‘And what’s the other half?’ Diana asked, watching a young man the teenage girls were calling out to as though he were a rock star of some kind. He was swinging that baseball bat around in the air like it was a Cheerleader’s baton. She had no idea how they ever hit the ball with those things. It was a bit like rounders, only boys played it.
‘Coming up with the right product. Which is where I come in. You need a vision. I don’t care if you’re manufacturing toilet paper; you better be passionate’
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about toilet paper. And you better come up with a better sold, better-presented, more comfortable goddamn toilet paper. Because that’ll make you a millionaire.’
‘Do we have to sit here and talk about lavatory paper?’ Diana asked plaintively. ‘I’m trying to eat.’
Michael took a gigantic bite of his hot-dog, smothered
with chillies and onions and mustard.
‘Pretty good, huh?’
‘Not really.’ She nibbled at a corner of her bun.
‘You’re lame.’ Michael pointed at the young man with
the bat. ‘That’s Derek Jeter. He’s one of their best—’ ‘Batsmen.’
‘Hitters. And that’s Roger Clemens. Best pitcher in
baseball, but he’s been having a lousy year.’
‘Cricket’s much more relaxing.’
‘Yeah, eleven guys standing in a field and nothing going on.’
‘Nonsense.’ She glanced over at him and saw the dark pants and plain white shirt on the barrel chest, the lust for life that he evinced everyday. ‘Cricket is like war. You and Sam watch your enemy slowly being demolished. He comes back with a new force, you cut the legs out of that one. It can be vicious. Exhilarating.’ She shrugged. ‘Unless you support England, in which case it’s usually embarrassing, but even they can surprise you with a mammoth win.’
‘I’ll take your word for it.’ Michael dragged his eyes away from Diana’s chest. ‘Tell me how the Count Cloud Nine series is coming along …’
She relaxed as they talked through the business of the week. Nobody could hear what they were talking about,
could spill their plans to Blakely’s. They
no
corporate
spy
were not going to let Ernie Foxton win this time.
And he would come after them. If they gave him an
inch.
Michael told her not to worry about Ernie. He said he
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had it taken care of. And Diana had learned that when Michael said something was getting done, it got done. His word was more than a promise, it was a fact. So she put Ernie out of her mind.
‘I’d like to see you tonight,’ he said to her when they rose at the seventh-inning stretch. ‘I’m hoping to launch an online travel guide. Written by real New Yorkers and aimed at kids. Books can’t offer real-time videos of your destination.’
Diana grinned. ‘You could make a lot of money with that.’
‘That’s part of my plan,’ Michael admitted. ‘So, tonight, OK? My place.’ ‘Won’t Tina mind if I intrude?’ Diana made herself
ask.
Through Christmas and New Year and Valentine’s Day - when three hundred red roses from Brad had been delivered to her desk, making the entire ninth floor smell like a florist’s - Michael had still dated Tina. The great advantage to having a bigger office was that Diana hardly ever saw her now. On the rare occasions when she had to go to see Michael, she tried to time her visits so Tina would be having lunch.
Once or twice, though, she hadn’t been able to miss her. And the signs were not reassuring. Tina had dropped the itsybitsy skirts and. tight leather pants for almost demure dresses. Diana noticed she was adapting herself to Michael’s taste. He was in favour of ladylike, funnily enough, for a guy who was dating a bimbette. And Tina, while not a smart girl, possessed a cegtain amount of low animal cunning. I bet she’s out in the bookstore right now picking up Italian cookbooks and learning how to serve Sambuca with the espresso, with three coffee beans in the glass, she thought. But she pushed it down. She couldn’t let dislike for Tina Show. She was getting on so well with Michael.
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‘Not at all. Actually I told her we’d be spending the evening together. I have plans I want you to see. And the fewer people who know about it, the better.’
‘But you can trust Tina, right?’ Diana asked.
She didn’t know why she asked this. It was like being a
kid and having a loose tooth, and being unable to stop teasing it with her tongue.
Michael looked at her with his dark eyes. ‘Of course I
can. But this is business, not personal. I don’t mix the
two. You know that.’
It felt like a slap. ‘Of course.’ She nodded quickly. ‘I couldn’t agree with you more. Mixing is always a mistake.’
They sat, and she switched her eyes to Tino Martinez,
who promptly belted a double down the left-field line.
‘Just keep your fucking trap shut, all right?’
Ernie turned on Felicity. Her inane questions about which wedding-cake design and which kind of fancy lightbulb to use in the strings of lights she planned on suspending over the ballroom ceiling were getting on his nerves. He was trying to find some way he could cut costs more, to improve the Blakely’s bottom line just a little bit, and she was bugging him yet again. ‘I don’t give a fuck, darlin’? Understand?’
His thick cockney accent had returned at full force
under stress. ‘I just want you to fuck off and give me some peace. Just get out so I can’do my business, which is what keeps you in jewels and fucking Maseratis.’
‘I understand perfectly.’ Felicity’s brow did not crease;
she had recently popped down to Dr Wexler for an injection of Botox, the poison that paralysed the muscles in the forehead, making you unable to frown and giving you a permanently surprised look. She had to fix Ernie with a gimlet stare instead. ‘You’re trying to dig yourself
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out of the hole the company is in. And you intend using
foul language in my presence. So I am going to leave.’ ‘Oh fucking dear. Boo fucking hoo,’ Ernie snarled. ‘Just make sure you complete your task properly … darling. I wouldn’t want you to have any difficulties paying for our summer place.’
Privately, Felicity thanked heaven that she had had the estate agent put the deed to that house in her name. Ernie was so busy these days with the wretched little men calling at the apartment, the endless faxes and the calls from Italy in the middle of the night.., always fighting with somebody and screaming at somebody else … he hadn’t even noticed the few alterations her private lawyer had put into the deal.
She wondered for a second if Diana Foxton had also had these difficulties. How on earth had Diana reacted when… Ernie had never actually fucked Jung-Li in front of her, but with his present frame of mind, that was probably coming. She hated Diana with total passion… Diana who once again ruled the scene in New York, this time without even trying. Brad Bailey was actually pursuing her. Brad! whom she, Felicity, had set her cap at so firmly three years ago, only to be brutally rebuffed, like most of the Manhattan girls. People had liked to say he was gay, but the trouble was, he was seen with too many women. He had been written off as a hopeless bachelor.
And now wherever he went Diana was there at his side. If Ernie had an excellent box for the opening night at the Met, Diana was in a better one, usually with the mayor or the governor, and oft one dreadful night had been seen having drinks with Elspeth Merriman and the First Lady … She had the best table at every ball, she lounged on the deck of the largest yacht, she was up there with Mrs Astor, but she was sixty years younger.
And she wasn’t trying. Felicity dreaded the day Diana’s ‘
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dinner parties, twice as glamorous and star-studded as before, started up again - with herself, Jodie and Natasha permanently off the guest list - but it had not come. Diana was past the party-giving stage. She was said ‘not to have the time’. And what the hell did that mean? Felicity asked herself, defensively. As though running some wretched company were so much more important than organising the social life of one of New York’s premier publishing figures.
Except that Diana’s company was no longer so wretched. Felicity had been forced to learn how to pay attention to the business pages of the papers. The JanCorp merger had made Michael Cicero’s company a what was the term? - a player. Diana’s books had burst on the publishing scene with promotion, marketing and sales clout behind them. Her ABCs and counting series for infants was a huge success.
Ernie told her bitterly you could spend your way into the charts, but making it last took more skill.
She stood and shook her head sorrowfully in Ernie’s direction, but he ignored her. She marched out of the room and slammed the door. She was mad.
Nothing but a couple of emerald studs from Cartier would make her feel better, Felicity decided, rather viciously. And maybe a tennis bracelet, too.
Diana took a cab down to Michael’s place. He had moved into a SoHo loft, which .was fairly luxurious. She noted the well-equipped gym set up next to the kitchen on the first floor; the neat bedroom, the home office, everything ranged out cleanly and simply. The colours were dark green, burgundy and mahogany. In a city full of teal, cream and variations of beige, Michael Cicero’s pad was uncompromisingly dark and masculine.
He had no paintings, just line drawings of the Roman Forum and the Baths of Caracalla. The ornamentation
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was limited to broken marble heads on display stands. She saw instantly that they were genuine antiques.
‘Come in,’ Michael said, waving her inside. ‘Good to see you.’
‘Yeah, it’s been at least four hours,’ Diana teased. She strolled over to the largest head, that of a masculine, full figured man with a beard and severe eyes. ‘Who’s this
guy? Could he have more testosterone?’ ‘That’s the Emperor Hadrian.’ ‘Of Hadrian’s Wall?’
‘Uh-huh. He was a good commander. Consolidated the Roman gains. A fighter.’
‘Very masculine,’ Diana said, approvingly.
Michael let his eyes run over her body. She was wearing a simple, elegant light blue number by DKNY, a dress in heavy silk that hugged her ass and her tits, yet
maddeningly covered everything up.
‘Yes he was. He was also gay.’
Diana laughed. ‘Rock Hudson was pretty masculine and he was gay.’
‘It doesn’t stop you being a man. My first partner was gay. Without Seth, I would never have gotten Green Eggs off the ground.’ Michael waved her over to the table in the middle of the office. It was set with illustrations, travel guides, sheets of numbers and a few cartons. ‘I got sushi again. Nothing but the best; no California rolls, just octopus, squid–’
‘Don’t.’ Diana tossed back her dark hair, and he felt the first stirring in his groin. ‘I can eat the stuff. I just hate knowing what they put in it.’
‘Then I’ll pour the sake and we can get to it.’
They spent a few hours going over the new games, just enough for Diana to understand what Michael wanted. The important part of a session like this was for her to understand his vision. Once She had clicked, she ran with the ball.
36I
‘Dorling Kindersley have the best maps and Insight
have the best snaps,’ she told him. ‘I can poach from both
and come up with something even better.’
Diana laid down her papers, aware that Michael was gazing at her. The sun had set outside and his home was lit with softly glowing lamps. She had drunk virtually nothing, but she still felt lightheaded.
‘I need to ask you something,’ he said.
She felt a knot in her stomach. ‘Fire away.’ If he would
only stop staring at her. She had a tendency to imagine his eyes on her breasts, which, inevitably got her hot, made her nipples harden and set her belly on fire as if his fingernails had raked lightly across it. And then who knew what his eyes were doing?
‘It’s about Ernie. I’ve been watching him. Building up a position in his stock.’
‘A position in his stock,’ Diana repeated. ‘But Blakely’s
is huge. You can’t own that much.’
‘Oh, I don’t.’ He gave her that trademark Cicero grin.
‘I just own two per cent. Which is enough to guarantee me rights to speak for five minutes at the next stockholders meeting. He’s in trouble. Real, serious trouble. He has spent so hard on marketing and advances, his sales can never match up. The games division is a joke - the hackers can’t work under those conditions, one of them called me last week. In order to make the bottom line look good, Ernie has taken to firing all the high-salary employees and replacing them with cheaper ones.’
‘Only the cheaper ones aren’t as good.’
‘Right. And books and games are leaking money. They
have a large market share and a profit margin of next to nothing. Signor Bertaloni thinks his money went to a flake. He’s trying to bury the deal.’ Michael smiled, cruelly. He had such a handsome, almost callous mouth, she thought. She was trying to listen to him, but her eyes kept fixing themselves on his mouth.
36z
‘Most of the business doesn’t know how bad it is. I thought I could help them to find out. We’ll bury that motherfucker.’ He shrugged. ‘Excuse my language. But … he is your ex-husband.’
Michael stood up and walked behind her chair, and Diana felt the tiny hairs on the back of her neck lift. She could sense his body, his muscles behind the cotton shirt, close to her. She slicked up and shifted on her seat, biting down on her lip.
‘I couldn’t care less about him,’ Diana said. She tried to say it, but it came out as a whimper. Frantically, she cleared her throat. ‘You can do whatever you like. I’ll be right there with you.’
‘OK. Good.’ Michael leant forward to clear away her dirty plate. He found himself looking down directly at those magnificent tits. Her skin was warm, silky. Was he imagining it, or was her breathing coming short?
He snapped. Enough control. He pushed closer and kissed her roughly on the lips.