“It is. Sometimes you see it, sometimes you don’t. Shall I take up your bags now, Ms. Bennett?”
“Please call me Rainey. I’ll carry them.”
“You’re going to find out my new assistant has an independent streak,” Payne murmured.
“That’s fine with me as long as you call me Betty.”
His housekeeper liked to keep things formal. For her to make a concession like that meant Rainey had already won her over.
“It’s a deal.”
“We’re going to get busy in my study, Betty. When you have a moment, will you bring us some lunch?”
“Coming right up.”
Payne was eager to sit down with Rainey and explain how he put his crude drawings together into one blueprint. With her intuitive eye, she would bring her own expertise to streamline the process and make innovations.
After a moment’s consideration he pulled out a tube housing the drawings of Paris he’d already begun work on. While he was laying them out on the large worktable, his cell phone rang. A check of the Caller ID confirmed it was Diane.
His eyes flicked to Rainey. “I have to take this call. Go ahead and see what you make of everything.”
It was like a giant jigsaw puzzle. He couldn’t help but be curious how long it would take her to fit each piece together.
Moving a few feet away he answered the phone. Now that he had Rainey firmly entrenched beneath his roof, it was time to follow through with the rest of his plan.
CHAPTER EIGHT
RAINEY slept, but it was fitful. At dawn she stole from the queen-size bed to half lie in the window seat and contemplate the vast Atlantic from her bedroom high above the water. As morning broke to the sounds of gulls, she remembered something Craig had said in an attempt to comfort her.
Treat the whole experience with Payne Sterling as part of your adventure in the Big Apple.
He didn’t know it then, but her brother had dispensed the best advice he could have given her. That was exactly the way she was going to look at her situation from here on out.
A marvelous adventure. The kind she enjoyed living with the heroine inside a romance novel until the very last page when she closed the book.
There would come a last page with Payne. Until then, what were the odds of meeting an exciting, brilliant New York billionaire-soon-to-be-trillionaire in her lifetime? Of working temporarily as his live-in assistant in his hideaway which was an architectural treasure?
Maybe a gazillion-to-one?
She leaned out the window to inhale the tangy sea air and enjoy the ocean breeze. The humidity curled the ends of her hair. Her skin, so used to the dry climate of the Colorado Rockies, felt soft and smooth.
By some quirk of fate, she and Payne had been brought together at this moment in time. It wouldn’t last, so why go on torturing herself about it?
Why not be the catalyst that might rouse his fiancée from debilitating fear so she could walk down the aisle to the man waiting for her at the altar?
What were the odds of Rainey ever playing a major role in someone else’s rescue again?
The answer was, never.
“Good morning, Ms. Bennett!”
Rainey looked down to see her host walking up the beach in cutoffs and a T-shirt looking like a contemporary Jane Austen hero.
“Why if it isn’t Mr. Darcy!”
His hands went to his hips. The next thing she knew he was laughing up at her. She found herself laughing with him.
Careful, Rainey. Don’t let him guess the very sight of him turns your bones to liquid. Keep things light.