Page 38 of Gold Digger
Lottie
“Vicky, why is he doing this?” Felix asked again for what seemed like the hundredth time.
“Just accept it, Moretti,” Harry York taunted from the other end of the conference table with a smirk. “Your company issoshit that you can’t even be guaranteed to invest someone’s money when theirsisteris your business partner.”
We were at Moretti Harding in the conference room, waiting for Ollie to show up for this meeting. I twisted my fingers together on the table and bit my lip. I enjoyed working here, mostly. Being Vicky’s assistant was great, and I’m not being big-headed when I say I was killing it. My ability to read people was actually one of the most valuable attributes you could have in business. When I started three months ago, I could tell everyone was a little shocked. My lack of qualifications and experience were glaringly obvious and, despite the best efforts of Vicky’s stylist, I didn’t quite fit in with the corporate vibe. But gradually, I’d been gaining respect.
A week into my time there, I’d been at a meeting with Felix and Vicky about the projections for a development they were considering. I was feeling like a bit of a spare part, to be honest,because Vicky didn’t need to suppress any of her abrupt ways in that circumstance; the men we were meeting were trying to convince her to take the deal, not the other way around.
But about ten minutes in, I knew they were lying. The tells were so clear that I couldn’t understand why at least Felix wasn’t catching it. The problem was that some stuff was going to be signed there and then so I had to move fast. I’d squeezed Vicky’s wrist, and she looked at me with a frown, seeing as there was no need for our normal cue. I shook my head side to side before tipping it towards the men on the opposite side of the table. It was a testament to Vicky’s faith in me that she stood immediately and announced that we needed some privacy before signing. Once the men had reluctantly filed out, Felix turned to Vicky and me.
“Vics, what the fuck?” he asked, frustration rolling off him in waves.
Vicky ignored him and turned to me. “Lottie?”
Felix huffed. “You stopped a multi-million-pound deal to chat with an unqualified intern? Vics, honestly, I’ve put up with this situ?—”
“They’re lying,” I blurted out.
“What?” he said, turning to me with both his eyebrows raised.
“Those men are lying.”
His brows snapped together. “What about?”
I shook my head. “Look, I’m sorry it doesn’t work like that. I can just tell that they’re lying. I don’t know what about.”
“Really fucking helpful then. Thanks for?—”
“But it’s something about the land drainage. They react whenever that’s mentioned. So no, I can’t tell youexactly,but I can say they are not telling you the truth,and they’re scared when drainage is mentioned.”
“How the hell do you know this?” he snapped.
“I can read people.”
“Read minds?”
“No, of course not. I just… I’ve always been able to sense how people are feeling, and part of that is identifying whether they’re lying.” I shrugged. “I’ve been like it since I was a child.” It’d served me well in the childhood I had. With every different caregiver came a whole different set of expectations. Anticipating people’s moods, especially people I didn’t know very well, was very important and occasionally essential for survival.
He stared at me for a long moment. “You’d better not be wrong.”
Felix and Vicky turned down the deal despite the men’s dire warnings that other companies were interested and that they were making the biggest mistake of their careers. Felix was a bit frosty towards me until a few days later when he came to Vicky’s office (which we shared – at that point, Vicky was happier if I was there for even her phone calls) and apologised. The menhadbeen lying about the land – the drainage system was illegally installed and was posing a flood risk. The deal would have lost Moretti Harding millions. Since then, Felix was absolutely not averse to poaching me from Vicky whenever he could. And, given my ability to tell if people were bluffing, he said yesterday that no negotiation should ever happen without me.
“Fuck you, York,” Felix muttered. He hated Harry York. The two had been at each other’s throats for years since Harry advised one of his clients against investing in a land development project of Felix’s. And now Ollie had decided to antagonise the situation even more by using Harry for some of his investment portfolio. I was furious with him because I just knew this was a dig at Vicky about me.
Of course Ollie didn’t want me anywhere near him or his family, but with Vicky, it was more. He was protective of her.He saw her differences as something that made her vulnerable and thought I was positioning myself to exploit her. But he had no idea how protective I now was of his sister too. Or that Vicky was my first real friend in the city. Since I moved to London two years ago for Hayley, I’d been working so hard that I didn’t have time to build any connections, not like the ones I’d had back home. It was lonely being left with all the responsibility, feeling like you had to prove yourself all the time, having no family support at all – in fact, the exact opposite.
And I really liked Vicky. I liked that hertells were more difficult for me to interpret, so I couldn’t always decipher what she was thinking. And she never lied, which was refreshing – there are so many small lies in everyday conversations with normal people that I could find it a bit exhausting shutting it all out, but with Vicky it was honesty all the way.
“Well, he’s twenty minutes late. Maybe neither of us are going to find out his plan,” Harry suggested just as the double doors to the conference room opened, and Ollie strolled in. Ignoring everyone else, he moved around the table to his sister, grabbed her hand, pulled her out of the chair and gave her a tight hug. Vicky was good with hugs, especially tight ones. In fact, in stressful situations, a tight hug could calm her down, something her brother clearly understood.
“Hey, Vics,” he said, smiling down at her as he pulled back, still ignoring everyone else in the room.
“Hi, Ollie,” she said. The hug had worked somewhat. There was much less nervous energy rolling off her now.
When Ollie turned to me, his smile was more like a baring of teeth, the soft expression reserved for his sister long gone.
“If the Harding family reunion is quite finished,” Harry said, clearly irritated. “I hope you haven’t called me here just to yank my chain, Buckingham?”
