“Can I come in?”
She hesitated. Hugo couldn’t tell if it was from embarrassment or annoyance with him. But he hated this feeling of not being in the know. He always investigated everyone in his employ thoroughly. But as a subcontractor, Erin wasn’t really in his employ—
Still, he needed to know.
He raised his hands imploringly. “I feel like we didn’t sufficiently discuss my project.”
She walked to the little boy—Noah—and put her hands on his shoulders to shift him away from the door. “Sure. Come in. Would you like some coffee?”
“Yes. That would be great.”
* * *
Hugo Harrington stepped inside Erin’s apartment, shrugging out of his cashmere overcoat. Their dealings had always been so crisp and professional, she hadn’t for even a minute thought he wouldn’t accept her refusal of his latest project.
But here he was. In her little condo. Her gorgeous, sexy as sin, biggest client, who always looked better in a suit than anyone had a right to, was in her apartment.
Tall and broad-shouldered, with dark chestnut hair that gleamed in the light from her overly bright kitchen, and brooding gray eyes, he’d been the object of her fantasies for the two and a half years they’d worked together. She’d never said a word, never made a move, always kept things strictly professional between them because she wasn’t ready for another man in her life, but it didn’t hurt to look.
And, oh, he was fun to look at.
She stopped the shimmer of attraction that lit her nerve endings. Nothing would come of her being attracted to him. Because that was how she wanted it.
As she popped a one-cup pod into her coffee maker, her short, auburn-haired mom called up the hall that led to the bedrooms. “Erin? If you’re home for the day, I’m going out to get in my walk.”
Seeing Hugo, she stopped dead in her tracks. “Oh, hello.”
“That’s Hugo Harrington, Mom. Mr. Harrington, that’s my mom, Marge Winters.”
He faced her mom with his always proper smile. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
She almost rolled her eyes. She might be super attracted to him, but she’d seen the way he’d looked at her apartment, the disdain that became confusion as he took in her out-of-date furniture and the cramped quarters. The attraction hadn’t ever been mutual, but now that he’d seen how she lived she wasn’t even sure he’d keep her as a friend.
Though come to think of it, they weren’t really friends either. Her other clients invited her to parties and dinners to discuss their projects. Hugo Harrington only did business in his office.
Which might be for the best considering how attractive she found him.
“Can Noah go on your walk, too?”
“Sure,” her mom said, overly cheerful, because she knew Hugo Harrington didn’t merely pay for their apartment; he was the biggest contributor to the money she’d been saving to expand her business, employ more people and hopefully make enough to buy a condo in Manhattan, closer to her work, something with sufficient space that all three of them could be comfortable.
In the thirty seconds it took to brew Hugo Harrington’s coffee, Erin’s mom slid Noah into a coat and pulled a knit cap over his red curls. Erin bent down, placed a smacking kiss on her son’s cheek and watched them leave the apartment.
Then she faced Hugo Harrington. He might be gorgeous and the object of her fantasies, but as a businessman he was single-minded. She’d told him no. He would try to talk her out of it.
Walking into her living room area of the open–floor plan space, she handed him his cup of coffee and motioned for him to sit. “I’m not sure what part of my decision you felt left room for discussion. But there is no room.”
He looked around at her meager home. “I offered you three times your rate.”
And assumed she should have been eager for it.
“There’s more to a life than money.” That’s why her expansion was basically a dream right now. Noah was the only part of her deceased husband she still had. He was her world. Not her career and certainly not money.
Hugo Harrington blinked as if the concept of there being more to life than money was completely foreign to him.
She stifled a sigh. “December is Christmas, discussions about Santa, buying gifts, teaching my son to be generous and kind…” She lowered herself to the sofa across from the armchair he’d chosen. “I can usually work around your schedule and still have time for my son…but not if I’m in London.”
Hugo’s confused expression shifted as comprehension dawned. The fact that she had to explain the excitement of Christmas to him reinforced all her beliefs about the real Hugo Harrington. He wasn’t the romantic, sensual man who inhabited her daydreams. He was a hard-nosed businessman, a guy who didn’t have time for family, who didn’t understand the meaning of the word family, a man who lived to work.
Well, she didn’t live to work. She couldn’t. Her mom may have been able to move in with her to help care for Noah when Josh died, but it wasn’t the same for her little boy as having a dad. Erin knew that she had to be both mother and father and she refused to abdicate that responsibility…the way Josh had.
She closed her eyes briefly, hating that she felt that way. After all, her late husband hadn’t asked for the heart attack that had taken him.
Thoughts of Josh rippled through her, her despair over his death, the sense of betrayal that came when she learned he’d been sick for months and hadn’t told her—but he had confided in a woman he’d worked with. She’d told Erin that Josh had believed he was saving her the heartache of knowing her husband was dying while she was pregnant.
But good as his intentions might have seemed, not only had he confided in another woman, proving she and Josh didn’t have the deep, wonderful bond Erin had always believed, but also they rang hollow as she’d stood at his graveside, ready to have his baby, without the opportunity to say goodbye.
She could have cried with him. They could have absorbed the first waves of loss together. Made videos of him laughing for their son. Made videos of him teaching Noah the kind of things a father longs to share with his child—
“You don’t have any other clients, do you?”
She forced herself back to the present, to her discussion with Hugo Harrington. Sexy man with a heart of stone. Maybe that’s what had reminded her of Josh?
“It looks to me like you can’t afford to lose me.”
Not about to give up Christmas with Noah, she sat taller. “I have other clients. Especially in December.”
“But not clients who pay you as much as I do. Scattered Christmas parties. Grand openings. Not clients who pay a fee over the norm.”
She took a breath. Part of her wanted to bluff her way through. The other part didn’t like lying or even hedging. Josh hadn’t out-and-out lied, but he’d kept a secret that had leveled her. She would never, ever again lie, distort the facts or omit anything.
She would face the truth. Always.
“You are my biggest client.”
“Then let me suggest a compromise.”
She brightened with hope. “I could supervise the project from New York?”
He chuckled. “No. But I could fly your son and your mum to London with you.”
Her breath stalled in her chest. The casual way he’d called her mom “mum” hit her oddly. He did not sound like always proper Hugo Harrington. For a few seconds, he was the man in her fantasies. Not a businessman. Not a keen negotiator. But just a guy.
A handsome guy with chestnut hair and intriguing gray eyes—
“You may not be able to take your son to see Macy’s Santa, but we have Santa in London. And wonderful shops.” He caught her gaze. “Think of it as an opportunity to show Noah a more diverse Christmas.”
She blinked, trying to see the real Hugo Harrington—the businessman, not the guy
who suddenly seemed family friendly—as his idea of her mom and Noah going with her to London tickled her brain and began to take hold.
“I won’t put you up in a hotel. I’ll find you a flat. A place you can decorate with a tree and garland. And I’ll make sure you leave work in time to tuck your son into bed every night.”
She stared at him. She knew she did a good job for him. So it wasn’t outlandish that he’d want her for a project with a looming deadline. And showing her son more of the world than one little corner in New Jersey appealed to her on so many levels. Noah would see one of the most beautiful cities on the planet, experience new traditions. She could teach him to think wider, beyond himself—
It was a generous offer from a guy who normally wasn’t this kind.
Skepticism rose. “I’d still get three times my usual fee?”
He frowned.
She smiled shrewdly. “You can’t take back something you’ve already offered.”
He rose. “Sure I can. This is a negotiation.”
And the real Hugo Harrington was back.
“Yeah, well. The way I see it, I have to pay staff extra to compensate for the fact that I won’t be around to supervise my bread-and-butter projects in Manhattan.”
He caught her gaze. “And the way I see it, you’re already getting paid for those projects. The money will simply shift from your profits to the employees who assume your tasks.”
“Which just took away my incentive to go to London.”
His frown returned.
“Do the deal,” she said, confident that if he really wanted her, he’d pay.
He sighed. “You don’t have me over a barrel.”
“Wouldn’t think of even considering that. I’m simply someone who knows how to hold her ground.” Her smile grew. “Whether you want to admit it or not, you like this side of me because I negotiate some very good prices for food and decorations and fancy pastries for your parties. You simply don’t appreciate that I’ve turned that skill on you.”
He rolled his eyes. Took a breath. And suddenly the ordinary guy was back. In all the years she’d done business with Hugo Harrington, he’d never been as normal, as human, as he had been today. He certainly wasn’t the romantic man in her dreams, but she could swear he had a beating heart.
He sighed and said, “All right. Three times your usual rate. Lodging in London for three.”
“And airfare.”
“And airfare.”
She extended her hand to shake his. “We have a deal.”
CHAPTER ONE
“I DON’T SEE why you can’t just flirt a little bit.”
Two weeks before Christmas Eve, Erin Hunter stuffed the reports she’d worked on the night before into her briefcase. Holding Erin’s son, Noah, her mom stood behind her in the open-plan apartment Harrington Enterprises had rented for them.
“I mean, look at this place,” Erin’s mom continued, glancing around at the gray walls that were trimmed with shiny white wood that matched the white cabinets in the kitchen. Black-and-white geometric-print tiles separated the cooking space from the huge living room/dining room area, which had hardwood floors accented by bright blue-and-white-print rugs.
“Only someone who really likes you would go to the trouble of getting us such a lovely apartment.” She shook her head. “And I saw the way you looked at him when he came to beg—and I’m accenting the word beg here—you to come to London. I swear you all but swooned. You can’t tell me you aren’t interested.”
Erin had been ignoring comments like these from her mom since she’d heard they would be spending Christmas in London. But that last one? That about stopped her heart. All this time she’d believed she was hiding the stupid crush she had on Hugo Harrington. But what if she wasn’t?
“I didn’t swoon. If you remember correctly, he’d shocked me.”
“Which was probably why your true feelings came out.”
She shoved more papers into her briefcase. She almost said there were no true feelings. Because what she felt for Hugo Harrington was one-sided and wrong. But she’d made that vow never to lie. “It’s all totally irrelevant.”
“Why is it irrelevant? You’ve been alone over three years,” her mom said, following Erin as she walked to get her coat. “It’s time. Even if nothing comes of it, you should flirt with him, if only to get your mojo back.”
“Mojo?” She gaped at her mom. “I never had mojo. I fell in love in college before I knew mojo was a thing. And Josh had been the sweetest, kindest man I’d ever met, yet look what he did to me.”
Her mom’s expression saddened. “Erin, you have to let that go.”
“Let what go, Mom? The fact that he never told me he had cancer or the fact that he had confided in another woman?”
“A coworker. He confided in a coworker. And you should be glad he did. She knew he’d been having experimental treatments for his cancer. So when he had his heart attack, she knew what to tell the ambulance people. It was awful that he died, but at least she gave him a fighting chance.”
“And in the end, it didn’t matter. The treatments he’d agreed to had pushed his body too far and he died long before he should have. He didn’t even get to meet his own child. If he’d talked to me, I wouldn’t have let him try something so risky.”
“Faced with mortality, people do all kinds of weird things. Besides, your Hugo probably isn’t anything like Josh at all.”
She slid into her coat. “He’s not my Hugo.” But that was the problem, and the reason her mom’s comments were so troubling. If her mom had noticed her looking at Hugo Harrington oddly, she wasn’t hiding her crush as well as she’d thought.
And she knew why. She was losing her grip on the bottom-line reason she shouldn’t like him. Damn that stupid conversation where he’d shown her his nice side!
“I think he could be your Hugo,” her mom singsonged, hoisting Noah higher on her hip.
Ignoring that, she asked, “Will you and Noah be okay today?”
“He loves it here. I told you about our walks.”
“Yes. It’s good to get him outside.”
“Give me another two days and we’ll totally know the neighborhood.” Her mom gave her a quick once-over. “Are you sure you want to wear jeans and a T-shirt? Maybe you should go put on that expensive blue sweater I bought you for your birthday?”
“Wear my only nice sweater to a hotel that’s a construction zone?” She laughed. “I need clothes I can throw in the washer when I get home at night.”
Her mother sighed, clearly disappointed Erin wouldn’t dress up for Hugo Harrington. “Okay, if you think that’s best.”
“I do.” Just as she thought flirting with Hugo would be a disaster.
Mojo.
For the love of God. She did not need mojo. She needed to stop thinking about Hugo Harrington, as if he were a nice guy. He was a businessman. He’d brought her to London because he liked her work.
That was it.
She kissed Noah’s cheek, then smiled at her mom. “I’ll be back a little after seven tonight.”
Noah said, “Bye.”
Her mom said, “Bye.”
And Erin stepped out into the hall, squeezing her eyes shut as the apartment door closed behind her. She wished her feelings about Hugo hadn’t changed. The crush she’d had on a fantasy version of him had been fun. Now everything felt real. She could barely take notes in meetings with him because the sound of his voice gave her goose bumps.
Damn it!
All because he’d shown her an inkling of a nice guy.
It was stupid…weird…wrong.
On the bus ride to Regent’s Park, she told herself the whole mess had to be an extension of jet lag or exhaustion after the hectic week of getting herself, her child and her mother settled across an ocean, followed by a week of nonstop work with Hugo,
setting out his plans for the grand opening.
Entering the hotel, she walked past scaffolding set up on concrete floors. Every room, hall and office waited for new carpet, hardwood or tile. Because everything was so old and had been neglected for so long, it all needed replacing.
As much as it was none of her business and potentially trouble, she couldn’t stop her mind from tiptoeing over into the question that had plagued her since she’d arrived in London and her feelings toward Hugo had—softened.
Why the hell does he care so much about this hotel?
Sure, it was fabulous with high ceilings, chandeliers and decorative carved column caps throughout the lobby, corridors and event rooms, but there were easier projects than this shabby hotel. Even the marquis with the name had rotted and fallen off. The place was a disaster.
After taking her briefcase to her office and removing her coat, she dodged ladders and workers on her way to see Hugo Harrington, her heart adding an extra beat or two of excitement. Not because she entertained as much as an inkling of a thought of acting on her growing attraction to him. And not even to ask him why he cared so much about this old hotel. She’d never be that forward, especially when the British in him seemed to be more pronounced in his own country.
No. She was searching for Hugo for something entirely mundane: a check.
After striding through what would eventually be a workstation for the general manager’s assistant, she opened the door to the manager’s office—where Hugo set up shop when he was at the hotel. His assistant worked across town in a huge office inhabited by the New York staff in charge of renovations, so protocol was to simply walk in.
The enormous room had probably been a showstopper in its day. Dusty velvet drapes covered huge windows that looked out over the back of the property. Cleaning and painting this room had been scheduled for last because it wasn’t a space that guests would use or even see. That was why the old filing cabinets along the left wall had been brought here when their original office space came up in rotation for painting.
Harlequin Romance December 2020 Box Set Page 2