‘Marcus.’ She jumped. ‘You surprised me.’
Marcus King was only thirty-nine, but he was the most senior of Tatiana’s trustees. A handsome Oxford graduate and former rowing star, Marcus was a practical and serious man, as steady in his private life as he was in his job. Happily married with three children, he was one of the rare heterosexual males able to look on Tatiana Flint-Hamilton solely as a client.
‘I want to be completely clear with you, Tatiana,’ he said, in his usual sober tone. ‘While we support this investment, there are risks involved. Significant risks.’
‘I understand that.’ Tati nodded gravely.
‘Forty per cent loan to value is our absolute limit,’ Marcus went on. ‘That means you need to find considerable seed capital on your own. We won’t release funds without it.’
‘I understand that too,’ said Tatiana. ‘And I appreciate the trust’s support.’
‘If you don’t mind my asking,’ Marcus pressed her. ‘How do you intend to find the money? Six million dollars is a very considerable sum.’
‘Marcus.’ Tatiana smiled sweetly, stepping into the elevator. ‘I never mind you asking.’
The doors wheeshed closed behind her.
Marcus King shook his head. She’s grown up immeasurably in the last year, he thought. The proposal she’d presented to him and his colleagues today had been impressive. Well researched, balanced, compelling. But for all her confidence and newfound maturity, Marcus wondered whether she fully understood the risks.
If she pulled it off, she could potentially make a fortune.
If she didn’t, she could lose a fortune, one that her father had spent a lifetime struggling to preserve.
Yet there was something in Tatiana’s eyes that seemed to suggest that to her, this was all a game.
With a lingering feeling of unease, Marcus King returned to his desk.
Brett Cranley sat bolt upright in his first-class seat as the British Airways flight roared upwards, dwarfing the New York skyline before disappearing above a blanket of cloud.
Brett could have afforded a private plane. Most of his peers in the real-estate business had one, once their net worth got above a certain level, but it had always seemed like a waste of money to Brett. At least his yacht, the Lady A, paid for itself through expensive charters when he wasn’t using it. Besides, yachts were built for pleasure. Jets, in Brett’s view anyway, were for business, for getting quickly from A to B, and as a business proposition, they sucked, burning through money faster than a Russian hooker in Cartier. There was also a faint whiff of insecurity about the owning of a private plane – the very rich man’s version of the shiny red Ferrari. Jets were for short men who wanted to be noticed by beautiful women. Brett Cranley was a big man who beautiful women noticed anyway.
Not that they always gave him what he wanted. As they reached cruising altitude, Brett sipped on his champagne, but it tasted sour. He ought to be happy, but he was not. Eight months after their fiery, passionate encounter at his London flat, Tatiana Flint-Hamilton still had the power to dampen his mood. She took the sweetness out of his successes and sharpened the sting of his failures, simply by existing. Brett resented her for exerting such an irrational power over him. For remaining important in his psyche when she ought to be supremely unimportant, just another girl he’d been to bed with. Deep down, however, he knew it wasn’t Tati who was the problem, but himself. Why couldn’t he let go?