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“So we grease some wheels.”
“We can’t pay to speed it up. It has to go by the book. We gotta do this Boy Scout or it might get challenged.”
“How long?”
“Weeks. I don’t know,” he says. “They don’t know.”
I swirl the ice in my drink. This is bad. She refused the money, which means she thinks she can get more. The best way to do that is to make things bad enough that we pay. It’s a hostage situation.
He looks at me, waiting to see what I say. They always expect me to have the answers, the battle plans. Usually I do. But working under the direction of an unpredictable scam artist who pretends to know a dog’s thoughts?
“So we manage her.”
A perverse thrill shudders through me as the idea takes hold. I take a swig of my drink. Set it down. Close my eyes. Breathe. I focus on the calm of it spreading through me.
When I open my eyes, Brett’s watching me. Waiting.
“Never imagined I’d feel nostalgic for Kaleb’s minimum profit-per-square-foot ball and chain around my ankle,” I say.
He snorts. “What the hell! Right?”
Kaleb never understood the new economy. He never got the memo that you sometimes make a bigger profit by taking a loss up front. That once in a while it’s worth it to make cool shit. You can’t put a price on being known as a builder that makes cool shit.
No, it’s all about profit margins to Kaleb. The man is so 1980s it sprains my brain.
“Manage her. Keep her busy. Keep her from screwing things up. Keep her…favorably disposed.”
“Should be easy for you. She’s not with anyone,” Brett says.
I nod. According to our PI, she’s led a quiet existence. No boyfriend.
Brett grins. “So you can play good cop and I’ll play bad cop. I’ll gather evidence and work the lawyers and keep the PI digging, and you just keep her on her back.”
I look down at my fingers around the glass, remembering the way she stared at them.
“You’re into it, right? One of New York’s ten most eligible bachelors? You could do a very good good cop. You could keep her sated until we yank the firm.”
I snort. One of New York’s ten most eligible bachelors was a title given to me out of spite by a journalist ex. Trust me, nobody who gets a title like that is ever happy about it.
“Get her into the Henry fan club,” Brett continues. “Take her out. Charm her. Romantic picnics in the park. Billionaire helicopter rides.”
I try to imagine doing the whole picnic-blanket-and-chilled-champagne-in-the-park thing with her in a way that wouldn’t be fake or cheesy, but I can’t. All I can see is her adjusting her glasses, brown eyes peering at me hard, like, really? “No, that approach—it’s not right for her.”
“What, are you suddenly a grifter expert?”
“It’s too generic for her. The picnic thing and all that, it says, Look at me, I’m romancing you.”
“Kind of the point.”
“Vicky won’t go for it,” I say with a certainty that surprises even me. “This isn’t a woman who wants a heart-shaped box of chocolates. She’s—”
What I almost say is that she’s too good for that.
God, she’s a grifter looking for a payday. I push the scotch away. “I’ll handle her, don’t worry. She won’t be giving any messed-up orders.”
“There’s the spirit,” Brett says. “Now, what about the press? What if they find out that Smuckers is heading up the board? That little bit of news could screw up a lot of projects. The stadium? They want an excuse to say no.”
“I won’t let anything nix the stadium deal.”
