And the worst thing was, he couldn"t wait to see her tomorrow.
"You," he told himself loudly, "need your head examined. She"s a complication you don"t need."
Though he had a nasty feeling that he was protesting just a little too much.
CHAPTER FOUR.
"IT"LL take us five hours to get there," Luke said when Sara walked into the office the next morning. "So we"ll leave at two, when you"re back from lunch. That way we"ll get there at seven, we"ll have time to unpack and have a quick shower and then we"ll have dinner."
Sara looked surprised. "We"re not stopping on the way?"
"Not unless you need a comfort break."
"What about you?"
He wrinkled his nose dismissively. "I"d rather just get there."
"You"re the boss."
There was definite sa.s.s in her tone, but Luke didn"t rise to the bait. He spent the morning in meetings and his lunchtime reading reports. Sara was back at two o"clock precisely, as he"d expected.
"Only one suitcase-and a small one at that?" he queried.
"We"re only away for two days. Why would I need more?" She rolled her eyes. "Clearly you mix with the wrong sort of woman."
"Meaning?"
"High maintenance-the sort who can"t open a door without checking for damage to their nails. And whose top drawer is full of make-up and emergency hair spray, and who travel with six changes of clothes per day."
He laughed. "Point taken. But it"s refreshing." Like her shoes, though he refrained from commenting. Today"s were suede, in a deep teal colour to match her camisole top.
Then he wished he hadn"t thought about matching shoes. Because it made him wonder if her underwear matched, too. And what she"d look like in just teal-coloured lacy underwear and those shoes and the black pearl choker, with her hair loose instead of worn up, and...
"I"ll carry that. You can lock up behind us," he said gruffly.
"I can carry my own case."
"As you say, I mix with the wrong sort of woman. I"ll carry the cases. And my laptop." He lobbed the bunch of keys at her; as he"d expected, she caught them automatically. She gave him a speaking look, but locked up and followed him down the stairs to his car.
"Nice," she said, clearly appreciating the sleek lines of his car, then frowned as he opened the back door. "Aren"t you going to put the cases in the boot?"
"There"s no room."
"What, you"re taking half a filing cabinet with you or something?"
"It"s a hybrid car," he said. "The one downside is that the battery takes up most of the s.p.a.ce in the boot."
"You"ve got an eco car?" She raised an eyebrow. "I"d have expected you to go for a really flash sports car. A limited-edition thing."
He laughed. "Absolutely. I have my name on the list for an eco sports car that"s going to be on sale in about...oh, seven years" time. But this"ll do for the time being."
"It doesn"t look like the one my sister drives. Hers is eco too, but it"s...well..." She wrinkled her nose.
"Ugly?" he finished. "I"m with you all the way. Just because a car"s environmentally friendly, it doesn"t have to look worthy. You can be green and still have fun."
"But you don"t have fun," she pointed out.
"Oh, but I do," he purred. He moistened his lower lip, aware that she was watching every move, and enjoyed the way her colour heightened. Good. So she wasn"t quite as cool and collected as she made out.
He stowed their cases on the back seat, then opened the pa.s.senger door for her. "And don"t give me a hard time about being perfectly capable of opening a door yourself."
"Would I?" She gave him a wicked grin, then sat on the seat and swung her legs gracefully into the car in a move that could"ve come straight from finishing school. And her knee-length skirt rose up just enough to make his own temperature rise accordingly.
Well, it served him right for playing games.
And he was going to need the air con on full to cool him down.
"This car was really expensive, wasn"t it?" she asked when he slid into the driver"s seat.
"That depends on your definition of expensive." He gave a half shrug. "I like to drive in comfort."
"I can see that. A real wood and leather interior. Justin would just drool over this." She laughed. "Well, he"d drool more if it was an E-type Jag."
"If it was a red one, so would I. But cla.s.sic cars need a lot of maintenance and a lot of time."
"Which you"re not prepared to spend."
He smiled ruefully. "You said it."
"Hmm. I really didn"t have you pegged as an eco warrior."
He indicated the building behind them. "This place is carbon neutral. It"s one of the reasons I chose the office s.p.a.ce." She didn"t need to know that he owned a sizeable chunk of the building. "And my hotel chain is going to be carbon neutral, too. Using as many local materials as possible."
"That"s why Dad turned the orchard organic when my grandad let him take over the reins," Sara said. "It means our costs are higher, but it"s worth it."
Something else they agreed on.
It was beginning to scare him, just how well she matched him.
He wasn"t in the market for a relationship. Didn"t want the commitment. Didn"t need the ha.s.sle and misery he knew that a family could bring.
He really needed to get his head straight and concentrate on this new venture instead of thinking about how s.e.xy the curve of Sara Fleet"s mouth was.
"So why Scarborough?" Sara asked.
"I"m looking for a hotel in a spa town. Scarborough was famous for its waters in its heyday. I"m looking at another in Cromer, and one in Buxton."
"Why not somewhere closer to London, so you don"t have so much travelling time?"
Because Scarborough was the only place he could ever remember having a family holiday. Not in a hotel-they"d stayed in a little guest house-but they"d had a week of sun and sea when he was tiny. Before his mother had turned into a shadow of herself and his father had let them both down. Not that he was going to explain that to Sara. It was irrelevant. "I"m just exploring my options at this stage," he said.
"So this place in Scarborough..."
He shook his head. "If I tell you the facts and figures it"ll colour your view. I want to know what you think of the place as a customer. What"s good, what"s bad, what"s missing."
"Do they know you"re thinking about buying it?"
"No. As far as they"re concerned we"re just customers, and that"s the way I want it. I"m not trying to catch anyone out. I just want to see things as they are on a normal day-not when they"ve made a special effort."
For the first three hours of the journey, they worked. Sara answered his phone, made appointments, sorted out his schedule for the next three weeks and talked business.
And then she stopped.
"Five on the dot?" he teased.
"Five on the dot," she agreed-and, to his horror, switched his phone off.
"What are you doing?" he asked.
"I"ve put your phone on to voice mail. Turning it off means it"ll be much less stressful for you than hearing the three rings before your voice mail cuts in-because, knowing you, you"ll start nagging me to bend the rules and answer it. And no, you"re not putting it onto hands-free and answering it yourself."
Bossy didn"t even begin to cover it. And Luke was too surprised to argue.
"Righty. Now this is a fabulous sound system."
"It has nineteen speakers," Luke said.
"Nineteen? That"s excessive." She groaned. "Boys and their toys. Rupert-he"s my baby brother-he would just love this. Let"s see. What have we here?" She fiddled with the playlist. "Oh, I should"ve guessed. Dinosaur rock."
"It"s not dinosaur, it"s indie. And it"s great to drive to," he protested.
"Yeah, yeah." Though at least she switched it on.
"I suppose you"re into ballet music," he retorted.
"What makes you say that?"
"You"re all posh and pearls," he said with a grin. "See, I can do stereotypes, too."
She paused. "Actually, I do like ballet music. And, before you ask, yes, I did have ballet lessons when I was young."
"And piano and horse-riding?"
"Don"t be chippy."
"I"m not. It"s just...how the other half live." He gave her a sidelong glance. "I can just see you in a tutu."
"You don"t wear tutus for practice," she said loftily. "You wear leotards and footless tights."
He could imagine her in a leotard, the material clinging to her body. And then wished he hadn"t, when his body reacted predictably.
"Anyway, I stopped doing ballet when I was twelve."
"Why?"
"To be any good, I would"ve had to spend hours a day practising," she said. "And I didn"t want to be a dancer when I grew up, so it wasn"t fair for me to take a place in the cla.s.s if it meant that someone who really wanted to dance missed out. But I enjoyed it while I did it."
Ballet. That certainly explained the grace with which she walked.
"What about you?" she asked.
"No, I never fancied being a Billy Elliot." He pushed away the thought that, if he had, his family would"ve put a stop to it. Ballet didn"t exactly go with their lifestyle.
To his relief, she let it go and seemed contented enough to look out of the window and listen to music-the same music she"d just decried, he noted with wry amus.e.m.e.nt. And it was fine until the traffic information report on the radio cut through the music, at about the same time as he noticed the queue of traffic on the motorway.
"Oh, great," he said, switching off the engine as they came to a halt at the end of the queue. "And we"re miles away from the next junction, so I can"t even take us cross-country to avoid the tailback."
"Hey, it"s not your fault. Accidents happen. We"ll just have to wait for the road to clear."
Though waiting wasn"t one of his strong points. When he asked her for the third time to check the Internet on his phone to see if there was an update on the traffic situation, she sighed. "You can"t stand being still, can you?"
"No. I hate wasting time."
"I doubt very much if anything"s changed in the last five minutes. We"re stuck," she said dryly, "so live with it."
"Mmm." He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel.
"You could always talk to me, to take your mind off it."
Talk? In his experience, when women wanted to talk, it meant trouble. That they"d changed their minds about not wanting a commitment-and they expected him to change, too.
Then again, he wasn"t in a relationship with Sara. Officially, they were working-even if she had clocked off. So that made things easy. "Oh, you want a proper rundown on the hotel."
She tapped her watch. "Remember, it"s gone five. I"m off duty. So no work talk."
"What do you want to talk about, then?" He knew it was a mistake even as he uttered the words.
"You," she said simply. "I want to get to know you better."
He wanted to get to know her better, too. Much more intimately. But he knew it was a bad idea. That it would turn his life upside down. And he"d fought too long and too hard to get where he was to throw it all away.
When he didn"t reply, she sighed. "OK. So you"re the strong, silent type. Give me your hand."