Page 6 of Christmas Baby with Her Ultra-Rich Boss

‘What about the workload? You find it manageable?’ He should not be hoping she would confess to finding it too hard and resign on the spot.

‘It’s nothing I didn’t expect when I applied for the role,’ she answered.

‘And the responsibility? It is a big step going from duty manager to general manager.’ It was a responsibility not everyone was cut out for. Hopefully, she would admit to being one of those people.

‘It is,’ she agreed, ‘but I have a great team around me. Everyone pulls their weight.’

‘Anything you have concerns about or feel needs my attention?’

‘Nothing that’s occurred since my last weekly report.’

They’d reached the lodge. Stopping to stamp the snow stuck to their boots, he asked, ‘You haven’t held anything back from me?’

If he hadn’t glanced at her he would have missed the flicker in her eyes.

She gave a quick shake of her head and said equally quickly, ‘I report everything that needs reporting.’

Narrowing his eyes, Konstantinos wondered if the colour in her cheeks was purely a side effect of the cold, or down to her having just told a blatant lie. He was well aware his managers sanitised their reports for his reading, failing to include minor incidents that he should, by rights and by contract, be kept apprised of. He let them go. He couldn’t micromanage every aspect—that was what he paid the managers to do for him and he had to trust their judgement on what was deemed serious enough to notify him about. Occasionally though, he would learn of incidents that had no place being swept under the carpet. The question was whether Lena was covering up for something minor or something more serious. Her reaction made him suspect the latter.

They stepped inside. Konstantinos pulled his hat off, unzipped his snowsuit, and appraised her flushed face one last time. ‘I believe your shift has finished. Leave your office unlocked for me. There are members of staff I wish to speak to.’

She’d made no attempt to remove any of her own clothing, and now he detected a noticeable flicker of fear in her dark brown eyes. ‘About me?’

By now convinced she was hiding or covering up something, he smiled tightly. ‘Everything appears to be in order but I take nothing at face value. I will call you in if I discover anything that needs your attention or explaining. Enjoy your personal time.’

Long past midnight, stripping off in the privacy of a log cabin far more luxurious than the last cabin he’d slept in whilst there, Konstantinos was unsure if he was relieved or disappointed that the only misdemeanours Lena had failed to notify him of were so minor it would have annoyed him if she’d added them to a report. He’d been disgruntled to find that all the reasons he’d promoted her a good few years sooner than he would anyone else in her position had proven sound and that Lena was an exemplary manager. She had the respect and loyalty of her whole staff and, in some cases, adoration.

Glass of Scotch in hand, he climbed into the rolltop bath he’d run to warm his frozen bones, sank under the hot water, and tried not to mentally plot the route to Lena’s cabin. She would have upgraded since their night together, staff accommodation being consummate to position. Only staff with a managerial title had a cabin to themselves. The general manager was granted the largest of them all.

After a large sip, he leaned his head back, closed his eyes, and tried to breathe out the tightness in his chest and the heavy ache in his loins.

He should have taken that woman in California up on her offer the other week. He’d attended a tech investment conference—Konstantinos’s businesses were varied—and her interest in him had been obvious from the moment she’d read his name tag. It never ceased to amaze him how his sex appeal grew once his name was recognised. Beautiful women who barely gave him a second glance when he was anonymous suddenly switched into beguiling flirt mode. A cynic would think it was his money they were after. A cynic, if in the mood, would take them up on their unspoken offers and enjoy a night of no-strings sex. If he’d accepted the Californian woman’s offer of a nightcap in her room, an offer made as she fingered the length of his tie, he could have purged himself. Five months of celibacy wasn’t healthy. He’d never gone this long between lovers before, which only brought his thoughts back to Lena, the last woman he’d been with.

Konstantinos threw the rest of his Scotch down his throat and swallowed it in one gulp.

Come the morning and he wouldn’t hang around. He’d keep appearances up, congratulate Lena on running a tight ship, and then get the hell out of this godforsaken place until the summer.

CHAPTER THREE

LENADABBEDCONCEALERunder her eyes to hide the dark circles that had formed after her terrible night’s lack of sleep. Many more nights like that and her circles would be as dark as Konstantinos’s.

A smear of balm over her lips and then she donned her snowsuit over her work clothes and set off on the short journey to the lodge. Apprehension and fear had compressed into knots in her stomach. She’d spent the whole night on tenterhooks waiting for her phone to ring and for Konstantinos’s unemotional, gravelly voice to invite her back to the lodge so he could sack her.

She’d been convinced she was going to lose her job, certain he’d discover the incident of the missing petty cash—whoever had taken it had replaced the money the next day—and the drunken scuffle between two members of staff that hadn’t been witnessed by any of the guests but which had resulted in broken furniture in the staff lounge. That, too, had been resolved the very next morning with a brisk hungover handshake, a bear hug, and a lot of glue.

After hanging up her snowsuit and checking her small bump was still hidden beneath the oversized sweater, Lena headed to her office.

Konstantinos was already there, sat at her desk, unshaven but dressed in a shirt and tie and black sweater, looking at something on her computer. Her knotted stomach lurched and her heart made that same quivering jump from yesterday.

He must have turned the heating up. The air in her usually balmy office currently felt more like the air in the sauna.

Somehow, she managed to inject a form of brightness into her tone. ‘Good morning. Is everything okay?’

He glanced up from the screen and gave a short nod. ‘You have an email from one of the grocery suppliers. They will be late with their delivery today.’

‘You’re going through my emails?’

‘Your work emails,’ he corrected. ‘And I wasn’t going through them. The notification popped up on the screen two minutes ago. Would you have a problem with me looking at them?’

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