Page 2 of Emergency Engagement

Rafael strolled towards his desk, dark eyes pinned to the elfin girl in front of him whose face looked vaguely familiar, although he was damned if he could put his finger on it.

He knew what she was here about: some nonsense about the hotel he had bought. Of course, the deed was done; the hotel up in Yorkshire, along with the various outbuildings on either side of it, belonged to him. He had bought the lot and he had no intention of yielding to any bleeding-heart sob stories about slicing up his acquisition to share with anyone else.

But he had some experience of people from that part of the world. It was a closed community, suspicious of outsiders and happy to close ranks to make life difficult for them. He didn’t fancy a difficult life, so he’d agreed to this meeting—but it was going to be a waste of time for both of them.

He glanced at his watch and, when he looked back at her, her eyes were cool and scornful. They were green eyes, clear as glass, framed by thick, dark lashes and set against smooth, pale skin. Under the heavy jumper and thick, dark skirt, which he suspected had been worn in a token gesture to the fact that this was a meeting of sorts, she was slight. Her dark hair was very short, but it suited her, emphasising the delicacy of her heart-shaped face and the hugeness of those green eyes.

Right now, however, there was nothing fragile about either her posture or her expression.

‘I’m here about the outbuilding attached to the hotel, to be precise.’

‘This is hardly orthodox,’ Rafael drawled, moving to sit behind the desk so that she now felt in the position of someone being interviewed for a job she wasn’t going to get. ‘Cutting to the chase, I’ve bought the hotel, just as I’ve bought the places alongside it. As you’ll probably know, I have every intention of developing the lot into a niche boutique hotel, and taking those acres of tumbleweed and overgrown fields and doing somethingcreative with them. A mower might prove to be a good start on that. I’ve cast an eye over your objections and it would seem that...’ he scrolled through his computer, then looked at her ‘...your plans were to buy one of the outbuildings for yourself?’

‘Correct.’

‘That’s unfortunate for you. You have my heartfelt sympathy but business, as you know, is business.’

‘This is more than justabout businessfor me,’ Sammy said through gritted teeth. ‘I’ve spentyearsputting money aside so that I can accumulate a deposit to buy somewhere suitable for my venture. That outbuilding was my dream come true because I had also got someone in to look at converting the upstairs into a place for me to live.’

‘And that’s a shame,’ Rafael said politely. ‘You might have something to say about Clifford selling the hotel to me, when he’d presumably already accepted an offer from you for the building attached to it, but...’ He shrugged—as if, “what do you expect me to do?”—and kept his eyes pinned to her face.

‘I have, as it happens! You offered him a stupid amount of money. His daughter is ill and that sort of money would mean that he’d be able to give her private medical treatment. He was in a no-win position.’

‘Hardly my fault.’

‘The hotel was doing fine, Mr Moreno! It was making sufficient money with the regulars, and in the summer months it was holding its own. It’s part of the community. It’s been there for over eighty years—and you want to bulldoze it!’

‘It’s decrepit and in need of some serious money spending on it. Plus, it’s heading in the wrong direction when it comes to making a profit. Trust me on this, Miss Payne. This is my business—I can spot something living on borrowed time from a mile away. There was no way Clifford was going to be able to keep on top of the repairs. He knew that. I did him a favour. Ifyour little concern happened to fall by the wayside, then you need to step back and look at the bigger picture.’

‘The bigger picture being the usual situation of a large, faceless conglomerate consuming the small, family business? Clifford and I had agreed that the money he made from selling that side-building to me would have gone towards upgrading the hotel!’

‘I know how much he offered you the place for. It would have been a drop in the ocean when it comes to making a dent in the work needed to haul that decaying old place into the twenty-first century.’

Sammy swallowed and tried to control her temper which was threatening to break its leash and run haywire. She dropped her eyes and clasped her fingers on her lap.

‘Why did you come here?’ Rafael asked softly. ‘Was it to try and get me to change my mind—even though the machinery has already started rolling for completion on the new hotel within the next couple of weeks?’

‘I’ve worked my fingers to the bone for the past five years.’ She did her best not to sound self-pitying, because by the looks of it this wasn’t a guy who empathised with anyone’s plight. ‘Worked to get myself into a place where I could actually buy somewhere to open my patisserie and café. I’ve sorted out all the equipment and it hasn’t been cheap. I’ve done the maths and worked out how to make a living doing what I love and what I’m good at. Clifford felt awful about selling to you. I was the first person he told. He suggested...’

‘What did he suggest?’

‘He suggested that you sell the outbuilding to me. If you want to somehow modernise it to fit in with your plans for the hotel, then maybe we could work out a repayment plan. I know it’ll make money—with its location, and it being attached to the hotel, there’s footfall. I would be willing to pay the mortgageeven if I couldn’t set up business immediately, even if I had to wait for work to be done...’

Rafael burst out laughing.

‘My apologies,’ he said, without a trace of apology in his voice. ‘But let me show you something.’

He fiddled on the keyboard and then swivelled the screen round so that she was looking at it, then he vaulted upright, his body long, lean and fluid, and swerved to stand behind her. He leant down, his hand resting on the arm of the leather chair in which she was sitting, and pointed to the screen.

Sammy’s vision blurred. She could make out something impressive and fancy, spinning round on the screen to afford a view from several angles, but it was hard to focus on anything because every nerve in her body was quivering at his sudden proximity.

‘So, you understand why that would be impossible?’

‘Sorry?’

Rafael stood up and then perched on the edge of his desk so that now she had nowhere to look but at him...and the the brown column of his neck where the white shirt was unbuttoned, cuffed to the elbows, the way the dark whorls of hair curled around the metal strap of his watch and the tight pull of his trousers over muscular thighs. Memories of her fourteen-year-old self gazing at him from the side-lines in those long summer months before he and his father had upped sticks and left now accosted her, making her thinking sluggish and woolly.

‘Clifford owned a hotel rooted in the past,’ Rafael said. He was talking slowly and gently, the voice of someone trying to explain the obvious to a halfwit. ‘The entire layout of the place left a lot to be desired. Some of the bedrooms actually shared a bathroom! Others had fireplaces that were so blocked, it’s a wonder they weren’t a registered fire hazard. It might havebeen languishing in its faded glory as a traditional timepiece, ticking along like an ancient grandfather clock, but that formula no longer works in this day and age. Those outbuildings? Falling apart at the seams. Destined for landfill, I’m afraid. The beautiful countryside in that part of the world demands something that people actually want to pay money to stay in, and that hotel and everything alongside it stopped fitting the bill fifty years ago.’

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