4
The lunch with David Hammar had raised more questions in Natalia than it had answered. But at least it had woken her up, she decided as she quickly walked back to her office at Stureplan. She took the elevator up to the fourth floor, nodded to the receptionists, and then shut herself in her office. She decided she needed five minutes for herself before she started working.
During those five minutes she thought about David and the lunch and how she felt confused, fascinated, and, well, attracted to that charismatic but also contradictory venture capitalist.
Natalia leaned back in her desk chair. She actually couldn’t figure him out. At times he had been chivalrous and even funny. He had teased her, and she had been drawn into something that felt like a force field of masculine charm.
But apart from that, she had found him to be a person with a very hard core. She knew he’d grown up in some of the toughest areas around Stockholm. It was no secret that he came from a really rough past. But something had happened since then because first he went to boarding school, then the Stockholm School of Economics, and finally Harvard. Probably on a scholarship, but still, talk about pulling yourself up by your bootstraps.
Yes, he was full of contradictions, Natalia thought, and with that her five minutes were over. No matter what she thought about his charisma and appearance, she was sure the lunch was a onetime occurrence. For some reason he had written her off—she had sensed that very clearly. She’d do best to get back to her real life: her work. Because no matter how, uh, interesting lunch with David Hammar had been, it had robbed her of valuable work time.
Natalia devoted several intense afternoon hours to a never-ending stream of paperwork. She and J-O were in the final stage of a really big and, for Natalia personally, prestigious bank deal, and she was pushing herself and her team hard. No one slept more than absolutely necessary. It was all hands on deck. In another few hours when the banks and the stock market opened in the US, this already long workday would keep going, its pace not slowing at all.
Natalia glanced at the time. They were still asleep in Hong Kong, and Los Angeles was three hours behind New York. Somewhere in the world there was always a bank opening or a stock market closing. Trade and business continued around the clock, and her boss drove his employees harder than anyone she’d known.
She wondered if David Hammar worked like this. He was also known for being a hard worker. No one could stay at the absolute top, where he’d been for years, without being indefatigable. Without being unrelenting. That was both the appeal and the downside of finance.
She glanced up when someone knocked on her door frame.
“Do you have a minute?” J-O asked.
“Be right there,” Natalia said, glad to be forced to focus on something other than the impression David Hammar had made. Åsa was right. She needed to get out more. Oh, but dating was such an enigma, she thought as she gathered her folders, papers, and iPad. She didn’t get it at all. Other women did, Åsa did. They went out with men, slept with men, dated men. But Natalia had never really gotten the hang of what you were supposed to do. There was something about the subtle, modern, essentially un-Swedish rules that she couldn’t fathom despite the time she had spent living in New York and London. She was pretty much useless at this stuff with men, as history had shown. On the other hand, she was exceptionally good at her job, she reminded herself as she followed J-O. At least there was that.
Natalia maintained her focus throughout the meeting. There was no room for anyone on J-O’s team operating at less than one hundred percent. They were the best of the best. One miss and you were looking for another job. Natalia had been handpicked two years ago by J-O himself when he started the bank’s Nordic team. The rest of them, all men, were unique specialists in their fields, just like her. Natalia was an expert on banking and financial institutions. J-O liked to say that he could call Natalia De la Grip in the middle of the night and she would sit up and rattle off the big, listed banks’ index rates and their share prices from when the markets closed.
And he wasn’t joking.
He’d done it several times.
J-O wrapped up the meeting and thanked those who had participated by phone. Natalia and the rest of them gathered up their things.
“It’s almost four o’clock,” J-O said to her. “Do you have time for a quick chat before New York opens?”
Natalia nodded, waiting quietly as the conference room emptied.
“Nice work,” he said when they were alone.
She smiled at the rare praise. “Thanks.”
He drummed one finger on the table. “What are you doing this summer?” he asked.
Natalia tried not to raise her eyebrows, but it was hard. Throughout the finance world, J-O was known for three things: his extremely expensive tastes, his weakness for giving long interviews in glossy magazines, and for never discussing personal matters.
As far as Natalia knew, he had no private life. Not like other mortals. He worked, traveled, and flew so much that people said he spent more time in the air than on the ground.
During the just over two years they’d worked together, first in London and then in Stockholm, they had never discussed anything other than work. What little she knew about J-O she had read in the tabloids or industry papers and since her own family was one of the most widely discussed in Sweden, she assumed that he knew pretty much what everyone else knew about her. At least once a year, whenever her younger brother, Alexander, was caught up in some new scandal, often involving a woman, the tabloids carefully reviewed the details of her family, so it wasn’t that hard for people to keep up to date on her. But J-O never said a word about it. J-O hadn’t even said anything when her breakup with Jonas hit the papers. He just dispassionately noted her bloodshot eyes and then got down to business as usual. In the middle of all that misery, that had actually been a relief.
“I’m going to keep working until we’re done,” she said in answer to his question. “Aside from that, I don’t have any fixed plans. Aside from maybe Båstad.” She managed not to sigh.
Everyone was going to Båstad. Of course her parents had invited her down to the summerhouse—her mother had practically ordered her to come—but Natalia didn’t know if she could bear to spend the summer with them. Last year, when her separation from Jonas was still fresh, it had worked, but yet another summer? When she was almost thirty? There were limits to how pathetic a person could be.
Unbidden, her thoughts flitted back to David Hammar again. Was he going to Båstad? If she joined her parents at the villa, would she run into him there?
That bothered her. She had met the man once and she was fantasizing about him already? What was she, twelve or something? At least she hadn’t googled him after lunch. Although she was still wondering what he was after. What did she have that he could be interested in? Her father hated him, she knew that. Until today she had never had any particular opinion of David Hammar. They moved in completely different circles. He was a handsome corporate pirate, mingling with American movie stars and British princesses, wreaking havoc on traditional companies. For her part, she was pretty much a bank woman.
“Hello?” J-O said.
“Oh, sorry,” she said. “If you need me, I’ll be here, of course. I haven’t decided on anything. I’ll take some vacation when I can.”
“I may need you in Båstad.”
Natalia nodded neutrally. Of course he would.
J-O stood up from the highly polished conference table. Their office was in a historically listed building, built in the 1800s with period details, high ceilings, crystal chandeliers, and art in gilt frames. He glanced out the window at Stureplan and the roofs surrounding them. “I know you have your own plans for the future,” he said slowly.
Natalia’s ears perked up. This was about something else, about her. Her most recent annual review had been about her long-term career goal being to eventually work for the family company. She’d always been open about that, that she wanted to build a career on her own merits, but that then she wanted to move on.
“Yes?” she said guardedly.
She admired J-O, but they weren’t actually friends. Everyone had their own agenda in this world, and trust was a perishable commodity.
“I heard you met with David Hammar today,” he said. “Is there anything you haven’t told me?”
“It was just lunch, nothing else,” she replied, completely caught off guard.
J-O had a reputation of knowing everything that happened in the gossipy finance world. But still. How the heck did he know this? So quickly? “I hope you’re not spying on me,” she said, only half kidding.
J-O shook his head. He crossed his arms in front of himself. “This is Stockholm. You can’t do anything without everyone knowing about it. What did he want?”
“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “You know him better than I do.”
“He’s up to something.”
Natalia nodded. “Presumably.”
“Keep me posted. And plan on Båstad.”
Natalia stood up, still a little taken aback. As she left the room, J-O turned back to the window again. His eyes locked onto some point outside.
They spent the rest of the evening focused on work. Someone fell asleep on the sofa. Someone ordered pizza. The interns, assistants, analysts, and other business folks came and went. Natalia chatted with clients and drew diagrams and yawned when no one was looking.
She took a taxi home late in the evening. She slept for a few hours, showered, changed, and was then back in the office again just after dawn.
J-O came in at 9:30, greeted her with a quick nod, and disappeared into a meeting. Phones rang, an assistant yelled, and her work once again took over Natalia’s thoughts.
“Natalia!” one of her colleagues called, and then suddenly the whole workday had passed. “We’re starting the conference now!”
She grabbed an apple and a pad of paper. “Coming,” she replied.
It was already six o’clock, and they were far from done. It was going to be another long day of work. Just the way she liked it.