Chapter Three
EIGHT DAYS LATER, Erin found herself staring, with trepidation, at the suitcase sitting by the front door of her little rented two-up, two-down terraced house on the outskirts of London.
Fortunately, considering the fact that she would shortly be flying to the Caribbean with him, the discomfort she had briefly felt in Raffaele’s presence ever since the cocktail party had faded as they once more settled into the usual routine of work, work, work.
No more curious questions about her private life. No more provocative remarks that made her feel hot and bothered and on edge.
Raffaele had returned to the grindstone and indeed, she hadn’t seen him at all for the past four days. He’d disappeared to New York on business.
Yesterday, he had emailed her to tell her that he would send his driver to collect her and take her to the airport.
Normally, she managed all his travel arrangements but he knew her well.
She suspected that he’d worked out that presenting her with a fait accompli would do away with her predictable protests that she would be more than happy to arrange her own transport, which was what she’d done on every other occasion when they’d travelled anywhere together on business.
Fine when it was a short hop at a civilised time during the day.
Less fine for a transatlantic long-haul trip at an ungodly hour in the morning.
‘I’ll be waiting for you in the first-class lounge,’ he’d instructed her.
‘We can take some time to discuss the nitty-gritty of the hotel accounts and expenditures so that we’re prepared for the meetings we’ll be having with the hotel manager and his lot and Erin—’ even as she’d read the closing sentence of his email, she’d had no trouble picturing the amused grin on his face ‘—don’t forget it’s going to be boiling hot and humid over there.
Feel free to jettison the woolly tights and starchy skirts. ’
Right now, at a little after six in the morning, she was dressed in a loose pair of cargo pants and a short-sleeved T-shirt.
She’d thrown the grey cardigan she usually wore to the office over the T-shirt in a nod to the fact that this wasn’t going to be a holiday.
It was going to be about work and meetings.
She would have felt more comfortable in her usual uniform of a skirt, a blouse and her black pumps, but even she had to acknowledge that that look wouldn’t do in searing tropical heat. Not unless she wanted to pass out with heat stroke.
Her case contained an assortment of similarly summer clothes, most of which hadn’t seen the light of day since last year when she’d had a two-week holiday in Cyprus with two girlfriends.
She was hovering in her small sitting room, glancing anxiously at her watch, when the doorbell rang half an hour before she was expecting it to. Overtaken by a sudden flurry of nerves, she leapt to her feet and headed for the front door.
She glanced at her reflection in the mirror in the tiny, narrow hallway.
She looked young and fresh-faced and not much like Raffaele Rossi’s PA heading off for a week of high-level meetings and writing up reports.
With one hand on her case and her bag slung over her shoulder, she pulled open the door—and drew in a sharp breath, her eyes widening in shock.
‘Raffaele!’
Her boss stood on her doorstep lounging against the door frame, hand raised as though on the verge of ringing the doorbell again. He was casually dressed in black jeans, a black polo shirt and uberexpensive tan handmade loafers. The absence of all logos proclaimed just how pricey his clothes were.
‘What are you doing here?’ Erin asked.
‘I thought it might be fairly obvious. I’ve come to collect you to take you to the airport.’
‘I was expecting George!’
‘Sadly George had to pull out at the last minute. His wife’s been rushed to hospital with a burst appendix.
I thought it might be a little insensitive to tell him to drive us to Gatwick first before going to the hospital to hold her hand.
Open up and let me in. I have time for a quick coffee before we head off. ’
‘That’s awful!’
‘What’s awful? George’s sudden health crisis with his wife—’ Raffaele grinned ‘—or my unexpected appearance on your doorstep?’
‘George, of course!’
‘I’ll be sure to pass on your condolences.’
‘I could have taken public transport,’ Erin huffed as she continued to guard the door with folded arms.
‘I wouldn’t dream of letting you take public transport to the airport, Erin. How would you get to Gatwick from here, anyway? I don’t recall passing any Tubes on the way. Or maybe I passed one a thousand miles back.’
He nudged the front door and Erin reluctantly stepped aside.
Raffaele had never been to her house. There had never been any reason for him to have visited. Now that he was here, she could feel a tide of mortification rising up inside her.
So there wasn’t a Tube. There was a mainline station which she took to Waterloo and then it was easy enough to connect with whatever Tube she wanted. Granted the mainline station was a hearty walk away but there was no such thing as too much exercise.
The area was respectable enough and the house was acceptable enough, and her landlady was a dream who had allowed her to paint the walls and hang one or two pictures and plant whatever she’d wanted to plant in the back garden.
But as she looked at her boss turning a full circle in the small hallway, she mentally cringed because she knew that this wouldn’t have been what he would have expected, not given the amount he paid her.
‘I can make you a coffee if you like,’ she offered, breaking the telling silence briskly, ‘but perhaps it might be a good idea to get to the airport early? We’ll be less rushed if we discuss business once we’re there.’ She remained where she was, arms folded.
Raffaele focused his eyes on her for a few silent seconds.
Frankly, he was shocked.
Why was she living here? In a faceless, nondescript suburb miles from public transport, never mind cafés, restaurants, shops and any sort of buzzy infrastructure suitable for a girl of her age?
The nearest he had found to any sort of life had been a strip of uninspiring shops on what passed for the high street. Several had been boarded up.
She was paid a small fortune!
Where was the money going? How many more layers were there to peel away to reveal the real Erin Fisher? How was it that in four years he had succeeded in finding out less about her than he’d found out about the guy who delivered his post?
Curiosity tore through him but he nodded slowly and agreed.
‘Good idea. You can fill me in roughly on any background information you’ve got on the hotel group. General stuff. We can hit the details later when I’ve got my computer in front of me and I’m not behind the wheel of a car. Where’s your bag?’
‘It’s okay, I can carry it.’ Erin grabbed her compact suitcase, which she’d left by the front door, glanced around her one last time.
As he passed by her through the front door, Raffaele could see her mind working—making sure she hadn’t forgotten anything, mentally double-checking that everything that should be turned off was turned off and everything that should be turned on was turned on.
Everything he never had to consider when he left on trips; he had others to worry about those things for him.
Finally, Erin stepped out and locked up.
‘Sure you have enough in that small case?’
‘It’s not a holiday. It’s a work week, so I’ve taken pretty much what I would wear for a work week.’
‘But excluding,’ Raffaele murmured, sliding an amused sideways glance at her, ‘the starchy skirts and blouses…’
Erin huffed her way into the passenger seat of Raffaele’s sleek, black Ferrari and didn’t respond to the jibe.
‘Well?’
He turned to her when he was in the car, flicking on the engine but staring at her for a few seconds as he waited for her to answer.
‘No starchy skirts. Raffaele, you made that clear in your email. I’ve googled the weather over there so obviously I haven’t packed my tights and fleecy jumpers and overcoat.’
Raffaele burst out laughing and pulled away from the kerb.
‘What about swimsuits?’
‘What about them?’
‘Any tucked away in your very small case?’
‘I had no idea I would be needing those for a working holiday,’ Erin said tartly. ‘Are we planning on conducting meetings in the ocean?’
Raffaele was still laughing as she fetched her notebook from her handbag and began prepping him on all the non-essential details of the hotel chain that might not seem immediately relevant but which might hold the key to whether he acquired the properties or not.
This was something Erin was especially good at.
She’d worked hard to get to university and she’d known, the minute she started doing her research, that the best courses would be the ones that led to concrete jobs.
She’d studied accounting and finance with a view to becoming a chartered accountant but along the way had got spooked at the promise of a job that would require very long hours doing things that seemed too repetitive to be satisfying, at least for her.
Plus, her parents had been entering an unstable time of their lives, ready to settle down but without the money to buy anywhere at all.
They were getting older, with their mobile home looking like it might be their forever home, so she wanted a job that paid well but didn’t consume her every waking moment.
She needed to be there for them when they inevitably needed her.
When they’d been younger, they’d managed just fine but now that they were no longer moving around, Erin could see how much they had aged over the years.
They’d had her very late in life and now were both in their late sixties and bewildered by modern life, which seemed to have passed them by in their colourful, adventurous travels. Their computer was a thousand years old and only used for the most basic of tasks.