Brazilian's Nine Months' Notice

The lift emptied and they were on their own for the last few floors.

‘Come back to London with me, Emma,’ he said as the lift slowed.

She turned to look at him with surprise and raised a brow.

‘Don’t allow the tragedy to destroy your life.’

‘Thank you, but I’m quite capable of handling my own affairs, and I really don’t want to talk about them with you.’

‘Don’t you?’

Her cheeks flamed red as if she was hiding something from him. He wondered what as she went back to studying floor numbers as they flashed on and off.

‘I understand why you came home to Scotland, but not why you stay here. It makes more sense to go back to London and complete your training.’

‘To you, maybe.’

His senses surged as she fired back at him. He liked her like this, full of passion, full of fire. ‘You can pick up the programme,’ he insisted, determined to keep the pressure on. ‘Everyone will understand that you needed time to come to terms with what happened. It’s a good course, Emma—the best. And free to all my staff.’

‘I know that,’ she said, refusing to look at him.

‘You had career prospects—great prospects. Why are you throwing them away?’

‘I’m happy here.’

The elevator slowed and the doors slid open, but before she could walk through them he stood in front of her. ‘What do you get here that you can’t get in London? The chance to grow old and grey while you wait for promotion?’

‘Peace of mind,’ she fired back, her eyes full of steel as she stared at him.

‘So it’s all about me?’

‘Hah!’ She laughed.

‘Well, I can tell you what it’s about here,’ he drove on. ‘It’s all about dead men’s shoes, while I have hotels around the world full of opportunity. You could work in any one of them—’

‘You’re pitching hard,’ she interrupted. ‘Why, Lucas?’

‘What’s your problem? I know there’s something. Debts? A persistent boyfriend you can’t get rid of? I don’t know—’

‘Don’t you, Lucas?’

‘There is something troubling you,’ he said. ‘If you had problems in London you should have told me.’

‘Problems apart from you?’ Her eyes were firing bullets at him. ‘I didn’t have any problems in London,’ she assured him tensely.

‘What, then?’

‘Why can’t you let it go? This isn’t the time. I have work to do.’

‘When will it be the time?’

She looked as if she would like to say something, but then thought better of it, and so he quietened his tone and said, ‘If you have a problem, who else is going to help you?’

‘You’re going to help me?’ Her mouth slanted sceptically.

‘You trusted me in London. Why not now?’

‘I trusted you,’ she said, neither a question nor a statement. ‘But you flew out of the country that morning. “Billionaire off on his travels again”,’ she quoted from the newspapers. ‘Whether I’d left you or not, don’t even pretend you were planning to stick around.’

‘Did you expect me to stay and start something with you?’

‘A proper relationship, do you mean?’ She shook her head as if that had never entered her thoughts, and he believed her. ‘I want to get out of the lift, if you don’t mind,’ she said, looking past him.

He moved aside. ‘Think about what I’ve said, Emma. There’s still a place for you in London, if you want it.’

‘I’ve just taken on more hours here,’ she said, as if that was an end of the subject.

‘We can still discuss it.’

‘I’ve got a twelve-hour shift ahead of me.’

‘Twelve hours?’ He was aghast. ‘How many hours have you put in so far today? There are laws to protect workers like you, Emma. This isn’t the Dark Ages. Your hours would be capped at my hotel in London, and you’d still receive a decent wage.’ She couldn’t deny that he cared for his staff. ‘My staff mean everything to me. Without them, I have nothing. They should treat you the same way here. Don’t they ever give you time off?’

‘I choose my hours, and I get enough time,’ she assured him.

He exhaled, both with anger and frustration, as Emma slipped past him and walked away.

* * *

The last thing she heard as the steel door slid to was Luc’s angry huff, but she had always worked hard. Growing up, there had only been one way to have new clothes and enough food on the table, and that had been to make the money herself. Whether her parents had made much out of their life of crime was hard to say. The only times she’d ever seen them they were so drunk or so high it would have the easiest thing in the world to steal from them, and they had died penniless and in debt, which she was also struggling to pay.