Grant Hampton listened to the ringing and felt the sweat on his palms. For a normal person, this would be an insane time to call, but knowing his nutbag sister, she was probably already up and about to go out for her daily run. And this on a Sunday morning, for chrissake, when rational people were drinking coffee or having sex or doing something sensible like retrieving the Times from the hallway and reading the columns in the Business section. He had left Tanya, his runway model livein, to get her beauty sleep and had driven downtown at this unthinkable hour on a mission. He was chief financial officer of Bartlett Medical Devices, Inc., which was in imminent danger of going under and taking him with it.
Come on, Ally. Pick up the frigging phone.
He gazed out the windshield of his blue Porsche, now parked directly across the street from Alexa's lobby, and tried to calm his pulse. He hadn't entirely worked out the pitch, but that was okay because he wanted to sound spontaneous. Who was it said, "Sincerity, if you can just fake that, you've got it made?" That was what-
"Hello."
Thank God she's picked up.
"Hi, sis, remember the sound of my voice? Long time, right?" Come on, he thought, give me an opening here. There was a pause that Grant Hampton thought lasted an eternity.
"You picked a funny time to call."
Is that all she has to say? Four and a half frigging years she shuts me out of her life, blaming me, and then…
"Well, Ally, I figured there's gotta be a statute of limitations on being accused of something I didn't do. So I decided to take a flier that maybe four years and change was in the ballpark."
"Grant, do you know what time it is? This is Sunday and-"
"Hey, this is the hour you do your Sunday run, right? If memory serves. So I thought I might drive down and keep you company."
He didn't want to let her know that he was already there. That would seem presumptuous and probably tick her off even more. But by God he had to get to her.
Again there was a long pause. Like she was trying to collect and marshal her anger.
"You want to come to see me? Now? That's a heck of a-"
"Look, there's something really important I need to talk to you about. It's actually a big favor for you, sis. You've surely heard of Winston Bartlett?"
"I've also heard of Donald Trump. So?"
"Well, he's got a clinic out in New Jersey that-"
"Grant, I know you're a big shot in his medical conglomerate or whatever it is, but I'm not interested in whatever you're peddling. I'm going out to run now."
He heard the sound of the phone clicking off, without so much as a goodbye.
Jesus, he thought, she really is ticked. This is going to be harder than I thought.
Okay, here goes Plan B.
He started the Porsche and slowly backed to the corner of Washington Street, where he parked again and then hunkered down, loving the smell of the new leather seat. Ally was going to come charging out of the front door in about two minutes, with that damned sheepdog that Steve gave her, assuming it was still around.
Grant Hampton was three years younger than Alexa and he lived in a different world. Whereas she'd never wanted to be anything but an architect, he had aimed directly for NYU School of Business. After that, he had gone to Wall Street and gotten a broker's license and begun an extremely lucrative career as a bond trader for Goldman Sachs. He discovered he had the nerves, as well as a gift for handling big numbers in his head. Soon he had a duplex coop on the twentysixth floor of a new building on Third Avenue in the East Sixties. He loved the money and the pad He also liked how easy it was to pick up models at downtown clubs if you had your own coop, a Porsche, and were six feet tall with a designer wardrobe.
That was where he met Tanya, also six feet tall, a striking (natural) redhead who did a lot of runway work for Chloe.
He thought he was making a lot of money, but Tanya, who could order a twohundreddollar bottle of Dom Perignon to have something to pass the time while the hors d'oeuvres were being whipped up at Nobu, taught him he was just barely getting by. She was accustomed to screwing men who had some depth to their money.
But when he tried a financial endeavor on the side, it turned into a disaster. Time to move on. He sent around his resume and managed to get an interview with BMD, which was looking for someone to help them hedge their exposure in foreign currencies. The next thing he knew, he was trading bonds for Winston Bartlett's personal account.
When Bartlett's CFO died of a heart attack at age fortynine (while undergoing oral sex in the backseat of a chauffeured Lincoln Town Car), Grant Hampton got temporarily drafted to take over his responsibilities. That was two years ago. He was aggressive enough that there was never a search for a replacement. He had made the big time, and he had done it before he was thirtyfive.
But now it all hung in the balance. If this didn't work out, he could end up coldcalling widows out of Dun amp; Bradstreet, hawking thirdrate IPOs. Tanya would be gone in a heartbeat.
Ally, work with me for chrissake. Sunday, April 5