‘No, you take care of you,’ Carla returned.
‘Let’s go,’ his hard voice said.
Samantha felt the old panic erupt inside her and had to work very hard at damping it back down. As he set off down the hotel steps the sun came out, giving his skin an extra warmth that added a luxurious sheen to it.
‘Call me,’ Carla begged as a final farewell.
‘I promise.’ She nodded, and felt a burn begin behind her eyes as she took that first mammoth step to follow him.
Maybe he sensed the tears. Certainly something made him pause and look back. Eyes like black marble lanced over her. Samantha lowered her own eyes and bit down on her bottom lip, fought hard to concentrate on negotiating the steps instead of the wave of anguish that was trying to overwhelm her.
His hand snaked out. She hadn’t even realised he’d moved back towards her until she felt the suitcase being taken from her. Then, without another glance at anyone, he strode off towards the Jaguar, opened the boot, threw the case in, then went round to open the passenger door to stand beside it like a jailer waiting to lock his latest prisoner in.
Which made her think of cages and chains, which in turn almost caused a hysterical bubble of laughter to burst in her throat. Swallowing both tears and laughter, she kept her face turned away as she reached the car and lowered herself into it.
Without a by-your-leave, her stick was taken from her. The door shut with a very expensive thud, and she found herself experiencing a different kind of luxury, made up of soft cream leather and walnut veneer. Five seconds later his door came open and he was bending inside to toss her stick onto the car’s rear seat. She caught the tantalising scent of his skin as he folded his long body in the seat beside her. He had put his jacket back on but his tie still hung loose around his throat. He looked lean and mean and decidedly alien.
Without a single word being spoken between them, he pulled his seat belt across his wide chest and locked it in place, glanced briefly her way to check that she had already done the same. Then, with a final settling of his long frame, he started the engine, shoved
it into ‘drive’, and swept them away.
It was all so swift, she decided, so final. As she caught her last glimpse of the hotel, she felt the tears burning the backs of her eyes once again. Goodbye, she lamented silently—then wondered why she felt as if she’d said goodbye like this to some other run-down, dearly loved building?
‘Why the stick?’ he bit out suddenly.
‘If my limp offends you,’ she flashed at him coldly, ‘then maybe you should turn around and put me back where you found me. Because the limp it isn’t going to go away just because you don’t like it!’
‘It doesn’t offend me,’ he denied. ‘It makes me bloody angry, but it does not offend me.’
She wished she believed him but she didn’t, and it didn’t help that it had to be her scarred profile he saw every time he flicked a brief glance at her!
‘Tell me about it,’ he persisted stubbornly.
Does he never give up? Taking a deep breath, she gave him what he wanted. ‘The knee was crushed in the accident but the injury was made worse by the urgency with which they had to pull me from my car before it went up in flames.’ He winced, but she didn’t care; he’d asked for this! ‘I’ve since had four operations on it and, believe it or not, the limp is not half as obvious as it was two months ago.’
With sarcasm abounding in that last comment, still he didn’t give up. ‘Any more operations to come?’
‘No,’ she replied. ‘What you see now is what you get. So if you were hoping to recover the same person you see in that photograph you gave me, then let me tell you now, before this thing goes any further, that you won’t be getting her!’
‘I’ll be getting the temper, though, I notice,’ he drawled, and was suddenly smiling, smiling in a way that made her heart flip over. Smiling with his eyes and a genuine amusement that completely altered his face. He was smiling at her as if she’d just given him some special present instead of yelling at him like a harridan.
‘Keep your eyes on the road!’ she cried as a desperate diversion away from the emotions that were suddenly churning up her insides.
He began to curse, shocking her with the abrupt way he took his foot off the accelerator and turned his attention back to the stretch of curving Tarmac in front of them. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t think. Obviously you will be nervous about being in a car after—’
‘No.’ She sighed, feeling just a bit guilty for making him think that she was. ‘Not so long as the driver is competent—which you clearly are.’
At which point another silence fell, while he made himself concentrate on his driving and Samantha’s mind went lurching off on an agenda of its own.
‘So, tell me why the Tremount Hotel has been left to fall into such a miserable state,’ he invited after a minute or two. ‘It looked as if it must have been quite something once upon a time.’
‘It was,’ Samantha agreed, relieved to be given a more neutral subject to fill in the silence while they travelled. ‘Victorian,’ she said. ‘Originally built to accommodate the upper echelons of British middle-class society of its time. And filled with some real architectural treasures if the right person knew where to look for them.’
‘They would have to look hard.’ André grunted.
‘They would have to possess soul,’ Samantha corrected, forcing André to respond with a rueful grimace at her set-down. ‘It fell on hard times when the British holiday market shifted abroad. But now the market is coming back to its own shores places like the Tremount could have a lot of potential for the right developer. It has its own beach, and isn’t too far away from the nearest resort town. Also, there is a large piece of land to the right of the main building you may have noticed as you came down the driveway. It was once a nine-hole golf course until it was left to fall into disrepair along with the hotel. With the right expert on the job, it could…’
André let her talk on, harshly aware she had no idea she was giving him a report on the hotel’s potential that was as detailed and informed as any of his top surveyors could offer him. But, then, Samantha couldn’t remember, and therefore had no idea that this kind of thing came as second nature to her. Or that, like himself, she had been involved in the hotel industry all of her life.