Gorgeous Kate Parker had probably spent longer than she should at his table. There were other customers for her to meet and greet. But Sam couldn’t think of an excuse to keep her there any longer. He was going to have to bite the bullet and ask her out. For a drink; for dinner; any opportunity to get to know her.
‘Kate, I—’
He was just about to suggest a date when his mobile phone buzzed to notify him of a text message. He ignored it. It buzzed again.
‘Go on, please check it,’ Kate said, taking a step back from his table. ‘It might be important.’
Sam gritted his teeth. At this moment nothing—even a message from the multi-national company that was bidding for a takeover of Lancaster & Son Construction—was more important than ensuring he saw this girl again. He pulled the phone from his pocket and scanned the text.
He looked up at Kate. ‘My friend Jesse is running late,’ he grumbled. ‘I hope he gets here soon. After a four-hour trip from Sydney, I’m starving.’
Kate’s green eyes widened. ‘Jesse?’ Her voice sounded strangled. ‘You mean...Jesse Morgan?’
‘Do you know him? I guess you do.’
She nodded. ‘Yes. It’s a small town. I...I know him well.’
So Kate was a friend of Jesse’s? That made getting to know her so much easier. Suddenly she wasn’t just staff at the hotel and he a guest;
they were connected through a mutual friend.
It was the best piece of news he’d had all day.
* * *
Kate was reeling. Hotter-than-hot Sam Lancaster was a friend of Jesse’s? That couldn’t, couldn’t be. What unfair quirk of coincidence was this?
Despite her initial misgiving about Sam, she’d found she liked his smile, his easy repartee. She’d found herself looking forward to seeing him around the hotel. No way was she looking for romance—not with the Jesse humiliation so fresh. But she could admire how good-looking Sam was, even let herself flirt ever so lightly, knowing he’d be gone in a week. But the fact he was Jesse’s friend complicated things.
What if Jesse had told Sam about the kiss disaster? She’d thought she’d fulfilled her cringe quotient for the day. But, at the thought of Sam hearing about the kiss calamity, she cringed a little more.
She should quickly back away from Sam’s table. The last thing she wanted was to encounter Jesse not only in front of this gorgeous guy, but also the restaurant packed with too-interested observers, their gossip antennae finely tuned.
But she simply could not resist a few more moments in Sam Lancaster’s company before she beat a retreat—maybe to the kitchen, at least to the other side of the room—so she could avoid a confrontation with Jesse when he eventually arrived.
‘Where do you know Jesse from?’ she asked, trying to sound chirpy rather than churning with anxiety.
‘Jesse’s a mate of mine from university days in Sydney,’ Sam said in his deep, resonant voice. ‘We were both studying engineering. Jesse was two years behind me, but we played on the same uni football team. We used to go skiing together, too.’
So that made Sam around aged thirty to her twenty-eight.
‘And you’ve stayed friends ever since?’ she said.
She’d so much prefer it if he and Jesse were casual acquaintances.
‘We lost touch for a while but met up again two years ago on a building site in India, rebuilding the villages damaged in those devastating floods.’
She hadn’t put darkly handsome Sam down as the type who would do active charity work in a far-flung part of the world. It was a surprise of the best kind.
‘So you work for the same international aid organisation as Jesse?’ she asked.
‘No. I worked as a volunteer during my vacation. We volunteers provided the grunt work. In my case, as a carpenter.’
That figured. His hand had felt callused when she’d shaken it earlier.
‘I’m seriously impressed. That’s so...noble.’ This hot, hunky man, who would have female hearts fluttering wherever he went, spent his hard-earned vacation working without pay in a developing country in what no doubt were dirty and dangerous conditions.
‘Noble? That’s a very nice thing to say, but I’d hardly call it that. It was hot and sweaty and damn hard work,’ he said. ‘I was just glad to be of help in what was a desperate situation for so many people.’