Page 86 of Bad Luck Bride

Kay laughed at how true that was. “What you mean is that we Brits want to see the pyramids in the morning, then have our tea and eat scones with jam in the afternoon, while we gaze out over the Nile and talk about merry old England?”

“Exactly so,” he said, laughing with her. “I was sure a hotel that catered to wealthy British tourists was bound to make money. I also loved Cairo. It’s one of the most exciting, vibrant cities you can imagine. So I built my hotel, and once the hotel was profitable, I builtanother, and then another. I also built myself a house right beside my first hotel in Cairo. Very modern,” he added. “Electricity, bathrooms, hot and cold laid on, all that.”

“Did you…” She hesitated, lowering her gaze to the table, tracing little circles with her finger, then she took a breath and looked at him again. “You never thought of coming home?”

He held her gaze steadily across the table. “No, Kay. Not after Giles. I felt as if we’d rather crossed the Rubicon there.”

She nodded, seeing in his eyes the same pain that still lingered inside herself. “You mean you felt I had forsaken you.”

“Yes. From what you told me, you felt the same.”

“Yes.”

They both fell silent, the past suddenly between them again like a wide, unbridgeable divide. She wasn’t an infatuated girl, and he wasn’t a wild, adventurous youth, and they weren’t caught up in the frantic, reckless throes of first love. That was all over, they were completely different people now, with completely disparate lives, and one could never go back.

Abruptly, he pushed back his chair and stood up. “It’s getting late. We should get on, if we’re going to tour this place before it gets dark.”

She nodded. “Of course.”

They gathered up the remaining food, put it in the basket, and left the kitchen. They left the picnic basket by the lobby door, and for the remainder of the afternoon, their conversation was strictly professional. But as she jotted down notes and took measurements and discussed the potential of the property they were viewing, the past still rattled around in her head, and she wondered suddenly what her life would have been like if she hadn’t been sensible. If shehadn’t cared what her parents and friends thought. If she’d listened to her heart instead of her head.

Would their wild, passionate infatuation have grown into a mature love that would last? Or would they have fallen into the typical stale, loveless marriages so many other people had, realizing they had nothing to say to each other and nothing in common?

She’d never know now. And to be honest, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know. Because regrets were a waste of time.

17

The day after their tour of the hotels, Devlin made sure to stay away from the Mayfair as much as possible, for he knew that the game of romance required both pushing forward and strategic retreat. But the next day, when he received another note from her, inquiring if the day following he was free to view more properties, he was glad to answer in the affirmative.

Though his goal was courtship with a view to matrimony, he knew he could not endure the excruciatingly sedate wooing that involved long strolls side by side under the watchful eyes of chaperones, dancing only once at each ball, and having afternoon tea with her mother, and he very much doubted such efforts would bring Kay any closer to changing her mind.

Touring the hotels gave him opportunities to be alone with her, as Delia had shrewdly surmised, but he suspected that even that wouldn’t be enough. She hadn’t quite forgiven him for that kiss at the house party, but he sensed that if he could only kiss her again, hold her in his arms, awaken her passion, he might get somewhere. If she didn’t haul off and slap him, of course. And a few kisses might eventually persuade her to agree to marry him. It was a riskystrategy, though, for he didn’t want to compromise her, not again, and he would have to tread carefully.

With that in mind, he appeared at her office at the appointed time. Kay, however, didn’t seem to notice his arrival, for she was standing behind her desk, staring at a slip of pale pink paper in her hand, a wide smile on her face.

He tapped his knuckles on the doorjamb, giving a cough, and she looked up.

“Good morning,” he said and nodded to the paper in her hand as he came in. “You look as if you backed a longshot and won the Derby.”

She laughed. “No, no, nothing like that. But look.”

She held out the paper with a triumphant flourish as he halted in front of her desk. “I just gotpaid.”

She said the word almost reverently. He leaned closer, studying the bank draft a bit dubiously, not sure a mere five pounds was worth such veneration. “Well, yes,” he murmured. “That’s rather the hope when one obtains employment. That one will be paid.”

“I’ve never been paid wages before. I mean, I get a dress allowance from Giles, of course, but that’s different.” She looked down at the check and laughed again. “I worked for this. I earned it.”

She sounded almost… awed. She lifted her head again, her smile so happy, it made him smile, too. “Why, Kay, you seem almost giddy.”

“So I am! You’re laughing at me,” she accused, still smiling.

“I’m not,” he denied. “Well,” he amended at once, “maybe a little.”

“Oh, I’m sure five pounds a week is a tiny fraction of what you earn in a year, but…” She paused, waving the check in the air. “It’s so gratifying to feel one isuseful.”

That took him back, rather. “You don’t feel as if you are useful?”

“Most women don’t,” she countered, making a face. “We pay calls and do the season and go to house parties. We buy clothes and write letters, we garden, we embroider cushions, and raise funds for charity… but it’s all for the sole purpose of killing time. Until we’re married, we have no place, no real purpose but to be decorative.”

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