‘You’re thinking we should do this for the team?’ He grinned lazily at her.
‘No. Just because we want to.’
‘My sentiments exactly.’ He pulled the duvet back, throwing it onto the other side of the bed in one strong motion. The heat of their bodies would soon counteract the morning chill in the air.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
EVERYTHING WENT BETTER and faster today. A good appetite for breakfast made it taste delicious and they stayed at the table, ordering more coffee, while they divided up the things they needed to do today. As soon as they were allowed into the media room, they sat together in their cubicle, concentrating on the screens of the laptops in front of them.
‘I think the lights are sorted. I’ve found a place that does them really cheaply, and they’re sending me through a quote that’s good for sixty days.’ Hannah wrinkled her nose. ‘Do you reckon sixty days will be enough?’
Matt shrugged. ‘We have to win this thing first. Then we can worry about the sixty days.’
‘True. How are you doing with the prefabs?’
His lip curled into a teasing smile. ‘Not too badly.’
‘What? Tell me, Matt!’
He chuckled. ‘I spoke to a few companies, and they offered to send me their best quotes. One offered ten percent off the list price, which was still far too expensive for us. So I decided that I needed to go to the top. I called the managing director’s secretary at Laurence Construction.’
‘And she spoke to you?’
‘I said I was a surgeon with an interesting proposition. I thought that a bit of mystery might help.’
Hannah laughed. ‘Yeah, okay. Go on.’
‘I told her what we were doing, and what we wanted. She said that she’d make some enquiries and get back to me, and I reckoned it was just a polite brush-off. But she called back after twenty minutes, and Sir James Laurence wants to see us. He’s not in the office today, but he’d like us to drive down to hi
s home in Sussex tomorrow morning.’
‘Really? That’s amazing. But do we have the time?’
‘It’s a risk, but I don’t see that we can afford not to take it. I told her that we were being filmed but that I’d tell the production company that we wanted to speak privately, and she said that he’d welcome the cameras as long as there were no microphones.’
‘That sounds promising. Surely he won’t want us to drive all that way just to say no to us in front of the cameras.’ Hannah thought for a moment. ‘What do you say we get all our computer work and phone calls done today, then plan a round trip tomorrow to pick up the samples we need and go and see Sir James?’
‘Yep. And we can start writing up the budget and the proposal tonight.’
‘Sounds good. I suppose we’d better get on with it then.’
* * *
They worked until six, eating lunch in their cubicle. Hannah disappeared to make her evening phone call to Sam, and when she didn’t appear in the dining room, Matt went to find her. She wasn’t in their shared sitting room, but when he went to her bedroom door, he could hear what sounded like crying. Matt knocked, and there was no answer.
‘Hannah...?’
‘I’ll be down in a minute.’ Her voice had a brittle, cracked edge to it.
‘Can I come in?’
‘I’m just combing my hair. I’ll see you downstairs.’
Right. After last night, wanting privacy to comb her hair was the worst excuse he’d heard in a long time. Matt walked over to the sofa, sat down and waited.
It took Hannah ten minutes to comb her hair, or whatever else it was she was doing. When she did appear she rushed towards the main door of the suite, obviously bound up in her own thoughts, and she didn’t even see him.
‘Hannah.’