From the Bookshelf of Around the World in 80 Books…

Åsa slid up close beside her. “Do you see?”
“Yes,” Natalia breathed.
“They’re both here.”
“Yes.”
“Damn, but they’re hot.”
Natalia thrust out her chin. She had new clothes, new shoes, and a new hairdo. She was ready. “But we’re hotter.”
“Yes,” Åsa agreed. “This is our scene, Natalia. Are you in?”
“All in.”

Åsa slid up close beside her. “Do you see?”
“Yes,” Natalia breathed.
“They’re both here.”
“Yes.”
“Damn, but they’re hot.”
Natalia thrust out her chin. She had new clothes, new shoes, and a new hairdo. She was ready. “But we’re hotter.”
“Yes,” Åsa agreed. “This is our scene, Natalia. Are you in?”
“All in.”

“Hammar Capital doesn’t hire people based on their sex but rather their expertise,” he said.

Natalia scoffed, and David was forced to hide a small smile. When she was passionate about something, she apparently put her heart and soul into it. All her polite blandness was replaced by fire and passion.

“If you do things based on quotas, you run the risk of hiring less-qualified people,” he continued, well aware that that argument ought to be like waving a red flag in front of a bull for anyone with a brain. “We hire based on skill.”

It was like pouring fuel on a bonfire.

“That is such bullshit,” Natalia said, the red patches on her cheeks growing. “Skill isn’t the deciding factor,” she said, her jaw clenched. “Not if people headhunt the same way they always have—through the same old-boy networks. And they get what they want, the same old men with the same old views. It has nothing to do with merit. That’s just window dressing.”

“I’m not saying we don’t want good women,” he said. “But some say they’re hard to find.”

“With attitudes like that I won’t be surprised if you go belly-up soon,” she said stiffly. She glanced down at her plate and added a muttered, “I hope so.”

“We’re doing great,” he said. “We have . . .”

“But don’t you see . . .” She was looking up again and started waving her hands around. When a woman who could presumably make it through a Nobel Prize banquet without committing a single breech of etiquette starts waving her silverware around, she’s got to be pretty worked up.

“Natalia,” he interrupted. “You do know that I’m playing devil’s advocate, right?”

She paused.

“I’ve helped hire people for over twenty boards in the last year and a half,” he continued calmly. “Fifty-one percent of them are women. And exactly half of the chairmen of the board on boards hired by Hammar Capital are women.” He leaned back and watched her breathing calm down. Her chest was moving beneath her blouse. He glanced at her cleavage, at her pearls and pale skin. He flashed her a little smile, maybe the first genuine one he’d given her.

He watched her long fingers as she absentmindedly stroked the side of her glass. She’d taken off her jacket and was wearing a simple, sleeveless blouse underneath. She had beautiful lines, tall and strong.

“What was that all about?”
“What do you mean?”
“It sounded like you were talking to Natalia De la Grip,” Michel said slowly. “A private little conversation with one of the members of the family that owns the company that we’re planning to hostilely take over. A deal we’ve been working on for more than a year. A deal that will define our whole future.”
“That was her,” he said. “But it was no big deal.”