He looked neither taken aback nor offended by her postscript. Of course, he would she thought irritably. Hadn’t she discovered that his ego was roughly the size of Panama? If Stephanie ever sought her advice on the subject, she would tell her in no uncertain terms that scooting around him and never answering back was a sure-fire way to add to the problem.
‘I can’t read the menu with you dragging it down.’
‘Have the fresh fish. It’s the best thing on the menu.’
‘There you go again,’ she reminded him, ‘being bossy again,’ and blushed when she realised that he had been winding her up.
‘So what is my type of look?’ he persisted, still grinning and still tugging her menu down so that she couldn’t conveniently hide behind it.
‘Well, if you must know, it’s that obvious tall, dark-haired, good-looking kind of look.’
‘Ah! You mean as opposed to the short, fair-haired, unappealing kind of look…’ He released the menu so that her glare of infuriation was lost on the list of starters, and by the time she had decided on what she was going to eat he had his amused gleaming expression safely under wraps.
‘I’ve got all the paperwork here,’ he said, whisking a two-inch wad of papers from the briefcase at the side of his chair. He pushed them across to her, then sat back to inspect her at his leisure. ‘Naturally you’ll need some information on Felt’s profit and loss over the past, say, three years. Did you bring it along with you?’
‘You know I didn’t.’ She glanced at the top page and found enough technical terms in the first three sentences to reduce her to bewildered dismay.
‘Ah, yes. You were sporting your minimalist look. Not to worry…’ He fished into his briefcase again and this time the wad was three inches thick. ‘I have everything you need right here.’
‘Perhaps you could just sum it all up for me and leave me with this paperwork to read over the next couple of days.’
‘You might not understand all the terms and sub-clauses,’ he said piously. ‘You might find that I have to explain them to you.’
‘I’ll try my best to get to grips with it.’
‘Okay. Just offering my services to speed things up a bit.’ He paused just long enough for them to order their meal, his eyes shooting up at her rejection of his fish suggestion, then leaned forward with his elbows resting on the table. ‘If you turn to page fifteen, you’ll find a listing of all my company’s assets.’
Destiny obligingly turned to the required page and was confronted by columns of figures, none of which appeared to have under six noughts in it. His company, or rather his holdings, were hugely profitable. It didn’t take a degree in accountancy to see that.
‘Now, if you turn to page eighteen of the document underneath, you can have a quick look at how Felt’s been performing recently.’
‘Get to the point. I know they’ve been struggling over the past few months.’
‘Years, actually.’
‘Well, years, then.’
‘It’s going to require a massive injection of cash to come up to scratch. No amount of good intentions and sympathetic man-management is going to haul it out of the red.’
Destiny was busily surveying the papers in front of her, which seemed to have a huge amount of brackets around figures. She sighed and flicked through the rest of the paperwork. Report upon report, all bearing the ominous word losses. Without the optimism of the directors, desperate to hang on to their lucrative jobs, the facts staring her in the face were sinister. She looked up to see Callum staring at her and sipping his wine.
‘I can see you’re beginning to get the picture.’
‘Derek seems to think that there’s a chance…’
‘Derek’s a lawyer who doesn’t want me to buy the company,’ he said bluntly.
‘Why? My uncle had agreed to sell…’
‘Because he could see sense.’
‘Why should Derek care one way or another?’
‘Because his links with that miserable uncle of yours stretch back a long way. Felt’s started as a family firm and the family firm was good to him. Unfortunately, it’s caused him to develop a very unhealthy blind spot when it comes to common sense.’
Destiny shuffled the papers she was holding and shoved them back to him.
‘Why are you so keen to buy something that’s losing money hand over fist? No one else wants it, apparently, so why do you?’
‘Let’s just say that I see it as a worthwhile investment.’ He drained the contents of his glass in one long gulp, while his eyes flicked over her face. ‘You asked me once whether there was anything personal involved and I might just as well tell you the sordid story of your dear, generous uncle.’