Shirley Hailstock - Someone Like You

“I suppose it is, but we decided this is dinner, not a date.” He laughed again. This time Teddy laughed, too.

“What do you do?” she asked. In speaking with her mother, she’d never asked anything about him. She’d been too busy arguing that she didn’t want to go on a blind date to think about his profession.

“Investments. I own a brokerage house.”

She was impressed, but kept it off her face and out of her voice. “So, I deal in dreams and you in cold, hard cash.”

“Not cold or hard. Just ones and zeros.” There was no censure in his voice. It was also devoid of pride or arrogance.

“Computer transactions.” Teddy nodded, understanding that everything today was done on a small machine you could put in your pocket.

“Actual money is on the way out.” He turned to her, pulling his chair an inch closer. “How much money do you have in your purse right now?”

Teddy glanced in surprise at the clutch bag that lay on the table. Tossing her head, she said, “Enough for a taxi and a phone call.”

Adam smiled. It was the first time since they met that his face showed any emotion. “I remember hearing my mother telling me about taxi fare and carrying cash when she and my father were dating. Of course, their generation can remember life before cell phones.”

“I got that story from my father. He wanted to make sure I could get home or at least call if some guy got out of hand. He said I could lose the phone or forget to charge the battery.”

“Did it ever happen?” he asked.

“The phone, no. The date, nothing I couldn’t handle.”

Adam gave her a long stare. She wondered what he was thinking. She hadn’t issued a challenge, yet she felt as if he was thinking of one.

“What about you? Any sisters to give that message to?”

“No sisters, two brothers.”

“Where are you in the mix?”

“Right in the middle.”

Teddy nodded. Spoiled, she judged. It rang true for middle children. Teddy was one of four siblings. She was the second child, the one who never got her way. Adam, as a middle sibling, would have always gotten his. And probably still did.

“What about you? Any brothers or sisters?” he asked.

“Two sisters, one brother.”

“Do they live close by?”

Teddy shook her head. “We’re pretty spread out, but we all make it home for most holidays.”

“Where’s home?”

“Maryland. Bentonburgh, Maryland. It’s near Hagerstown, not that you’ve heard of either of those places.”

“Actually, I have,” he said.

Teddy looked at him for further explanation.

“A while ago I met a woman studying hotel management. She worked in Breezewood, the Town of Motels, for three years.”

Teddy wasn’t surprised he knew a woman there. She supposed he knew women in lots of places. That fact also surprisingly left her slightly cold. Deciding to move away from discussions about herself and her family, Teddy asked about him, “How did you get into investing?” He smiled at that. She recognized that type of smile. She’d seen it a hundred times on the faces of mothers or grandmothers of the brides. They were usually remembering their own weddings and knew how in love the bride was. The smile took them back in time. Adam had that look.

“My parents let me try it.”

“How?”

“I had a teacher in high school who told us about the stock market. It intrigued me. It was one of the few classes I had where I sat up and listened to what he had to say.” He spread his arms and hunched his shoulders. “I was fascinated by the possibility of turning a little money into a lot of it. I told my parents I wanted to try investing. They said it was too risky. That I would lose anything I had.”

“And you proved them wrong,” she stated.

“Very wrong, but it was a turning point.”

“How?” Teddy took a sip of wine.

She gave him her full attention, just as he must have done to that high school teacher all those years ago.

“I wasn’t the best kid. But in high school, who was?” He paused and gave her a long stare. “I was sixteen and rebellious. I guess I was at that age where a turn one way or the other could make me a man or send me to jail. My parents talked over the idea and agreed to let me have a thousand dollars to play with.”

“Play with?” Teddy’s brows rose. Her parents weren’t poor, but she couldn’t imagine them giving her that much money when she was in high school.

“Money was the first thing that really interested me. They would try anything that would hold my attention and keep me out of trouble,” he explained. “The money was enough that I would be careful with it. So I read all the reports, learned the language, took small steps. Within a year, I’d turned the thousand into five thousand.”

“You’re kidding.” Teddy stared at him. She knew that kind of return was unheard of.

He shook his head.

“That’s a phenomenal return on investment,” she said.

“It was. I made good choices and I learned that I was good with money. After that I took every class I could on investing and wealth management. After college I took a job on Wall Street, got my feet wet and struck out on my own.”

He smiled, proud of himself. Teddy liked that he put his mind to something and stuck with it. “So if you’re ever looking to invest...” He left the sentence hanging.

“You’re not going to give me a sales pitch?”

“Why? Are you a hard sell?”

“Extremely hard,” Teddy said.

“I’m good at what I do,” Adam challenged.

“I see,” Teddy said flatly. “So you like handling other people’s money?”

“As much as you like the weddings you plan, I like building wealth.”

Teddy thought about the wealth they had built, she and Diana. Both had come from humble backgrounds. Diana had been a scholarship student at Princeton, and Teddy, too, had had scholarships and had worked partially through Stanford. Both understood the need for capital and they learned management of money as a necessity to their business.

Teddy wasn’t wealthy, but she was comfortable. Her designs were selling for thousands of dollars and she had a growing portfolio. It wasn’t managed by Adam’s company.

“What is the name of your investment firm?” Teddy asked.

“Sullivan Brothers Investment, Inc.” He slipped a business card across the table to her. The ease with which he did it showed a practiced salesmanship.

Teddy had never heard of his company. That was probably a good thing. If they weren’t maintaining or increasing wealth for their clients, she surely would have heard something from the many brides that came in for planning. And there was the trade show that had financial planners in attendance every year. She didn’t know if his company had ever been represented.

“Your brothers are part of the business?”

He shook his head. “Initially, my brother Quinn went in with me, but quickly decided it wasn’t for him. I bought him out for all of three dollars.” He stopped and laughed at that.

“I suppose that laugh means you didn’t actually cheat him out of a good deal?”

“He hadn’t invested any capital into the setup. He did the legwork of finding the offices and his muscle in helping me buy and set up furniture. That was years ago now.”

“Are you at the same location?”

He shook his head.

Weddings by Diana had moved twice. Once for a medical project, and the second time because she and Diana needed more space and they could afford a more prestigious area.

“With both of us in Princeton, I’m surprised our paths haven’t crossed before,” Adam said. “Of course, my hours are unpredictable when I’m dealing with overseas markets.”