Hot Asset (21 Wall Street #1)(10)

I’m still staring at the Post-it in surprise as he saunters away, turning back after he opens the conference room door.

“Oh, and Ms. McKenzie . . .”

I look up.

“My personal account has a few naughty pictures in there. Enjoy those.” He winks.

Damn it. I hate knowing that I probably will.





5

IAN

Week 1: Thursday Morning

“Dude.” Matt slows to an easy jog beside me. “When you asked if I wanted to go for a run, you could have mentioned you were trying to set an Olympic record.”

“You’ve done four Ironmans,” I point out, catching my breath.

“Exactly. Because I like the swimming and bike shit. If I liked the running part, I’d do a marathon like Prefontaine up there.”

I slow my cool-down jog all the way to a walk. “Hey, Kennedy,” I call out. “Slow your roll.”

My other best friend doesn’t glance back, but I know he hears me because he slows his damn sprint pace to a walk, then stops and waits for Matt and me to catch up.

Kennedy’s not even breathing slightly hard, damn the man. We’re all in good shape, but of the three of us, Kennedy’s the runner. Matt’s all about the competition, and me . . . well, to be honest, I just like a good old-fashioned gym session, preferably with a hot female trainer.

Today, though, I’d talked the guys into a run with me. I see them enough around the office, but today I need them as friends not coworkers.

And there are no better friends than these two.

Matt Cannon, Kennedy Dawson, and I all came up with one another at Wolfe. We started the same year and worked the bullpen together, even as we were competitors. Investment brokerage is an up-or-out business—you either make it to the next level, burn out, or are pushed out.

All three of us had made it. We’re competitors still, fighting for the same clients, the same accounts, but friends in spite of it. Hell, maybe friends because of it. All of us are fighters in our own way.

Matt’s the brains. Younger than both Kennedy and me, he’s twenty-eight now, but everyone from the trading room floor up to the CEO penthouse still thinks of him as a boy wonder. The little shit skipped God-knows-how-many grades to graduate from Cornell at the age of nineteen, then took Wall Street by storm by twenty-two.

Lucky for Matt, the women of New York City know that he’s all grown up now. Blond, blue eyed, charming, and clever as shit, the guy’s almost as big of a manwhore as me.

And if Matt got here by brains and I did by sheer force of will and hard work, Kennedy Dawson’s a big dick on Wall Street because it’s just his damn destiny.

As dark haired as Matt is blond, Kennedy and his family have been in finance for for-fucking-ever, his trust fund big enough to ensure he could quit tomorrow and still have more money than Matt and I will ever see in our lifetimes, combined.

It’s more than the bank account, though. Kennedy’s old money, and it shows. His apartment’s got a goddamn library, his mother wears pearls, he only drinks single-malt scotch, he belongs to two different country clubs, and he looks like one of the Kennedys (whom he was named after).

He’s also a bit of a nerd. He gets way too into museums, and his idea of a wild Friday night is reading a philosophy tome and a World War II history book. When we do manage to drag him out on the town with us, I’m not sure he even notices the way women relentlessly chase him, swooning over the dimples that he thinks are ridiculous.

Matt drops into a stretch. “For real, what was with the double-time sprinting?” he asks me.

“If the SEC were on your ass, you’d be running, too,” Kennedy says.

“I was running.”

“Could have fooled me,” Kennedy says, leaning against the railing along the Hudson, looking every bit as polished after a five-mile run as he does in the office.

Matt shoots Kennedy the bird, then turns his attention back to me. “So what’s our plan? How do we clear your name?”

See that? Loyalty. Told you these guys were solid. Not once since this went down have they thought or implied I was guilty of anything other than shitty luck.

I brace on the railing and, dipping my chin to my chest, take a deep breath. “I don’t know, man.”

“Who’s your lawyer?” Kennedy asks.

“Dunno yet.”

“Damn it, Ian. You need a lawyer.”

I look up in irritation. “Yeah, thanks for the brilliant words of wisdom, Dad. I said I didn’t know yet, not that I wasn’t going to get one.”

“You found out about the investigation on Monday. Today’s Thursday. What the hell have you been doing if not lawyering up?”

“Flirting with the SEC,” Matt chimes in.

Kennedy snarls, “What?”

Matt gives me a shit-eating grin as I glare at him. “Kate filled me in. Dude, you bought her a Frappuccino? That was your grand plan?”

Kennedy braces both hands on his thick head of hair and turns in an agitated circle.

“We got off on the wrong foot. I was trying to make amends,” I say, defending myself as we start walking back toward our respective apartments.

“Bullshit,” Matt says. “You were trying to use the infamous Ian charm on her in hopes she’d go easy on your case.”

Kennedy’s arms drop. “Tell me he’s joking. Tell me there’s another explanation for why you haven’t made time to find a lawyer that doesn’t involve bringing the SEC whipped-cream concoctions.”