Blind Date Rivals

by Nina Harrington

  ‘Okay,’ she replied with a tilt of her head, ‘and thank you. I’m not used to being admired, so it has come as a bit of shock. Especially on top of the bad news about the land sale.’

  Then she flung back her head and dared to chuckle as the irony of the situation hit her. She was holding hands with a dazzling, handsome man with eyes the colour of a winter sky while her plant nursery was just about to go to the wall.

  ‘Do you know the funny thing? Cottage Orchids has actually been shortlisted for an award. Can you believe that? An award for my entrepreneurial skills.’ Her right hand slid out from Leo’s hand and traced the letters in the air above their heads. ‘Local Businesswoman of the Year.’ Then she dropped her hand onto her hip and gave him a tiny shrug. ‘What a joke. I could use some serious business advice myself right now. If only I could afford to pay for…it.’ Then she froze mid-sentence.

  Leo was a mega business consultant.

  She needed a business consultant.

  And she needed one badly.

  And he did have a point about Helen. Her friend would never have arranged a blind date unless she thought that she and Leo could get along.

  But that would mean asking for help. And even the thought of asking this Adonis of a man to give his time and energy as a favour made her teeth go on edge and she cringed inside.

  Worse—he was part of the Rizzi family! How could she possibly trust him to give her impartial advice? No. It was impossible.

  Especially when she still had his precious ring in her pocket.

  Her mind raced. Oh, no, she could not do that! She could not hold his property to ransom. That would be totally wrong, not to say unethical. And he was Caspar’s friend, after all.

  Desperate times called for desperate measures. She had been out here working for two hours and the only ideas she had come up with to save her business were too long-term to be any use at all over the next few weeks before she had to pack up everything she could save.

  His professional advice could make a difference and at that particular moment she needed all the help she could get.

  All she had to do was forget the fact that he was a professional business guru who probably charged his clients the earth for the benefit of his advice, and swallow her pride and just ask him.

  She could do this.

  She could humiliate herself yet again.

  She chewed at her lower lip, aware that he was looking at her with his eyebrows creased together, clearly bewildered at this strange woman who had been trying to get rid of him. Perhaps she could put it down to mood swings? That always confused boys.

  ‘Look, Leo. It’s like this.’ She took a deep breath and blurted out her question before she could change her mind. ‘I need a business consultant. You are a business consultant. It seems to me to point one way.’

  Then she smiled sweetly at him, slipped her hand from his, reached into her trouser pocket and waved his ring between two fingers.

  ‘I was going to give you your ring back this afternoon, but now I would like to offer you a trade. You can have your ring back in exchange for a few hours’ work. Ten hours at most—even quicker if you really put your mind to my problems.’

  She held up one hand when he started to bluster in protest. ‘I know that your family own the hotel and I know that there is no way I can prevent the land from being sold. That ship has sailed. So I am not asking you to do anything that could harm your family.’

  Then her hand dropped and she smiled through clenched teeth and looked up sheepishly into Leo’s startled face. ‘All I need is a second opinion about what I can do to make the best of this situation and save my business. Right now, I have no clue about the options I have and I am in great danger of losing everything. That’s all I need—some advice about my options. It won’t take long, and I would really appreciate it. So. What do you say? Want to make a trade? Your time for the ring. It’s quite simple, really.’

  Simple? Leo choked on the words that were bursting to the surface and stared open-mouthed at Sara, who was just standing there smiling at him in her prettiest, cheekiest, freckliest fashion as though she had just invited him for afternoon tea.

  His situation was anything but simple.

  He couldn’t give this girl advice without compromising his position—but he also could not tell her that he was on assignment for his aunt.

  He had given his word that he would keep this project a secret.

  He had just told her that he was not an employee of the hotel chain, and that was true—he was doing this work for his aunt as a personal favour.

  His aunt was the only one of his mother’s Rizzi family who had reached out to him and his sister and offered practical help when their parents had died in a road accident. He owed her. And he would keep his reason for staying on at the hotel to himself, even if it meant being less than honest with Sara.

  He had walked away from the Rizzi Hotel chain a long time ago and had absolutely no intention of ever joining the payroll. Not while his grandfather was in control. And nothing—nothing—was going to come between him and his mission here.

  Not even a pretty girl who was so cheeky that she some how believed that he could simply drop everything else in his life and give her his undivided personal attention in exchange for the return of his own property!

  She had no idea what she was asking.

  There was a waiting list of companies who were willing to pay top rates for this kind of advice, and it had taken a lot of juggling to squeeze these few days away from the office into his schedule. He had a mountain of paperwork and emails and reports to finish back at the hotel. There was no way he could take so much time away from his core business and current projects to help Sara.

  Of course, they were not friends of friends who had struck rock bottom and were as intriguing as Sara Fenchurch—but it was still a lot to ask.

  So where did that leave him? He had to have that ring back. And fast.

  He raised an eyebrow. ‘You want me to give you business advice in exchange for my own ring. Is that right?’

  ‘Don’t put it like that,’ she said. ‘It makes me sound as though I might be…well…an opportunist. Instead of just foolish and desperate. With an old cat to support,’ she added in a rush.

  ‘Oh, well,’ he replied. ‘That makes all the difference. How could I possibly forget about the cat?’

  He lowered his head and glared at Sara down his nose in a very half-hearted attempt to intimidate her. ‘I could always complain to Helen and Caspar that you are holding my property to ransom. I think that they would take a very dim view of that kind of behaviour.’

  She sniffed and shook her head from side to side. Then she raised her eyebrows and grinned cheekily. ‘You wouldn’t. You like Caspar. And Helen is my best friend in the whole world.’

  Sara gave a short shrug. ‘It would be such a shame if Caspar’s life was a misery because you could not spare a few hours of your time to give some business advice to a lady in distress. How could you be so ungallant?’

  And then she sniffed and reached into her pocket for her mobile phone. ‘Why don’t I give Helen a call now and ask her to turn the car around because I’ve had bad news about my business? Of course I haven’t told her yet because I didn’t want to upset her so close to the wedding, but seeing as I’m all alone and broke…’

  Leo’s hand came up and his fingers closed over the open cell phone. ‘You didn’t tell Helen when you heard your bad news this morning?’

  She stuck her neck out and hissed in disbelief. ‘Are you kidding? She would have dropped everything and stayed here to try and sort things out. I couldn’t do that to her. Not when her wedding is only four weeks away and she is meeting Caspar’s parents this afternoon to go through the final plans. She has enough to worry about. No—’ and she stood back and dropped her voice ‘—I have to work through the next steps on my own. When I have something concrete to tell her, then yes, I will talk it through, but until then I would prefer to keep this to
myself.’

  She looked into his face for a second and frowned. ‘You’re giving me that two headed look again. Now what have I done?’

  ‘More what you haven’t done.’ He lifted his head, sighed out loud, then nodded. ‘Just how alone and broke are you? Because, coming from a girl who used to live in that house—’ and he nodded over his shoulder towards the hotel ‘—you will forgive me if my idea of being broke is slightly different from yours.’

  There was a sharp intake of breath and she stared at him wide-eyed. ‘I don’t believe it. You actually think that just because my grandmother left my mother a huge house that there was money in the family? Oh, dear. Another bubble for me to burst.’

  Then she shook her head slowly from side to side. ‘Huge debts we knew nothing about, followed by even bigger repair bills. Don’t even talk about the tax. All of which means that I have no employees and no backup team. Cottage Orchids is what you see in front of you. There is me, the cat and a cheap delivery van. Everything I have earned has been ploughed back into the business. I have some savings, which had been intended to pay the rent, but that is it. That’s why I have to resort to these sorts of tactics to persuade you to help me out. Otherwise, these glasshouses are going to collapse around me and I won’t be able to do anything about it. I will lose everything.’

  Lose everything. Leo bit the inside of his cheek. Why did she have to use that particular expression?

  Grainger Consulting dealt with companies large enough to survive in one way or another even without his intervention, but to lose everything?

  There was no way that Sara could know that she had just described his own personal nightmare made real, and the words rebounded inside his head.

  He had fought long and hard to make sure that he would never, ever face the horror of losing everything again. He had checked his investment and property portfolio only that morning and, if he wanted to, he need never work again.

  And it did not make one bit of difference. The fear was still there.

  He inhaled slowly through his nose, anxious not to show Sara the impact of her innocent and totally open and honest statement. No complicated risk assessment needed here. She slouched casually against the glasshouse, looking at him with her hopeful lopsided grin as the sunlight brought out the freckles on her chin. Everything about this girl, who was pinning her hopes and dreams on him, of all people, screamed out to him that she knew as much about business management as he knew about orchid propagation. And she was asking him to help her. One to one.

  He swallowed down something close to personal concern, and then sniffed it away. What a ridiculous notion. He did not do sentiment. He did objective analysis based on data.

  Perhaps Sara did need someone like him to look at her options. But it would have to be done professionally. Advising a one woman plant business would be easy enough—if she was prepared to accept some hard facts.

  There was a long pause before Leo lifted his chin.

  ‘I’m beginning to get the picture. And you accept the fact that the Rizzi Hotel group is not going to walk away from buying the land? Nothing is going to change that fact.’

  Her shoulders slumped and she seemed to falter and swallow down what he sincerely prayed was not the start of tears, before biting her lower lip and nodding once for emphasis before flicking back her head and glaring defiantly at him. ‘Yes, I accept that my business is toast and I am going to be evicted. Can we move on now?’

  ‘One more question. Have you ever had any kind of business or marketing advice at all?’ he asked.

  Her face seemed to relax a little at his first sign that he might actually be thinking about her proposal. ‘No, but I can learn. Do you really think that will help me save my nursery?’

  Not completely convinced that he was doing the right thing, even as he spoke, Leo reluctantly gave his terms. ‘I can’t promise you that—but I can talk you through some options. What you do with them has to be your decision, not mine. As you say, you have to choose the direction you want to go in. All I can do is give you a few maps to help you to decide.’

  ‘Maps. I like the sound of that! Because I have to tell you, Leo, that at the moment I am feeling totally lost. I may need guidebooks as well.’ She exhaled with a slow sigh. ‘You might as well know that I hate asking anyone for help. Anyone. Which makes it extra hard for me to ask you to give me some advice. I wouldn’t do it at all unless I was seriously desperate and it’s important to me that you know that. Just so that we are clear.’

  Leo fought back a smile. Perhaps they had a lot more in common than he had ever expected. To feel as if the whole world was against you and there was nowhere to go and nobody to help? Oh, yes, he knew what that felt like.

  But, as he looked at Sara, the small beginnings of an idea crept into his mind.

  He had one objective here at Kingsmede Manor and that was to find some way to give this hotel a competitive edge. And who better could there be to give him the inside story about the place than the girl who had lived there most of her life? She had twenty plus years of background and insider information about this hotel which he could use—if he could persuade her to tell him. While keeping his assignment a secret.

  Yes, it would be a deception of sorts. But he couldn’t afford to get sentimental and it was Sara who had suggested it. She stood to gain just as much as he did.

  If he made sure that she never found out that he was there to help out the very family who were putting her business at risk.

  Which was probably why the words came out of his mouth before his brain had properly engaged.

  ‘I was planning to stay at the hotel for a day or two. I suppose I could give you a few hours of my time tomorrow morning. Just to take a look at your business strategy and work through some options. How does that sound?’

  ‘A few hours?’ she gasped in disbelief and waved her arms about. ‘I am going to need more than a few hours! I have to save my entire family heritage here!’

  ‘That’s my offer,’ he said, unmoved.

  ‘What else can I offer you in exchange for some extra time?’ she asked with a smile. ‘Crash course in orchid cultivation? Budding for beginners? Or perhaps your lady friends could use an orchid in their lives? Girls love flowers and my special hybrids smell really wonderful. The girls will love you for ever.’

  And that really did make him laugh out loud. ‘Well, I might just take you up on your kind offer but not at the moment, thanks. However—’ and he hesitated with a twinge of guilt as another far more pressing excuse for being with Sara kicked in ‘—there is something you could help me with. I am interested in Kingsmede Manor. Call it professional curiosity if you will, but the history behind a country house like this and the people who designed it and lived in it has always fascinated me.’

  Now that was true. He did have a personal interest in the design aspects of the property.

  ‘The Manor? You do realise that once you get me talking about the house you would never be able to shut me up? But yes, of course, if you’re interested I’ve inherited a lot of material about the history of the house and you are welcome to look at it. But you do realise that an exclusive viewing of these historical documents will cost you a lot more than a few hours of your business time?’

  ‘How about four hours a day for the next three days?’ Leo replied and held back a laugh as Sara’s mouth fell open in surprise. But then she pulled herself back together and held out her hand, clearly anxious to grab his offer before he had a chance to think about it and change his mind. ‘Done. Do we have a deal?’

  ‘Deal.’ He nodded and they shook on it. Her hand was warm and small, but her handshake was solid. It was the handshake of someone who meant what they said, and the prospect of spending a lot more time in Sara’s company suddenly seemed like the best decision that he had made all day.

  ‘So how soon can you get changed?’ she asked. ‘I can be ready in about an hour. Oh, and one word of advice. Don’t wear black. The compost gets everywhere.
’

  ‘Oh, no,’ Leo replied in a slow languorous voice. ‘I only come in one colour and that colour is black. And I start tomorrow morning. Take it or leave it.’

  And he gave her that half smile that brought a bright flush to her cheeks for all of the ten seconds it took her to say, ‘I’ll take it. I will definitely take it.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  LEO swiped his thumb across the display on his personal organiser as he strolled across the stone patio outside Kingsmede Manor and checked down the list of emails which had come in from the project team leaders around the world during the night.

  There was nothing that could not wait until later in the day.

  Leo popped his organiser into his pocket, lifted his head and looked across the sunlit gardens and asked himself, yet again, why on earth he had cleared four hours from his schedule on a Monday morning to work for Cottage Orchids.

  The first answer was too embarrassing to be ignored.

  He had made a deal. A deal where he had actually agreed to spend hours of his valuable time in order to get his own ring back. This was so totally pathetic that it was humiliating.

  Sara Fenchurch was a remarkable woman but he knew that she wouldn’t have put up much of a fight if he had demanded the ring then and there and kept on demanding it back until she caved under the pressure.

  Except that would have made him a bully, and he had a real problem with bullies. Always had. Probably always would. And he had no plans to become one himself. Despite the level of provocation.

  He had worked late into the night and over his room service breakfast finishing a report for a top client who had demanded that Leo took personal responsibility for the final recommendations—and was willing to pay to make that happen. It was a difficult case involving the hostile takeover of several chains of family-run bakeries. Bakeries that used local suppliers who could soon find themselves in trouble when the company switched to one single supplier overseas.