‘Settle?’
‘Give back your half of the Meadow line. For whatever price they offer.’
Dina leafed through the letters again. ‘They don’t sound like they want to settle. Unless I sign it back, they’re going to sue.’
‘And you can’t persuade Dr Green?’
‘Hector won’t talk to me. The money stuff really changed him.’
‘Yes,’ said the lawyer. ‘It can do that.’
Dina sighed. ‘So, if I hire you to write the letters, how much could I get?’
Eliza shrugged. ‘I’d try for something small – you’re right, they don’t want to settle – like, maybe, fifty thousand dollars, just to make the headache go away.’
Dina almost choked on the water she was sipping from a white plastic cup. ‘Fifty thousand? That’s it?’
‘They’re a serious firm.’
‘Thank you,’ Dina said. The older woman could see her thinking. ‘Just one more question,’ Dina continued. ‘If I had the money to hire a firm like them, and I could fight it, would I get to keep my share?’
‘Oh, sure. I really think so. The contract is tight, you persuaded him to develop the cream, you took over at the store – your fingerprints are on everything. And the fact that you re-mortgaged your apartment . . . it’s all there.’
‘I appreciate your time.’ Dina rose to her feet. ‘What do I owe you for the consultation?’
Eliza Sherman felt a pang of pity for the kid. ‘Absolutely nothing,’ she said. ‘Good luck, Ms Kane.’
Dina sat at her kitchen table, an uneaten bowl of oatmeal by her side. She was lost in the
Wall Street Journal
and her laptop. Next to her was a simple white pad, with a list of names on it.
It was a short list.
So few men had the power to help her. And the name on the top of the list? Well, it was like approaching a legend.
Joel Gaines was one of Wall Street’s major mavericks. He was forty-one years old and a venture capitalist of the old school – not a dot com in sight. Gaines bought companies, broke them up and sold them off. He founded his first hedge fund aged just twenty-five and, by the age of thirty, owned a Detroit automaker, a travel agency in New York and several citrus farms in California. He had a bad reputation as a brutal player, with a ruthless eye on the bottom line. Gaines cut jobs and made companies profitable. He also started with senior management first. He had married early, at twenty-three, to a society beauty, Susan, who threw legendary parties in the Hamptons and sat on several charity boards. There were two sons, seventeen and fifteen. His partner, Bob Goldstein, was older and very respected. He provided the prestige, and Gaines did the rest.
Dina loved the story. She wanted to be like him. One day – maybe.
Her fingers reached for her cellphone, then hesitated. It was such a long shot. Why on earth would a man like Gaines agree to see her?
But one thing she knew: in her place, at her age, Joel Gaines would have made this call. He would have made all the calls.
The letters from the law firm were piled up in front of her, their threats written clearly on the stiff cream paper. She wanted out, she had no choice.
‘What’s on the list today?’ Gaines asked.
His assistant, Marian, placed a neatly typed list on his desk. Gaines always wanted a hard copy. He found screens distracting. Other bankers ran the numbers, did the algorithms; Gaines went out to the factories, talked to the workers, used the products. It was part of what made him the best.
‘You have the Japanese team here for the breakfast meeting.’
‘Very good.’ He glanced out of his huge floor-to-ceiling windows. ‘Bring them in shortly.’
‘The
New Yorker
is here to profile you at ten.’
‘We agreed to that?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Very well. Twenty minutes, max.’
‘Yes, sir. Then you are talking to the union leaders from the plant in Milwaukee.’
‘They can have an hour.’
‘Lunch with Mr Goldstein.’
‘OK. We’ll go to Jean-Georges today.’
‘Very good, sir. You have forty minutes after that for emails and calls. I’ll have a sheet ready for you.’
‘Then what?’
‘Your personal trainer at half three and, at five, you are meeting the Mayor over the new construction site in TriBeCa. Your driver will take you directly home from City Hall at five forty.’
He nodded. Going home: that was the part of the day he liked least. ‘Anything else?’
‘Well . . . you did mention you might speak to that young woman who called, about the beauty cream.’
‘Yes. Cute. What was her name again?’
‘Dina Kane.’
‘See if you can squeeze in an extra phone call somewhere. I’ll take her pitch. Ten minutes.’
‘Oh.’
‘What is it?’
‘She’s waiting outside, sir.’
Joel blinked. ‘Did I say a meeting?’
‘No. She says she would prefer to speak to you face to face. She understands you will only have a few minutes for her; says she’ll wait. Do you want me to tell her to go away?’
He laughed; he liked a kid – of either sex – with balls. Mostly they were eager young Ivy League grads who’d watched
Wall Street
one too many times. Mostly they were men.
‘She can go away and come back after lunch, if she wants. Or she can wait. It may be several hours.’
‘Very good, sir.’ Marian didn’t argue the point.
‘Bring me some coffee, please.’
He had few vices these days, but caffeine was one of them.
Dina waited. She came prepared; she had her notes, her printouts, her projections, the case summary. And she had her phone. As the hours ticked by, she didn’t idly leaf through magazines, or stare out of the vast Gaines Goldstein windows at Sixth Avenue below. She read up and studied, digging through the
Journal,
the
New York Times
,
Forbes
,
Fortune
, whatever was out there, following all the deals that Joel Gaines had ever done.
It was gripping. Dina got it immediately. There was a beautiful logic to the way he worked, mixed with a gambler’s touch that made it artful. The private jet, the exclusive prep schools, the house in the Hamptons – all of these were less interesting to her; they were just the natural result of the brilliant mind at work in the office behind her.
She watched as men were shown in to the inner sanctum and returned, hours or minutes later, awe-struck and babbling amongst themselves. From Japanese businessmen to a journalist and photographer to some hard-looking, weather-beaten guys in lumberjack shirts and jeans. It wasn’t clear precisely what he was doing, but from their reactions when they came out, he was doing it brilliantly.
It was exciting. It was thrilling. Another time, she might have been happy just to be in his presence. But not today. This wasn’t just a courtesy call, nor was she a mere fan. She needed him. She needed this deal.
Finally, at almost noon, his secretary emerged: immaculate in pencil skirt, silk shirt and kitten heels; an elegant fifty-year-old blonde.
‘Ms Kane – Mr Gaines can see you.’
She jumped to her feet, trying to calm her ragged breathing.
‘I must warn you, this was meant to be a phone call. Mr Gaines has an absolute maximum of ten minutes. Try to make it less.’
Dina knew better than to sass the assistant. She meekly nodded her head. ‘Yes, ma’am.’
The door opened into a cavernous office, exactly as she had expected. But that didn’t make it any less impressive. The soft woollen carpet in eggshell grey led up to a wall of windows at one end, and stark white walls on the other three sides, hung with enormous canvases of modern art; she recognised a Basquiat, a huge Warhol print, two others she didn’t know, but that still reeked of money. There was a large Wall Street ticker moving across one wall relentlessly, in an electronic banner.
Dina swallowed dryly. She was impressed, even a little aroused, despite herself. It was so in-your-face.
Gaines was sitting behind his desk, reading through some papers as she approached him. Dina took him in – the square, powerful shoulders, the muscled body under the well-cut suit. He wore a plain steel watch, nothing fancy. His square-jawed profile was striking and he had salt-and-pepper hair cut very close to the head.
‘Thank you for seeing me, Mr Gaines.’ She sat down, without being asked. There was a chair, and Dina didn’t have time to waste with pleasantries.
‘We were supposed to do this over the phone.’ Gaines turned and looked at her, and Dina flushed with surprise.
He was sexy. The eyes were dark, fringed with black lashes so thick it looked like he was wearing mascara. He had a large nose and a cruel, arrogant set to his mouth, which matched his aura of power and the muscles of his body. She flashed to imagining him in a gym, lifting weights.
‘Yes, sir.’ She dragged herself back to the present. ‘I thought I could get the point across better if I could see you.’
The dark eyes flickered up and down her body, and Dina felt desire licking at her.
He leaned back in his chair. ‘Go ahead, kid. Pitch me.’
‘I partnered with a man who ran a small beauty store – a chemist who hadn’t worked in years. I love beauty.’
He inclined his head a fraction of an inch, without paying her a compliment.
‘We were doing too well for the store, but he didn’t want to expand. I persuaded him to develop a great day cream. I put up the money for lab costs, packaging: a loan against my apartment, in exchange for half the product. It’s called Meadow and early orders are really good. Here.’
She passed over her fact sheets. ‘It could be a blockbuster, if we had the right distribution. A new Crème de la Mer.’
Gaines looked over them. ‘Congratulations. What do you need me for?’
‘My partner is suing me – for ten million dollars. They’re saying I stole half the cream from him. He wants to make other products in the line, without paying me. Glamour Store offered him a million bucks for a night cream.’
‘Messy.’
Dina swallowed hard. ‘I saw a lawyer and she says I can’t fight it. Even though I can prove I funded it, he hired this big-shot firm and they can file so much stuff, I have no money to defend the suit. I spent all I had on funding Meadow.’
‘Why is he doing this to you?’
She was ashamed to find tears prickling in the corners of her eyes, and fiercely blinked them back.
‘Maybe I pushed him too hard. Hector just wanted a quiet life. Now he wants money first, then a quiet life.’
Gaines glanced at her, and then down at the papers again. It was a solid little bundle, presented by somebody who had judged him well. She had included not just the sales figures and her contract, but costs, projections and – more than that – press. There was a small sheaf of articles and reviews, neatly clipped from beauty magazines and supplements. From her package, he got a sense of a wonder cream breaking into the market, a product with legs.
‘My lawyer said somebody with money could fight this suit easily. But I don’t have any.’
‘What’s your background?’
He pushed back in his chair. The girl was intriguing, and not just because she was beautiful. As a very rich man, he was around pretty girls all the time; the models swarmed at the nightclubs and the country clubs, hoping to pick up a financier, married or not.
She was elegantly dressed, wearing fitted black trousers and flats, and a dark red silk blouse. No jewellery; she didn’t need it. Her face looked like it had been made up by a pro: gorgeous light rose blusher on the tops of her cheekbones, a translucent pink gloss on the lips, some sheer kind of foundation, eye shadow the pale brown of lightly done toast. When a girl like this spoke about beauty, young as she was, he got the sense of talking to an expert.
‘I started out as a waitress. Then got into beauty retail, like I said.’
‘No college?’
‘There was no money. My mom was widowed early.’
He arched a brow. ‘You don’t think a sob story will have an effect on me?’
Dina flushed again, this time with anger. ‘What sob story? I’ve done well.’
‘Up to now.’ He liked her spirit. Loved it. He was just playing with her now, enjoying himself. ‘You can’t fight this case.’
‘No, sir. But, for you, it would be peanuts. They would wet themselves if they saw you coming.’
‘That’s probably true.’ Gaines smiled. ‘When it comes to lawyers, I have depth on the bench.’
‘And a reputation.’
He pushed his chair back a little, examined her more closely. ‘What reputation is that?’
She blushed. ‘I’m sure you know that, Mr Gaines.’
‘Very well.’ The plain speaking amused him. Nobody ever talked to him like this. They were craven, flattering, obsequious. This girl hadn’t got the memo. ‘And knowing my reputation, why do you think I would be interested?’
‘In the
Journal
it said that L’Audace was looking to expand its beauty presence, to add to its brands. You need a skincare line.’
L’Audace was a tired luxury goods house with a glittering past behind it that Gaines Goldstein had bought out two months ago.
‘Meadow could be a big part of that revival. I will sell you my fifty per cent, and all my interest in future products and brands in the line. When they know you’ll fight, they will probably cave themselves. You can buy out Hector’s half, and the formula. And you’ll have a great product. You see, Meadow actually works, because Hector is a talented chemist. It’s what made our store good.’
He nodded. ‘How does a waitress get a property she can borrow against?’
‘My mom made me a small loan and I saved; I bought a studio, fixed it up, flipped it, did the same with another place.’ She tossed her hair, a proud gesture. ‘I did very well.’
‘Excuse me. Sir?’ Marion Harris was at the door, tutting impatiently. ‘Your lunch reservation.’
‘Coming.’ He stood up, and the girl did too, dismissed. ‘The idea has some merit; the figures need to back it up. I’ll make some calls, get back to you.’
‘Would you like my phone number?’ Dina said.
‘No.’ He didn’t look back at her as he strode towards the door. ‘We can reach you if we want to.’
She spent a depressing afternoon trudging around the banks.