‘He really never mentioned it?’ Sam asked. ‘Not the hotel, not his business interests, nothing?’
She shook her head, glancing again at the bathroom door.
‘No, he really didn’t.’
‘Then he should have,’ Sam said. ‘Whatever else you can say about him, he’s not stupid. If he’s keeping quiet, it’s deliberate.’
‘Indeed.’ Her voice had gone flat. ‘See you later.’
She ended the call, slipped on her shoes, picked up her bag and jacket and, after a brief search, found a pen and notepad on his desk.
She wrote quickly, dropped the note on the coffee table where he couldn’t miss it, and let herself quietly out of the apartment.
As she hit the lift button, her only clear thought was that Oliver Perry-Warnes was going to regret using her as a stepping stone to destroying the heart of MacLeod’s Cove.
* * *
When Oliver finally emerged from the shower, towel around his waist, rubbing at his hair, he wasn’t immediately worried that the living area was empty.
She’ll be on the deck, he thought. Or back in the bedroom looking for something. Or making coffee.
But a quick check of the different decks, and then the bedroom, told him otherwise.
She’d gone.
A tight, unpleasant knot formed low in his gut.
He picked up his phone and called her. It went straight to voicemail. No ringing. No chance she simply didn’t hear it.
He was sliding the phone back onto the coffee table when he saw the folded sheet of paper. He opened it.
The note was short and unambiguous. It didn’t quite tell him where to go, but it came close enough. There could be no mistaking her meaning: she knew. And she was done.
He swore under his breath.
He hadn’t meant for it to happen like this. After last night — after the stupid, reckless tenderness of holding her while she slept — he’d decided he had to tell her the truth. Not the whole truth of why the hotel mattered to him, he wasn’t that far gone, but enough. He’d planned to frame it as an opportunity. With a few tweaks to the plans, he could have made space for her business, for their precious ‘community’.
He knew she was smart. A realist. A businesswoman. Given the right information, she might even have seen sense. Now that option had been ripped away.
He read the note again, then set it down carefully. His gaze flicked to her empty coffee mug, to the throw folded over the back of the sofa, to the faint indentation where her head had rested.
What had given him away?
Presumably she’d turned on her phone and googled him. He should have thought about that. It wouldn’t have taken much to find out about his current works in progress. And she’d put two and two together, and unfortunately, she appeared to be as good at maths as she was at everything else.
And then there was Sam. He swore again. What were the odds that a business acquaintance would not only live in MacLeod’s Cove but also be dating Lucy’s sister? Then he reminded himself, not for the first time, that he was in New Zealand now. Everyone knew everyone. If he wasn’t careful, he’d be bumping into half his old girlfriends, he thought bleakly. And wouldn’t that be miserable?
He had to face the facts. He’d failed.
And the result was worse than a lost building or a delayed project. Somewhere between that first glance across the street and last night on the sofa, his feelings for Lucy had slid from amused admiration into something far more dangerous.
She’d got under his skin.
And that, he thought bleakly, was worse than losing.
Chapter Seven
Lucy was pretty sure it was only anger that kept her tiredness at bay all weekend. On Saturday morning, after only a brief visit to her apartment to change, she’d gone straight to work. Saturday night she’d fallen into bed exhausted. On Sunday she’d kept busy at work, staying mainly in the kitchen, knowing that her mood to kill someone made her unfit for conversation and banter.
