The Ultimate Surrender

She could take her memories with her, of course, but deep down inside Polly knew that she didn’t want to leave Fraser House. She was happy there; it was her home as well as her business. Deplorable though it sounded if she admitted it, she wasn’t particularly ambitious. Oh, she liked to know she had done a good job, she loved knowing her guests felt happy and comfortable, but the thought of moving on to something bigger and supposedly better held very little real appeal for her. And this hotel, stunning though it was, was too big, too impersonal, too state-of-the-art for her tastes.

‘Phil, it’s very kind of you to offer me the chance to manage this hotel,’ she began steadily, ‘but—’

‘But?’ Phil interrupted her, his eyebrows lifting. ‘You can’t be going to turn me down?’ he said with such obvious astonishment that Polly had to smile a little at his self-confidence. ‘There’s no way that running a hotel like Fraser House can compare to running a place like this. Apart from anything else, just think about how impressive it’s going to look on your CV. Manage this place for me, Polly, and quite literally the world will be your oyster; you’ll have every hotel chain in the world beating a path to your door.’

‘It sounds very tempting,’ Polly agreed. ‘But…’

‘Go away and think about it,’ Phil counselled her.

‘Phil,’ Polly protested, wanting to tell him that she had already done her thinking and made up her mind, but he was shaking his head and mouthing ‘Please’ at her as his phone started to ring.

‘Look, I’ve got to take this call,’ he told her quickly. ‘It’s from my bankers in New York. But please, Polly, think seriously about my offer. You don’t have to make an immediate decision. I can give you a week or so…’

But what about Suzi? Polly wanted to ask him, but he was already turning away from her, and, sensing that he wanted privacy to speak with his bankers, Polly made her way to the suite door.

As she took the lift down to the foyer her head was buzzing. There was no denying that the offer Phil had made her was one that most people would think she was a fool to turn down.

As she stepped out of the lift she was so engrossed in her own thoughts that at first she failed to see Suzi.

But the other woman had seen her, and was making a bee-line for her, coming to a halt just a little too far inside Polly’s own private space for Polly’s comfort. However, as she instinctively made to step back from the other woman Suzi moved aggressively towards her.

‘There you are,’ she announced. ‘I want a word with you.’

‘Suzi,’ Polly protested. ‘I think—’

‘Oh, I already know what you think.’ Suzi interrupted her savagely. ‘You think that just because he spent the night with you, just because he took you to bed, it means he cares about you. Well, I’ve got news for you. I hate to be the one to ruin all those little plans you’ve been making for happy-ever-afters, but someone’s got to tell you the truth. You mean nothing to him,’ she told Polly cruelly. ‘Nothing at all. You’re just someone he was using for sex because I wasn’t there.’ She gave a small, sharp-toothed little smile, her eyes full of angry contempt as she looked Polly up and down disparagingly.

‘He is a very highly sexed man, after all, and very good in bed…very good.’ She gave a small dismissive shrug. ‘But there’s much more to the relationship I have with him than just sex. He and I belong together, and if you think for one moment that I’m going to let someone, anyone—but least of all a woman like you—come between us then you are very, very mistaken.

‘He’s already asked me to marry him. Did he tell you that?’ she challenged, and then smiled triumphantly as Polly’s wounded gasp gave her away.

‘Well, he has, and not just asked me but pleaded with me,’ she added. ‘And of course I can give him so much more than you can. You are—how old? Close to forty—?’

‘I’m thirty-seven,’ Polly interrupted her shakily.

‘So, you’re thirty-seven.’ Suzi gave a contemptuous shrug. ‘I’m twenty-six. Do you really honestly think he could possibly want you? But then I suppose when a woman is as desperate as you so obviously are she’ll tell herself anything,’ she added disparagingly. ‘And, of course, he is a very wealthy man. I suppose a woman of your age has to think of her future…her pension,’ she taunted.

Her pension…? Had she not been feeling so shocked and distressed, Polly could almost have laughed. She might be a full decade the other woman’s senior, but she was still a long, long way from having to think about her old age. Nor had she ever, or would she ever, look to a man to provide her with financial security.