chilliest and most impersonal men Natalia knew. He had three secretaries who kept track of everything, from which airport he would be at next to which bar he'd spent the wee hours in.

“The Danish CEO is coming to Sweden,” she replied, just as impersonally. “I think we should try to meet with him. He needs to talk.” A lot of Natalia's work was being a calming influence behind the scenes, holding the hands of nervous CEOs, listening, and being supportive. Giving advice and sealing the deals. She wasn't worried, not about that part of it.

“Yes, and he'll be coming to our party in BÃ¥stad. We'll take care of him there.” J-O inspected her over his wire frames. Sometime during the last year he'd gone gray. And he had wrinkles at the corners of his eyes she hadn't noticed before. “I need you there,” he said. “He likes you.”

“Of course. I'll ask my assistant to arrange tickets,” she said, realizing there was no chance in hell she would manage to avoid her family if she went to BÃ¥stad.

BÃ¥stad was where rich, famous, and glamorous Swedes went to play in the summer. BÃ¥stad was the reason the capital city was currently devoid of luxury cars, moneymen, and ladies who lunch. Natalia's parents were there, sunbathing and attending the endless string of cocktail parties and champagne minglers.

And, of course, Jonas would be there too.

Damn it all.

Natalia hesitated. There
was
something worrying her. “You don't think this merger is happening too fast?” she asked slowly. A deal of this magnitude often took a year to implement, but now after just a few months, people at Investum were talking about signing the contract this fall. Natalia knew how eager her father was to complete the purchase, but she felt it was being rushed. The prestige of creating a major pan-Nordic bank was clouding their view.

“Why do you think that?”

“I don't know. It's really just a feeling.”

“I'll look over the whole deal when I have a chance, but it's normal to start to feel jittery at this stage. That's why there are two of us. Leave it to me.”

She nodded and went to leave a note for her assistant to book the trip to BÃ¥stad.

Two hours later the office was full of people. Phones were ringing, monitors glowed, and the concentration was almost palpable.

After lunch she received a text from J-O:
I'm in Finland. I'll be in again tomorrow.

The next time her phone chimed it was three, and Natalia, who hadn't eaten since breakfast, was faint with hunger.

She blinked. She was so lost in her work that it took a moment for it to click that this was a private text. Then she started smiling to herself. She replied:
Picnic seals the deal. Yes, please. P.S. What does pls mean?

Natalia smiled the whole time she waited. She hadn't had a chance to think about David for more than a few seconds here and there today. But now . . .

She put her feet up on her desk, leaned back in her chair, and kept smiling. It had been such a long time since she'd flirted with anyone. And he'd almost kissed her yesterday. She felt a tingle run through her body at the memory of that quick, warm peck of his lips on her cheek. She glanced to the side, hoping no one would notice that Natalia De la Grip was sitting in her desk chair, getting excited about a peck on the cheek.

Natalia took her feet off her desk. She didn't have time to go home in between, but she had a few changes of clothes here at the office, and she had time for a quick shower. It was sunny, and she realized she longed to be outside in the sunshine and fresh air, to be like a normal person, the kind who met men, ate food, and didn't work eighteen hours a day without even living. She typed out a confirmation to David and threw herself back into her work again.