Pleasure Doing Business

ELLIS

“What guarantees do I have from you, Mr MacRae?”

I work two fingers into my tie knot and drag it loose an inch. My will to remain entirely professional wanes with each passing minute of this conversation.

“Please, call me Malcolm,” he insists.

His grey eyes slide from me to Naomi. She looks as crisp as she did when we left London: cream blouse beneath a tailored blazer, strawberry-blond hair pinned half-up as always. A small gold daith hoop glints in her ear as she dips her head and taps her pen against the paper.

“You’ve laid out the acreage, the proximity to the road, the access to the river.”

“Aye.” Malcolm clears his throat. “I mean—yes. It’s all there.”

I say nothing.

Silence is useful in negotiations. People are terrified of it. Give a man six uninterrupted seconds and he will usually begin explaining precisely the thing you did not ask him to explain.

Outside the broad windows, Edinburgh traffic hisses over wet pavement.

Malcolm shifts in his chair, the fabric of his cerulean dress shirt stretching over his belly as he does so. “It really is a beautiful property,” he tells me.

“And yet,” I say, setting my pen neatly beside the folder, “you don’t actually own the land.”

His mouth gapes open like a fish, then promptly clamps shut.

He hooks his forefinger beneath his thumb and gives the knuckle a sharp, obnoxious little crack.

I look at his hand.

Violent tendencies, perhaps. Or he’s simply an anxious wanker.

Either way, it’s irritating.

“Listen, Mr Pembroke,” he starts, chin bobbing with enthusiasm. “I wouldn’t have had you come all the way from London without some guarantee.”

He gestures towards the bottle between us, nearly a third of the whisky already divided amongst three crystal tumblers. “You already know it’s a fine product.”

I turn the amber liquid once around the glass.

Top-shelf finish. Distinctive nose. Competitive production estimates. Sensible distribution projections. Branding that could be rescued with money and a competent designer.

The man’s done his homework.

“It is,” I concede. “But I can’t agree to invest several million pounds in a distillery if we’ve nowhere to build the bloody thing.”

“All a matter of timing,” he persists. “How long have we got you here in Edinburgh for?”

Naomi immediately unclasps the binding of her Filofax—she still swears by it, even in this day and age—and flips a page. “Ten days. A few other business prospects to see to.”

She wisely omits the four days of vacation she has smuggled into my itinerary, made possible by a supposedly cancelled client meeting which I later discovered had never existed.

When I confronted her about it, Naomi informed me that I “work too bloody hard” and that if she left the matter to me, I would “die under fluorescent lighting before the age of forty.”

I am thirty-seven.

Apparently, we are cutting it close.

Malcolm drags a hand through his chestnut hair. Silver catches at his temples beneath the overhead lights. Enough to suggest experience without diminishing the rakish quality of his smile.

“That’s brilliant, truly,” he says. “Give me four days.”

I arch an eyebrow; his grin tightens.

“Three,” he corrects, voice a touch too quick. “I’ll drive you out to Dunkeld myself—show you the lay of the land.”

“We’ve our own transport,” Naomi says. Her tone could strip wallpaper. “Thursday at ten o’clock, then?”

Relief pours across Malcolm’s face. “That’d be grand.”

He lifts his glass and gestures for us to do the same. “I can’t thank you enough for believing in MacRae Distilling Company.”

“I haven’t yet,” I reply.

His glass stops halfway towards mine.

I let him sit with that for precisely one second before touching my tumbler to his.

Clink.

Malcolm laughs. A warm, gruff sound.

“I ken what you’ve done for others around the country,” he says. “Distilleries, hotels, restaurants. You’ve a reputation for knowing what’ll work before anyone else does.”

“I have analysts.”

“Analysts don’t put their own money in,” he replies.

Naomi glances up at that.

So do I.

There may be more beneath the grin than I gave him credit for.

Malcolm takes a drink, watching me over the rim of his glass. “Have you always had an eye for a good dram?”

I tilt the tumbler towards my lips, inhaling notes of heather smoke and malted barley.

“More like tongue,” I say smoothly.

By the time we reach the hotel, my ambitions for the evening have narrowed considerably.

I set my briefcase on an armchair upholstered in an aggressively baroque pattern and let out a groan from somewhere near my soul.

“Please tell me there’s a decent bath in here.”

Naomi sweeps past, already inspecting the room. “You have a lovely one.”

I start shrugging out of my suit jacket, already picturing hot water, room service, and Enya singing something soothing in the background.

The jacket barely clears my shoulders before Naomi catches it at the elbow.

“Calling it in already?” she asks, too blasé for my liking. “The night is young.”

“That meeting went on two hours longer than nature intended,” I reply. “I’m knackered.”

I look pointedly at my sleeve.

She drapes the jacket back over my shoulders.

My eyes narrow.

Hers do not.

This is the trouble with employing someone for eight years. Eventually they stop being afraid of you.

She pats my lapel twice. “There’s a lovely pub called The Viceroy right down the road. You’ve got the day off tomorrow, Ellis.”

I pinch the bridge of my nose. “And you booking this hotel has nothing whatsoever to do with its proximity to that particular pub.”

“Pure coincidence.”

“Of course.” I sigh. “I’ll go tomorrow, if I must.”

Naomi reaches up and straightens my tie, undoing several hours of deliberate loosening. “You’re going tonight.”

“And why’s that?”

“Because I’m about to go on a Haunted Edinburgh tour,” she answers.

I stare at her. “You’re going on a what?”

“A Haunted Edinburgh tour.”

“Voluntarily?”

“Yes.” She rolls her eyes. “And I’m not leaving you here on your lonesome.”

“After today, solitude sounds medicinal.”

“You’ll be checking emails within half an hour.”

“I might not.”

She gives me a look.

I concede the point with silence.

“That isn’t solitude,” she says. “That’s being overworked somewhere with better curtains.”

She presses the keycard into my hand. “The pub is well-reviewed, it’s close, and you won’t have to spend the evening wondering whether anyone gives a damn who you’re looking at.”

I glance down at the card. “A compelling argument.”

“I thought so,” she says, far too pleased with herself.

“Are you planning on escorting me there yourself?”

“I’ve sent the directions to your phone.” Naomi reaches for her bag. “I need a quick bath and a change before I commune with the dead.”

“And I don’t get the same courtesy before attempting to socialise with the living?”

“No.” She gives me a knowing look. “You’ll only change your mind.”

I exhale through my nose.

“Go, Ellis,” she says, with the patience one might reserve for a particularly stubborn child.

“You are remarkably authoritarian for someone technically in my employ.”

“I promise you won’t have to listen to me at all tomorrow, sir.” She waves me towards the door. “Have fun.”

I pause in the corridor, the deep burgundy carpet swallowing the sound of my steps.

For one irrational moment, I consider going straight back inside.

Then my phone buzzes in my pocket with Naomi’s directions.

I tug my tie back into place and head for the lift.

And thus, Naomi Clarke accidentally sends her boss directly into the plot. Teehee.

You’ll notice the first few chapters are a wee bit shorter than my usual ones, but I promise we’re just getting warmed up. 👀 Hope you’ll follow Ellis to The Viceroy...