Page 92 of Wilder at Heart
And as if that’s not bad enough, this morning I have a charmingly convenient opportunity to kill two birds with one stone while my fake girlfriend slash real love of my life spends the day in Hertfordshire at a wedding she’s planned.
Because today I have a meeting with The Montague Group’s VP Finance.
Otherwise known as Jonathan Holmes.
It’s awkward as fuck,sitting right beside this guy at a huge white table in a conference room in our City office. Yeah.Beside. Because while I explain my proposals for Manhattan, he’ll be building a financial model on his laptop to quantify said proposals.
We shake hands, exchange some terse small talk from which the N-word is carefully omitted by silent agreement, and get down to it. Once we’re sitting, I sneak a look at him. The guy has a couple of inches on me and, I’d guess, a couple of stone. He’s in beige chinos and a bulky checked shirt under a navy v-neck jumper. He’s so fucking Sloaney—I bet he drives an ancient Landrover. I swear, he’s late twenties going on fifty. The guy screamsdad.
Which is exactly what Nora is so desperate for. A man who can give her the stability her own father couldn’t. She’s got abandonment issues. Serious daddy issues. And Jonathan fucking Holmes is her self-coined solution.
Jesus.
He breaks my train of thought, his fingers hovering over the keyboard and an empty spreadsheet ready on his screen. ‘Why don’t you give me an idea of what you’re planning. Then I can start building it out?’
‘Sure.’ I pull up the presentation I’ve been working on. ‘There are a few ways we can go. A few moving parts. Like a membership club. A complete aesthetic revamp. Most extreme, the conversion of a couple of floors into apartments. So we’re looking at a lot of CapEx, and possibly a far greater variety ofrevenue streams.’ I exhale. ‘And I don’t have the first clue where to start with modelling that.’
‘No problem.’ He rubs his hands together. ‘We’ll build several scenarios for each of those ventures, and we’ll make them fully dynamic so we can change up whatever inputs we like.’
I shrug. ‘Sounds good. Let’s start with the club concept.’
He’s calm. Methodical. And surprisingly effective. I watch in awe as he builds models for each part of my business plan, keeping them simple—though he tells me he’ll build out the detail later—and talking me through them as he goes. Explaining how he’s arriving at the initial assumptions he’s inputting, and how we can change them to stress-test the cost and revenue forecasts.
We sit there for two hours, drinking coffee and fiddling around on Excel, and it goes by surprisingly quickly. Not only does Holmes build the model, but he shares his views on how feasible the various projects are, how soon they may cover their costs and what levels of capital we’d need to consider to fund them. It’s eye-opening and surprisingly absorbing.
Once we have something that looks pretty damn professional to my eyes, he turns to me.
‘I’ll keep playing with this. I want to add detail in. I’ll send it over tomorrow.’
‘That would be great, mate.’
‘Not a problem.’ His eyes flicker back to the screen. ‘It’s quite fun seeing it all come together. Looks like a solid plan. Aggressive, but do-able.’
‘Thank you. I appreciate you saying that.’
He doesn’t meet my eyes. Drums his fingers on the table.
‘So, would Nora move out there with you? If you took the lead on this?’
The blood rushes to my head.
It’s now or never.
I swivel my chair to face him and push back so we’re not creepily close.
‘Mate.’ I swallow. ‘I need to talk to you about something.’
He looks up. ‘What’s that?’
Fuck.
I feel lightheaded. Can’t believe I’m here. That I’m about to do this. About to ruin everything I have. But I’m not, because I don’t have her. She’s only mine on loan. She doesn’t see me as a long-term prospect. She made that abundantly clear the other night. Practically had to spell it out for me.
‘Do you still love him?’
‘Yeah. I do.’
This guy, who should be nothing to me except for a walking spreadsheet, holds Nora’s happiness in his hands. I don’t know how the fuck he walked away from her. He’s so average. So forgettable. And I know the way he fucked her must have been just as forgettable, because the way she’s responded to me… Let’s just say she doesn’t strike me as someone for whom those kind of orgasms are the norm.
