Grant Hampton was three years younger than Alexa and he lived in a different world. Whereas she'd never wanted to be anything but an architect, he had aimed directly for NYU School of Business. After that, he had gone to Wall Street and gotten a broker's license and begun an extremely lucrative career as a bond trader for Goldman Sachs. He discovered he had the nerves, as well as a gift for handling big numbers in his head. Soon he had a duplex co‑op on the twenty‑sixth floor of a new building on Third Avenue in the East Sixties. He loved the money and the pad He also liked how easy it was to pick up models at downtown clubs if you had your own co‑op, a Porsche, and were six feet tall with a designer wardrobe.
That was where he met Tanya, also six feet tall, a striking (natural) redhead who did a lot of runway work for Chloe.
He thought he was making a lot of money, but Tanya, who could order a two‑hundred‑dollar bottle of Dom Perignon to have something to pass the time while the hors d'oeuvres were being whipped up at Nobu, taught him he was just barely getting by. She was accustomed to screwing men who had some depth to their money.
But when he tried a financial endeavor on the side, it turned into a disaster. Time to move on. He sent around his resume and managed to get an interview with BMD, which was looking for someone to help them hedge their exposure in foreign currencies. The next thing he knew, he was trading bonds for Winston Bartlett's personal account.
When Bartlett's CFO died of a heart attack at age forty‑nine (while undergoing oral sex in the backseat of a chauffeured Lincoln Town Car), Grant Hampton got temporarily drafted to take over his responsibilities. That was two years ago. He was aggressive enough that there was never a search for a replacement. He had made the big time, and he had done it before he was thirty‑five.
But now it all hung in the balance. If this didn't work out,
he could end up cold‑calling widows out of Dun & Bradstreet, hawking third‑rate IPOs. Tanya would be gone in a heartbeat.
Ally, work with me for chrissake.
Sunday, April 5