‘Unfortunately, the day job gets in the way of the saving the city full time.’ He smiled. ‘Without the aid of tight costumes, my father helped to revolutionise the computer industry in the 1980s. I spent a lot of my childhood watching him solder motherboards together.’
‘Is that a good thing or a bad thing?’
‘Back then, I would rather have spent my time watching NFL.’
‘And now?’
He nodded. ‘Yeah, pretty much still feel that way for the most part.’
‘So you’re not all work, work, work, then?’
Now the unease rolled into his shoulders as he thought about the job he did. The billions of pounds he played with, the employees he was responsible for. It was a burden. He didn’t love it like his father. He wasn’t exceptional like his brother. He was doing his best but he was hanging everything on the Globe. Failure wasn’t an option. He had to make that work or he didn’t know what came next.
He smiled, regaining his composure, hopefully before she had even realised it had diminished. ‘All work and no play isn’t my style.’
‘If only your staff could hear you now.’
The vodka and cranberry was doing strange things to her tongue. She liked to talk but she wasn’t usually this good at shooting herself in the foot every time words fell out of her mouth.
‘Was my name bandied around the dinner table along with the wine you couldn’t pronounce the name of?’
The tone of his voice had an edge to it and she quickly shook her head. ‘No, of course not. Dean isn’t like that.’ She hurried on. ‘He’s a hard worker and he’s the most intelligent person I know. And he’s very discreet. Completely discreet. Always has been.’ She hoped she had salvaged this.
‘Hopefully, he won’t be discreet when he brings the Globe to market. I want more press than a red carpet event at the Oscars.’
‘And I wouldn’t mind one of the dresses.’
Her fingers went to the hair clip on the front of her dress then across to the cut-off shoulders she hadn’t had time to hem. She cleared her throat. ‘None of those in my luggage. Anything with Swarovski crystals would completely eat into the baggage allowance.’
He smiled, seemed to drop his eyes to Angel’s hair clip on her dress. It had looked funky in the mirror at Dean’s apartment; now it felt trashy. Not that she cared. Because she was completely disinterested in men. This man in particular. Who was rude and abandoned dates and was definitely not giving her any kind of hot flush whatsoever.
‘So, you’re just visiting?’ he asked.
‘I think so…’ She wet her lips. ‘I didn’t mean that,’ she corrected. ‘I meant to say, yes.’
He looked quizzical then.
‘I’ve got a return ticket for just after New Year.’
His gaze was unsettling her now. She pulled at a petal on the hair clip. ‘School starts back in January.’ She swallowed. ‘You knowI have a daughter. The one your PA probably told you went on and on about you being an eligible bachelor.’
She really needed to stop talking now.
‘And she was getting very talkative about the lobsters at the restaurant the other night,’ he said.
Hayley looked up, a smile on her face. ‘You heard that?’
‘To be honest, it was pretty hard not to,’ he said with a wry smile.
‘Yeah, she’s loud and opinionated and too clever for her own good.’
‘What’s her name?’
‘Angel,’ Hayley said.
‘It’s pretty.’
‘I think she would rather be named after someone from history now she’s nine. Every day, I wait for the forms to change her name to Boudicca.’
