The Underwriting by Michelle Miller Page A

before.
    Are you done yet?
    An internal instant message appeared from the second-year associate on the case, Kerry. Amanda looked up: Kerry was sitting in the cubicle next to her, literally an arm’s length away, staring at her screen with her earphones in.
    â€œNo,” she said out loud to Kerry.
    â€œI’m sorry?” Kerry took an earbud out, bothered. “What did you say?”
    Amanda glared at her. “I said no, I’m not done with the document.”
    Kerry lifted her eyebrow disapprovingly and turned back to her screen.
    That
was what Amanda had to avoid. Kerry might have a JD from Harvard Law, but she was still single. And twenty-nine. In New York. It was a death sentence.
    Amanda saw the way things shifted when women reached a certain age in this city. As girls crept toward thirty, their dying eggs seemed to excrete desperation, and men could smell it a mile away. Before they knew it, they were Amanda’s mother: living alone in Florida dating losers, spending their money on creams and fad diets in a futile attempt to recoup the youth they squandered on men they’d failed to fix.
    And so, as important as the work in front of her might be, it was more important that Amanda lock something down before she turned twenty-seven and everything started going to hell. That gave her a year and five months.
    Plenty of time
, she assured herself, turning back to the document.
    Or was it? She’d already been in New York for two and a half years and Todd was the only close-to-a-boyfriend she’d had. Her roommate Cindy was probably marrying her boyfriend from college, and her other roommate, Claudia, didn’t need to worry because she was from the Upper East Side and always had a string of attractive, eligible bachelors ready to procreate with her blue blood.
    What did Amanda have? Great boobs, she knew that. And a killer metabolism that kept her skinny without exercising, which meant she also didn’t have man-arms like a lot of the women in New York. She was ambitious, but not so career-obsessed that she wouldn’t quit working to raise her kids, to whom she would contribute Ivy League–worthy intelligence.
    She rolled her eyes in frustration: there was no reason she didn’t deserve Todd. She was the right girl for him, she just had to show him that. And to show him that, she had to see him, and she couldn’t leave that up to chance in a city as busy as New York.
    She opened Facebook again and sent him a message:
    Hey—totally random, but I’ve got a happy hour at Maggie’s the Wednesday after next, March 26. You should stop by if you’re free. Will be fun. A.
    She read it again. And again.
    Send.
    TODD
    W EDNESDAY , M ARCH 12; N EW Y ORK , N EW Y ORK
    â€œWe’ve got to work on your Hook profile, T Two.”
    Todd glanced up from his laptop at Beau, who was shaking his head at his iPhone, then across at Tara, who had stopped typing.
    â€œAre you talking to me?” she asked.
    Todd had had his assistant reserve a conference room on the twenty-seventh floor for the team so they could work together and Todd could keep track of what everyone was doing. They’d gotten back to New York on Sunday and the room hadn’t been empty since: they were all working around the clock to get things ready for the IPO, fueled by Harvey’s demand that the deal be done by May 8.
    Todd was still furious with Harvey for going behind his back to negotiate the fee. And 1 percent? It was a fucking joke. It only affirmed Harvey’s diminishing power and his desperation to maintain some sense of significance by undermining the real talent in the firm. It made Todd sick, and more motivated than ever to nail the deal so that he could take all the credit and neutralize any senior manager who tried to stand in his way.
    Todd rolled his neck to release the tension. He couldn’t get worked up over Harvey—there was too much else to think about. He needed to