Mistress of the Game

Chapter Eighteen

AUGUST SANDFORD GRIPPED THE SIDES OF HIS CHAIR AND ground his perfectly straight white teeth with frustration.

The team meeting of Kruger-Brent's new Internet division had run over by almost an hour now. Max Webster, Kate Blackwell's twenty-one-year-old great-grandson and Kruger-Brent's probable future chairman, was on his feet, pontificating.

August thought: I didn't spend eight years at Goldman Sachs to sit here and listen to some business-school freshman talking out of his ass. Or did I?

August's girlfriend, Miranda, had warned him about joining Kruger-Brent.

"It's a family company, babe. However huge, however global, at the end of the day the Blackwells will always call the shots. You'll hate it."

August had ignored her warnings for three reasons. The headhunter from Spencer Stuart had promised to triple his salary and bonus; he'd be fast-tracked onto the Kruger-Brent board, and he wasn't in the habit of taking career advice from his girlfriends. August Sandford picked his lovers according to a strict set of criteria involving largeness of breasts and flatness of stomach. He wanted a lioness in the sack, not a life coach.

"Don't worry, sweetie," August told Miranda patronizingly. "I know what I'm doing."

But he didn't know shit. Miranda was right. On days like today, August Sandford yearned for his old job on the Goldman derivatives desk like a shipwrecked man yearns for dry land. No salary was worth this.

"You're being shortsighted." Max Webster's black eyes blazed with passion. "Kruger-Brent should be allocating more money to its Internet businesses, not less."

His speech - more like a sermon, thought August bitterly - was directed entirely at his cousin Lexi Templeton. As if the two Blackwell heirs were the only people in the room. Both Max and Lexi were on a six-month leave from Harvard Business School. When they graduated, both would join Kruger-Brent. But only one would ultimately take on the mantle of chairman, a position reserved for family members only.

The general consensus was that that person would be Max. Aside from the obvious drawback of her hearing, Lexi was seen as too much of a party girl to be taken seriously. She showed up for the first day of her internship on the back of a Ducati, her long legs wrapped around its owner, Ricky Hales, and her trademark blond hair flying in the wind. Ricky Hales was the drummer with the latest hot rock band, the Flames. More tattoo than skin, with a heroin habit that made Courtney Love look like Mother Teresa, Ricky was almost as much of a paparazzi favorite as Lexi herself. Lexi gave Ricky a lingering kiss on the steps of the Kruger-Brent building, a shot that made the front cover of every gossip rag in America the next morning.

Lexi Templeton was an enigma. Part vulnerable child, part vixen, she kept the press guessing and the Blackwell-obsessed public intrigued. But August Sandford sensed that Lexi's little show with Ricky Hales was not intended for the media. It was a deliberate attempt to goad her cousin, the brooding Max Webster.

The rivalry between the two Blackwell heirs was intense.

They reminded August of the Williams sisters, announcing at their first Wimbledon tournament that they considered their only competition to be each other, thereby instantly alienating every other women's tennis player on the international circuit. Unlike the Williams sisters, Lexi and Max further fueled the flames of their competitiveness with a sexual tension so strong you could practically smell it in the air. Not that either one of them would admit it, even to themselves.

Miranda's voice rang in August's ears: It's a family company. The Blackwells will always call the shots.

August looked around the table. Apart from Max, Lexi and himself, there were three other Kruger-Brent executives at the meeting. Harry Wilder, a gray-haired former academic with mad-scientist eyebrows, was nominally the most senior. A board member for a decade, Harry Wilder was a golf buddy of Peter Templeton's, Kruger-Brent's current chairman. Other than a decent handicap and an affable clubhouse manner, however, it was hard to see what value he added to the company. Nobody took him seriously, least of all August Sandford. The fact that Harry Wilder was the board member chosen to head up the Internet division did not bode well for any of them.

Next to Wilder sat Jim Bruton. Jim Bruton was an up-and-comer at Kruger-Brent. A dead ringer for a young Frank Sinatra, Jim's most meaningful personal relationship was with his mirror. Second came his busty personal assistant, Anna. In distant third was his loyal wife, Sally, mother of Jim's three legitimate daughters, Corinna, Polly and Tiffany, always referred to pretentiously by Jim as "the heiresses." (His two illegitimate sons, Ronnie and Carlton, lived with their mother in Los Angeles, unbeknownst to Sally and the girls.)

To say that August Sandford despised Jim Bruton would be an understatement. But even August had to admit that Jim was sharp. He'd tripled the profits of the biotech division during his stint as head in the early nineties. Jim made no secret of the fact that he intended to make Kruger-Brent Internet his next money-spinning fiefdom.

Over my dead body, thought August.

Beside Jim Bruton was a young woman named Tabitha Crewe. Recently hired from Stanford Law School, Tabitha was attractive in a neat, regular-featured, hair-pulled-back-in-a-ponytail sort of way. Apparently she'd started and sold a small dot-com while at college and made herself a little nest egg, hence her assignment to the team. August looked at Tabitha's impassive, makeup-free face and found it hard to imagine her having the get-up-and-go to start a washing machine, never mind a business. She seemed so...blank. Especially when she sat next to Lexi Templeton.

Now there's a chick with a fire in her crotch. If she weren't so obsessed with her prick of a cousin...how much would I like to screw all the haughtiness out of her? Sexy, opinionated, stuck-up...

"Mr. Sandford. Are we boring you?"

Jim Bruton was staring at August, a wry smile playing across his lips.

Yes, you're boring me. You're all boring me stiff.

"I apologize." August returned the smile. "What was the question?"

"Mr. Webster here is proposing we make a formal submission to the board, asking for a bigger budget with which to make acquisitions. Ms. Templeton disagrees. Harry and I were wondering where you stood on the matter?"

August opened his mouth to reply but was interrupted by Lexi. Her deafness made her speech slower and more deliberate. She also had a habit of moving her hands when she spoke, unconsciously signing her words. August watched her long, slender fingers perform their delicate dance and found himself wondering what they'd feel like wrapped around his cock. He started to get hard, which irritated him even more.

Lexi said: "I'm all in favor of expanding our online reach. What I'm not in favor of is throwing money at a random bunch of start-ups before we've done our due diligence. My cousin seems to think that no economic fundamentals apply to Internet companies. I disagree."

"So do I," said August.

Max glared at him. Jim Bruton and Harry Wilder followed suit. Both had clearly decided that the chances of a deaf woman taking over Kruger-Brent were slim to none, whatever Kate Blackwell's will might say, and were pinning their colors firmly to Max's mast.

If I had any sense, I'd do the same, thought August. I don't even like the girl, so God knows why I'm defending her. But the fact was, Lexi was right. Max was talking out of his ass, jumping blindly and greedily onto the Internet bandwagon like every other Harvard Business School groupie.

"Any acquisition proposal we make to the board needs to be specific and backed up by hard data." August stood up to leave. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm afraid I have an important lunch appointment."

That night in the bath, Lexi Templeton thought about August Sandford.

He's not the ugliest man in the world, she conceded grudgingly, picturing his thick chestnut hair, strong jaw and almond eyes, offset by a butterscotch tan acquired, no doubt, on the beaches of East Hampton this past summer. Lookswise he was the exact opposite of Max. Brad Pitt to Max's Johnny Depp. Or so August probably thought.

He's almost as good-looking as he thinks he is. Not half as smart, though.

Lexi knew scores of August Sandfords at Harvard. Handsome, rich, well-educated, chauvinist pigs. Take one rampant ego, saute lightly in wealth and privilege, top with a blue-chip business card, and voila! August Did-I-Mention-I-Was-at-Goldman? Sandford. Yawn.

The bright young things at Harvard bored Lexi, but they served a purpose. She slept with all of them. Ever since the night of her sixteenth birthday party, when she'd lost her virginity to Christian Harle, Lexi had been haunted by the thought that her childhood abuse might have ruined her for sex as an adult. Having worked so hard to overcome her deafness, it was terrible to imagine that the pig might have won after all. That he might have turned her into some sort of sexual cripple. Determined not to let this happen, Lexi threw herself into college sex with all the single-minded fervor of a sailor on shore leave. Harvard was an education on every level: algorithms by day, orgies by night. Threesomes, bisexuality, sex toys, role-play; Lexi wanted to discover it all. To prove to the world and to herself that she was not a victim, that the pig had not defeated her. It was an open secret on campus that Lexi Templeton was the best lay at HBS. But an unspoken code of loyalty prevented her classmates from spreading rumors in the newspapers. Harvard was a closed world, a safe place to explore one's wild side. Outside the college walls, it was a different story.

At Kruger-Brent, I'll have to be more careful.

Lexi brought her thoughts back to August Sandford. At least he'd stuck up for her against Max today, which was more than those other stuffed shirts had done. Lexi was well aware that 99 percent of Kruger-Brent's senior management had written her off. Kate Blackwell's will favored her over Max for the chairmanship, but then Kate Blackwell had never known that Lexi would grow up to be deaf. In any event, a unanimous board decision could see Max usurp her position. Most people at the company, including Max himself, not to mention Lexi's own father, seemed to view this as a foregone conclusion. It drove Lexi wild with rage.

How dare they write me off? My GPA has always been higher than Max's. I'm smarter than he is, I have more business sense. Okay, so I can't hear. But Max can't listen. That's the real handicap. He loves the sound of his own voice too much.

Lexi rubbed soap under her armpits and breasts with a sponge. Men were all the same. So impressed with themselves, beating their chests like baboons. August Sandford, Jim Bruton, Max...they were just grown-up versions of Christian Harle and the other Andover jocks. They patronized Lexi, the way they patronized all women, only in Lexi's case her deafness seemed to make it worse. That and the fact that she was beautiful, rich, famous and smarter than all of them combined.

August Sandford might have thought he had his poker face on today. But Lexi could see the envy in his eyes.

He hates me because I'm better than he is. He hates me because he wants to sleep with me and he can't. He hates me because -