Hard Sell (21 Wall Street)

MATT

Tuesday Evening, September 26

“Let me get this straight. You had lunch with Jarod Lanham. And our bosses. Lanham told you he’d be in touch. And you’re looking like someone kicked your puppy?”

I glare at Ian. “I don’t have a puppy.”

“Evading,” Kennedy chimes in, pointing at me accusingly. “Ian’s right. You’re not nearly as happy as you should be.”

“I don’t have Lanham’s business yet. You’ll have to excuse me if I’m not popping the champagne.”

The guys and I are at one of Wall Street’s favorite after-work watering holes, and I’m halfway through what I expect to be the first of many cocktails tonight. And not the celebratory kind.

My friends are right. I should be ecstatic that Jarod didn’t laugh me right out of the restaurant. That he knew about my Vegas notoriety and still seemed to entertain the idea of working with me.

Hell, the man ended our lunch meeting with the implication that I was on his short list of potential brokers.

“Lanham say why he’s in the market for someone new?” Ian asks. “He’s been with Herbert Bishop for a hundred years.”

“Precisely. Bishop’s practically a hundred years old. He’s retiring,” I answer.

“So why not stay with Morgan Stanley? Surely Bishop’s got a half dozen protégés itching to take over.”

“Probably. But the last thing I wanted to do was plant the seed that he should stay where he is. Besides, I got the sense the man thrives on change.”

Ian takes a sip of his Negroni, a bitter red gin cocktail he orders wherever he goes. “Wanna flip for him?”

I grin, knowing my friend’s joking. “You’ll have to pry his billions from my cold, dead fingers.”

“Jarod Fucking Lanham.” Kennedy shakes his head. “Unbelievable. You realize that you’re on the cusp of achieving everything you’ve ever wanted at twenty-eight. It’s hard not to hate you.”

I smile reflexively, but I’m taken aback at Kennedy’s words: Everything you’ve ever wanted.

Is that right?

Is getting an elusive billionaire client my life’s dream? Is it really everything I’ve ever wanted?

You. I’ve always wanted you. That much I’ve known for a long time, but what I didn’t know until this week was that I loved you. I love you, Sabrina. Please, for the love of God, tell me it’s not too late.”

I’m not in panic over my love for her. On the contrary, loving Sabrina might just be the most sane, smartest thing I’ve ever done.

I love her. I love her more than anything.

My panic? Fear that I might be too late—that she might no longer love me.

Love.

It’s a word I’ve never really given much thought to, partially because I didn’t think it was for me. But mostly because . . .

I’ve been terrified. Still am, to be honest. But if anyone’s worth it, she is.

What I didn’t see until recently was how the person with the power to destroy you can also be the one to lift you up. The one who can make you live like you’ve never lived before. The one who shines light into dark, infiltrates color into blandness.

The person who can take someone who’s perfectly content and make her . . . happy.

The person who can make me happy.

Hell, to be completely honest, I don’t know that he was ever my worst enemy, so much as my biggest threat. The person who I sensed, even from the very beginning, could destroy me.

She whirls toward me, and the air all but crackles around us. With anger, with sexual tension, with whatever else is between us, always.

I wish I knew what it was. I’m not sure it has a name. Because even though I know down to my very core I’m not cut out for the monogamous-relationship thing—I don’t want a serious girlfriend ever, much less a wife—the woman in front of me is the only one who’s ever made me think maybe.

Maybe.

What can I say, the apocalypse fascinates me.”