Hugo’s bubble burst. He might want her. But she didn’t even appear to be thinking about him. About the possibility of another night together.
“There’ll be no walk-ins. We hope to have the place booked.”
Her attention fully focused on the notepad she held, she said, “Okay. I’ll check with reservations today and every day until the actual event.”
He said, “Good thinking,” but his pride was a little bruised. While he fought a hellish battle to get himself to stop dwelling on her, she had no problem talking about stockings?
Which was exactly what needed to be happening for the grand opening. The biggest project of his life. The goal he’d been working toward since his stepfather kicked him out.
Plus, she obviously didn’t feel the same way he did. He could see himself longing to be with her, if she showed even one sign that she wanted to be with him. But she was a pro. And he was behaving like a smitten fool.
Annoyed with himself, he said, “I’m also toying with the idea of taking the celebration out to the courtyard garden.”
Her eyes widened with excitement. “Wow.”
“My parents’ celebration was wonderful. Warm and cozy. Though I definitely want those elements in our party… I also want a fresh spin. Does taking it to the garden seem like it would be a fresh spin or sound like too much?”
“What if you have the dinner exactly as it used to be in the ballroom, then have everyone go outside for the visit from Santa?”
He loved her idea but couldn’t believe he’d asked for her opinion. He never needed anyone’s opinion. If he had an idea, he either used it or he chucked it. Fighting his desire to sleep with her again had knocked him off his game.
Which was another reason to get himself beyond this. To stop wanting something he couldn’t have.
He waved his hand, dismissing her. “Anyway, that’s it for now.”
She smiled and rose from her seat, closing her spiral notebook. He glanced at it, wondering why she didn’t take notes on her phone, then realized she had an actual, physical record of everything they discussed, the theme of the event and the work she had done. If something happened to her, her staff probably knew to find that book.
She wasn’t merely beautiful and sexy; she was smart. And today he was finding her intelligence every bit as sexy and her shiny red hair—
“I can go?”
“Yes! Yes!” He bounced from his seat and hit his knee on the top of the desk. Damn his wandering thoughts. He was behaving like an idiot.
This stopped now. No more rambling. No more noticing things about her.
They’d had a one-night stand. They worked together. He employed her. His mind should have already moved on to other things.
She turned and walked out without so much as a goodbye or a smile and his pride dinged again.
This time he did groan as he lowered himself to his seat. He decided his weird reaction was a result of the pressure of the project and didn’t think about it for the rest of the day.
But when it came time to leave the hotel that evening, his thoughts jumped back to her. It wasn’t right for her to ride a bus after a twelve-hour day. He couldn’t break his promise to make her stay comfortable just because he needed time away from her.
* * *
When Erin left the hotel that night, Hugo leaned against his limo door. He looked like a teenage boy waiting for the girl from math class to come out so he could talk to her. The urge to tease him rose in her, along with a yearning to simply be with him.
But she said nothing. They’d had a night of fun. Neither intended for it to go any further than it had. She needed to keep the objectivity going that she’d cultivated that day—no matter how difficult it was to get their night together out of her head.
“Are you taking me home?”
He opened the door. “Yes. I promised you a nice stay in London. I’m not marring that with late-night bus trips.”
“Okay.” She slid into the limo.
He got in beside her and reached out to close the glass that separated the passengers from the driver. She frowned. Why would he care if his driver heard their conversation?
She wondered if she’d done something wrong. Except, she hadn’t. She made sure every bit of work she did for him was as good as it could be. Her actions always spoke louder than her words. She hadn’t done anything wrong.
So what wouldn’t he want his driver to hear?
They made the two turns that would take them to her apartment and the limo stayed silent.
Silent. He didn’t even say, How was your day? Any problems with the project? Anything you want to discuss?
The car stayed quiet.
So she said, “How was your day?”
He glanced over at her with a frown. “What?”
She sighed. “Just making conversation.”
“Oh. Okay, then. My day was fine.” He smiled briefly, a weird, fake smile. “How was your day?”
“Um…good. I guess. Getting a lot of things done.”
“Good.”
She took a breath. “And I’m glad your day was fine too.”
“Yes. I was too.”
The conversation died, but that was better than enduring the stilted discussion of how their days had gone.
She suddenly missed romantic Hugo. That guy knew exactly what to say. But maybe this was for the best? This stilted, emotionless guy was the real Hugo, and no matter how much she yearned for things to be different, this was reality.
She tried to shove that truth into her brain so hard it stuck, but memories of him being sweet and kind, sexy and romantic kept writing over them.
It was going to be harder than she thought to forget about their one-night stand.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE NEXT MORNING, Erin immediately went to the attic to search for stockings. Stooped in front of a big box, she might have stopped at the first sample she’d found, but it wasn’t alone. Two different stockings had been stored together.
She rocked back on her heels. She should ask Hugo if the hotel purchased one kind of stocking for boys and one for girls. Or one for older kids and one for younger kids. Or a different kind of stocking every year, making each year’s offering a keepsake.
But, frankly, she wasn’t in the mood to see him.
She told herself that wasn’t good. The guy was her biggest client. It shouldn’t matter one way or another if they hadn’t been able to have a decent conversation in his limo the night before. Or that the horrible attempt at chitchat had actually made her long for romantic Hugo.
She squeezed her eyes shut. It doesn’t matter.
Except she was back to thinking about him again, wishing things could be different when she knew they couldn’t.
And she had a job to do.
She snatched the two stockings from the floor as she rose and headed to the attic door.
She would set their relationship right simply by going to his office and asking about the stockings. She would be the nicest person on the planet to him. She would not fail. He would not fail.
Because, damn it, that’s what she did! Made everything perfect for her clients.
She stormed to the general manager’s space Hugo used when he was in the hotel, but he hadn’t arrived yet. His habit was to come in around ten or so and stay a few hours, but that schedule wasn’t etched in stone. If he needed time with the staff in charge of the renovations, he’d stay with the team of New York employees as long as he needed. If he needed to come back to the hotel in the afternoon, he did that. He floated around, being where he had to be to get things done. And he wasn’t here now. Apparently, he didn’t need to be.
She turned to leave as the office phone rang.
Pivoting to face the desk again, she stared at it. She hadn’t realized the landlines had been hooked up. Everybody wa
s using their cell, if only for convenience. Running back and forth between the hotel and office, Hugo was easier to reach that way. And she could be reached anywhere in the hotel, or at the florists, the bakery or any one of her vendors.
The phone rang again.
She inched into the room. It seemed rude not to answer it. Especially since it could be Hugo calling…
No. He’d call her cell. He wouldn’t even know she was in this room.
It rang again.
Damn it! She wasn’t the kind of person who didn’t answer a ringing phone.
She raced to the desk, catching the receiver as the phone rang one more time. “Hello?”
“Who is this?” a female voice asked. “Isn’t this the Harrington Park Hotel?”
“Yes. I’m sorry. I’m not a receptionist. I just happened to be in the office waiting for…someone when you called.”
“Would that someone be my brother Hugo?”
Erin’s breath caught. Hugo’s sister?
“Yes. He’s usually at the hotel by now, but he must have gotten tied up with his regular staff at the office.”
“Aren’t you in an office?”
She winced. “I’m in an office at the hotel. I’m Erin Hunter, the event planner organizing the Christmas Eve celebration.”
“Ah, you’re the miracle worker he hired.”
Erin frowned at the phone. “I wouldn’t know about miracle worker, but I do like to get things done.”
“Don’t mind my mood. I’m Sally, by the way. I’m not usually this grumpy but things are progressing weirdly on the garden.”
Intrigued, Erin sat. “Anything I can do to help?”
“No. But I need to talk to my brother. Can you have him ring me?”
“Sure.” She frowned again. “Why not just call his cell?”
Sally cleared her throat. “He gave me the number, but I threw it away.”
Erin’s heart broke a little. She knew how much Hugo wanted his sister at the ornament ceremony and she’d tossed away his number. Still, having Hugo call Sally might be a good first step to settling their differences.
“Okay. Sure. I’ll have him call you.” She paused, then said, “Does he have your number?”
“Yes. My cell.” She laughed. “Unless he tossed it.”
Erin waited a second as Sally rattled off her number. “Thanks… Um… I could give you his number if you’d like.”
Sally paused a little too long. Giving Erin the sense she didn’t want any part of Hugo in her life.
Finally, she said, “You know what? I’m just going to send him an email. And, Erin… Don’t let my brother run you off the way he does most other people.”
Something about that hit Erin oddly. But the quiet in the limo ride home the night before suddenly made sense. Had he been trying to run her off? Not as a subcontractor. He’d made it abundantly clear that he liked her work and wanted her to stay.
Running her off was personal.
“Actually, we’ve worked together for years.”
“So that must be the secret to getting along with him. Have something he wants.”
Erin almost said, “Maybe.” But decided against it. Hugo was her boss and she wouldn’t badmouth him to his family. In fact, everything about the conversation seemed wrong. Hugo should have been the one talking to Sally, not her.
She said, “I’ll give him your number.”
“No. No. I’ll email him.”
Erin said, “Okay. Fine.” Then she and Sally said their goodbyes.
Though she had tons of work to do, her mind spun with possibilities of what Sally might want. She was still in Hugo’s seat when he walked into the office.
“Problem?”
Caught, she bounced to attention. “No… Yes. Maybe. I—” She stopped her babbling. “Two things. I have a question and your sister, Sally, called.”
She handed him the slip of paper with Sally’s number and his lips lifted into a smile as he glanced down to read it. But when he saw only Sally’s number, he frowned and looked up at Erin again.
“She has my number.” His frown grew. “Yet she called on the landline?”
“Yes.” The troubled expression on his face wouldn’t let her tell him that Sally had tossed his cell number.
“We didn’t really chat.” Damn it. She suddenly found herself in choppy waters again. Holding back information. Downplaying the call. When she’d sworn to herself that she’d always be honest. Painfully honest.
She took a breath. “Your sister was confused because I’d answered the phone that she’d thought you’d answer. That’s all.”
That and Sally had clearly let Erin know she wasn’t Hugo’s biggest fan.
Damn it. No matter how honest she wanted to be, she couldn’t say that. Wasn’t there some sort of etiquette about this? Like: if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all?
Yes! That was it! Her mom had said that all the time when Erin was a little girl.
Plus, if she really wanted to get bottom-line honest on this… Getting Sally to the Christmas Eve celebration might fall under Erin’s purview, but Hugo’s relationship with his sister was none of her business. She had no responsibility to tell Hugo her conclusions and suspicions.
It wasn’t like holding back a cancer diagnosis.
She took another breath as her thoughts simultaneously cleared about Sally and muddled about Josh. The pain of his holding that back rolled through her once again. No matter how hard she tried, or how many other circumstances she compared it to, his not telling her had been unforgiveable.
“Anyway, she said she’d email you to discuss the garden. And I wanted to talk about the Christmas stockings.”
He rounded the desk as she scooted to the front. “What about the stockings?”
“I found two styles of stockings in a box. If they had been in two different boxes, I might have assumed your parents bought a unique stocking for every year…sort of like a keepsake. But they were in the same box, making me wonder if younger kids and older kids got different stockings or boys and girls?”
“Different stockings every year. All kids get the same one.”
“So, they are like a keepsake?”
He dropped to his seat. “I guess. I never saved mine…”
“Maybe your mother did?”
His frown deepened as he glanced at some papers on his desk, as if his attention was off the stockings and moving on because he had too much work to do to dawdle.
“I think those are requisitions dropped off by subcontractors.”
“I know what they are.”
His tone caused her to step back, as she reminded herself that he was working to create emotional distance between them—
Except he was also a guy whose sister had tossed his cell number.
She remembered the happily surprised expression on his face when he’d been told his sister had called and how it had shifted when he saw she’d only left a number for him to return her call. What if that had really hurt him? Erin knew he wanted his sister and brother at the Christmas Eve celebration.
He was renovating the family hotel.
He’d given his siblings a role in the new hotel.
What if he wanted to reunite? What if he’d spent millions of dollars buying this run-down building and millions more renovating it? Not just to recreate his past, but to reunite his family?
The truth of it hit so hard, she almost had to sit.
“Erin?”
“What?” She shook her head to bring herself back to the present. “I’m sorry. What were you saying?”
She glanced at his face and saw lines she’d missed before this. She saw sadness in his gray eyes. Not the emptiness of not caring as she’d always believed. But a bone-deep sadness.
“I said we get new stockings
every year. Go crazy picking out a new design or find the stockings from the first year and buy those.” He frowned. “Though I’m not sure how you’d know which stocking had been chosen for the first year my parents had this celebration.”
“Boxes aren’t marked.”
He dismissed her by looking down at his work again. “Figure it out. It doesn’t matter either way. A new stocking type or find the first one.”
She backed up, inching toward the open door. “Okay.”
“Close that.”
She nodded, but as she closed the door her heart hurt, and guilt tiptoed through her for being so angry with him for making things difficult in the limo the night before.
A man who’d been estranged from his family for so long might not know how to make a connection.
Of course, he was the one who’d left his family. So, wasn’t it true that he had no one to blame but himself?
* * *
Thursday afternoon concluded with a short meeting with the subcontractors doing the renovation work. Hugo strode into the conference room, his jacket off, his tie loose and his sleeves rolled up. This was the real work. Jay had the kitchen and menu under control. Sally had some problems with the courtyard garden, but he had every confidence in her. His brother and sister had become remarkable adults.
And Erin would make the celebration perfect.
Even as he thought the last, he saw her sitting on one of the chairs around the conference table, laughing with the construction supervisor.
Annoyance skittered through him at the sight of her so easygoing and happy with another man, along with that silly joy he always felt when she was around. The joy he had to fight so hard to ignore he could only talk about work with her. Which made riding home in the limo quiet and awkward.
“Good afternoon, everyone.”
The men and women at the conference table came to attention at the sound of his voice.
“I hope everyone’s got a good report for me.”
General murmurs of agreement floated around him as he sat.
“Except for Ms. Hunter, whose presence confuses me.”
“I need reports too,” Erin said, totally unaffected by his negativism. “I need to know when rooms will be done so I can assign decorating crews.” She caught his gaze. Her blue eyes held an emotion that confused him. She should be on her high horse, her pride radiating like the rays of the sun because he’d questioned her presence. Instead, she studied him as if he were a bug under a microscope.
Harlequin Romance December 2020 Box Set Page 7