Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 89243 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 446(@200wpm)___ 357(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89243 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 446(@200wpm)___ 357(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
I’d barely seen him in the last few months, and when I had, all I could ever see was his face the moment he’d reached his orgasm. How his mouth had parted to drag in breath and how his eyes had gone hazy, but he didn’t dare drop his focus from me.
The air in the classroom went thin, but Macalister and I were the only ones who seemed to be having difficulty breathing. He held my gaze for a lifetime and a single beat, and then his focus shifted away to the class in general.
“Thank you.” His tone was cold and professional. “I’m happy to speak with you all this afternoon, and hope you find what I have to say informative.”
For the next forty-five minutes, he recanted the tale of how he, as a newly-minted CEO in 2007, had struggled to lead the bank through the darkness of the housing bubble burst and come out the other side of the Great Recession with his family’s company still intact.
Once I divorced my mind from the man I knew personally, I was able to absorb his lecture from a business standpoint. He talked about his successes and was somewhat forthcoming about his failures too. But there was a glimpse of the real Macalister near the end. Defensiveness crept over him when he brought up the Troubled Asset Relief Program money HBHC had accepted to bail them out and was quick to remind us that over five hundred banks in America had needed taxpayer dollars to keep from collapsing.
He took a few questions at the end, but they were softball ones. Unsophisticated questions meant to flatter, but he saw through the bullshit and was irritated.
I raised my hand, and when he nodded, “Do you think the bailout created a moral hazard for big banks?”
“I can’t answer for every bank,” he said, “but I believe the answer is no. There are protections in place like Dodd-Frank—”
“But you created the problem with your greed, were deemed too big to fail, and then given billions of dollars to get out of it. Without having to suffer the consequences, was there a lesson learned?”
If a pin had dropped in the room, everyone would have heard it, except perhaps him. His anger moved almost as slowly as a glacier as it rose up over his face, but I could see in his eyes it burned hotter than the sun. It was so rare he lost control.
“First of all,” his speech was crisp and deadly, “I have been credited with a great many things, but personally causing the subprime mortgage crisis is a new one. Second, there were consequences—some of which my bank is still grappling with.” The walls in the classroom closed in so it was just the two of us. Macalister speaking only to me in his sharp tone. “And third, I don’t use the term ‘too big to fail,’ because failure isn’t a word I allow in my vocabulary, Marist.”
He’d scolded me like a child in front of the whole room, and I wanted to melt under the table and disappear. As he said his goodbye, I sensed the rest of the class wanted that as well. I’d meant to embarrass him, but I’d done it to myself instead.
I stayed up later than Royce did on the weeknights. I was a night-owl, and my earliest class wasn’t until nine thirty, and there were some mornings where he’d gone into the office and was seated at his desk before I’d even gotten out of bed.
He told me to enjoy it while I could. After graduation and the wedding, Macalister had informed me I’d start as a credit analyst at HBHC and work on my master’s in my spare time. It was an entry-level position, and I could probably land a better one on my own somewhere else, but he’d never allow a Hale to work outside the company. If I put in my dues and proved qualified, there would be fewer cries of nepotism when I moved into higher positions.
The past few weeks, I’d been staying up even later, studying or reading or just lying in bed unable to quiet the thoughts in my head. The wedding was in less than two months.
My wedding.
The one where I’d marry the man currently snoring softly beside me, who still hadn’t told me he loved me. He showed it, though. He was caring and attentive and devoted, and he couldn’t keep his hands off me either. But Alice’s words haunted me. Once I was Royce’s wife, the chase was over. Would he lose interest in me? Be on to the next thing?
I threw off the covers. If I wasn’t going to sleep, I’d go downstairs and grab something to drink, then retreat to my own room with a book and read until Hypnos, the god of sleep, came for a visit.