Lucy dipped a finger into the bowl of dip, unable to resist, and tasted it. ‘Mm, not bad for a bought one.’
‘Lucy! How can you be so sure you won’t be hurt?’
They weren’t going to be diverted. She sighed and sat on a stool. ‘Because,’ she said, spreading dip onto a cracker, ‘there’s no way my heart will become engaged.’
Kate frowned, then her expression cleared. ‘He’s not vulnerable?’ She turned to Megan. ‘Lucy is a sucker for a sob story,’ she explained. ‘Anyone who’s vulnerable, an underdog, and she cracks.’
Lucy nodded, mouth full. She added a slice of cheese. It was good. She knew it would be; she’d bought it. ‘Far from it. Oliver is not an underdog, and I doubt he even knows what the word “vulnerable” means. He’s confident, arrogant, gorgeous, looks like he’s made of money, and he just wants to have fun.’
‘Oh, well then,’ said Kate, hesitating as she processed this. ‘Then I guess he might be all right.’
Lucy and Megan looked at each other and burst out laughing.
‘My mother,’ Lucy told Megan. ‘Must be the only one in the world who thinks it’s fine to date a bastard.’
‘Lucy has a point, Kate,’ said Megan, raising an eyebrow.
‘Bastards,’ said Kate, in the tone of someone delivering a verdict, ‘are easy to spot and easy to deal with. It’s men who are wounded who pose the real threat to my little girl. So, if this man isn’t wounded, then you have my permission to go out and have fun.’
‘Oh, well, that’s good. Because that is exactly what I intend to do. I must be away. I have seduction on the menu.’
Kate tutted. ‘I didn’t hear that.’
‘I did,’ said Megan, eyes wide.
Lucy glanced down at Megan’s pregnant belly and raised an eyebrow. She managed to close the door just before the cushion thudded against it.
‘Missed!’ she called as she walked back down the hall, her high heels clicking where the rugs ended.
Chapter Four
With one hand jammed in his trouser pocket and the other clamping his phone to his ear a fraction too tightly, Oliver gazed out across Wellington harbour.
It had been a long time since he’d had to listen to someone drone on about things he already knew. But he couldn’t cut the mayor of Wellington short. He needed him. He needed him in a way he’d never needed anyone, because he’d made a mistake. He’d underestimated something that should have been straightforward.
‘Of course, there’s no doubt about that,’ he said in his smoothest voice. He needed to sound in control even if he wasn’t.
He was rewarded with a rambling stream of corporate jargon, which might have impressed councillors but only irritated him.
For the sake of his temper, he let his mind drift, catching the odd phrase — ‘pursuant to clause 5… the city’s environmental policy…’ — and the one that made him close his eyes in frustration: ‘…proof of community support is central to the process.’
He forced himself to listen. The man on the other end of the phone would have the final say on whether Oliver could proceed with his central Wellington waterfront development. Ordinarily, he acted entirely independently, and he hated how entangled this project had become with the council. But if he was going to develop the land the way he wanted to, he had no choice. He might own it, but the council controlled what happened on it.
He needed their co-operation for zoning approvals, building consents, public easements, heritage reports — the whole tedious list. Most were already in train, some approved. The sticking point was his lack of a track record in community consultation. He’d never needed one before.
Now, the mayor couldn’t have been clearer: fail to get community support for his ‘test’ project — the Old Colonial Hotel at MacLeod’s Cove — and the waterfront development would stall. Permanently.
And this waterfront site wasn’t just another investment. It was land his family had once owned and his father had sold, impoverishing their legacy with his own weakness and greed. The development was meant to honour the only member of Oliver’s family who’d ever shown him love or respect — his grandmother — and reclaim his grandfather’s name. This was personal. It wasn’t about money.
If he failed, he’d be left with a crumbling hotel in godforsaken MacLeod’s Cove and mega-expensive prime real estate he couldn’t develop as he’d planned.
He’d bought the hotel out of desperation — to tick the ‘community consultation’ box.
He’d assumed it would be easy.
He’d assumed wrong.
All because of one woman.
