Page 15 of How to Win the Wild Billionaire

Digby pushed his hand through his hair and gripped the back of a wrought iron chair. “Work for me. Be my designer. I’ll be the project manager, will provide the cash and funding and source the crew.”

He watched her eyes widen, excitement flashing then fading. “I’d love to but, jeez, Digby, I don’t think I can.”

“Why on earth not?” Digby demanded, unable to believe she was passing up this opportunity. “If you work with me, you will not only be earning an excellent salary. You can say that you were the designer on a hell of a project. Provided you do a good job, and I don’t see why you wouldn’t, I would be happy to write a letter of recommendation for you. Working for me would open up a lot of doors for you.”

“I understand that and I’m grateful for the offer but it’s not that simple!” Bay cried, standing up abruptly. “Can I be honest?”

“Please do.”

“I didn’t really think this through. I was so caught up in the design work and forgot about the practicalities of working for you, working for anyone, actually. I’m guessing that there would be very tight time constraints, wouldn’t there?”

“Yeah, obviously. Shutting anything down means losing money so, yes, you’d have to work long hours and plenty of overtime. You’d be recompensed accordingly.”

Bay twisted her lips. “But that’s my problem, Digby. I can’t work long hours and loads of overtime. I’m responsible for a little girl who lost both her parents six months ago and who is, I’m quite sure, suffering from separation anxiety. While I desperately need an income, and a steady job, I can’t leave her for extended periods. I especially can’t leave her alone at night and Mama B is too old to look after a three-year-old every day.”

Digby stared at her and scratched his head. Damn, he’d forgotten about Olivia. And he remembered how he felt, as a young teenager losing Jack—he’d suffered terribly and had clung to Radd—so he understood Olivia’s fear of losing Bay.

Hell, he wasstillterrified that he was going to lose Radd. As his dreams kept reminding him.

But he couldn’t lose Bay’s talents either. If he did, he didn’t know how long it would take before he found someone else who got him.

Got his vision, got what he wanted for The Vane, he clarified.

He thought for a minute, then a minute more. “What if you brought Olivia to work with you?” he asked.

“Then I would get no work done,” Bay crisply replied. “She’s sweet and lovely but she’s demanding. And willful.

“And she doesn’t trust strangers,” Bay added.

“She seemed to trust me,” Digby said.

“I know and that was super strange. But you did bring Fluffy back so... Are you offering to look after her while I work?” Bay asked him. She smiled. “I give you a half a day and you’ll be begging me for mercy.”

“She can’t be that bad,” Digby protested.

“She’s worse,” Bay cheerfully replied. She hesitated, started to speak and shook her head.

Digby encouraged her to voice her thoughts and after a moment she spoke again. “Maybe I can do the drawings for you, set up the mood boards for you, and you can take it from there. You can pay me for doing that.”

Digby thought about her suggestion and pretty much instantly dismissed it. “I worked on the design of Kagiso Lodge with Radd, and things we thought would work on paper sometimes didn’t. I’d need you to be there to give immediate input, to make changes on the fly.”

“That’s fair.” Bay’s expression closed down and she lifted her shoulders in a weary shrug. “I appreciate your offer, Digby, and your faith in my work, but I just don’t see how it would work. And I don’t want to start something, be excited about it and have it come crashing down around my ears. I desperately need a stable, secure job.”

He heard the tension in her voice, saw the way her fists clenched and opened and thought that there was a lot Bay wasn’t telling him. And that was okay...

For now.

“I’m prepared to offer you a decent contract,” Digby informed her. “And I have an idea about what to do with Olivia...”

Bay lifted her sexy eyebrows—he’d never thought a pair of brows could be sexy until today—and waited for him to continue.

“Today I signed off on some new hires from Human Resources, including a three-month contract for an American looking for temporary work as a waitress...”

He hesitated, wondering if Bay would go for his proposal. There was only one way to find out...

CHAPTER FOUR

ASDIGBYBEGANoutlining his proposal, Bay felt like she was on a Tilt-A-Whirl, or that she was a dandelion trying to survive a hurricane. What washappening?

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