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 Salomon 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 curly.
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. A rising tide lifts all boats, as that great statesman John F. Kennedy used to say.”
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. He 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 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 sang 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.