LITMIR.BIZ

      PROLOGUE

      THE last of the overnight flights out of JFK to London was about to board. The departure lounge was crowded to overflowing, but even so one alert journalist was scanning the faces carefully. Rewarded, he caught his breath with excitement.

      He nudged his companion in the ribs. ‘Did you see who that was?’

      The companion was a generation older than the keen young television correspondent; it took a lot to get him excited. Besides, he had made a career out of not being impressed by anyone. ‘If you mean Steven Konig, I saw him on the main concourse.’

      The younger man swung round. ‘Really? Konig—the food for famine guy? He’s here? Where?’

      ‘They boarded him first,’ said the other, bored.

      ‘Oh, that’s who it was! I thought it must be royalty.’ The younger man had a point to prove, too. ‘You do know it was the top brass escorting him?’

      His companion got even more bored. ‘If you mean David Guber, he and Konig go way back. They were students at Oxford together.’

      That would silence the upstart, he thought.

      But it didn’t. Amazingly, the younger man’s chagrin lasted only a few seconds before he was bouncing back, eager as a puppy.

      ‘I didn’t catch Konig, but I did catch someone a lot more interesting.’ He paused expectantly.

      The older man yawned.

      ‘The Tiger Cub,’ said up-and-coming television financial newsman tantalisingly. And sat back, waiting to be asked ‘Who or what is the Tiger Cub?’

      It did not come.

      It would be too much to say that the older man sat bolt upright and looked keenly round the lounge. Excitement, after all, was not his bag. But there was no doubt his journalist’s antennae twitched.

      ‘The Calhoun girl?’ he said, after a moment.

      ‘Pepper Calhoun, yes,’ said his companion, disappointed but still fighting. At least he knew that Penelope Anne Calhoun was called Pepper by her intimates.

      The older man stared into the middle distance, his eyes narrowed. ‘That’s interesting,’ he said at last.

      ‘Yes, that’s what I thought. Do you think Calhoun Carter are going on the acquisition trail in the UK? I can think of a couple of retail companies ripe for acquisition.’ He smacked his lips at the thought, especially as he could be the first back to London with the news. At least, he could if Sandy Franks was as indifferent as he seemed.

      But Sandy Franks was still thinking aloud. ‘The last I heard, the girl wasn’t working for Calhoun Carter. Mary Ellen Calhoun has been telling people that her granddaughter is going to gain experience in the outside world before coming back into the company for good.’

      ‘You believe that?’

      ‘It’s possible.’ He sucked his teeth, pondering. ‘Maybe Pepper Calhoun has decided to do her own thing. Visit the sights. Have a fling with the boyfriend. What is she? Twenty-six? Twenty-seven? She’s got a right to party a bit before she settles down to a life of corporate greed.’

      ‘The Tiger Cub?’ Young and eager Martin Tammery laughed heartily at the naïveté of experience. ‘She doesn’t party. Her idea of a good time is an eighteen-hour day topped off by a night of conference calls. And she hasn’t had a boyfriend since business school.’

      ‘Then she’ll be ripe for a romantic interlude,’ said experience with conviction.

      His companion stayed unconvinced. ‘The one thing that is absolutely certain about Pepper Calhoun is that she doesn’t do romance. Never has. Never will.’

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