by Nora Roberts
“I know your wife’s going to love them,” she said as she slipped the box into a tiny gold bag. Her hands weren’t trembling, but they wanted to. “I did. And happy anniversary.”
The minute the customer stepped away from the counter, she snagged Kate’s hand and pulled her into the powder room. “That was fifteen hundred and seventy-five dollars, plus tax.” Grabbing Kate around the waist, she led her into a quick, clattering dance. “We’re selling things, Kate.”
“That was the idea.” It had killed her not to be there, with Laura and Margo, to open the doors for the first time. But responsibility at Bittle took priority. “You own a store, you sell things.”
“No, we’re really selling them. Liz Carstairs was in and bought the set of Tiffany wineglasses for her daughter’s shower gift, and this couple from Connecticut bought the gateleg table. We’re shipping it. And, oh, more. We’re not going to be paying that storage bill for the rest of the stock much longer.”
“Are you logging the sales?”
“Yeah—well, I might have made a couple of mistakes, but we’ll fix that. Come on, you can ring something up.” She paused with a hand on the door. “It’s sort of like sex. There’s this attraction, and you build on it, then there’s foreplay, little thrills of anticipation, then there’s this big bang.”
“Want a cigarette?”
“I’m dying for one.”
“You’re really getting into this, aren’t you?”
“I had no idea that sales could be so . . . stimulating. Give it a shot.”
Kate glanced at her watch. “I’ve only got forty-five minutes, but, hey, I’m all for cheap thrills.”
Margo snagged her wrist, studied the clean lines of the practical Timex. “You know, we could get a good price for this.”
“Control yourself, Margo.”
She tried. But every now and again throughout the day she had to find some quiet corner and simply gloat. Maybe her emotions were swinging high and wide like a batter too eager to score, but she just didn’t care. If there was a pang now and then when one of her treasured trinkets slipped away in a gold-and-silver box, there was also a sense of triumph.
People had come. And for every one who snickered there was another who admired, and another who bought.
By three, when there was a lull, she poured two cups of the tea they’d offered to customers throughout the morning. “I’m not hallucinating, am I?”
“Not unless we both are.” Laura winced as she wriggled her toes. “And my feet hurt too much for this to be a dream. Margo, I think we’ve actually done it.”
“Let’s not say that yet. We could jinx it.” Carrying her cup, she walked over to straighten a vase of roses. “I mean, maybe this is just fate’s way of sneering at us. Giving us a few hours of success. We’re open for three more hours, and . . . the hell with that.” She whirled around. “We’re a hit. We’re a smash!”
“I wish you’d be more enthusiastic—and I wish I could stay and ride the next wave with you.” Wincing, Laura looked at her watch. “But the girls have dance class. I’ll wash out the cups before I go.”
“No, I’ll take care of them.”
The door opened, letting in a group of teenage girls who made a beeline for the jewelry counter.
“We have customers,” Laura murmured and gathered up the cups herself. “We have customers,” she repeated, grinning. “I’ll try to be here tomorrow by one.” There were so many obligations to juggle, and she worried about how long it would be before she started dropping balls. “Are you sure you can handle working the shop by yourself?”
“We agreed from the start that you’d have to be part time. I’m going to learn how to handle it. Get going.”
“As soon as I wash these.” She stopped, turned. “Margo, I don’t know the last time I had this much fun.”
Nor did she, Margo thought. As she measured her young customers, a smile began to bloom. Teenage girls who wore designer shoes had generous allowances—and parents with gold cards. She crossed to the counter, took her place behind it.
“Hello, ladies. Can I show you something?”
Josh didn’t mind long hours. He could handle being chained to a desk and being buried under paperwork. Though it wasn’t as appealing as zipping across continents to fine-tune the workings of a busy hotel chain and its subsidiaries, he could deal with it cheerfully enough.
But what really pissed him off was being played for a fool.
The longer he remained in the penthouse and studied the files generated from the California Templetons, the more certain he was that Peter Ridgeway had done just that.
He’d done his job. There was no way to accuse him, legally, of mishandling funds or staff, of cutting corners. Though he had done precisely those things, Peter had documented it all, in terms of his rationale, his position, and the increase in profit that his alterations had generated.
But Templeton had never been an organization that was motivated exclusively by profit. It was a family-owned operation steeped in two hundred years of innkeeping tradition that prided itself on its humanity, on its commitment to the people who worked in it and for it.
Yes, Ridgeway had increased profits, but he had done so by changing staff, cutting back on full-time employees in favor of part-time ones. And thereby squeezing people out of benefits and slicing their pay stubs.
He’d negotiated a new deal with wholesalers, produce distributors, and as a result had lowered the quality in the staff kitchens. Employee discounts in reservations and in Templeton hotel boutiques had been cut back, reducing the incentive that had always been traditional for Templeton people to use Templeton services.
In the meantime, his own expense account had increased. His bills for meals, laundry, entertainment, flowers, travel, had steadily grown. He’d even had the gall to charge his trip to Aruba to Templeton as a business expense.
It gave Josh great pleasure to cancel Peter’s corporate credit cards. Even if he did consider it too little, too late.
Should have aimed for his balls after all, he thought, and leaned back to rub his tired eyes.
It would take months to rebuild trust among the staff. A huge bonus and a mountain of flattery would be necessary to lure back the head chef who had quit in a huff at Ridgeway’s interference. Added to that was the resignation from the longtime concierge at Templeton San Francisco that he’d found buried in Peter’s files. There were others as well. Some could be lured back, others were lost to competitors.
None of them had come to him, Josh mused, or to his parents. Because they’d believed, justifiably, that Peter Ridgeway was a trusted, highly placed member of the Templeton group.
He tugged at his tie, trying not to think about the amount of work that still lay before him. Someone was going to have to take over his responsibilities in Europe, at least temporarily. He wasn’t going anywhere.
Already the penthouse suite was more his than Ridgeway’s. The fussy furniture had been replaced with Josh’s preference for the traditional. American and Spanish antiques, with deeply cushioned, generous chairs were more in keeping with the scheme of Templeton Monterey. After all, the hotel and its decor followed the history of the area. The resort was more truly of California Spanish design, but the hotel echoed it in the ornate facade, the musical fountains, and lush gardens. The lobby was done in deep reds and golds, offering heavy chairs, long, high tables, winking brass, and glossy tiled floors.
There were potted palms, like the one he’d chosen for the corner of his office, in a huge hand-thrown clay pot that took two men with beefy arms to lift.
He’d always thought Templeton Paris more feminine, with its mix of the airy and the ornate, and Templeton London more distinguished, so British with its two-level lobby and cozy tearoom.
But Monterey was perhaps closest to his heart after all. Not that he’d ever pictured himself settling behind a desk here, even if it was a Duncan Phyfe, with an eye-blurring view of the coast he loved only a head’s turn away.
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br /> It didn’t bother him for outsiders to consider him the globetrotting trust fund baby. Because he knew better. The Templeton name wasn’t simply a legacy, it was a responsibility. He’d worked long and hard to meet that responsibility, to learn the craft of not simply owning but managing and expanding a complex organization. He’d been expected to learn hotels from the ground up, and he had done just that. By doing so he’d developed respect and admiration for the people who worked in the kitchens, picked up wet towels from bathroom floors, calmed the tired and frazzled incoming guests at the front desks.
He appreciated the hours that went into public relations and sales and the frustrations of dealing with oversized conventions and harried conventioneers.
But there was a bottom line, and that line was Templeton. Whatever went wrong, whatever needed to be fixed, smoothed over, or polished up was up to him. And there was a great deal of fixing, smoothing over, and polishing up to be done in California.
He thought about getting up and brewing coffee, or just calling down to room service. But he didn’t have the energy for either. He’d sent the temp home because she’d gotten on his nerves, scrambling around like an eager puppy desperate to please.
If he was going to be stuck behind a desk for the foreseeable future, he would need an executive assistant who could match his pace and not go wide-eyed with terror every time he gave an order. He was going to have to toss the temp back into the pool and go fishing.
But for now he was on his own.
He swiveled to his keyboard and began to compose a memo to all department heads, with a copy to his parents and the rest of the board of directors. It took him thirty minutes to perfect it. He faxed a copy, with the addition of a personal note, to his parents, printed out the others, and arranged for them to be messengered or overnighted.
Seeing no reason to waste time, he set up a full staff meeting at the hotel for eleven A.M., another at the resort at two. Though it was already after six, he contacted legal and left a message on voice mail outlining the urgency of a meeting and setting it up for nine sharp in his penthouse office.
It was highly probable that Ridgeway would sue over his abrupt termination. Josh wanted his bases covered.
Shifting back to the keyboard, he began another memo, reinstating the previous employee discounts. That, he thought, was something they would be able to see immediately, and, hopefully, it would build morale.
Standing in the open doorway, Margo watched him. It was a delightful shock to discover that watching him work made her juices flow. The loosened tie, the hair disarrayed by restless fingers, the dark and focused intensity of his eyes had her all but vibrating.
Odd, she’d never thought of Josh taking work of any kind seriously. And she had never realized that a serious man at work could be quite so arousing.
Maybe it was the months of self-imposed celibacy, or the heady success of the day. Maybe it was Josh himself—and had been all along. She didn’t, at the moment, give a damn. She’d come here for one thing—a good, hot, sweaty bout of sex. She wasn’t leaving without it.
Quietly, she closed the doors at her back, flipped the locks. “Well, well,” she murmured, her pulse leaping when his head shot up like a wolf scenting his mate. “The scion at work. Quite a picture.”
Knowing exactly the kind of picture she made—God knew she’d worked on it—she swaggered to his desk. After setting a frosty bottle of Cristal on the blotter, she eased a hip onto the edge. “Am I interrupting?”
His mind had gone blank the moment she’d stepped toward him. He did his best to snap it back. “Yeah, but don’t let that stop you.” He glanced down at the bottle, back into her glowing face. “So, how was your day?”
“Oh, nothing worth mentioning.” She leaned over the desk, all but slithered over it, and gave him a tantalizing glimpse of pearly lace and cleavage. “Just fifteen thousand dollars in sales.” She screamed, reaching out to tug his hair. “Fifteen thousand, six hundred and seventy-four dollars, eighteen cents in sales.”
She sprang back off the desk, whirled in a giddy circle. “Do you know how I felt the first time I saw my face on the cover of Vogue?”
“No.”
“Just like this. Insane. I closed the doors at six, and there was half a bottle of champagne left. I drank it all myself, right from the damn bottle. Then I realized I didn’t want to drink alone. Open the bottle, Josh. Let’s get drunk and crazy.”
He rose, began to rip the foil. He should have known that gleam in her eye had been helped along by bubbly. “From what you’ve just said, you’re already there.”
“I’m only half drunk.”
The cork popped celebrationally. “This should fix that.” He went to the kitchen, setting the bottle on the counter of granite-colored tile and reaching into a glass-front oak cabinet for glasses.
“That’s what you do, isn’t it? Fix things. You fixed me, Josh. I owe you.”
“No.” That was one thing he didn’t want. “You did it yourself.”
“Made a start on it. I’m not finished yet.” She clinked her glass to his. “But, oh, it’s a hell of a start.”
“To Pretenses, then.”
“You bet your adorable ass. I know it won’t be like this every day. It can’t be.” Fueled with energy, she prowled back into the office. “Kate says we can expect sales to dip, then level off. But I don’t care. I watched this incredibly ugly woman waltz out with one of my Armanis, and I just didn’t care.”
“Good for you.”
“And I—” Her voice hitched, strangled, and he set his glass down in pure panic.
“Don’t do that. Don’t cry. I’m begging you.”
“It’s not what you think.”
“Don’t give me that shit about happy tears. They’re all the same to me. They’re wet and make me feel like slime.”
“I can’t get hold of myself.” As a defense, she gulped down more champagne, sniffled. “I’ve been like this all day. Dancing on the ceiling one minute, bawling in the bathroom the next. I’m selling my life away, and it makes me so sad. And people are buying it, and that makes me so happy.”
“Jesus.” Frustrated, he rubbed his hands over his face. “Let’s trade in the champagne for some coffee, shall we?”
“Oh, no.” Spurting up again, she danced away from him. “I’m celebrating.”
“Okay.” When she folded, he would pour her drunk, sexy body into his car and drive her to Templeton House. But for now, she had the right to celebrate, to gloat and be ridiculous. He sat on the desk, picked up his glass again. “To ugly women in secondhand Armani.”
She tossed back the champagne and let it fizz down her throat. “To teenage girls with rich, indulgent parents.”
“God love them.”
“And tourists from Tulsa.”
“Salt of the earth.”
“And hawk-eyed old men who appreciate long legs in a short skirt.” When he only frowned into his glass, she laughed and poured them both more. “And who plunk down cash for Meissen tea sets and harmless flirtation.”
Before she could drink again, he caught her wrist. “How harmless?”
“I let him cluck my chin. If he’d bought the raku vase, he could have pinched any and all of my cheeks. It’s such a rush.”
“The clucking.”
“No.” She giggled happily. “The selling. I had no idea I’d find it so exciting. So . . . arousing.” She spun back, sprinkling them both with champagne before he could pluck the glass from her hand and set it safely aside. “That’s why I came to find you.”
“You came to find me,” he repeated, too cautious to move forward, too needy to move back.
With a low laugh she slid her hands up his shirt front, over his shoulders, into his hair. “I thought you could finish the job.”
She was more than half drunk, he calculated, and told himself to remember the rules. He just couldn’t think of them. “What do you want me to sell?”
She laughed again, dragged his mout
h to hers for a steamy kiss. “Whatever it is, I’m ready to buy it.”
He came up for air, tried for reason. “You’ve got champagne on your brain, duchess. This might not be the time to do business.”
She made quick work of his tie, slinging it over her shoulder while her mouth went to war with his. “It’s the perfect time. I could eat you alive, in great . . . big . . . bites.”
“Jesus.” It was hard to focus on reason when all the blood was draining out of his head. “In about ten seconds . . .” His mouth clashed with hers again as she dragged his shirt clear of his waistband. “I’m not going to give a damn if you’re drunk or sober.”
“I told you I’m only half drunk.” She tossed her head back so that he could see her eyes. They were filled with laughter and desire. “I know exactly what I’m doing and who I’m going to do it with. What would you say if I suggested we consider that little bet of ours a draw?”
He was busy tugging her buttons free before he realized his hands had moved. “How about ‘Thank you, God’?”
“It’s probably a mistake.” She attacked his throat with her teeth. “A terrible, terrible mistake. Jesus, put your hands on me.”
“I’m trying.” He managed to drag her jacket off while they stumbled toward the bedroom.
“Try harder.” She wriggled out of her shoes, tripped, and sent them both crashing into the wall. When his hands streaked under her skirt, hiking it high as they greedily cupped her bottom, she arched back. “Don’t stop,” she panted, “whatever you do, don’t stop.”
“Who’s stopping?” Desperate, he lifted her off her feet so that his mouth could close over her lace-covered breast.
She moaned once, grasping his hair for balance. “This could ruin our friendship.”
He mumbled, his mouth busy with soft, hot flesh. “I don’t want to be friends anymore.”
“Me either,” she managed as they fell onto the bed.
She’d always thought of sex as one of the quirky bonuses life had to offer, with the act itself rarely measuring up to the anticipation. There was certainly nothing dignified about two people panting like dogs and groping each other frantically. It was, if you discounted all the fripperies, a laughable, if temporarily satisfying, experience.