Read Silver Bay for Free Online Page B

as if we were speaking different languages.
    ‘So, what I’d like to do now is get my colleague to make a short presentation. Just to give you a flavour of what we consider a very exciting opportunity.’
    Tina had crossed to the other side of the boardroom. She stood next to the coffee-table, her stance deceptively relaxed. I could still glimpse that violet strap. I closed my eyes, trying to force away a sudden memory of her breasts, pushed up against me in the men’s toilets at Bar Brazilia, the fluid ease with which she had removed her blouse.
    ‘Mike?’
    She was staring at me again. I glanced up, then away, not wanting to encourage her.
    ‘Mike? You still with us?’ There was the faintest edge to Dennis’s voice. I rose from my seat, shuffling my notes. ‘Yes,’ I said. And, more firmly, ‘Yes.’ I raised a smile for the row of Vallance Equity’s flint-eyed venture capitalists around the table, trying to convey some of Dennis’s own confidence and bonhomie. ‘Just – ah – mulling over a couple of points you made.’ I took a deep breath and gestured across the room. ‘Tina? Lights?’
    I took hold of the remote-control device for my presentation, and as my phone vibrated again, wished I had thought to remove it. I fumbled in my pocket to try to turn it off. Unfortunately, glancing up through the dimmed light at Tina, I realised she thought this had been for her benefit. She responded with a slow smile, her eyes dropping to my groin.
    ‘Right,’ I said, letting out a breath and refusing resolutely to look at her. ‘I’d like to show you lucky gentlemen a few images of what we modestly consider to be the investment opportunity of the decade.’ There was a low rumble of amusement. They liked me. There they sat, primed by Dennis’s raw enthusiasm, ready for my sonorous list of facts and figures. Receptive, attentive, waiting to be reassured. My father often said I was ideally suited to a business environment. He meant business in the grey-suited sense, rather than the hyper-sexy mega-deal sense. Because, although I had somehow ended up at the latter end, I had to admit that I was not a natural risk-taker. I was Mr Due Diligence, one of life’s careful, considered deliberators, who researched everything not just to the nth degree but several degrees beyond.
    As a child, before I spent my carefully saved pocket money, I would spend hours in a shop, weighing up the benefits of Action Man against his compatriots, fearful of the crushing disappointment that came when you made the wrong choice. Offered a choice of puddings, I would pit the potential infrequency of lemon meringue pie against the solid comfort of chocolate sponge, and double-check that raspberry jelly wasn’t among the options.
    None of this meant I was unambitious. I knew exactly where I wanted to be, and had long since learnt that taking the quiet path was the key to my success. While colleagues’ more incendiary careers crashed and burnt, I had become financially secure, due to my dogged monitoring of interest rates and investments. Now, six years into my tenure at Beaker Holdings, my promotion to junior partner apparently nothing to do with my engagement to the boss’s daughter, I was valued as someone who would accurately assess the benefits of any choice – geographical, social or economic – before making it. Two big deals and I would be senior partner. Another seven years until Dennis retired, and I would be ready to step into his shoes. I had it all planned.
    Which was why my behaviour that night had been so out of character.
    ‘I think you’re having your teenage rebellion late,’ my sister Monica had observed, two days previously. I had taken her to lunch, in the smartest restaurant I knew, as a birthday treat. She worked on a national newspaper but earned less per month than I spent in expenses.
    ‘I don’t even like the girl,’ I said.
    ‘Since when did sex have anything to do with liking someone?’ She sniffed. ‘I