Lachlan MacLeish – her new client. The one who was apparently footing the bill for this gorgeous suite. Lucy checked her watch; it was just gone six p.m. local time, which made it the middle of the night back in Edinburgh. Way, way past her bedtime.
‘Eight o’clock is fine.’
‘I’ll let Mr MacLeish know.’
Taking a deep breath, she rolled her shoulders again, ignoring the way they protested at the movement. So much for a power nap. Who needed sleep anyway?
2
Give them great meals of beef and iron and steel,
they will eat like wolves and fight like devils
– Henry V
‘Good evening, Mr MacLeish,’ the hotel valet said, opening the car door as Lachlan unbuckled his seatbelt. He left the engine running – no point turning it off – and stepped out of the gunmetal-grey Porsche Panama, grabbing his phone from the console just as it started to ring.
Again.
He looked up at the white art deco façade of the Greyson Hotel, towering over them both, and then back at the valet, sliding the phone in his pocket and ignoring the call.
‘How’s the family, Paul?’ he asked, shaking the valet’s hand, sliding a note into his palm.
‘They’re great.’ Paul looked past Lachlan and at the car, whistling with appreciation. ‘This one’s a beauty,’ he said, taking Lachlan’s keys. ‘I’ll take good care of her for you.’
As Paul climbed into the car, Lachlan rolled his shoulders, trying to ease the kinks out of the muscles there. The smell of the ocean surrounded him, the salty aroma clinging to the warm evening air. Unlike New York, it was temperate enough to wear only suit pants and a jacket – his tie had been taken off and rolled up in his pocket hours ago.
His phone buzzed again, that familiar vibration pushing into his hip bone. He’d spent most of his day in meetings, trying to stave off a crisis in New York. The three hours of videoconferencing, followed by two more in tense talks with his investors, hadn’t added to his good humour at all.
‘How are you this evening, Mr MacLeish?’ the concierge asked him as he walked into the hotel. ‘Your guest has made it to the restaurant. We let her know you’d be a few minutes late.’
‘Thanks, Maria.’ Lachlan nodded at the young woman. It had seemed a good idea at the time – to arrange a dinner with his prospective Scottish attorney – to see if she’d be suitable to take on his case. But right now he’d much rather collapse into bed.
‘And reception have a few messages for you. I asked them to forward them to your room.’
A group of tourists – ones with deep pockets and expensive clothes – walked into the hotel lobby, their suitcase wheels squeaking across the marble floor. Almost immediately the triple-storeyed space was filled with loud voices that echoed across the indoor pond.
‘I’ll leave you to deal with these guys,’ Lachlan said, inclining his head at the crowd. ‘Have a good evening.’
‘Thank you, sir. And you, too.’
As he crossed the lobby – weaving his way through the giant silver abstract sculptures and the huge potted trees – Lachlan felt a shot of pride blast through his veins. When he’d first invested in this hotel it had been run down and losing money in spite of its grand location. It had taken a few years of finding the best people, investing in the facilities, and attracting the kind of guests who would be willing to pay the prices they charged – but finally the place was back in profit.
Like everything he touched, he’d made it succeed.
As he turned the corner into the restaurant, the maître d’ smiled warmly, reaching his hand out to shake Lachlan’s firmly. ‘Your guest is seated at your usual table, Mr MacLeish.’
Lachlan checked his watch. Twenty minutes late. He felt a little guilty for keeping her waiting after she’d flown all this way.
The Palm Room was a half-indoor, half-outdoor restaurant, with a wall of folding glass doors that led out to a palm-tree-lined terrace. Though the interior was painted an off-white, everything else in the room was filled with colour, from the purple velvet chairs to the hand-picked Jackson Pollock paintings.
Like the rest of the hotel, since it had been renovated the Palm Room had become a fashionable haunt for the rich and famous. In the corner he could see an old shipping magnate friend of his father’s, dining with a girl who was young enough to be his daughter. On the other side was a semi-famous actress, scanning the room to see if anybody was looking at her, and totally ignoring her dining companion – a notorious ex-criminal, who had enough money to buy whatever company he wanted to dine with. Lachlan nodded at them, then continued to the doors, and stepped outside.
The terrace was his favourite place to eat, even in early spring. Though the temperature was just below seventy, the heaters were lit, making the outside feel as warm as the interior.
His usual table was on the far side, set back from the others to provide some privacy, as it overlooked the Atlantic Ocean. As the sun slid into her watery bed, the sky was darkening, the palm trees that divided the hotel from the beach becoming black silhouettes against the blue-grey water.
But it wasn’t the view that drew his eye. It was the woman sitting at the table, her face turned as she looked out at the bay.