The Jinx Read Online Free Page B

as much as I wanted to go out with my grandmother’s dentist’s handsome associate, but Sara was a friend as well as a client.
    â€œThank you, Rachel. Maybe I’m overreacting—I hope I’m overreacting—but I can’t relax if I know that the company might get away from me somehow. I can’t let that happen.” Her gaze locked on mine.
    â€œI won’t let that happen,” I promised her.
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    Exchanges like that sometimes made you forget that Sara was only twenty-five years old. She spoke with the focused confidence of the CEO she would one day become. However, once we had finished discussing business it was almost as if she switched that side of herself off. She was still far more self-possessed than most people her age, but as we talked about her classes and her friends her voice took on the casual cadences of her peers.
    She described the tension that was gripping the campus now that Hell Week had descended upon it.
    â€œIs there anyone I should look out for who’s interviewing with Winslow, Brown?” I asked Sara after I’d convinced her to order dessert.
    â€œI’m glad you asked—I’d almost forgotten. One of my suite-mates, Gabrielle LeFavre, is trying to get a job in investment banking. I think she had her first round of interviews with Winslow, Brown today. She’s been talking to all of the usual suspects—Goldman, Morgan Stanley, Merrill. She has her heart set on this.”
    â€œWhat’s her background? Does she have any finance experience?”
    â€œNo, not really. She was an accountant before business school. She’d put herself through college at a state school down South, and then she went to New York and tried to get a job in banking, but you know how it is—the big firms only recruit people out of college from Harvard, Princeton and Yale for the most part—nobody even gave her a chance.”
    â€œThat must have been tough. So she went into accounting?”
    â€œYes. She had earned her CPA at night when she was in college. Anyhow, she’s a bit of a stress case, but she’s really ambitious, and I think she’d work like a fiend if she were hired.”
    â€œI’ll keep an eye out for her.” I made a mental note to myself, but from what Sara had said, her friend sounded like the sort of high-strung perfectionist who would fall to pieces the first time a partner yelled at her.
    I turned the conversation to a lighter topic. “Now, what else is going on with you? How’s your love life? Besides Adam, of course,” I added with a smile.
    â€œNice.”
    â€œSorry. Couldn’t resist. But seriously, anything of interest?”
    â€œHardly,” she responded with a grimace.
    â€œThat good?”
    â€œI was sort of seeing this guy before the holidays, but it didn’t go anywhere. I mean, he’s sharp and good-looking and everything, but we just didn’t click. It’s awkward, because he seemed to be really into it. We’d only been out on three or four dates and he was practically ready to propose. It was bizarre—we barely knew each other.” She looked up at me. “Actually, I think you might know him. He was an analyst at Winslow, Brown before business school.”
    â€œWho?” I asked, not anticipating what the answer would be.
    â€œGrant Crocker. Do you remember him?”
    My heart sank as I tried to keep my expression even. I remembered Grant all too well, having had the misfortune of working with him several times during his two years at the firm, likely due to yet another of Stan’s none-too-subtle plots to torment me. Grant was unusually cocky in an industry where arrogance was nearly a prerequisite. He’d spent several years in the Marine Corps after college, so he was closer to my age than Sara’s, and the military seemed to have trained him well in various forms of chauvinism. He had difficulty following directions from