The Trophy Wife (2 page)

He was senior vice president at InterBank, which was the financial community's shorthand for the Bank of International Trade. There were five men on his level, whose offices shared half of the Park Avenue building's fifty-second floor, the other half devoted to the offices of the chairman, president, and chief exceutive officer, Jack Hollcroft. Walter's expertise was in international monetary transactions, where he moved enormous pools of currency from bank to bank, country to country in order to keep the mark, the yen, the pound, the franc, and the dollar in some sort of logical hierarchy. Since this was the most critical and the most profitable of the bank's many roles, Walter was the logical successor to the chairman's suite of offices. He would be running the most important bank in the world's most important financial center.

That's what Angela had to understand. He was within a few board meetings of being the acknowledged leader of world finance. He would be sharing head tables with presidents and prime ministers and whispering into the ears of princes and sheiks. As president of InterBank, his life would
be a tour of the financial capitals of the world. Certainly, all that was worth waiting for.

Emily, in her prime, might have enjoyed such an environment. But her prime was history. She was, Walter thought with a touch of regret, no longer up to it. Angela, on the other hand, would star on a worldwide stage. Her beauty was genuine and her poise unfailing. She exuded self-confidence, which might have reached into arrogance were it not grounded in such obvious ability. Walter was still in awe of the assurance she had brought to their first meeting.

Angela had blown away her competition at the University of Virginia, emerging as the class valedictorian, and then moving on to the Harvard Business School. Once again, she had outdistanced her class and become the target of all the campus recruiters. She had been invited to visit InterBank as part of the wooing process and had been scheduled for a half-hour interview with Walter, who was then the bank's youngest vice president and a shoo-in for an office on the fifty-second floor.

Walter remembered his annoyance at finding her on his schedule and had reluctantly decided to spare her fifteen minutes. He hadn't even taken the time to study her background folder.

When he had looked up from his work and saw her, the pen fell from his fingers. She was in a chalk-striped business suit that whispered
banker
, with the skirt cut high enough to say
beauty queen
. And when she leaned across the desk with a firm handshake, she showed just enough cleavage to suggest
you might even get lucky
.

She took a chair with her briefcase balanced on a crossed knee, admired the painting that had come with the office and which Walter scarcely noticed, commented on other works by the artist as a way of approving Walter's taste, and then asked him about his work. Walter began to describe the importance of monetary movements and she nodded her agreement. At the first opportunity she mentioned her research into the flight of hot money from the English pound that had brought down a conservative government and then asked a very pertinent
question about the excessive gold holdings of several Swiss banks. How was InterBank handling the situation? It was at this point that Walter realized he was the one being interviewed and that he wasn't making a very good impression.

He had pulled out all the stops, using his working knowledge of the real market to counter her theoretical preparation, but she clung to his thinking like a pit bull. Then, when he was just about to pull away, she ended the interview, thanking him for his time, appreciating the conversation, and once again complimenting his taste in art. She had left him staring at the door she closed behind her, hoping that he had made a favorable impression. It took seconds for him to recover, realize that
she
was the one who should have been trying to make an impression and then get angry at her impertinence. But his momentary pique hadn't stopped him from calling personnel and ordering her hired onto the bank's fast-track program with him as her mentor. He wanted to see a great deal more of Miss Angela Hilliard.

“Beautiful!” It was Omar's voice from the front seat and for a moment Walter thought the driver had entered his thoughts and was sharing his image of Angela.

“What?” he demanded.

“The city,” Omar said obviously. “It is very beautiful reflected in the river.”

“Yes, it is.” Walter wondered exactly how much the driver had guessed. How much others had guessed. Did Emily have any suspicion? Could his affair be a whispered joke in the executive washroom?

He closed his eyes and made a great show of catnapping in order to discourage further comments from the front seat. His mind lurched abruptly to the confrontation that he faced with Emily, the dark cloud that invaded all his dreams of rapture with Angela.

He wasn't terribly worried about the property settlement. Emily didn't care much about money, nor was she overly impressed with the status that wealth could convey. She had resisted leaving their first starter house even when he had become a bank officer. And she was furious when he had
driven her from their second house, a very substantial colonial in a good suburb, to show her the estate where they now lived. “Why the hell do we need a paddock?” she had asked. “We have a dog, Walter, not a horse.”

“Emily, I'm a senior vice president, for Christ's sake. The bank expects me to move in wider circles.”

“And you need a paddock so you can walk in wider circles,” she had taunted.

But her indifference to the trappings of success didn't mean she wouldn't clean out his accounts. Emily was a fighter, and once he put her in an adversary position, she would fight to win. She'd take his BMW 740 for the simple pleasure of parking it at a shopping center where supermarket carts could ding its doors. She'd fight for the house so that she could fill in the swimming pool and knock down the white paddock fences. Probably she wouldn't be angry with Angela. Emily would expect ambitious young women to have a run at their powerful superiors. But she would expect him to be true to his marriage and sensitive to the obvious ploys of children who pretended to find him attractive. In court, she could make his affair look tawdry and ridiculous. In the boardroom, that would very likely make him an unacceptable heir to the presidential office. Jack Hollcroft would never allow a hint of infidelity into his bank. Banks were built on faith!

No, there would be no facing the truth. The truth was overrated. He needed a plan. He had to find a way to move Emily out of his life without encouraging her to battle. He had to find a way to move here out quietly. Better still, a way that would reflect to his credit. There had to be something that he could offer.

The limousine turned off the highway and quickly lost itself in the winding roads that linked the secluded country estates with civilization. Ironic, Walter had often thought that the greater one's success with modern economic realities, the greater the need to imitate the lifestyle of the agricultural barons. His business associates—all men of great accomplishment—housed themselves in the manors of the eighteenth-century
landed gentry and relaxed aboard sailing ketches rigged for a seventeenth-century crossing. Tycoons who had mastered the electronic global markets felt the need to prove their skills as vintners, buying into wineries that would never yield a good bottle. Software geniuses, who had raised intangible property to incredible values, somehow felt the need to lapse back into animal husbandry. They not only bred their own horses but even hammered their own horseshoes.

They turned through the gates that announced his driveway and popped over the Belgian blocks that paved the road to his door. Omar lowered the headlights so as not to disturb the sleeping residents and then waited discreetly to make sure Walter had no difficulty fitting his key into the lock.

He went immediately to the alarm panel that was hidden behind a tapestry and pounded the wall when he found that Emily hadn't even turned it on. He had spent ten thousand dollars for a sophisticated system that detected not only forced entry but any sort of movement in any of the rooms. “It's a damn nuisance,” Emily had told him, explaining that the system was constantly summoning the police. “I'm the only one it ever detects.” So instead of trying to remember to turn it off, she had apparently decided never to turn it on.

Walter stepped into the kitchen, spent a few seconds shuffling through the day's mail, and then walked to the wet bar for a nightcap. He was pouring the scotch over the ice cubes when he heard her behind him. He turned and found her wearing an oversize T-shirt as a nightgown. There was a Grateful Dead tour promotion printed across her chest.

“Want one?”

“No thanks,” she answered. “I took a sleeping pill.”

“Doesn't seem to have worked,” he allowed. He gestured a toast and then sipped at the scotch.

“I guess I don't like to be alone.”

He shook his head at the irony. “That's why I put in the alarm, so you'd feel secure when I'm away. You really ought to turn the damn thing on.”

“Sure. And then when I get up during the night, I get to make coffee for the cops who are suddenly shining their flashlights
through the window. One of them even had his gun drawn. They're more dangerous than a burglar would be. Besides, I don't need security. I need someone to talk with.”

Walter sagged into a soft, family-room chair. “We'll talk when I get upstairs. I just need a few minutes to unwind.”

She leaned over and kissed his forehead. “A tough day?” she asked.

“A real ballbuster,” he sighed.

Emily turned up the gracious staircase that wound up the wall of their circular foyer. Walter downed the rest of the drink and went back to the bar for a refill. The Grateful Dead, he thought. She'll never catch up.

“I'll bet it was a ballbuster,” Emily whispered to herself as soon as she was out of his sight. “Why the hell can't men smell the perfume of the women they're sleeping with.”

E
MILY RIPPED A FOREHAND
crosscourt, aiming for the corner.

“Out!” Mary Anders yelled, pointing at the ball mark she pretended to see just beyond the base line. “We're at deuce.”

Emily nodded and took her stance to receive the serve. She waited back for her opponent's looping, topspin serve to bounce up high. Then she pounced on it, drilling a rifle shot that cleared the net by half an inch, bit into the sideline, and ricocheted past Mary.

“Nice shot,” her opponent said, trying to sound casual. She was glad the shot had been away from her where she didn't have to try for it. If she had reached it, it would have taken the racket right out of her hand. She set up in the add court, tossed the ball, and hit another spinner at Emily's backhand. Emily slashed at it and sent a whistling return into the alley just outside the singles line. “Out,” Mary yelled and walked back to the deuce court.

Again, she spun her serve to Emily's backhand. This time Emily blocked a return to center court. They rallied back and forth with easy top spins until Emily decided to put her away, first with a slashing backhand into the right corner that Mary Anders just managed to return, and then with a forehand to the vacated left corner. But her forehand was too strong, whistling past the base line. “Out,” Mary announced. “My advantage.”

Mary switched her serve to Emily's forehand and Emily tore into it, hitting a rocket that aimed right back down Mary's throat. For an instant, Mary Anders hesitated like a deer caught in the headlights. But at the last instant she leaped aside, letting the return whiz past her, a foot out of bounds.

“Out!” she screamed triumphantly, raising her racket to the ladies applauding in the gallery. She rushed toward the net
with a gushing display of sportsmanship. Emily congratulated her sincerely, smiled at the applause that was her consolation prize, and collapsed onto the bench. She toweled her hands and face and then gulped down her jug of water.

“You threw that one away.”

She looked up at Bill Leary, the club pro, who tossed her a fresh towel.

“She played well,” Emily breathed.

“She played you for an idiot,” Leary said. “All she did was feed the ball back to you and let you kill yourself trying to hit winners. Jesus, she even kept complimenting you just so you'd keep trying to hit the lines.”

“I hit some lines,” Emily said, zipping the cover over her racket.

Leary shook his head. “How many times have I told you? Just keep it in play and let your opponent try for the winners. In the Monday Morning League, no one is good enough to hit the lines consistently.”

“No one ever will be if all we do is keep tapping them back.”

“Yeah, well, that's why you lost.”

She handed the towel back to him and picked up her sweatjacket. “I'd rather lose trying. It's better than standing around waiting for someone else to make a play.”

He held her jacket while she backed her arms into the sleeves. His hands lingered on her shoulders an instant longer than necessary. “Well, if you're going for winners, you've got to work harder on your setup,” he told her. “Maybe we ought to pencil in some lessons. I could come up to your place so we can get in some real work.”

She smiled knowingly. “I'm free right now.”

He nodded. “Okay. Give me a minute to freshen up and get my racquet.”

Emily broke out of his embrace. “Forget the racquet.” She walked across the court, throwing a withering glance back over her shoulder. But he didn't wither. He winked.

Bill Leary had made a quick appearance on the pro tour right after he left college. In two seasons, he had earned
$4,500 in prize money and hadn't been offered a single endorsement, even by local car dealers. He was bright enough to get the message that while he could be a consistent winner in the country club set, he would be a consistent joke on tour. He joined the clubs.