Fatal Reaction

call,” I assured him fervently.
    “I can have my secretary do that,” barked Guttman. “That’s not why I called you down here. I shouldn’t have to tell you how to do your job. But if you’re as close to Stephen Azorini as people seem to think you are then you had better find some way to use your influence to make sure that he makes this goddamned deal.”
    “Stephen runs his company as he sees fit, John,” I replied coldly. “The last thing he needs is me telling him what to do.”
    “Don’t let the fact that you’re sleeping with him cloud your judgment on this, Kate,” he snapped back, unpleasantly.
    “What exactly is your point, John?” I inquired, determined not to let myself be baited. “When you’re subtle like this it’s so hard to know what you’re really thinking.”
    “Come on, Kate. You know that I think of you almost like a daughter.” It occurred to me, not for the first time, that there was a reason Guttman’s own daughter had chosen to make a life for herself in Australia. “I’m just giving you a little fatherly advice for your own good.”
    “And what’s that?”
    “It’s not just Stephen’s ass that’s on the line this time, it’s Azor. Believe me, Kate, if Stephen doesn’t make this drug, if he doesn’t make a deal with Takisawa, Cassidy and his buddies on the board will throw him out and sell Azor to one of the big drug houses just to get some kind of return on their investment. What do you think will happen to your position in the firm if that happens? Stephen isn’t the only one who stands to get hurt if this deal doesn’t get made. You are up on the high wire, Kate, and the spotlight is on you. There’s a monkey on your shoulder and all the people sitting underneath you in the audience have paid their money hoping to see you fall.”
     

CHAPTER 2
     
    I was so unsettled by what John Guttman had said that I stormed out of his office, took a wrong turn, and ended up in the library before I realized where I was. It is one thing to know that you are an outsider in the world you have chosen for yourself. It is quite another to hear it put into words and spoken out loud by someone who is most definitely on the inside. I did not need John Guttman to tell me that under normal circumstances any lawyer would jump at the chance to come to the aid of such an important client. But these were not normal circumstances, and the fact that they were of my own making helped matters not one bit.
    My roommate, Claudia, says the trouble with Stephen is that he has the brains of a rocket scientist trapped in the body of a movie star. She may be right. I have known Stephen Azorini since I was a teenager and have counted him as a client from my first days practicing law. Though most people never got beyond his genius and his charisma, I know better than anybody just how difficult he can be. Besides, even though I would never tell Guttman, it was the current state of our personal life that was making me reluctant to get involved in the negotiations with Takisawa.
    While there was no doubt that our relationship had recently moved forward—we had just bought an apartment and planned to move in together once renovations were completed—things between us didn’t seem to be actually progressing. No matter what conclusions outsiders chose to draw, ours remained first and foremost a relationship of convenience.
    Stephen did not love me. He loved his company. And I was still in love with my husband, Russell, who’d died of brain cancer during the first year of our marriage. The fact that it was Stephen, then a resident at the hospital where Russell was being treated, who stood by me during those last terrible months only added another strand of obligation to an already complicated relationship.
    Growing impatient with my own self-pity, I buzzed Cheryl, my secretary, and asked her to bring me a cup of coffee and my messages. The first three were from my mother, all reminding me of the five o’clock appointment Stephen and I had with her and the decorator at the new apartment. It had already been rescheduled four times and as much as I would have liked to get out of it, I knew that I was well and truly on the hook this time.
    I picked up the phone and dialed Stephen’s number. This was his first day back in the office after ten days in Tokyo and I was pretty sure that my news about Cassidy and his incipient cabal was the last thing he wanted to hear. Nonetheless, I owed it to him to