Overseas Read Online Free PDF Page B

spoke, however, her voice had sunk nearly to a whisper. “Oh, you fucking bitch. You fucking
bitch
. You have no idea, no
idea
, no
fucking
clue
what I’m going to do to you. If I have to blow up the whole fucking bank, so help me.”
    She turned and stalked out of the conference room. I stood there, frozen, watching the door ease behind her until it closed at last with a final click.
    “M ESSENGER IT ? A RE YOU KIDDING ?” Banner wasn’t looking at me as he said this; his thumbs flew away on his BlackBerry, firing off some e-mail.
    I folded my arms. “Don’t we always messenger these things? Do you want me to e-mail it instead?”
    His eyes flashed upward. “No,” he said, as if he were stating the obvious. “I want you to deliver it yourself.”
    I was sitting in the chair in front of Banner’s desk, feeling like a kidhauled in to see the principal. As head of Capital Markets, he had one of the plushest offices in the building, full of dark brown furniture and gleaming upholstery, designed to strike clients into acquiescent awe. The lion-footed desk roared Important Antique, or at least a convincing reproduction, and the handsome wing chair in which I was sitting could swallow me whole without a burp.
    “Oh,” I said. “What about Charlie?”
    “
Charlie?
What the fuck?” He began to laugh. “You really don’t get it, do you? Look,” he said, still chuckling, “here’s Laurence’s e-mail address. Let him know you’re stopping by the office to drop it off. Say you’re on your way to the airport for Christmas, and thought you’d hand it off in person.”
    “But I’m not leaving until tomorrow morning,” I said.
    “Katie, Katie.” He turned back to his phone. “Work with me here.”
    I straightened in the chair with some effort. “Look,” I began, about to make some high-minded protest, like
I’m just not comfortable hanging myself up in the shop window like that
. But then I realized two things. First, arguing with Banner over something like this was akin to the old saying about teaching a pig to sing.
    And second—God help me—I
wanted
to see Julian Laurence again.
    “Aren’t you going to check over the book first?” I asked instead, waving my hand at the printout on his desk.
    He didn’t look up. “No, I trust you. Look, I’ve got to get going. Did you write down his e-mail?”
    “Yes. Safe in the BlackBerry.” I held it up to demonstrate, but he wasn’t watching.
    “There you go, then. Merry fucking Christmas.” He ripped his gaze away from his phone and grinned at me.
    I struggled upward from the chair. “You too.”
    I snatched the presentation from his desk and stalked back to my cubicle, where my laptop bag slumped tiredly against the dividing wall in abristle of zipper tabs. I stood there a minute, nibbling my lower lip, presentation dangling from my folded arms. Then I tossed the book on the desk and burrowed in the bag for my wallet.
    It took some time to find the scrap of paper I sought; it had wedged itself between my University of Wisconsin senior year ID and an ancient loyalty card from the hairdresser next door to my apartment in Madison. I removed it slowly and stared at the image for a long dense moment: a heart, colored in blue-black ink, surrounded by a circle with a slash across the center, like a traffic warning sign.
    I’d drawn it on the flight to New York City two and a half years ago, full of apprehension and introspection and a margarita or two from my farewell lunch with Michelle and Samantha. There, cruising above the patchwork farmlands of Pennsylvania, I’d promised myself—in the kind of melodramatic gesture that had once been typical of me—to avoid any kind of romantic involvement until I’d completed the three-year Sterling Bates analyst program. I’d take myself out of the game, keep my life neat and tidy, stay focused on work. Not a single date. Not even a casual flirtation. And I’d kept that vow with near-obsessive scrupulousness.
    So