Page 22 of Love or Your Money Back

CHAPTER

The Oxo Tower restaurant hums with the gentle clink of cutlery, glasses and low, dignified conversation.

Okay. Deep breaths. One foot in front of the other. My legs are both working fine. Which is excellent. But you never know with my body. Sometimes it rebels at all the wrong moments.

‘Remember you’re exclusive,’ Freddy whispers. ‘Value yourself. You are here to assess your dining companions, not the other way around.’

‘Easy for you to say,’ I whisper back. ‘What if I get anxious and my leg starts kicking one of our dining companions?’

‘Is that likely?’

‘It’s not unlikely.’

‘You’ll be fine.’ Freddy clenches me tighter in his steel bolt of an arm.

We approach a dining table, where two handsome, suited men wait with eager expressions on their faces.

I feel a smile growing as I see them. ‘Well done, Freddy,’ I whisper. ‘They’re both really good-looking –’

‘REMEMBER you’re exclusive.’

We reach the table, and Freddy smiles and nods at the men. ‘Marcus. Ahmet. Allow me to introduce my friend and business associate, Katerina Friedman. She’s an award-winning publisher and heads up T&Cs literary output.’

Ahmet leaps up and gives me a warm handshake. ‘Hello there. Great to meet you.’

‘Hi.’ I take a seat opposite him, smiling.

The man diagonally opposite gives me intense eyes. ‘Good to meet you, Katerina. I’m Marcus Ajulo.’ He reaches to shake my hand.

Marcus looks like someone stuffed a champion athlete into a business suit.

He has smooth black skin, straight, white teeth and the sort of fiercely intelligent eyes you’d rely on for anything.

Under normal circumstances, I’d give him my business card immediately.

But Freddy’s earlier warnings about exclusivity have hit home.

‘And Ahmet manages T&Cs real estate acquisitions,’ says Freddy.

‘It’s a boring job but someone’s got to do it.’ Ahmet has a very sweet smile and gleaming, chin-length, black hair tucked behind his ears. His shirt is a colourful blast of paisley and fits close to his toned body.

Both men look like they have mortgages and a solid pension plan in place, which is excellent.

‘So, you run a publishing company?’ Ahmet asks. ‘You’ll have to tell me more about that. I’m a real bookworm. I’m on my second literature PhD. My house looks like a library.’

‘Me too,’ I laugh. ‘Not the second PHD. The house library. I’ve got bookcases up the stairs. In the kitchen. On my front porch. Everywhere. I even set up a book exchange box in my front garden. But I had to take it down because people kept putting empty beer cans in it.’

‘We sound like kindred spirits,’ says Ahmet. ‘I set up a book exchange at the youth club I volunteer at. And yes, people do litter it! What’s your favourite library in London?’

‘The British Library. Obviously.’

‘Me too!’ Ahmet leans forward. ‘I know it’s not the prettiest of buildings, but it’s one of my favourite places in the whole world.’

‘Maybe we should go there together –’

Freddy taps a spoon on the table. ‘This spoon is made of very exclusive

steel, Katerina. Beautiful, isn’t it? A really exclusive

spoon. If I could marry it, I would.’

I redden. ‘Yes, Freddy. What a lovely, marriageable spoon.’

Ahmet watches me, eyebrows pulled together, waiting for me to finish my sentence. I mentally run through my usual first-date conversation topics:

Do you want kids?

Would you prefer to marry in the town or country?

Have you been fertility tested?

Freddy will be banging spoons all night if I try any of those. Eventually, I settle on:

‘So. Ahmet. How do you and Freddy know each other?’

‘I’ve worked with Freddy for years,’ says Ahmet. ‘He helped me land my first big property deal. That’s Freddy for you. A great supporter of others.’

‘Freddy supports people?’ I ask. ‘Without getting some sort of kickback?’

‘Of course he does.’ Ahmet gives a kind chuckle. ‘Freddy is one of life’s givers. We all know that, don’t we?’

‘ Do

we?’ I sound incredulous. Because I am.

‘Well, I certainly do,’ says Marcus. ‘Freddy has raised so much money for my single-parent housing project. And he still gives free gym passes to anyone in my rehousing program.’

I turn to Freddy. ‘You give out free gym passes to single parents?’

‘I wouldn’t use the term single parents.’ Freddy sips water. ‘I would use the term heroic parents doing twice the work.’

‘How come you’ve never mentioned this before?’

‘I don’t do it to impress people.’

‘But I might have hated you less when we first met –’

‘Look, enough about me.’ Freddy gives a focused look across the table. ‘Marcus. You and Kat both live in central London. Kat’s in Bloomsbury. And you’re in Westminster, aren’t you?’

‘Yes,’ says Marcus. ‘But I spend a lot of time in Surrey too, these days. The classic London double homeowner.’

‘Isn’t it selfish to own two properties when low-income families are struggling for housing?’ I ask.

SMASH!

A glass falls to the floor. A glass by Freddy’s elbow. However, I am unmoved. Freddy told me to be exclusive. He never told me not to have opinions.

As a waiter hurries over to sweep up the glass, Marcus says, ‘The thing is, Katerina, I need a much larger house outside of London to host writers and artists from oppressive regimes. I give them somewhere to stay while they work on their art. Some of them stay for years at a time.’

For a moment I am utterly silent. Then I turn bright red and mumble, ‘Oh. Right. That’s … wonderful.’

‘I must admit, looking after such a roaming country estate is a challenge,’ Marcus continues.

‘It’s a rather old property and I’m committed to only living zero-emission.

So it’s taking a lot of work to bring it up to speed.

And money. But you can’t put a price on looking after Mother Earth, can you? ’

‘You certainly can’t.’ I lean forward, smiling. ‘I also love the environment, Marcus. I’m a committed vegan. Well, unless cheese is put directly

in front of me. And every toilet in my house is fitted with a water-saving flush mechanism.’

‘A woman of principle.’ Marcus’s smile widens. ‘How marvellous.’

Despite Marcus’s size and muscular stature, there is something so sweetly shy about him. The combination of strength and vulnerability is adorable.

‘And a woman of intelligence.’ Ahmet leans across the table. ‘Tell me, Kat. How did you and Freddy become friendly?’