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“Sounds terrible,” Damian said solemnly.
Nicolo smiled as he draped his towel around his shoulders. “Yeah, I know. But I have an important meeting Monday morning.”
“Well, so do I.”
“Very important.”
Damian looked at him. “So?”
“So,” Nicolo said, after a moment, “I’m hoping to finalize a deal. With James Black.”
“Whoa. That is important. So, tonight we celebrate in advance, at Lucas’s place.”
“Well, I want to stay focused. Get to bed at a decent hour tonight and tomorrow night. No liquor. No distractions—”
“Thee Mou! Don’t tell me! No sex?”
Nicolo shrugged. “No sex.”
“Sex is not a distraction. It’s exercise. Good for the heart.”
“It’s bad for the concentration.”
“That’s BS.”
“We believed it when we played soccer, remember? And we won.”
“We won,” Damian said dryly, “because the competition was lousy.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I. Giving up sex is against the laws of nature.”
“Idiot,” Nicolo said fondly. The men walked to the free weights area and made their selections. “It’s just a matter of discipline.”
“Unless, of course, there was such an instant attraction you couldn’t walk away.” Damian grunted as he lifted a pair of twenty-pound weights. “And how often is that about to happen?”
“Never,” Nicolo answered—and, unbidden, the image of the blonde with the hot eyes and the cold attitude flashed before his eyes.
He had been reaching for the twenty-pound weights, too. Instead he lifted a pair of heavier ones and worked with them until his mind was a pain-filled blank.
Farther downtown, in a part of Manhattan that was either about to be discovered or still a slum, depending on a buyer’s point of view, Aimee Stafford Coleridge Black slammed her apartment door behind her, tossed her black suede coat at a chair and kicked off her matching boots.
The coat slid off the chair. The boots bounced off the wall. Aimee didn’t give a damn.
Amazing, how a day that began so filled with promise could end so badly.
Aimee marched into the kitchen, filled the kettle with water, put it on to boil and changed her mind. The last thing she needed was a caffeine buzz.
She was buzzing enough without it, thanks to her grandfather.
Why had he summoned her to his office, if not to make the announcement she’d been anticipating?
“I shall retire next May,” he’d told her almost a year ago, “when I reach ninety, at which time I shall place Stafford-Coleridge-Black in the charge of the person who will guide it through its next fifty years. A person who will, of course, carry on the Stafford-Coleridge-Black lineage.”
Lineage. As important to James as breathing but that was fine because she, Aimee, was the only person with both the necessary lineage and the proper education to assume command.
She had a bachelor’s degree in finance. A master’s degree in business. She’d spent her summers since high school interning at SCB.
