“No, darling, I am a genius. You are a common laborer. I am not a laborer. I run idea roundtables. My clients and I will talk about business while we golf. And it would be so very dear of you to join me in this endeavor in your journey to becoming a businesswoman, or should I say businessperson?” Hugh coughed. “Please, Casey. Shall I get on bended knee? Girls like that sort of thing.”
“So do boys.” She couldn’t resist.
“You naughty girl.” Hugh grinned and placed his hand on her shoulder lightly. His thumb rubbed across the sharp bit of bone.
Casey turned back to her index. “When?”
“This weekend.”
“This weekend? It’s Thursday.”
“Please.”
“I have to work. I had last Saturday off for the reunion.”
“I will ask Charlie for a special dispensation,” he said very quietly.
“You must owe Charlie quite a lot already,” she whispered back, but no one seemed to be listening as far as she could tell.
“No, not at all.” Hugh looked serious, and he scribbled on her legal pad in his flowing script: “He gave you the interview as a favor to me, but he wouldn’t have given you the spot unless he thought you were qualified. You had the best transcript in this room. Charlie said so.”
“You didn’t tell me that before,” she wrote back.
“Oh, did I not mention that?” Hugh wrote quickly.
“No,” she said, then wrote down, “Withholding bastard.”
Hugh laughed. “I like that one. That’s new.”
By then, Karyn had walked into the interns’ office and noticed Casey with a man. She approached Casey’s desk.
Casey saw her and tucked away the legal pad under her forearm.
Hugh smiled at Karyn. He didn’t know who she was, not that he cared. She was some single woman—out of habit, he’d checked her ring finger.
“This is Hugh Underhill,” Casey said to Karyn. “And this is Karyn Glissam,” she said to Hugh.
They shook hands.
“Karyn, what a pleasure it is to finally meet you. Charlie has said such nice things about. . . your work.” Hugh’s face looked composed, but his eyes were smiling, and Karyn couldn’t help noticing how attractive he was.
“Oh, are you a friend of Charlie’s?” she asked.
“Yes. Good friends.” He and Charlie had grown up together in New Canaan, had dated many of the girls in the same neighborhood. Their parents belonged to the same clubs in town and in Manhattan. They had played poker every other Tuesday night since they were in college. But there was no need for this Karyn woman, whom Charlie had actually never spoken of, to know any of this.
“Oh,” Karyn said. The senior associate had already figured out that Casey, the twenty-first summer intern to be given a spot in the twenty-student program, must have had an inside track, because Charlie Seedham, the senior banker in charge of the summer program, was almost pleasant to Casey Han. Charlie was customarily indifferent toward the summer kids. It couldn’t have been a sexual thing, Karyn reasoned, because Charlie screwed only blondes, and Casey was not pretty enough to get his attention. But now that she met Hugh, she understood the connection perfectly. But then, what was the relationship between this guy and Casey? she wondered. It didn’t look romantic. In fact, Karyn thought he was flirting with her instead—especially the way he looked at her in that bedroom way.
Karyn was ignoring Casey completely. Casey wondered if she should excuse herself so they could be alone. Poor Karyn was falling for Hugh the way virtually every naive woman fell for Hugh. On Wall Street, the women might have been savvy about profits and losses, but when it came to boys, they knew as much as middle school girls. It wasn’t just that he was handsome and tall and physically fit. He was incredibly attentive—the way he looked at you was exceptional. His focus was absolute. Casey thought it was despicable how he toyed with women. That kind of attention was addictive, and the need would inevitably grow bottomless if you let yourself get hooked. Casey wanted to punish him sometimes, and consequently, she was far meaner to him than he deserved. Although, oddly enough, he had always been very kind to her. He wasn’t a bad person—to say that would be unfair. Hugh was just too charming for his own good, and in a way, Casey thought that was irresponsible.
“Casey here used to work at my desk,” Hugh said, having anticipated what Karyn was wondering.
Casey nodded once in assent but didn’t want to get into it.