Chapter Three #2
She’d had to introduce them to technology bit by bit and had realised that any job that demanded all of her time wasn’t going to work, and besides she wouldn’t enjoy it.
She’d had some interesting temp jobs while she waited for just the right one to come along and sure enough, the role as Raffaele’s assistant had fallen into her lap and had been sheer perfection.
She’d been able to use everything she’d learned at university and had enjoyed delving into the details of projects without having to devote her entire life to them.
She’d loved having the challenge of new things happening week after week whilst also maintaining a switch-off mode so that none of those new challenges became onerous.
She rattled off her findings as he drove, satnav guiding them on the fastest route. Raffaele listened with his head tilted to one side, interrupting to ask questions, nodding in agreement with some of her conclusions and then congratulating her on a thorough job when she’d finished.
‘My perfect little PA,’ he eventually murmured with satisfaction, ‘what would I do without you?’
‘I’m guessing you wouldn’t curl up in a corner, sobbing and crying and thinking that the sky had fallen in.
You’d just find someone else.’ Erin glanced across at him with a wry smile and then kept looking, first at his aristocratic profile, the crooked smile on his mouth and then at the capable, long fingers holding the steering wheel. She had to tear her eyes away.
‘Took me a while to find you. Do you remember what I told you about the long line of failed applicants?’
‘You mean the ones who just couldn’t help falling in love with you?’
‘Inappropriate crushes, I believe is what I said.’
‘Maybe you just made them a little nervous, Raffaele. Or maybe if you’d widened the pool to include a few candidates over the age of thirty, you might have had a little more luck.’
The scenery was whizzing past them. She lived closer to Gatwick than Raffaele did and they were well on their way now, speeding towards the airport and with next to no traffic on the roads because it was still early.
‘You weren’t over the age of thirty and I don’t make you nervous,’ he pointed out. ‘You settled in to my routine like a duck to water from day one. No blushing every time I looked at you…no stammering if I asked a question…no showing up in inappropriate outfits…’
‘Sorry, but I thought you were quite critical of my dress code.’ Erin settled back against the plush leather seat and half closed her eyes.
It was a stupid car. Who needed something this fast in London?
But she had to admit that it was comfortable.
Raffaele had once told her that he didn’t get to drive as often as he liked, so she could understand why he hadn’t delegated the task to someone else even though after New York he surely would have been a tiny bit jet-lagged.
People stared, mouths open, as the black Ferrari rushed past their more pedestrian cars on the motorway.
It was ridiculous to be tickled pink by that but Erin was.
‘Your dress code is perfectly acceptable. Although I’ve questioned it when you’ve shown up at Christmas parties in pretty much the same outfits as you wear to work.’
‘I don’t have wardrobes filled with cocktail dresses.’
Raffaele slanted a sideways glance at her.
Erin’s delicate, pale face was drawn. He took in the outfit, her interpretation of ‘casual’. Workmanlike cargo trousers, a T-shirt and a cardigan which she’d wrapped around herself.
He was only now realising just how little she put herself out to impress him on the physical front and just how surprising that was.
Nearly every woman Raffaele had ever met had always done their best to impress him.
Given the chance to show up in casual gear, Erin had chosen the least feminine outfit she could have got her hands on, even though the loose, unfussy clothes suited her slender frame, made her look incredibly feminine.
With a small jolt, he realised that being in her presence soothed him somehow.
When he considered his life, the relationships he’d had…
First, there was his cold, distant upbringing, carrying with it those hard lessons of hurt, sadness, disillusionment and eventually the erection of icy walls behind which his heart would forever be locked.
Then that one crazy fling with a woman all those years ago who confirmed his belief that romantic happiness was beyond his grasp.
It had been a painful reminder of his own inability to love; he’d tried but he just hadn’t had enough to give.
After that, he had walked away from anything that required too much emotion of him.
And now there were the women to whom he gave trinkets when everything ended. Fun, energetic, temporary.
Between all that, Erin occupied a special place.
She stimulated him intellectually and without a physical connection…yes, she soothed him, made him feel safe.
And now, more than that…she intrigued him.
What had she meant when she’d said that she didn’t have wardrobes full of cocktail dresses?
Did she hate cocktail dresses?
Because on her pay grade, she could certainly buy as many as she wanted. That thought brought him back to her house. What was going on there?
He dumped pointless introspection about his past and focused on the here and now. The suddenly very invigorating here and now with his once-predictable secretary. She had her secrets and he’d find out all about them in due course. It was a very pleasant prospect.
They were going to have a week together and not all of it was going to involve sitting in front of a computer or having back-to-back meetings with hotel people.
Next to him, Erin yawned.
‘You’re tired,’ he said.
‘I got up really early,’ Erin agreed. ‘Plus I went to bed really late. I wanted to finish doing as thorough a job as I could on researching the hotels and it took me a bit longer than I thought. I never knew the hotel business could have so many nooks and crannies. It’s not straightforward at all.
The profit and loss columns are, but then things can change at the turn of the dice.
If the restaurant in one of the hotels gets a new chef and the menu isn’t popular, business could fall off and that could affect the profit margins in a matter of weeks.
If something happens that spooks the clientele, same could happen… ’
‘Something like what? Murder in the building?’ Raffaele grinned but he was still half thinking about her living circumstances and tempted to ask her what was going on there.
‘You’d be surprised. I started checking out all the things that could go wrong in hotels, impacting their profits, and there’s a lot.’
Erin shifted so that she was half turned to look at him.
‘I still don’t get it, you know,’ she murmured drowsily, on the edge of nodding off in the sleek, powerful car.
‘Don’t get what?’
‘Why you’re interested in buying this chain of hotels.
It feels like a real departure for you. And feel free to tell me to mind my own business but I’m just looking at it from a practical point of view.
I know you said that it’s not about the money but I always figured that, with any luck, people end up doing the things they really enjoy and are good at and then they stick to the programme and don’t really deviate.
And you’ve always seemed to thrive on the challenges of the financial world. ’
‘A change is as good as a rest, as you said. Is that what you did? Never deviate? Were you never tempted by any other career choice?’
‘I…’ Erin blinked. She seemed to think for a second. ‘No. Financial security is important to me,’ she said firmly. ‘I also didn’t think that we were talking about me.’
‘Now that we’re getting to know one another a little better, I think that conversations between us should be fluid, don’t you? Airport up ahead. We made excellent time.’
The conversation was lost in a whirlwind of valet parking and checking in and then, within half an hour, they were in the first-class lounge, ushered through the opulent, semi-empty space like royalty to a group of comfy chairs and brought coffee and breakfast by one of the uniformed staff who was clearly in awe of Raffaele.
And then they carried on chatting about work.
Her comfort zone, Raffaele mused. He looked at her from under his lashes as she busied herself on her laptop, swivelling it occasionally to corroborate whatever point she was making. He intended to dig much deeper into his guarded secretary than she might anticipate.
Why the sudden fascination? Had it always been there, lurking under the surface, waiting for the right key to unlock it?
Or maybe he was bored of his standard-issue women.
Bored with ridiculously good-looking women who were always too eager to please.
Maybe he needed the safe distraction of someone like Erin, someone clever and restrained and, even more important, someone who wasn’t in awe of him, who would never want any sort of romantic involvement with him.
Why shouldn’t he give in to curiosity about his disciplined, guarded secretary with all those enticing layers?
One day he would settle down, although right now the thought alone was enough to bring him out in a cold sweat.
Too many associations with his parents and their dysfunctional marriage, two people wandering around their mansions, barely connecting on any meaningful level.
Too many memories of his youthful hopes shot down in flames because the girl he’d thought he’d loved just couldn’t put up with a guy who had no heart to give.
He thought of all the many ways love could fail and his mind went blank.
Why was the past resurfacing right now and with such vigour? Raffaele didn’t know, but it made no difference. He was firmly rooted in the way he was. He would never change.