Fallen

by Natasha Grace

  She figured giving Jason’s watch to Luke would show that she was willing to start anew, that they could forge a professional relationship.

  The watch was also a thank–you of sorts after all he’d done with the funeral preparations. She would’ve been a mess if the arrangements had been left to her, and she doubted Jason’s parents would’ve been any better. And he’d done it all without her even asking. The only thing she’d had to do was show up, and for that she’d always be grateful.

  It was still early, so Luke’s assistant wasn’t in yet. Samantha knocked softly on his closed door.

  “Come in,” his voice boomed.

  Well, here goes nothing.

  “Hey,” she murmured as she walked in. Luke looked up from his computer, his dark eyes widening when he saw her.

  “Hey, yourself,” he said cautiously.

  Was she making a mistake? Would he misinterpret the gesture? No. She wouldn’t let her worries stop her. He’d been so kind in the weeks immediately following Jason’s death and when she’d come back to the office, he’d made sure that she wasn’t overwhelmed with too much work.

  Besides, he’d worked so hard to build Harkin Capital Management up. If she were being completely honest, she doubted Jason would’ve reached the level of success he had without Luke. Though Jason was an amazing analyst and portfolio manager, he didn’t have the perseverance, the tenacity that Luke did. Luke truly put the company first whereas Jason often got distracted with other priorities.

  And sure, it had been Jason who’d gotten them most of their clients, but it was Luke who’d delivered the above–average returns that had kept those clients satisfied throughout the years. And it was Luke who’d picked up the slack when Jason had decided to focus more on his charity work. So, yeah. Luke deserved the watch.

  Sam settled in one of the leather chairs in front of his mahogany desk. “I was cleaning up some of Jason’s things and thought he would’ve wanted you to have this.” She smiled as she handed him the box.

  A curious light entered Luke’s eyes as he took it. He froze when he realized what it was.

  His throat worked as he opened the box and removed the watch. The overhead LED lights gleamed against the diamonds set in the face as he held the watch reverently.

  “I…” He shook his head as he looked at her. “Thank you, Samantha.” His voice was thick with emotion, surprising her. He’d always been so stoic.

  All the things she’d planned to say about him and Jason being the perfect team suddenly seemed trite. Though they really had complemented each other perfectly—with one’s weaknesses being the other’s strengths—she could just imagine how many times Luke had heard people say it since Jason’s death.

  “I’m always here if you want to talk,” she said instead.

  Sorrow flashed in his eyes. “Thanks. The same goes to you.”

  She nodded, and a subdued silence filled the room. She glanced at the bookshelf at the side of the room and realized that this was the first time she’d been in his office since he’d told her about Jason having an affair.

  She could still recall how his words had upended her world and how hurt and angry she’d been. After months of them not getting along, she’d thought they’d finally become friends. He’d stopped scowling at her and had even smiled at her once or twice. Little had she known that his behavior had just been part of a bigger plan to try to get rid of her. As soon as her defenses had gone down, he’d pounced and fed her lies.

  Her back stiffened at the memory and she bolted out of the chair. “I guess I’ll let you get back to it then,” she said as she gestured towards the work on his desk. Just because she’d decided to forgive him didn’t mean that she was ready to forget.

  She was almost at the door when Luke stopped her.

  “Samantha.”

  Her fist tightened as she slowly turned to face him.

  “Thank you,” he said as he lifted the watch. “This really means a lot to me.”

  Sincerity shone in his eyes, and she realized that while Jason may have at times been jealous of Luke, she’d never seen Luke jealous of Jason. It was a disconcerting thought.

  “Of course.”

  * * *

  The man was still talking.

  Luke Darren resisted the urge to check the clock in the corner of the meeting room later that day. He’d always thought client meetings were a waste of time, but he couldn’t afford to offend any more of their customers by refusing to meet them. He’d learned the hard way these past few weeks that some clients wouldn’t settle for anything less than talking with the boss. In fact, they felt entitled to it.

  Guilt dug at him at the knowledge that he could’ve stopped some of their investors from pulling out of Harkin if he’d just taken the time to personally talk with them and ease their concerns the way Jason always had. While he understood the importance of client relations, he felt his work spoke for itself. Harkin’s excellent returns should’ve been enough to keep their clients happy without having to entertain them all the time.

  He should’ve known better.

  He was already getting rid of all those thousand–dollar–a–plate meals he’d considered legal bribery but Jason had pushed for. The least Luke could’ve done was meet with the people who’d asked to see him. Instead, he’d sent out a mass email. Not his finest hour.

  Hindsight could be a real bitch.

  At the time, he hadn’t seen the need for all those one–on–one meetings. If the clients weren’t talking about topics like yachts or new Broadway musicals, they were trying to fish for information about the company’s holdings. It was ridiculous. He hadn’t gone through the trouble of making their SEC holdings reports confidential just to blab them to a client.

  He was well aware that there were people—including the company’s own clients—who tried to mimic Harkin’s portfolio on their own to avoid paying management fees. And while it was flattering to have people copy him, it also raised the prices of the stocks they had unnaturally. There had been times earlier in his career when he’d wanted to buy more shares of a company but hadn’t been able to because the prices had already been driven up by these copycats.

  Hank Randall, who was almost as good as Jason when it came to dealing with clients, was supposed to have been in on tonight’s meeting to help guide the flow of the conversation, but his wife’s water broke this morning—a few weeks earlier than expected, apparently.

  Luke hadn’t even known that Barbara was pregnant, and though he was happy for his COO, he wondered why Hank hadn’t said anything before today. They spent hours together every day and Hank had never thought to mention that he and his wife were expecting their first child?

  “It’s a very exclusive school,” Thomas Baine, the hotel heir Luke was currently stuck with, said.

  Luke wondered what the guy would say if he told him that he’d gone to public school from kindergarten all the way to college. His parents hadn’t even been able to afford preschool. Thomas would probably withdraw his money from the fund the first thing in the morning. People like him didn’t want to have anything to do with the working class, even though it was their work that had made his family rich.

  “Tuition costs forty–nine thousand dollars a year, but it’s worth it,” Thomas boasted. “They have a student–teacher ratio of four–to–one and it was ranked the best elementary school in the East Coast by Wealth. It was really the only school we could’ve considered for our son.”

  Luke’s eyes twitched. He didn’t care what school Thomas had enrolled his kid in or how much it had cost. He just wanted to find a way to wrap up this meeting without insulting another client. He still had a lot to do tonight. He’d recently discovered that Jason had been overleveraging their clients’ money in the distressed fund, and Luke was now liquidating some of their riskier assets as fast as he could to mitigate the risk. He hated that he was doing a lot of these trades on intuition and not solid research, but he was pressed for time and didn’t have that luxury.
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  Part of him still had trouble accepting what Jason had done. Though he’d known Jason had lost face with the media when one of their bigger holdings had been caught falsifying their earnings, Luke hadn’t thought Jason would renege on their agreement.

  When they’d opened the distressed fund, they’d agreed to leverage it by three times at the most. Though it was risky to buy stocks with borrowed money, it was a calculated risk and they’d agreed to manage it extra carefully. Even if one or two companies in the fund tanked, their other holdings would be able to make up for any losses.

  But Jason had leveraged the fund by eight. If the market had suddenly turned, his overleveraging would’ve not only hurt the clients who’d entrusted them with their money, it would’ve killed Harkin.

  “Your son must be very smart,” Luke said inanely, forcing himself to focus on the conversation at hand rather than the holdings he needed to sell.

  Damn. Could these meetings be any longer? If Hank wasn’t able to make it to the meetings Luke had planned tomorrow, George or one of the other managers would have to be pulled in to help ease the conversations along. Luke couldn’t risk another disaster like tonight. He could talk business and investment strategies all day, but small talk? Not on his life.

  Thomas’s chest puffed. “That he is. He’s quite bright for his age.”

  Luke was just about to say, “Like father, like son,” when he noticed Sam walking down the trading floor and froze. She’s still here? It was past seven o’clock. He was wondering if his mind was playing tricks on him when he realized that she was wearing the same dark blue dress she’d worn when she’d visited his office this morning.

  Thomas must have seen the direction of his gaze, because he said, “Oh. Is that Jason’s wife?”

  “Yeah.” Knowing that this meeting would soon be dead with just the two of them, Luke stood. “Here, let me introduce you.”

  He opened the door and poked his head out as Sam approached. Her steps faltered when she saw him, and his stomach dropped. She was still wary of him. He’d hoped that her giving him the watch earlier meant that she’d forgiven him for telling her about Jason’s affairs, but perhaps some wounds were just too deep to ever fully heal.

  Knowing that this was neither the time nor the place to think about what he could’ve done differently, he forced the thought out of his mind.

  “Hey, Sam. Can you come here a second?”

  She hesitated briefly. “Sure.”

  He caught the scent of vanilla as she walked into the room and tightened his grip around the doorknob. This was not the time to be thinking about Sam that way. It never was, he quickly corrected himself. Just because Jason was gone didn’t mean that Luke suddenly had a chance with Sam. It didn’t matter that his friend hadn’t appreciated her the way he should’ve. Friends didn’t steal their friends’ wives.

  Luke owed everything he had to Jason. He would probably just be an analyst at Brown and Hale right now if Jason hadn’t invited him to start a fund. He himself would never have dreamed of owning his own hedge fund. He hadn’t had the connections or the money to start one. And as if all that Jason had done for him wasn’t enough, he wanted the man’s wife as well?

  Disgusted with himself, he looked at Thomas as he made the introductions. “Sam, this is Thomas Baine. Thomas, this is Samantha Collins.”

  Besides, it wasn’t like Sam was interested anyway.

  “Hi, Samantha. It’s good to finally meet you,” Thomas said as he offered his hand. “Jason has told me so much about you.”

  Sam flashed Luke a quizzical glance before she faced Thomas. “Good things, I hope,” she said as she shook his hand, smiling.

  Thomas laughed. “Of course, though he didn’t mention how beautiful you are.”

  Twenty minutes later, Luke inwardly laughed as the conversation turned to cooking. Samantha hated cooking. As the eldest daughter of two full–time, blue–collar workers, she’d been saddled with cooking duties. Now that she had the luxury of hiring a cook, she, understandably, took advantage.

  “So you make your own pasta?” Thomas asked. The question was purely rhetorical because, before Sam could answer, he launched into a monologue about the pasta cutter he’d recently purchased.

  Thomas didn’t seem to notice that Samantha was faking her interest as Luke had done earlier when they were talking about his son’s education. Luke couldn’t blame the man. If all of Samantha’s attention was directed solely at him, he probably wouldn’t even be able to remember his own name.

  For what must be the hundredth time, he mentally patted his back for pulling her into the meeting. Though she might have been hesitant, she’d quickly taken control by engaging Thomas, and for that, Luke was grateful. By putting Thomas at ease, Sam had ensured that he’d walk away confident that all was well at Harkin. Left to his own devices, Luke knew that his inability to make small talk, along with his impatience, would have made Thomas uneasy and convinced that there were problems at Harkin. It wouldn’t have taken long for the hotel heir to join the deserters.

  It was why Luke needed a wingman—or in the case, a wingwoman—when it came to clients. His strengths lay in numbers and analysis, but where people were concerned, he didn’t have a clue. Hell. Even his COO hadn’t told him that he and his wife were expecting.

  As if she were telling Thomas a secret, Sam leaned forward and pointed at Luke, a ghost of a smile curving her lips. “You might not know it, but Luke, here, does a mean short rib.”

  Surprised that she remembered that, Luke blinked. He’d made the meal for her and Jason two years ago and hadn’t realized it had made any kind of impact on her. Though she’d called the meal “wonderful” at the time, he’d thought she was simply being polite. Was it possible she’d actually enjoyed his cooking? The thought pleased him way more than it should’ve.

  “Really?” Thomas asked as he turned towards Luke. “What’s the secret? I’ve tried making short ribs a few times, but the sauce always ends up being too oily.”

  “I usually marinate the ribs overnight and then remove the excess fat before cooking them.” He made short ribs the way his mom had taught him and didn’t think that there was any secret to them. “The extra marinating really brings out the taste of the wine.”

  “And what kind of wine do you use?”

  “Cabernet.”

  “Now that’s interesting,” Thomas said. “I’ve been using sherry. Have you tried the short ribs at the Jacques Martin? I’ve been trying to replicate the recipe.”

  Luke forced a smile as Thomas talked about how his first attempt had overbrowned, then how tough the meat had been the second time. Luke glanced at Sam and saw that she was smiling at him. It was the first real smile she’d given him in years and he couldn’t help but return it.

  Thomas looked at his watch. “Sorry. I have to get going. My wife will kill me if I miss my son’s recital.”

  “That’s all right,” Luke said as he bolted out of the chair. “It was nice meeting you.”

  “You, too,” Thomas said as he stood, then turned towards Samantha. “And don’t forget to email me that recipe,” he said referring to a pot roast recipe Sam had. He patted his shirt pocket. “Did I give you my card?”

  “I’ll get the info from Janet tomorrow.”

  He beamed, and Luke resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Sam had probably gotten the recipe from Jason’s mom and had never tried it herself.

  “Thanks.” Thomas turned towards Luke and shook hands. “And thanks again for taking the time to meet with me. I know you’re busy.”

  Luke was about to say, “Anytime,” when he remembered how horrible the meeting had gone before Sam had arrived. Though she’d managed this one well, he couldn’t count on her willingly participating in any more. Not only did she have enough on her plate as it was, apart from earlier when she’d given him the watch, she usually avoided him like the plague. So instead, he said, “Of course.”

  After they’d seen the client to the elevator and had sta
rted walking towards their offices. Samantha turned towards Luke. “So…that was strange.”

  “I’m sorry for putting you on the spot, but I was dying in there,” he said as he gestured towards the meeting room. Tonight had underscored one of the reasons he’d partnered with Jason. Jason’s knack with small talk and pleasantries meant he could deal with the clients while Luke concentrated on what he did best—growing the money.

  “I can just imagine.” A small smile appeared on her lips as she rolled her eyes, and he tried not to think about how soft those lips looked. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you meeting with a client. In fact, you’re always talking about how meetings are a waste of time and resources to the point of— Oh! I forgot to tell you. Hank and Barbara had a boy. I was on my way to visit them when you stopped me.”

  The fact that Hank had called Sam but not him niggled at Luke. It bothered him that Hank had never even mentioned that they were expecting. That seemed like big news. News that a guy would share with someone he saw every day. Not wanting Sam to know how out of touch he was with the employees, he said, “That’s great. Are you still planning on going?”

  “Yeah. The hospital’s on the way home anyway.”

  “I’ll go with you.” He could just look over the reports George had given him later when he got home.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to force you.”

  “You didn’t. I want to go. That is, unless you don’t want me to…” With the way she’d smiled at him during the meeting, it was easy to forget that she’d always done her best to avoid him.

  “No. Of course you can come. I was just surprised. I didn’t think you did things like this.”