The Rift (12 page)

Megan gave a low laugh. She leaned forward, held out her crystal glass. “Here’s to catastrophe,” she said.

He bent toward her, touched his glass to hers. A crystal chime sang out, hung for several seconds in the air.

Charlie leaned further, pressed his lips to hers. Her lips were moist, tasted of smoke and desire.

A throb of pure lust pulsed through his nerves. For a half-second he considered flinging his drink and cigar off the edge of his patio and throwing himself on Megan, but on reflection he decided to wait.

Timing, he found, was everything.

He leaned back, let the water jets pulse against his back, sipped again at his drink. Megan rescued a strand of her pinned-up auburn hair that had trailed into the water, then looked back at him with dark eyes.

Charlie adored Megan, and it was because he could look into her and see a reflection of himself. Someone who had come from nowhere— from
worse
than nowhere— and turned herself into someone else by talent, by energy, and by pure force of will. And the process wasn’t over. Megan was improving her vision of herself all the time.

Charlie loved Megan not for herself, but for her
potential.

Megan was born in the Ozarks— Charlie didn’t know just where. Her father was a
trapper,
for God’s sake, someone who spent most of his life in the woods and mountains looking for animals to skin. Her mother was an alcoholic, abusive when she wasn’t drinking herself unconscious. Megan had clawed her way out of that environment through pure courage and determination, got her college degree, worked her way up in the TPS back room to the point where she was in charge of the whole settlements office. Changed her hick accent to the smooth tones of a Southern beauty queen— now he could only hear the Ozarks in her voice when she got excited. Megan had remade herself.

And so had Charlie. The son of an East London machinist, the product of the local Mixed Junior School, he had ridden a talent for maths to London University, to a first-class degree in mathematics, to jobs at Morgan Stanley in London and Citi in New York— both American firms where his lowly origins and Cockney accent were not a liability— and now to head of the front room at Tennessee Planters Securities. Along the way he’d had his teeth capped, his jaw-line reshaped, and his straight, mousy brown hair had gone blond and wavy.

He hadn’t managed to lose his Cockney accent the way Megan had lost the tones of the Ozarks, but he’d worked out ways of turning the accent to his advantage.

In Megan he had found a kindred soul, someone who understood that sometimes a person just needed to be
someone else,
could
decide
who that person was to be, and then
become
that person.

The way Charlie figured it, there was a kind of empty space, a virtual space in the world where a successful person was destined to be. He planned to occupy that space.

So far, it was working very well.

Charlie adjusted his body to the massaging jets that throbbed behind his back. He tasted his cigar again and looked at Megan over the smoke that curled from his mouth. “Life is good, innit?” he said.

Megan blew a kiss at him over the rim of her brandy snifter, and gave voice to the two words that were her motto. “No guilt,” she said.

“Why be guilty?” Charlie sipped his cognac. “We’re not going to
cause
the recession.”

“For every winner in the market,” Megan said reasonably, “there is a loser. For every fortune we make, a fortune is lost somewhere else. People who aren’t as smart, or as quick, or are just unlucky.”

Charlie smiled. This was the settlements officer talking. In the end, for Megan everything had to balance.

It was her job to catch his mistakes. Trading was fast and manic, and sometimes in the heat of action traders placed the wrong orders or entered the wrong figures. It was not unknown for traders to attempt fraud and deception. It was the task of the settlements office to catch those mistakes on the fly, to make sure that all the accounts were balanced at the end of the day. The job required skill, intelligence, instinct, and tact.

All skills that Megan possessed in abundance. But her instinct to bring columns of figures into balance did not necessarily encompass all financial reality.

“That’s not exactly true, is it?” Charlie said. He leaned back and waved his cigar at the sky. “The market isn’t a zero-sum game,” he said. “Because wealth isn’t limited. The market can be used to
make more wealth.
And then everyone benefits. As that great statesman John Fitzgerald Kennedy used to say, a rising tide lifts all boats.”

Megan examined her cigar. “That’s not what’s going to happen in this case, Charlie. We’re fast and smart, and we’re going to take money from the people who are slow and stupid.”

Charlie shrugged. “They can afford to lose,” he said, “or they wouldn’t be betting at all.”

“No guilt,”
she said.

He rolled the firm gray ash off the end of his Cohiba. He and Megan had formed their— they called it a “partnership”— about three months before, after dancing around their mutual attraction for the better part of a year. They kept their relationship a secret from the others at Tennessee Planters, not because there was a company policy against it, but because people might begin to wonder what an overly intimate relationship between the front and back offices of TPS might
mean
in terms of what Megan actually reported to their superiors about Charlie’s trades. She had, theoretically, the power to suppress information about his activities. If he was in hot water, she could cover for him.

She hadn’t ever done any such thing, of course. But Charlie liked to think that, if he ever really needed it, he could count on her to do just that.

He knew that she trusted him. He was managing her portfolio for her, had made her some money. Was about to make her enough money so that she could retire on her capital now, at the age of twenty-eight.

“I keep thinking of my dad,” he said. “What he’d make of all this.” He made a gesture that took in his house, the spa bubbling on the deck, the swimming pool glowing on the lawn below, the cigar and the cognac and the money in the bank.

“We lived in a little semidetached, you know?” he continued. “Recessions always hit us hard. When I was growing up my dad was laid off half the time. And even when he was working, my mum would meet him at the factory gate at five p.m. on Fridays, so she could get her week’s allowance before he could spend it at the boozer. All the wives did that. Imagine what it was like for the men— walk out of your place of work into this mob of women, all waiting for the money you’ve had in your hand for only a few minutes. Dad got to see his money for the length of time it took him to walk to the gate, and then it was gone. Year after year.”

“At least your dad had a paycheck,” Megan said. She shifted in her seat so that her foot could slide along his inner thigh. Pleasure sang along his nerves, and he caught his breath. He could see a wicked little smile touching the corners of Megan’s lips.

She wasn’t interested in his family history, in fact thought his affection for his family improbable. She hated her
own family and saw no reason why anyone else should like his. And so, to avoid the topic altogether, she was playing a game of distraction. But Charlie preferred to demonstrate that he could not be distracted so easily. Other men might be led by their dicks, but Charlie’s moves were more calculated.

Despite the fire that quickened his blood, he leaned back and kept his voice deliberately casual.

“My dad’s a union man,” Charlie said. “Always votes Labour. Gets tears in his eyes whenever he hears the ‘Internationale.’” Charlie shook his head. “I’d buy ’em a nice place in the suburbs, but what would my dad
do
? He’s still at the factory, still doing his job—doesn’t want to commute to work. I’d buy them a car, but they don’t drive.”

Megan’s foot slid up one thigh, crossed his abdomen— Charlie’s belly muscles fluttered at the touch— and then her foot descended the other thigh. Charlie felt heat flowing into his cock. By a pure act of will he kept his voice from breaking.

“So,” he said, “I got my family some nice furniture, and in case I stroke out on the trading floor, I’m leaving them a packet in my will. God knows what they’ll do with the money. Buy a new telly, maybe. Take a trip to Disney World.”

Megan’s foot rested lightly on Charlie’s thigh. “My will leaves everything to my buddy Maureen,” she said. “My family can go fuck themselves.”

“What?” Charlie grinned at her over the rim of his glass. “You’re not leaving anything to
me
?”

Megan’s foot slid up his thigh again. Fire kindled along his nerves. Deliberately he caressed her own inner thigh with his instep.

“If this works,” Megan said with a little gasp, “you’re not going to need
my
money.”

“What do you mean
if
?”
Charlie said. She had reacted to his underwater caress: that meant he had won. He rested his cigar and drink on the edge of the spa, then moved forward, slid weightlessly between Megan’s legs as a wave foamed over his shoulders. He kissed her smoky lips. A smile tilted Megan’s mouth as she arched lazily against him. Water spilled from her breasts. She cocked up one leg and ran her heel up his lower spine.

“Why, Mistah Johns,” she said, in her best Southern-deb voice, “ah am so totally astonished by such gallant attention directed toward li’l old me.”

She tipped her head back and finished her cognac in one swallow. A tiny rivulet of brandy coursed from the corner of her mouth and ran down her left breast. Charlie licked it off, felt the fire on his tongue. He licked up to her neck, tasting sweat and chlorine, and feasted for a moment on her throat. Megan laid her cigar carefully on the edge of the spa, then gave her brandy glass a careless toss over her shoulder, off the deck. Charlie heard the little splash as the glass hit the swimming pool below.

He kissed her again, and she drove her lips up into his. Her long fingernails combed his hair. He was already fully erect, and could feel her coarse pubic hair grating against the underside of his cock. He cupped her breasts, held them up out of the water. Foam sluiced down her flesh as he kissed her breasts, tongued the nipples. Her fingernails expertly slid up his back, bringing a shiver of sensation along his spine.

“Mistah Johns.” Still in her Southern belle voice. “Ah do believe that you are growing ovah-excited by the thought of all those Yankee dollahs.”

She took his head in her hands and pressed him to her breast. Her nipple was swollen with pleasure, and he drew it into his mouth, flicked the rubbery bud with his tongue. She gave a tremulous sigh, a bit theatrical— still playing Scarlett O’Hara. “Oh my,” she said in a lazy voice, “it is certainly my impression that you are taking advantage of mah generous and yieldin’ nature.”

“Sorry, love,” he paused to say. “But I can’t do Rhett Butler.”

“You could try Leslie Howard,” she suggested.

Charlie couldn’t remember who Leslie Howard was exactly, a film star or a character in
Gone with the Wind
or some other bloke entirely, and he really wasn’t in the mood to do imitations anyway. He kissed her again, teasing her breasts under water, stroking them from the armpits to the nipples. He could taste the tang of salt on her lips. She encouraged him with a little sigh.

At least she’d dropped the Scarlett O’Hara routine.

He stroked her ribs, her thighs. Megan nipped his lower lip with her sharp front teeth. He slipped his hand between their two bodies, between her legs. Her lips had a different texture— normally velvet-soft, under water they were more rubbery. She shifted her hips to give him room to stroke her. One of her hands dipped under water, and Charlie felt her long fingernails scratching up the underside of his cock. He arched his back, gasped. She gave a demonic little giggle and enclosed him in her fist. He slid the tip of his middle finger between her lips, felt warmth and readiness. Megan gave a little moan, close to his ear.

“I don’t think you’re exactly immune to the lure of those dollars yourself,” Charlie said. He slid his finger up to her clitoris, heard her sudden gasp, saw her bite her lip. He couldn’t tell if the reaction was pain or pleasure— the problem with sex under water was that the natural lubricant tended to get washed away.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

Her dark eyes challenged him from under her brows. “I’m all right for anything you care to try, Mr. Johns,” she said. The Southern-deb voice was gone, and the Ozarks twang had slipped back into her voice.

He positioned her on the molded fiberglass seat— she was near-weightless under water— and slid himself into her. Her softness folded around him, a half-degree warmer than the spa-water. She gave her demonic little giggle again, and her knees clamped hard on his ribs. He adjusted his position with little thrusts.

Megan drove her pelvis into him with a sudden urgent thrust that almost sent him floating. The water made him so buoyant that he’d bob away like a cork if he wasn’t careful. Charlie clamped his hands on the sides of the spa and met her thrusts. Her ankles crossed behind his back and locked him to her.

She drove herself into him, hips pumping, breath hissing past her teeth, her eyes closed to slits. She could usually trigger her first orgasm right away. Water splashed up, fountained over the edge of the spa. Megan gave a series of low, guttural cries as she came, her strong thighs clamping down hard on his ribs. Charlie scarcely had to move at all.

Megan’s orgasm passed, and she lay back against the spa’s side and let her breath sigh out as she tried to relax. The grip of her thighs eased. Charlie looked down at her and smiled at the way her breasts, more buoyant than the rest of her, bobbed in the surging water. She looked up at him with a ragged grin, then reached for her cigar with shaking fingers. She inhaled luxuriously, held the smoke for a moment, and then formed her mouth into an O and blew out into the space between them. The blue smoke mushroomed off his chest, floated up past the chest hairs that were plastered to Charlie’s skin. He inhaled deeply through his mouth, bringing the tart flavor of the Cohiba across his tingling palate.