by Penny Jordan
She was, after all, responsible for its day-to-day running, even if financially she and Marcus were joint equal partners.
‘Mind you, you’re obviously making a very good profit,’ Suzi went on carelessly as, at a discreet nod from Polly, the serving staff removed the canapés and started to collect their empty glasses.
‘I saw that dress in a Knightsbridge store when I was in London the other day. She isn’t a designer I particularly favour. I’m very much a Gucci woman—and besides, it would be a little old for me. It’s the long sleeves that give it away as being an older woman’s dress, isn’t it? And I suppose when I start approaching forty…’
Approaching forty! Polly gave a small indrawn breath of indignation but it was, rather to her surprise, Phil Bernstein who pointed out crisply to Suzi, ‘Actually I think you’ll find that Polly is closer to thirty-five than forty, Suzi.’
But what was really worrying Polly, however, was how Briony had managed to pay for such an expensive dress.
Five minutes later when dinner was announced she quietly voiced her concern to her daughter.
‘Oh, don’t worry about that. I haven’t blown all my grant money on it,’ Briony told Polly breezily. ‘Uncle Marcus paid for it.’
‘Marcus?’ Polly repeated faintly. ‘You asked Marcus to buy me a dress?’
‘Well, I chose it,’ Briony assured her. ‘I just told him that unless we got together and did something about it you’d end up wearing that frock horror thing you always wear and he agreed that it was high time you had something new!’
There wasn’t time for Polly to say anything else, and, after a quick professional look around the table to make sure that everyone was seated and comfortable, she indicated to the staff that they could begin serving the meal.
‘Say, this soup is just wonderful,’ Phil Bernstein enthused.
‘Thank you.’ Polly smiled. ‘It’s my own special recipe and I—’
‘At Gifford’s Cay we have three top chefs and the menus are out of this world.’ Suzi interrupted them rudely. ‘We regularly have top film stars staying, don’t we Phil?’
‘Yes, we do. We had Meg Ryan as a guest during the summer,’ he told Polly with a warm smile. ‘You have something of the look of her…’
‘Oh, no,’ Polly demurred. But she couldn’t help but be flattered.
‘Wow, have you made a conquest, Ma,’ Briony chortled a little later on in the evening. ‘He’s a millionaire, you know, and the hotel is just one of his business interests. Suzi won’t confirm it but Chris is convinced that Phil has come over here looking to buy into something to extend his empire.’
‘Mmm…well, just so long as it isn’t Fraser House he tries to buy into,’ Polly rejoined humorously.
‘Do you know, Ma, I sometimes wonder which of us you love the most—the hotel or me,’ Briony mock complained.
‘Oh, there’s no contest,’ Polly reassured her dryly. ‘It’s the hotel every time!’
They were both still laughing when Phil overheard them and asked, ‘What’s so funny?’
‘Nothing, really; it’s just a mother and daughter joke,’ Polly informed him.
‘Uh-huh. You know, I still can’t take it on board that you are Briony’s mom,’ he told her. ‘You look like a girl yourself, especially with that very sexy hairdo.’
‘What?’ Self-consciously Polly lifted her hand, realising too late that she had never managed to smooth down her tousled hair.
‘No, I like it. Leave it,’ Phil pleaded softly. ‘It’s…It makes you look like you’ve just got up out of bed—a lover’s bed…’
‘Oh!’ Polly gasped, feeling even more self-conscious.
‘Polly, I think we’re ready for the next course.’
The harsh sound of Marcus’s voice brought Polly abruptly back to reality.
‘But there isn’t another course,’ she told him, frowning. ‘There’s just the coffee, which I thought we’d have in the drawing room.’
‘Oh?’ Marcus queried caustically. ‘You do surprise me. From the sound of it Bernstein was more than ready to make a meal of you!’
Polly gasped in outrage. ‘Just because he was being polite to me?’
‘Polite—by telling you that you looked like you’d just crawled out of some man’s bed? If that’s polite…’
‘That wasn’t what he said at all,’ Polly began—and then stopped. What was the point? She knew Marcus in this kind of sharp, critical mood, when nothing she could say or do was right; and besides, although Marcus had turned his head away from the others so that his comments to her would not be overheard, out of the corner of her eye Polly could see that both Suzi and Phil’s heads were turned in their direction.
‘More coffee, anyone?’ Polly invited, reaching for the nearly empty cafetière and smiling as everyone shook their heads.
‘That was an excellent meal,’ Phil praised warmly, but whilst both of Suzi’s parents added their praise to his Polly noticed how Suzi flashed her an angry look.
Suzi commented patronisingly, ‘I’m afraid I’m not really in a position to judge. You see our chef has moved on such a long way from this type of food that—’ She stopped and gave a small shrug as though she couldn’t find the words to describe adequately the huge gulf which existed between the meal she had just eaten and the wonders of the food she normally enjoyed.
Although she could feel her face starting to burn with what she knew to be justifiably annoyed colour, Polly calmly refused to allow herself to be drawn, but she had her reward and her justification, had she needed it, when, quite unexpectedly, both Phil and Suzi’s father rebuked together, ‘Suzi!’
‘It was a most enjoyable meal, my dear,’ Suzi’s father went on to compliment Polly. ‘Much more to my taste than some flim-flam of unidentifiable bits of raw this and that served with uncooked vegetables or, even worse, warm salad. Warm salad, I ask you—’
‘Dad, you’re out of touch,’ Suzi interrupted him crisply, whilst Polly, whose own special recipes included several served in such a manner, hid a small smile. Suzi’s father was typical of some of their older male guests for whom she always diplomatically made sure there was a very traditional pudding on the menu in addition to something lighter to tempt their wives’ appetites.
‘You promised me you’d show me round the hotel,’ Suzi reminded Marcus as Polly suggested that her guests might like to move into the drawing room.
‘Perhaps we might accompany them?’ Phil Bernstein suggested.
A little reluctantly Polly agreed. She could see from the looks that both Suzi and Marcus were giving them that neither of them really wanted their company.
And yet, as Phil held open the drawing-room door for her to precede him through it, Polly found herself feeling unusually determined and assertive.
She, after all, had as much right to show someone round the hotel as Marcus, and she also had just as much right to enjoy the company of an attractive member of the opposite sex. Marcus didn’t have any sole rights on being allowed to enjoy some flattering attention, and Phil was being very flatteringly attentive towards her, Polly had to admit.
Was she imagining it or was Phil deliberately slowing down his footsteps so that they fell some way behind the other pair? He was certainly walking far closer to her than was the norm, Polly knew that, his jacket-clad arm brushing hers as he stood even closer to her to admire the elegant architecture of the window halfway up the stairs.
‘Phil, what are you doing?’ Suzi demanded, suddenly turning round to chivvy them, using a tone of voice which privately Polly thought rather inappropriate from an employee to her employer, but it was obvious to her that Phil had a singularly sweet and laid-back nature, not like Marcus, who was standing at the top of the stairs glowering down at them.
‘I was just admiring the view.’ Phil responded to Suzi’s bossy question.
‘But it’s dark outside,’ Suzi told him, frowning.
‘Mmm…’ Phil agreed, and then turned to look at Polly.
Polly couldn’t help it; she could feel herself blushing like a schoolgirl whilst Suzi ground her teeth and then turned on her heel, walking down the galleried landing so fast that she and Marcus had reached the end of it before Polly and Phil had got to the top of the stairs.
As Polly walked faster to try to catch up with them Phil placed his hand on her arm. ‘Let them go,’ he told her quietly. ‘I must apologise for Suzi’s rudeness to you earlier…’
‘I expect she’s still suffering from jet lag,’ Polly offered diplomatically.
It was kind of Phil to apologise to her on Suzi’s behalf but Polly suspected that the other woman wouldn’t be the least bit grateful to him for his tact.
‘Chris’s parents mentioned that you were widowed very young.’
‘Yes. Yes, I was,’ Polly agreed.
‘And you have never remarried? Not for any lack of opportunities, I’m sure.’ Phil smiled gallantly.
‘Looking after Briony and running this place hasn’t left me much time for…for anything else,’ Polly responded.
‘Mmm…I imagine that you would also have difficulty persuading your guard dog to allow another man into your life,’ Phil commented dryly, nodding in the direction the other couple had taken.
‘My…my guard dog?’ Polly repeated in bemusement. ‘You mean Marcus? Oh, but he…isn’t…he doesn’t…’
‘As your business partner and half-owner of this place, of course it is in his interests to ensure that you remain single and put the business first,’ Phil continued, taking any edge off his words with the smile he gave her. ‘In his shoes I suspect I might be tempted to do exactly the same.’
Polly didn’t make any response. She couldn’t. Marcus would never try to stop her from having a relationship with someone if she wished to do so. Would he? Just let him dare! She was not answerable to him where her private life was concerned, and so far as the business was concerned they were equal partners. It annoyed her more than she wanted to show that not just Suzi but Phil too, it seemed, appeared to believe that it was Marcus who held the real power.
‘No comment?’ Phil pressed.
Polly stopped walking to look at him. He was looking back at her with an expression of quizzical but very male interest in his eyes.
‘I’m a free agent,’ she told him. ‘And as for my guard dog…’ She paused, and then told Phil recklessly, ‘He will soon be moving into a new kennel.’
Heavens, what on earth had come over her? What she had just said was tantamount to…But no, she didn’t want to think about what a foolishly dangerous flirtatious step she had just taken. Already she was beginning to regret it and to feel almost breathlessly light-headed—and equally breathlessly light-hearted? If so…
‘We’d better catch up with the other two,’ she told Phil huskily.
Marcus had already finished showing Suzi the first of their guest rooms when they caught up with them.
Whilst all the bedrooms had had to be redecorated since Richard had originally painted them, when she had had them done Polly had held many a mental conversation with her dead husband. It wasn’t just his memory she wanted to keep alive but his whole artistic ethos, and when she saw the look of admiration in Phil’s eyes as she proudly showed him their guest bedrooms Polly knew that she had succeeded.
‘No. Not that door,’ she intervened quickly when they had almost reached the end of the corridor and Phil was striding towards the last room.
‘That’s Marcus’s suite of rooms,’ she explained.
Suzi made a small, tantalising moue and told Marcus suggestively, ‘Oh, what a pity we can’t go in…I think a man’s bedroom tells you so much about what he’s really like…’
What he was really like in bed was quite plainly what she meant, Polly decided, but she suspected that if Marcus had volunteered to show her his rooms she might have been disappointed.
They were very plain and impersonal—but then, of course, Marcus did not spend an awful lot of time in them, being away on business so much, and Polly couldn’t remember there ever being a time when, to her knowledge anyway, he had had a woman stay over in them.
She knew there had been women in his life, of course; there had been photographs taken whilst he was away with a variety of stunningly beautiful women posing next to him.
‘A friend,’ had been his inevitable response when Briony had asked innocently who they were; sometimes she herself had answered phone calls from husky-voiced women asking for him and just giving their Christian name with the confidence of knowing that it would be instantly recognisable to him.
Oh, yes, Marcus was a very heterosexual, very male man.
‘The hotel really is very small, isn’t it?’ Suzi drawled disparagingly. ‘More of a guest house, really.’
Anger flashed in Polly’s eyes as she listened to her. She herself and her loyal staff had worked very hard to get the hotel deservedly recognised as one of the country’s best small country house hotels and to refer to it as a guest house was, so far as she was concerned, not just rude but ill-informed as well.
But, before she could say anything, a little to her surprise, Marcus was speaking, telling Suzi firmly, ‘Fraser House is perhaps not a hotel in the larger sense of the word. In fact I suspect that, like others in the rather select grouping it shares, it doesn’t easily lend itself to labelling. As you’ve just observed, we are rather short of bedrooms—so much so that we are increasingly having to turn potential guests away. Which is one reason why I’ve decided to give up my own rooms here!’
‘Personally I would much rather stay in this kind of hotel than one of the larger, more impersonal ones,’ Phil intervened.
‘We do have more rooms on the next floor,’ Polly told Suzi crisply, nor could she resist adding pointedly, ‘And I rather doubt that you’d find many guest houses offering the kind of facilities that we offer. Our leisure complex not only has a first-rate gym but we also have an Olympic-size swimming pool.’
‘Oh, if you’re talking about swimming pools you should see the ones we have at Gifford’s Cay,’ Suzi responded smugly. ‘One of America’s top sports facilities designers designed them for us didn’t he Phil?’
‘I’d love to see the other rooms,’ Phil told Polly pointedly, calmly ignoring Suzi’s boastful remark.
The rooms on the upper floor were all well proportioned and decorated and furnished in keeping with their sloping ceilings and small windows. Polly was rightly proud of the way they had made the most of the house’s design without compromising either on the kind of luxury their guests would expect or its age.
As they inspected the last one, Phil lingered by the window, gazing out of it.
‘Who owns the farmland?’ he asked her conversationally.
‘It belongs to me,’ Marcus informed Phil flatly, and as the two men exchanged a look Polly couldn’t interpret she was conscious of a sharp animosity between them that almost crackled in the still air.
‘Mmm…That was a wonderful evening,’ Briony told Polly happily as she helped her mother put away the last of the special Spode dinner service they had used for their dinner party. The Spode was Polly’s own service—a special treat to herself the previous Christmas.
‘You’ll miss Uncle Marcus when he moves out, won’t you?’
‘No, certainly not,’ Polly denied immediately.
Briony dipped her head, her mouth curling in a small smile. She had told Chris of her hopes. He had cautioned her against interfering but she just knew she was doing the right thing!
‘I’m tired, Briony; I think I’ll go up to bed…’
After she had hugged her mother and kissed her goodnight, Briony wandered round the room for a few seconds and then, as her face split into a wide smile, she punched the air and exclaimed triumphantly, ‘Yes!’
CHAPTER FOUR
‘SO, THE way I see it is that if we put the sitting room between the two bedrooms and each has a connecting door to the sitting room you would have the option of either a double suite, with t
wo double rooms and a sitting room, or a single suite with one double room and a sitting room, plus another double room, and I’ve also got the provisional drawings here for the small conference suite you asked me about.’
‘Polly, if we could possibly have your attention…’
With a small start Polly realised that both the architect and Marcus were waiting for her response.
A little guiltily she looked at the drawings in front of her.
‘Er, yes…those are fine,’ she agreed.
She hadn’t slept at all well for the last three nights—ever since the dinner party, in fact—and for some reason she felt almost permanently on edge during the day even though physically she was so tired. If it hadn’t been for the nervous energy driving her she suspected she would not have stayed awake.
Blinking a little, she forced herself to focus on the drawings. The architect, Neil Harland, had done a very good job for them, Polly recognised. His suggestion was an excellent one but somehow her normal enthusiasm just wasn’t there. Every time she closed her eyes she kept visualising Suzi deriding the hotel, deriding her, it seemed, whilst making no secret of her admiration for Marcus.
The hotel had filled up over the weekend, and because of that Marcus had arranged for them to see Neil at the dower house instead of the hotel, and now, as Neil removed the plans for the rearrangement of Marcus’s rooms to show her his drawings for the proposed conference suite, she was sharply conscious of the fact that this house was alien territory to her; that it belonged to Marcus and that it was going to be his home. His and Suzi’s—or, if not her, another woman like her.
‘You don’t seem very enthusiastic,’ she heard Neil saying wryly.
‘No…Yes…I am…I think you’ve done a wonderful job, Neil,’ Polly assured him immediately.
Mollified, Neil leaned over the plans he had spread out in front of her and Marcus, indicating to them both how the new conference suite could be built onto the existing stable block to make a courtyard effect.