Hot Under Pressure. Kathleen O'Reilly

percent lower than what she paid for them. It was enough to make a weaker woman cry. But not Ashley, not this time. She was still flying high on the aftershocks of great sex.

      For the next week, Ashley worked eighteen-hour days to get the store back in order. Her first instinct was to promote the lead sales associate to manager, but honestly, that wasn’t smart and she knew it, so she caved and put a Help Wanted sign in the window. Forty-eight hours later, she’d hired a new manager, a gum-popping twentysomething named Sophie, who didn’t meet her eyes all the time, but her resumé was good, and she wore a great vintage Halston to the interview. That alone was enough to get her the job.

      By the middle of the week, the Lakeview store was in better shape, and the Naperville, State Street and Wicker Park stores were holding their own. She was ready to make the call. It was late on a Wednesday that she decided to do it because she worried about whether he’d be alone on a Friday, or whether a Monday morning call seemed too needy. And what if he slept in late on Sundays?

      Thankfully, he picked up on the first ring.

      “Hello.”

      “David? It’s Ashley,” she told him, praying that he wouldn’t ask, “Ashley-who?”

      “Hi,” he said, completely the perfect response.

      “I’m going to be in New York.”

      “When?”

      “Two weeks. If you’re not busy…”

       Don’t be busy. If you’re busy, I’m never going to call a man again in my life. Ever.

       Don’t be dramatic, Ash.

       Shut up, Val.

      “Not busy. We’ll get dinner. Or a show. Or does that sound too normal? We don’t have to do normal. You can stay here if you want. I’ve got space.”

      “No. I’m booking a room,” she answered firmly, not the frugal answer, which was part of her problem, but hotels were dim, mysterious, sinful. Apartments were warm, homey and mundane. And if she found herself settling into his warm, homey and mundane, what would happen to all that smoking-hot passion? Would it disappear, as if it had never existed?

      Not going to happen. She liked this smoking-hot passion. She was going to keep it.

      “Is your hotel near the airport?”

      Ashley tried not to laugh, but failed. “No.”

      “Good. How’s work?”

      “Not so good. But I’m optimistic.”

      “Much better than defeatist.”

      “Probably.”

      She thought about all the other things she could say, but they sounded neither exciting, nor affairish, so she elected to hold her tongue. “I should go now,” she told him.

      “Call me when you get in. Have a good flight, don’t forget to pack your bunny slippers, and Ashley—”

      “Yeah?”

      “Thanks for calling.”

      “Anytime,” she answered, before quickly hanging up.

       5

      THE FRIENDLY SKIES were extinct, along with dinosaurs, cheap interest rates and the commitment to customer service. The next week David flew fifteen thousand pain-filled miles to Portland, Houston, Seattle and two trips to DC. In the process, he discovered that the plastics company in Portland was running dangerously low on working capital, the oil services company in Houston was ripe for a friendly buyout and the people who worked in government had zero people skills. As he was waiting on the tarmac to head back to New York, Christine called.

      “I’m sorry about your meeting. I debated a long time to call, kept hoping that you would call, but you didn’t, so I decided I should. It would mean a lot to me, and Chris, too, if you could come and visit.”

      David eyed the air-sickness bag, felt the aftertaste of hard feelings rise in his throat and in the end politely opted to spare his fellow passengers excessive hurling noises. He was thirty-four, not four. “I’ll try,” he lied.

      “Maybe you can reschedule the meeting. He misses you. He’s your only brother.”

       Sucks, dude. I feel your pain.

      “They’re telling us to shut off all electronic devices, Christine. I need to hang up.”

      “David, you don’t have to be like this.”

      Because he was exactly like that, David hung up.

      IT WAS A WEDNESDAY afternoon at the start of earnings season, and the offices of Brooks Capital were humming with closing-bell guesses and bets and gossip and shadow numbers that were most likely pulled from someone’s ass. David’s office was on the forty-seventh floor, one below the executive floor, but he wasn’t worried. His boss liked him. He liked his boss. Things were proceeding nicely. And nowhere else but Brooks Capital could he learn from the best of the best, Andrew and Jamie Brooks.

      There were three monitors on his desk, one green screen to monitor the markets, one open to e-mail and the last was his latest work in progress, Portland Plastics. Market recommendation: Hold.

      The door opened, and his boss, Jamie Brooks, walked in, perching herself on the desk, high heels swinging to an unknown beat.

      “You have the latest on Houston Field Works?” she asked coolly.

      Without missing a step, David handed over the folder. It was a test. She liked to test him, see if he was ever at a loss. He hadn’t failed yet. “Anything else?” he asked confidently.

      Jamie opened it, skimming over the introductory fluff, jumping right to the bottom line. “You’re going to Omaha on Friday?” she asked, not looking up from the words, her expression an unreadable blank. David still wasn’t worried.

      “I’ll be there.” Nebraska was the home to an alternative energy company that was close to going public. On paper, they looked good. But David’s job was to visit, kick the tires, peek under the hood and in general, see if the hype was worth it.

      “Good,” she said, and then closed the folder with a snap. “You’re in for the pool on the Mercantile Financials report?”

      David pulled a crisp c-note from his pocket. “Down ten-point-one percent.”

      She stared at him with appraising eyes. “Gutsy.”

      He shrugged modestly.

      “Andrew says up three-point-four,” she remarked. Andrew was Jamie’s husband. The Man. Capital T, capital M.

      In the last seven years, David had followed Andrew’s every move. When Andrew opened his own fund, David jumped at the chance to follow. When the market had put most hedge fund managers out on the street dancing for nickels, Brooks Capital had not only survived, but they were also still turning the same solid returns year after year. Andrew was as thorough and methodical as David, and he was usually right. Andrew Brooks made his reputation on being right. This time, however, Andrew Brooks was wrong.

      “He’s too high,” David told her, perhaps more confidently than he should, but he’d done his homework, and he had a feeling. You always did your research, always gleaned over every piece of data available, but when push came to shove, bet on your instincts.

      Not taking her eyes off David, Jamie slid the bill back and forth through her fingertips, thinking, considering, wondering if David could beat the master. Eventually she broke down and laughed. “Breaking from the crowd. I like it.”

      During his first days on the job at Brooks Capital, Jamie had intimidated David, but then one afternoon he had brought her a report on a waste management company in Dallas, and she’d pointed out the one tiny,