Chapter Five
IN THE LIGHT OF DAY, Erin’s panic the night before seemed like a massive over reaction.
She cringed when she thought of the way she’d raced over to Raffaele’s cabin like—fittingly—a bat out of hell and flung herself at him, trusting him to deal with the situation with just the sort of helpless, stereotypically feminine reaction she honestly had never had time for.
She could change the washer in a tap, hang a heavy picture and put up shelves!
So why had a bit of wing flapping sent her shrieking with terror straight into the arms of her boss?
How did this tally with the woman who had privately scorned the many women who’d fallen under his spell and treated him like an Action Man hero every time they were within smelling distance of him?
She also cringed knowing that he had checked on her before he’d left her cabin.
She knew he had, because the socks she’d worn to bed just in case she stepped on something in the dark had been slipped off her feet and neatly placed on the chair, and she’d been covered with the cotton blanket which had been folded at the foot of the bed.
He had placed it over the thin sheet she had fallen asleep under, knowing that at some point the cold from the air conditioning unit would probably wake her up.
She decided that she would face the day and the upcoming week without dwelling on any of that. It was the only way she would be able to get through their confinement together and work the way she had always worked—professionally and efficiently.
It was a perfect day and jet lag had not yet put in an appearance. At a little after eight, the sky was already a cloudless blue and as she headed out of the cabin, the scenery that had been shrouded in darkness when they’d arrived was spectacular in all its Technicolor glory.
It was hot but the clearing beneath the towering canopy of trees was cool and shady and there was nothing sinister in the gentle rustle of the breeze through the leaves.
The paths they had followed through the forest to their cabins had seemed bewildering when the only light had been from the lanterns strung between the trees but now, in the bright light of a sun filled day, the winding pathways were all visible between the borders of bright tropical flowers and giant, oversized ferns.
She headed straight to Raffaele’s cabin and banked down the nerves as she raised her hand.
He opened the door on the first knock.
‘Erin.’
‘Good morning.’ Erin smiled distantly and he grinned.
‘It certainly is. Come in, come in. Don’t stand there hovering by the door. First meeting isn’t until eleven so we have time to brief and grab breakfast.’
He turned on his heels and Erin reluctantly followed him in. He was dressed casually. Navy blue collared T-shirt and a pair of light cream linen trousers and flip-flops.
In her short-sleeved lemon blouse and neat cotton skirt and with her laptop firmly tucked under her arm, she felt inappropriately stuffy.
‘So?’ he called over his shoulder. ‘Sleep all right for the remainder of the night—or should I say morning? I stayed on for about an hour then went to check on you and you were fast asleep.’
‘Thank you for…the babysitting duties,’ Erin said politely.
‘It was no bother,’ Raffaele returned with equal politeness but with a wicked glint in his eyes. ‘As babysitting duties go, it was stress free. In fact, all I did was remove the socks and throw a blanket over you.’
Erin gritted her teeth as the very subject she’d hoped to dodge was flung at her with an amused smile and raised eyebrows.
‘Won’t happen again. I can already see how ridiculous and misplaced my brief panic was.
Everything always looks so much less threatening in the daylight.
What will we be covering in this morning’s meeting?
I’ve brought my laptop so that we can maybe have a look at how the costs of running the place are broken down? ’
‘Excellent. Let me grab mine and we can go have some breakfast in the restaurant. Unless you’d rather we stay here? Have someone deliver something for us?’
‘No! The restaurant will be fine.’
Raffaele smiled and shrugged.
Erin was as formally dressed as it was humanly possible to be given the heat and the humidity. Unassuming flowered skirt, loosely falling to mid-calf, and a neat shirt with tiny buttons. Very impractical, he decided. She would be drenched in sweat within the hour.
He knew just what that was about. She was desperate to put distance between the woman he had seen in the early hours of the morning.
The woman half scared to death, wearing the sexiest little vest and shorts imaginable.
The woman who had banged on his door looking tousled and pink faced and very, very cute.
The woman who had painted toenails—a sweet pale pink that somehow gave the lie to her being the ultimate professional with all girlie traits stamped into oblivion.
She was as slender as a ballet dancer and, having seen her in her nightwear, he could now attest that she had the shapeliest legs he’d seen on a woman in a long time.
The woman with the background he’d never have guessed who had roused his curiosity to the point where his curiosity had no intention of being put to bed, at least not just yet.
The restaurant was a charming wooden pavilion attached to the side of the main hotel, open to the birds which flitted in and out, pecking whatever scraps had been left on plates before they were cleared away. Their plumage was bright—blue and yellow and orange—and they filled the air with song.
‘This place is amazing,’ Erin admitted as they were shown to a table. Around them various other couples were having breakfast and poring over maps and making plans. Shorts and T-shirts with beach bags on the ground. She fidgeted uncomfortably in her more formal gear.
‘Yes, it is but there’s a lot of work that would have to be done to get it up and running.
I was out and about at six thirty and the only real thing it’s got going for it is its location, which is stunning.
There’s a waterfall about twenty minutes’ walk away.
Beautiful. Very private. These are the sort of things I’ll want us to check out because it’s the added bonuses that can sell a hotel like this and my feeling is those have been bypassed as Archer’s goals have shifted away from his hotel business. ’
Erin was busy taking in the birds and the flowers curling on green tendrils over the white wooden railings of the sitting area, where the tables were arranged in no particular order.
She nodded absently and only surfaced when breakfast began appearing.
‘Did I order?’ She frowned.
‘No menu. You get what’s freshly baked.’
‘That’s something else that could be used as a selling point. A lot of people like the idea of the food being locally sourced on a daily basis.’
‘So you were listening to what I was saying.’
‘I always listen to what you say. I’m your secretary. That’s what I’m paid to do.’
‘Ah…because for a while there you were a million miles away.’
‘I was admiring all the birds,’ Erin admitted.
‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’ She thought of the life she’d led, which she’d always considered eccentric and ridiculously adventurous compared to everyone else she had known along the way, the other pre-teens and the teenagers who had passed in and out of her life like whispers.
For a while it had been both those things but being here…
It was in places like this, she thought, that the adventure really started. It was here with all the new sights and smells and tastes, where nothing was like anything else that had gone before, that the imagination could take flight.
The predictability of her life at home hit her like a sledgehammer. After her break-up a million years ago, she had retreated into the safety of her carefully curated comfort zone, the very one that had become part and parcel of her life from as far back as she could remember.
She had put adventure in a box that wasn’t for her and that had included adventures with men.
She’d been moulded by her wandering parents and hurt by her ex-boyfriend, hurt by the things he had casually thrown at her. Protecting herself had become the most important goal in her life.
They were disturbing thoughts and it was easier, surrounded by all this untamed beauty, to shove them aside.
‘And this breakfast is delicious. The bread…is there coconut in it?’ Their eyes collided and Erin blushed. ‘This is what I meant when I said that the food could be a pulling point here.’ She cleared her throat and looked away.
‘Definitely something I will mention to Gary, the manager, when we meet him later. How did your parents take you being absent from another weekend because you’re here with me?’
Erin was thrown by the abrupt change of subject and she blinked like an owl for a couple of seconds.
‘Meant to ask at the airport,’ Raffaele drawled, sitting back to look at her with his head tilted to the side.
‘But we got wrapped up in work chat. How dependent is your father physically on you being there on the weekends? I know you said something about arranging for someone to come and help him…’ He paused and looked at her thoughtfully for a couple of seconds.
‘Which suddenly makes me wonder something…’
‘Shouldn’t we stick to working out what we’re going to concentrate on when we meet the hotel manager in…’ Erin glanced at her phone, which was on the table, and was gutted to see that they still had over an hour before they were due to meet Gary. ‘Er…soon?’
‘I think our time would be better used having a stroll through the grounds and assessing the property and the outbuildings. Finished here?’
‘Yes, sure…’
‘Good!’ He smiled brightly at her and vaulted upright, waiting for her to follow suit. ‘We can start with the cabins,’ he said, waiting while she faffed and got her things together.
‘My laptop…’