Page 28 of The Boss's Forbidden Assistant

He was more than tempted to go up to their room. Curious as all hell, in fact, to know just what she did in these thirty minutes. He now knew that it was a scheduled thing with another party, and it couldn’t easily be rescheduled, but beyond that he was in the dark—not a place Salvador da Rocha generally liked to be.

He sipped his coffee, eyes fixed on the door of the bar, waiting, watchful, his whole body tense and on alert in a state of adrenaline preparing to flow.

She walked in about fifteen minutes past the time her half-hour appointment would have ended, and something clutched in his gut low and fierce, a taste filling his mouth that he couldn’t explain. Beneath the table, his hands formed balls on his thighs and his eyes clung to her as she looked around the bar, lips pressed together, eyes hooded, figure hidden in a boxy linen dress.

But he’d seen her. He’d touched her. It didn’t matter what she wore; he saw her as she’d been in his office and he yearned for her.

Fire spread through his veins as he remembered the way it had felt to kiss her in Greece. The way her body had been so soft and pliant against him, her slender curves addictive, so he’d wanted to strip her naked right then and there and take her.

It had been a tempest, a storm, a raging desire, and he’d thanked whatever powers there meant that he’d been able to bring it to a close. But he was only a man, a mortal, and resisting Harper would take a superhuman effort, more strength than he possessed.

He closed his eyes for a moment and thought of Anna-Maria, thought of their baby, thought of the pain that had come from opening his heart, from openinghimself,and he knew he couldn’t weaken with Harper.

But then she looked in his direction. Their eyes met and he was sinking, without control, without consent, deep into that abyss again...but now he was no longer sure he wanted to escape.

He stood as she approached the table, the old-fashioned courtesy somehow in keeping with his character. Her heart did a funny little pop. She hovered at the seat opposite without taking it.

‘How was your appointment?’ he asked casually, too casually. She understood the curiosity he felt. It was natural.

Harper hesitated. She never spoke about her mother, especially not to colleagues. Revealing the vulnerability made her feel weak, or as though people might treat her differently. She liked to be seen as strong and in charge. But Salvador’s voice, his eyes, everything about him, made her want to tell him the truth.

‘It went well,’ she said eventually, a little unevenly. The truth was, it hadn’t gone well. Her mother had barely been lucid. Those days were the hardest. Harper offered a tight smile and then belatedly folded herself into the seat opposite. A waiter appeared brandishing a drinks menu. Harper ordered a coffee, taking her lead from Salvador. This was business, not a date, despite the convivial setting. ‘How was the rest of your meeting?’ she asked, pulling her laptop from her bag. ‘Did you like the parquetry?’

He laughed, and she sat bolt-upright, the sound as welcome now as it had been the first time she’d heard it.

‘Excellent parquetry,’ he confirmed. ‘Definitely worth buying the hotel for.’

‘If not their reservation system.’

‘That I could do without.’

‘If these hotels are all part of the same chain, why aren’t their systems the same?’

‘They’ve been bought over the years and slowly homogenised, but this was the last to be acquired, and therefore the last to be modernised.’

‘So that’s a job for you.’

He dipped his head.

‘Are you going to buy them?’

He scanned her face. ‘What do you think I should do?’

Harper considered that, her pulse racing. ‘I think you should.’

‘Why? Two of them run at a loss.’

‘That’s true,’ she agreed, leaning forward, all of the tension forgotten as she warmed to her theme, excited to have a chance to say what she’d been thinking for days when she hadn’t been thinking obsessively about Salvador. ‘But there’s a huge amount of wastage. I checked their linen costs, for example, and they’re astronomical. They’re still running on a policy of laundering all towels and sheets daily. Most hotels, as a concession to the environment, offer guests incentives to reuse towels and skip housekeeping services.’

His eyes narrowed, and he remained very still, but Harper didn’t notice. She was too enlivened by the chance to share what she’d been looking at.

‘I ran the figures,’ she continued. ‘You’d save twelve per cent of operating costs if you implemented a similar scheme. That’s in comparison to competing hotels in the same cities,’ she explained.

‘What else?’

‘Food and beverage. All of the hotels offer round-the-clock room service, but between eleven at night and, say, six in the morning, it’s running at a huge loss.’

‘They’re five-star hotels. Guests expect to be catered to at any time of day.’

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