She smiled. “With mirrors.”
“You’re a puzzle.”
“Am I? Why?”
“At this moment you’re arguably the most successful builder in New York. Your name is plastered on half the real estate in this town. You’re putting up the world’s tallest skyscraper. Your competitors call you the Iron Butterfly. You’ve made it big in a business traditionally dominated by men.”
“Does that bother you, Mr. Thompson?”
“No. What bothers me, Miss Cameron, is that I can’t figure out who you are. When I ask two people about you, I get three opinions. Everyone grants that you’re a brilliant businesswoman. I mean…you didn’t fall off a hay wagon and become a success. I know a lot about construction crews—they’re a rough, tough bunch of men. How does a woman like you keep them in line?”
She smiled. “There are no women like me. Seriously, I simply hire the best people for the job, and I pay them well.”
Too simplistic, Thompson thought. Much too simplistic. The real story is what she’s not telling me. He decided to change the direction of the interview.
“Every magazine on the stands has written about how successful you are. I’d like to do a more personal story. There’s been very little printed about your background.”
“I’m very proud of my background.”
“Good. Let’s talk about that. How did you get started in the real estate business?”
Lara smiled, and he could see that her smile was genuine. She suddenly looked like a little girl.
“Genes.”
“Your genes?”
“My father’s.” She pointed to a portrait on a wall behind her. It showed a handsome-looking man with a leonine head of silver hair. “That’s my father—James Hugh Cameron.” Her voice was soft. “He’s responsible for my success. I’m an only child. My mother died when I was very young, and my father brought me up. My family left Scotland a long time ago, Mr. Thompson, and emigrated to Nova Scotia—New Scotland, Glace Bay.”
“Glace Bay?”
“It’s a fishing village in the northeast part of Cape Breton, on the Atlantic shore. It was named by early French explorers. It means ‘ice bay.’ More coffee?”
“No, thanks.”
“My grandfather owned a great deal of land in Scotland, and my father acquired more. He was a very wealthy man. We still have our castle there near Loch Morlich. When I was eight years old, I had my own horse, my dresses were bought in London, we lived in an enormous house with a lot of servants. It was a fairy tale life for a little girl.”
Her voice was alive with echoes of long-ago memories.
“We would go ice skating in the winter, and watch hockey games, and go swimming at Big Glace Bay Lake in the summer. And there were dances at the Forum and the Venetian Gardens.”
The reporter was busily making notes.
“My father put up buildings in Edmonton, and Calgary, and Ontario. Real estate was like a game to him, and he loved it. When I was very young, he taught me the game, and I learned to love it, too.”
Her voice was filled with passion. “You must understand something, Mr. Thompson. What I do has nothing to do with the money or the bricks and steel that make a building. It’s the people who matter. I’m able to give them a comfortable place to work or to Jive, a place where they can raise families and have decent lives. That’s what was important to my father, and it became important to me.”
Hugh Thompson looked up. “Do you remember your first real estate venture?”
Lara leaned forward. “Of course. On my eighteenth birthday my father asked me what I would like as a gift. A lot of newcomers were arriving in Glace Bay, and it was getting crowded. I felt the town needed more places for them to live. I told my father I wanted to build a small apartment house. He gave me the money as a present, but two years later I was able to pay him back. Then I borrowed money from a bank to put up a second building. By the time I was twenty-one, I owned three buildings, and they were all successful.”