Page 33 of His Best Mistake

What possible excuse could he have for saying no? None of what was on his desk was confidential and to claim it was would make him look like a man with something to hide. “Sure.”

She moved round to his side of the desk and his pulse sped up.

“What’s that?” she asked, leaning forwards a fraction and pointing at a diagram on the screen as her scent wafted up his nose and made a mess of his brain.

Good question, he thought dazedly. What was it? With what felt like superhuman effort Jack hauled himself back under control and focused. “It’s a Fibonacci spiral.”

“Which is?”

“It’s a tool that uses the combination of time and price to predict market movements.”

“Handy.”

“There are others too.”

And in an attempt to distract himself from the effects of her proximity he started talking about algorithms and data visualisation and platforms. God only knew whether he made any sense. He could only hope that if she didn’t know what a Fibonacci spiral was, she’d have even less of a reason to challenge him on the rest of it.

“I have no idea what any of that means, but you really love what you do, don’t you?” she said, once he’d ground to a halt, sounding ridiculous even to his own ears. “I can tell by the passion in your voice.”

“I have to,” he said, pushing his chair back a little and thinking that the less said about passion the better. “It’s all-consuming and I spend a lot of my time doing it.”

“Is it risky?”

“About as risky as desk jobs get, although the rewards usually more than make up for it.”

“But it can’t be just the money.”

“There’s the adrenaline rush,” he admitted. “And the thrill of anticipating the way the market’s going to go and getting it right. It makes the fourteen-hour days worth it.”

“Fourteen-hour days?”

“Sometimes longer.”

“Crikey. Your stress levels must be stratospheric.”

“Not really,” he said. “Stress can be minimised by a steady, disciplined, emotionally detached approach to trading. If you nail that then you’re halfway there.”

“Remind me never to play poker with you,” she said with a quick smile. “I’d lose everything in minutes.”

If it was strip poker they were playing then maybe that wouldn’t be so bad… “I never gamble.”

“Seems to me you gamble every time you trade.”

“Perhaps. Although in my case the odds are very carefully calculated.” He paused, then said, “Anyway, you love what you do too, don’t you? Are you ever without a pencil and paper?”

She glanced down at the sketchbook in her hand and grinned. “Rarely.”

“May I see?”

“It’s one I bought today. There’s nothing to see.”

“Another time, then.”

“Perhaps.” She paused and looked slowly over the papers on his desk: the graphs, the columns of figures, the scribbled notes. “Do you ever make mistakes?”

“Not often.”

“So how did you get into it?” she said, finally inching back and moving away to sit on a sofa, which meant that he could actually breathe again.

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