‘Maybe you just made them a little nervous, Raffaele. Or maybe if you’d widened the pool to include a few candidates over the age of thirty, you might have had a little more luck.’
The scenery was whizzing past them. She lived closer to Gatwick than Raffaele did and they were well on their way now, speeding towards the airport and with next to no traffic on the roads because it was still early.
‘You weren’t over the age of thirty and I don’t makeyounervous,’ he pointed out. ‘You settled in to my routine like a duck to water from day one. No blushing every time I looked at you…no stammering if I asked a question…no showing up in inappropriate outfits…’
‘Sorry, but I thought you were quite critical of my dress code.’ Erin settled back against the plush leather seat and half closed her eyes.
It was a stupid car. Who needed something this fast in London? But she had to admit that it was comfortable. Raffaele had once told her that he didn’t get to drive as often as he liked, so she could understand why he hadn’t delegated the task to someone else even though after New York he surely would have been a tiny bit jet-lagged.
People stared, mouths open, as the black Ferrari rushed past their more pedestrian cars on the motorway.
It was ridiculous to be tickled pink by that but Erin was.
‘Your dress code is perfectly acceptable. Although I’ve questioned it when you’ve shown up at Christmas parties in pretty much the same outfits as you wear to work.’
‘I don’t have wardrobes filled with cocktail dresses.’
Raffaele slanted a sideways glance at her.
Erin’s delicate, pale face was drawn. He took in the outfit, her interpretation of ‘casual’. Workmanlike cargo trousers, a T-shirt and a cardigan which she’d wrapped around herself.
He was only now realising just how little she put herself out to impress him on the physical front and just how surprising that was. Nearly every woman Raffaele had ever met had always done their best to impress him. Given the chance to show up in casual gear, Erin had chosen the least feminine outfit she could have got her hands on, even though the loose, unfussy clothes suited her slender frame, made her look incredibly feminine.
With a small jolt, he realised that being in her presence soothed him somehow. When he considered his life, the relationships he’d had… First, there was his cold, distant upbringing, carrying with it those hard lessons of hurt, sadness, disillusionment and eventually the erection of icy walls behind which his heart would forever be locked. Then that one crazy fling with a woman all those years ago who confirmed his belief that romantic happiness was beyond his grasp. It had been a painful reminder of his own inability to love; he’d tried but he just hadn’t had enough to give. After that, he had walked away from anything that required too much emotion of him. And now there were the women to whom he gave trinkets when everything ended. Fun, energetic, temporary.
Between all that, Erin occupied a special place.
She stimulated him intellectually and without a physical connection…yes, she soothed him, made him feel safe.
And now, more than that…she intrigued him.
What had she meant when she’d said that she didn’t have wardrobes full of cocktail dresses?
Did she hate cocktail dresses?
Because on her pay grade, she could certainly buy as many as she wanted. That thought brought him back to her house. What was going on there?
He dumped pointless introspection about his past and focused on the here and now. The suddenly very invigorating here and now with his once-predictable secretary. She had her secrets and he’d find out all about them in due course. It was a very pleasant prospect.
They were going to have a week together and not all of it was going to involve sitting in front of a computer or having back-to-back meetings with hotel people.
Next to him, Erin yawned.
‘You’re tired,’ he said.
‘I got up really early,’ Erin agreed. ‘Plus I went to bed really late. I wanted to finish doing as thorough a job as I could on researching the hotels and it took me a bit longer than I thought. I never knew the hotel business could have so many nooks and crannies. It’s not straightforward at all. The profit and loss columns are, but then things can change at the turn of the dice. If the restaurant in one of the hotels gets a new chef and the menu isn’t popular, business could fall off and that could affect the profit margins in a matter of weeks. If something happens that spooks the clientele, same could happen…’
‘Something like what? Murder in the building?’ Raffaele grinned but he was still half thinking about her living circumstances and tempted to ask her what was going on there.
‘You’d be surprised. I started checking out all the things that could go wrong in hotels, impacting their profits, and there’s a lot.’
Erin shifted so that she was half turned to look at him.
‘I still don’t get it, you know,’ she murmured drowsily, on the edge of nodding off in the sleek, powerful car.
‘Don’t get what?’
‘Why you’re interested in buying this chain of hotels. It feels like a real departure for you. And feel free to tell me to mind my own business but I’m just looking at it from a practical point of view. I know you said that it’s not about the money but I always figured that, with any luck, people end up doing the things they really enjoy and are good at and then they stick to the programme and don’t really deviate. And you’ve always seemed to thrive on the challenges of the financial world.’
