Private Player

Nathan Cove was a terrible liar.

The lift doors opened and Nathan placed his hand at the small of my back, just like he had done on Saturday night when we’d gotten out of the lift. My entire body shivered. No unintentional physical contact had to be a rule for both of us or I wasn’t going to be able to focus.

We emerged into a basement where a Range Rover was waiting, the rear passenger door already open.

A man emerged from the shadows and gestured me inside.

Despite the kidnappy vibes, I clamored into the backseat, which seemed to be about a meter and a half higher than any normal car. I glanced around, trying to get some sense of who Nathan Cove was. But there weren’t any hints aside from the obvious wealth, which I knew about already.

He slid into the seat next to me and pulled out his phone, typing furiously. As the car pulled out into daylight, he set his phone down on the armrest and turned to me.

“Gretel says you’ve not been at the Post long,” he said.

“That’s right.” Where was he going with this? Was it just the small talk he hated so much, or was he going to try to tell me that if I played my cards right and gave him a flattering write-up, he could get me promoted? A thousand ridiculous ideas ran through my brain.

“And you were at Rallegra before?”

“Yes. The Post is a better opportunity to write the kinds of stories that matter to me.”

“They’re very different,” he said.

“Yes. But not incompatible,” I replied. “For too long women have been told they can only be one thing. You can’t be clever and pretty. You can’t like fashion and politics.”

I glanced over to find him looking at me, waiting for me to finish my thought.

“I want to know the best way to get rid of my chin hair and I want to have an opinion on whether the parliamentary system of government is the most effective. You know?”

The corners of his lips twitched. “Chin hair?”

I shrugged. “It’s a problem for more than one in ten women.”

“Well, whatever you’re doing is working. I’ve not been aware of any chin hair on you since we met.”

As well as a ban on physical contact, I might have to suggest that we shouldn’t look at each other. All the looking was . . . intense.

“I’m sorry about earlier,” he said. “I just needed to take a personal call.”

On the armrest between us, his phone lit up. It was Erik calling—the actuary he’d mentioned to his operations director.

“Excuse me again,” he said before accepting the call.

They talked about numbers, risk factors, sensitivity, deductibles, and other things that meant I couldn’t follow their ten-minute conversation before Nathan ended the call.

“Gretel mentioned you like to get involved in the details. Are you generally a detail-oriented person, or is that specific to the business?” I asked. I didn’t know much about the insurance industry, but I was surprised to find him talking in so much detail with someone firmly in the middle of the corporate hierarchy.

“I built this company from scratch,” he replied. “If something goes wrong, that’s my responsibility.”

“Because you risk getting a kicking if the share price drops?”

“I can take a kicking. That’s not the problem. I care that if the share price drops, that’s someone’s pension losing money. I care that if Astro doesn’t perform, we might have to cut costs, make redundancies. And each of those jobs supports someone, sometimes a whole family. It keeps a roof over someone’s head. Food in someone’s stomach. If being in the detail means I can protect those things, then I’m in the detail.”

It wasn’t the response I’d been expecting. I thought he’d talk to me about the share price and maintaining his position, but he was focused on the people. Not the power. Not the money.

“Sounds like a lot of pressure,” I said.

“My job isn’t high pressure,” he replied. “I don’t have to tell anyone that their child has a brain tumor. I don’t have to watch people suffer pain. I don’t have to worry that if I have an off day, someone might die.”

Before I could respond, his phone flashed with a message. From Audrey Alpern.

He said nothing but flipped his phone onto its front and placed his hand over it as if I was likely to try to grab it and force open the message.

He might be able to pretend the message hadn’t come through but I couldn’t. It was the reason he was taking up column inches on Sunday morning. “So you and Audrey Alpern are friends?” I asked, trying to keep a neutral tone to my voice.

“Old friends,” he said, eventually.

“Old friends who like to party together?” I asked. From what I could tell, Nathan didn’t seem to have a type other than single and female. It wasn’t as if he was famous—not unless you read the financial or business pages—so none of his lovers were writing kiss and tells. But even so, it was obvious he had a pattern. These women, just like me on Saturday night, had no connection to him. Usually, he didn’t stick around long enough to form one.