‘Good idea. You can fill me in roughly on any background information you’ve got on the hotel group. General stuff. We can hit the details later when I’ve got my computer in front of me and I’m not behind the wheel of a car. Where’s your bag?’
‘It’s okay, I can carry it.’ Erin grabbed her compact suitcase, which she’d left by the front door, glanced around her one last time.
As he passed by her through the front door, Raffaele could see her mind working—making sure she hadn’t forgotten anything, mentally double-checking that everything that should be turned off was turned off and everything that should be turned on was turned on. Everything he never had to consider when he left on trips; he had others to worry about those things for him.
Finally, Erin stepped out and locked up.
‘Sure you have enough in that small case?’
‘It’s not a holiday. It’s a work week, so I’ve taken pretty much what I would wear for a work week.’
‘But excluding,’ Raffaele murmured, sliding an amused sideways glance at her, ‘the starchy skirts and blouses…’
Erin huffed her way into the passenger seat of Raffaele’s sleek, black Ferrari and didn’t respond to the jibe.
‘Well?’
He turned to her when he was in the car, flicking on the engine but staring at her for a few seconds as he waited for her to answer.
‘No starchy skirts. Raffaele, you made that clear in your email. I’ve googled the weather over there so obviously I haven’t packed my tights and fleecy jumpers and overcoat.’
Raffaele burst out laughing and pulled away from the kerb.
‘What about swimsuits?’
‘What about them?’
‘Any tucked away in your very small case?’
‘I had no idea I would be needing those for a working holiday,’ Erin said tartly. ‘Are we planning on conducting meetings in the ocean?’
Raffaele was still laughing as she fetched her notebook from her handbag and began prepping him on all the non-essential details of the hotel chain that might not seem immediately relevant but which might hold the key to whether he acquired the properties or not.
This was something Erin was especially good at.
She’d worked hard to get to university and she’d known, the minute she started doing her research, that the best courses would be the ones that led to concrete jobs. She’d studied accounting and finance with a view to becoming a chartered accountant but along the way had got spooked at the promise of a job that would require very long hours doing things that seemed too repetitive to be satisfying, at least for her.
Plus, her parents had been entering an unstable time of their lives, ready to settle down but without the money to buy anywhere at all. They were getting older, with their mobile home looking like it might be their forever home, so she wanted a job that paid well but didn’t consume her every waking moment. She needed to be there for them when they inevitably needed her.
When they’d been younger, they’d managed just fine but now that they were no longer moving around, Erin could see how much they had aged over the years.
They’d had her very late in life and now were both in their late sixties and bewildered by modern life, which seemed to have passed them by in their colourful, adventurous travels. Their computer was a thousand years old and only used for the most basic of tasks.
She’d had to introduce them to technology bit by bit and had realised that any job that demanded all of her time wasn’t going to work, and besides she wouldn’t enjoy it.
She’d had some interesting temp jobs while she waited for just the right one to come along and sure enough, the role as Raffaele’s assistant had fallen into her lap and had been sheer perfection. She’d been able to use everything she’d learned at university and had enjoyed delving into the details of projects without having to devote her entire life to them. She’d loved having the challenge of new things happening week after week whilst also maintaining a switch-off mode so that none of those new challenges became onerous.
She rattled off her findings as he drove, satnav guiding them on the fastest route. Raffaele listened with his head tilted to one side, interrupting to ask questions, nodding in agreement with some of her conclusions and then congratulating her on a thorough job when she’d finished.
‘My perfect little PA,’ he eventually murmured with satisfaction, ‘what would I do without you?’
‘I’m guessing you wouldn’t curl up in a corner, sobbing and crying and thinking that the sky had fallen in. You’d just find someone else.’ Erin glanced across at him with a wry smile and then kept looking, first at his aristocratic profile, the crooked smile on his mouth and then at the capable, long fingers holding the steering wheel. She had to tear her eyes away.
‘Took me a while to findyou.Do you remember what I told you about the long line of failed applicants?’
‘You mean the ones who just couldn’t help falling in love with you?’
‘Inappropriate crushes, I believe is what I said.’
