Nights In Black Leather. Noelle Mack

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СКАЧАТЬ Lara entered a vast executive suite paneled in more steel. Or wallpaper that looked like steel. There was a block of glass that served as a table with, yup, steel beams for legs. So industrial.

      Something that resembled a sofa in that it was long, and looked like robots would find it comfortable, was at the center of the room. Its space-age upholstery was picked out with steel rivets. There was a matching chair next to an enormous window with a drab view of crowded buildings. No paper in sight. She didn’t know quite what she’d been expecting—stacks of money, maybe.

      “Cozy, isn’t it?”

      Lara just looked at him.

      He laughed. “I call it the Hostile Takeover room. It’s meant to intimidate.”

      “Who?”

      “Venture capitalists.” Adam grinned. “Investment bankers. CEOs and CFOs. And anyone else who needs intimidating.”

      She didn’t know whether to laugh or shiver. “Does it work?”

      He nodded. “So far, yes. But it’s rather oppressive, really. I don’t work in here. Come this way.” He motioned her around a projecting wall and into a much smaller space surrounded by glass brick.

      “Penelope?” He looked around, then smiled at Lara. “I expect she’s gone out for a tick.”

      “Oh.” This room looked like where a man like Adam would work. Lara took in a bank of monitors displaying real-time information from stock markets and exchanges all around the world. Above those were wall-mounted flat-screen TVs with talking heads spouting financial news from different nations in different languages.

      Bewildering. And hypnotizing. Where she might be working with Adam if she were lucky. At up close and personal distance.

      She glanced at the peach-colored copies of the Financial Times strewn around. She’d read the London-based paper in Chicago and the Wall Street Journal every damn day. Part of her job as assistant to Jason Pratt III was cutting down the major articles to a few lines for him, and Jason had a short attention span.

      So she’d stayed on top of US and international markets, and learned the ropes day by day. Numbers and analyses were only part of it. Financial movers and shakers operated on animal instinct, howling out trades and calls in the pit and even at their computers, getting lathered up over the stupidest shit and pawing the ground everywhere they went.

      Big, swinging dicks, one and all, to the glee of lawyers who specialized in high-profile sexual harassment cases. Which the plaintiffs invariably won. She should’ve filed one; she could’ve used the cash. Her degree in business administration didn’t cut it in the real world of big money.

      Anyway, here she was. Adam Bowlin’s operation was an oasis of calm by comparison. Although that could be deceptive.

      Jason had asked Gemma Chiswick to recommend Lara to Adam—Gemma knew everyone and everybody.

      As far as Lara understood, Jason and Gemma had once had a wild cocaine-and-champagne-fueled transatlantic love affair. Now they were the bestest pals ever, mostly because they had yet to figure out a way to cheat on each other, financially speaking. On her side of the Pond, Gemma ran a boutique investment firm for private clients who were disgustingly rich but too silly to think. But she wanted to move up to the big time and play with the big boys. So a trade had been made: if Jason could spare Lara from her Chicago duties to spy on Adam Bowlin, Gemma would reward Jason with, cough cough, insider tips.

      Naughty, naughty. But Lara wasn’t involved with that side of the somewhat shady transaction. She was only supposed to find out what stocks, bonds, CDOs, and other financial instruments Adam favored and why, what he paid for them, how he sweet-talked investors into buying into the Bowlin Fund, and above all, precisely how he spun millions of dollars and pounds and euro and yen into billions. Running a very successful hedge fund basically meant never having to say you were sorry, so long as everybody who got in early made out like bandits when the fund went liquid.

      Good thing that Adam Bowlin had hired her just on Gemma’s glowing recommendation. She wandered around and looked discreetly at his personal photos.

      He had a life outside this office, that was for sure. Apparently he liked hiking and hey, he looked great in multi-pocketed chino shorts. Not many men could make that claim, but he had great legs. Mighty and muscular. Planted far apart on a rock, on top of a jagged peak—she could learn to love the great outdoors.

      And here he was with a crew of laughing buddies, male and female, in a restaurant that overlooked emerald-green, terraced rice paddies. Bali?

      Okay, sign her up.

      Another photo showed him sitting on top of a beat-up, dusty Land Rover. Not the kind suburbanites drove. He was eying a lioness who was eying him. South Africa? Oh, that might explain the ambiguous accent.

      And yet another one had been taken in a very English garden with a group of posh-looking people. Family? Hard to tell.

      Oh, that double portrait must be his mom and dad, the one of a pretty, crinkly-eyed lady in a lace-collared dress and an older man in a sweater that she had probably knitted for him. Aww.

      Adam came a little closer to her. “So what do you think of Operation Bowlin? The latest and greatest hedge fund of all.”

      Lara looked around. “Must be nice to be lightly regulated.”

      Adam pulled out a small swivel chair for her. “I just bend the rules. But I don’t break them.”

      She smiled. “You’re honest.”

      “I like to think of myself as too intelligent to get in trouble,” Adam said with a wink.

      “And you’re not modest.”

      He spun the swivel chair around with a laugh. “I think we’re going to get on, you and I. Sit down. I’ll explain the basics of my operation and then we can do creative brainstorming on the derivatives market. Would you like some coffee?”

      “Sure. Thanks.” Lara racked her brain trying to remember everything she knew about derivatives, drawing a blank. She couldn’t chalk it up to jet lag, not after a week, but she would be happy to let him teach her.

      “I’m afraid that our tea-and-coffee lady is out sick this week. Or on strike. I don’t remember. So I’ll send my assistant for it, if you don’t mind.”

      Who will probably hate me, if only for that, Lara thought. “Fine with me,” was all she said.

      Adam brought over a swivel chair for himself, then used his foot to move aside a large aluminum-sided box to make room for the chair. The box was filled with joystick consoles, plug-in connectors, DVDs, and other gear tossed in at random.

      “Video games.” He grinned a bit sheepishly. “Childish, I know, but I’m a fan.”

      “Most guys are.”

      “Do you play?” he asked.

      “Sometimes.” She looked into the box. “Not any of those, though. I don’t think.”

      “Not all of the ones in there are on the market. Some are prototypes.” He sat down next to her and took out a blank СКАЧАТЬ