Kiss Across Chaos (Kiss Across Time #10) - Tracy Cooper-Posey Page 0,43
beautiful, once the gem cutter was done. He even offered to buy them from me. But he would have expected a deal and I wanted full price, so I went to my two favourite dealers and asked them for their best quote.”
“You auctioned them?” Her breath evaporated at his chutzpah. “Isn’t that against the rules or something?” She took another mouthful of burger.
“An auction in all but name. They bid against each other. I let them know I had other interested parties, at least two of them. That made it an interesting few hours.” He grinned. Devilment lit his eyes, making them dance.
Jesse remembered the burger and made herself take the last bite, while Aran sorted through the briefcase once more. “I had them make the cheque out in your name, Jesse, but you’ll have to create a holding company for yourself, or taxes will eat you alive.” He came toward her, holding out a certified bank cheque. “I can show you how to do that and what sort of account to put it in, so the interest is maximized. There’s all sorts of ways of doing it.”
She stared at the cheque, all thoughts frozen.
Jessenia Hall.
She glanced to the right, on the next line.
$87,395.49.
Jesse coughed, the dry burger bun scraping the back of her throat. Hastily, she chewed and swallowed, but it lodged halfway down, and she held her hand against her breastbone as it ached. “You can’t give that to me!”
Aran frowned. “That was the entire point of the exercise. This is start up stakes, Jesse.” He put the cheque on the table.
“But they were your diamonds!”
“Pay me back the fifty dollars I used to buy them, once you’ve deposited this cheque,” he told her dismissively.
“Seven hundred dollars,” she said swiftly. “That’s what you told me it was worth, back then.”
“Seven hundred then. But I did this for you, to show you how. And if you hadn’t been there, it might have ended far differently, so as far as I’m concerned, we’re even.”
“If you’re talking about Stinky, at the end, then it wouldn’t have happened at all if I wasn’t with you,” she said swiftly. “The only reason they figured they could rip you off was because you had a wife you would give up the diamonds for.”
“Stinky?” He raised a brow. This time he really did laugh. Then he tapped the cheque. “Don’t march into the nearest Citibank with this, hmm? Let me explain what you should do with it. Then, every now and again, you can top up the principal, or spread it around and do interesting things with it.”
“Top up the principal? You mean, jump back in time more? I’m not a jumper.”
“I am, and I’m out of a job and bored, and this is a great way to keep my jumping instincts alive.” He smiled a little. “The Jesse Hall Trust Fund.”
Jesse crumpled the burger wrapper and put it on the table, then moved closer to the cheque and peered at it. “This is what you do to buy your car and your clothes and everything? The house in England?”
“This is what I do,” he said, his voice low. “There’s a few other things, too, but they’re riskier.”
She looked up at him. “It was risky enough. Do you know who Stinky really was?”
“Not his name. His connections, I have figured out. Einaudi demonstrated his true colors. He didn’t want to give up the lumpy diamond. He knew it would be extraordinary, once it was cut. So he decided to have it both ways.” He tapped the cheque once more. “You earned this, Jesse. Take it, so I can stop worrying you’ll die of malnutrition.”
She peered at the figure once more. “Eighty thousand dollars,” she breathed. “That’s more than…than a whole year for me…”
“Longer than that, if you set it up right, and keep adding to the capital.”
She swallowed, as a huge well of emotion rose inside her. “It just…it feels like cheating, somehow.”
“It’s not cheating,” Aran said, his tone firm. “You paid for this. You got pushed around by time, a hundred years ago and again, five years ago, when you stopped the planeload of Sarin smashing into Greater London. Time doesn’t care about you. It doesn’t have rules or morals or empathy. You paid and your life hasn’t been the same since. You even had to take risks and work to get this.” He tapped the cheque again. “Now you get payback.”
She drew in a deep breath and nodded. “Put that way…”