Her Alpha Saviors [The Hot Millionaires #2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (4 page)

Skye looked Jay squarely in the eye as she spoke. She’d decided to tell him the brutal truth about her finances before anything else. But, damn it, it was hard to concentrate when he—when they both—made an electric charge surge through her each time they looked her way with their lazy come-to-bed eyes. What the hell was wrong with her? Her body appeared determined to react to their sex appeal, and there didn’t seem to be a damned thing she could do about it.

Jay probably knew how she was situated anyway. He’d be a fool if he came here without doing his research. Jay Blanchard was many things, but foolish wasn’t one of them.

“My father didn’t make a single repayment,” she said, trying to keep the bitterness out of her tone.

“I’m surprised they gave him the loan if his situation here was so bad,” Luke said.

“Back then the banks fell over each other to lend money. That’s why the world’s in such a mess.”

“There’s such a thing as responsibility on the borrower’s part,” Jay said coldly. “The world doesn’t owe anyone a living.”

“Yes, there is.” Skye bit her lower lip so hard that she almost drew blood. His unnecessarily cruel remark brought tears to her eyes, and if she didn’t need him so badly she’d tell him to go to hell. “I negotiated an extension when I took over, but I’ve barely made a dent in the amount owed and the bank is running out of patience.”

“Trying to cover their butt for making an unwise loan,” Luke remarked.

“Hardly unwise. They get The Fox out of it, which will more than cover their losses.”

“And so you’re hoping I’ll bail you out,” Jay said, stretching his arms about his head and flashing her a long-suffering look. “Why would I do that?”

“Because The Fox
is part of the landscape hereabouts. I know that sounds sentimental but English pubs are traditionally at the heart of village life. Since The Fox
has been here longer than most of the houses, it’s undeniably true in this case.”

“If it’s so intrinsic to village life, why are the takings so low?”

Damn, trust Mr. Smartarse to go straight to the heart of the problem. “Did you know that English pubs are closing at the rate of twenty a week?” By the looks on their faces they very obviously did. “The smoking ban, drinking and driving laws, and the high tax on alcohol that’s pushed prices sky-high have combined to make it cheaper and safer for people to drink at home. That and the fact that most pubs are now glorified restaurants and you can no longer have a quiet drink in a cosy bar without hordes of kids running riot.”

“But you’ve kept your main bar as a bar,” Jay said, shifting his position and crossing one leg elegantly over the other. “Why is that?”

Skye smiled. “One thing The Fox
has in abundance is space. We have a large restaurant off the main bar, so I decided to try and maintain the pub atmosphere to entice drinkers away from the modern plastic pubs in the area.”

Jay fastened a fathomless gaze on her profile. She’d give a lot to know what was going on in that intelligent head of his. “With large log fires, old world decorations, and specialist ales?”

“Yes. We have darts games, quiz nights, all the usual things that pubs do to survive nowadays, but they don’t have to encroach on the diners.”

“How much did your father borrow from the bank?”

Skye raised a brow. “You don’t know?”

“Oh, I know,” Jay said with infuriating calm. “I rather wondered if you did.”

“I can tell you down to the last penny,” she said with feeling, and proceeded to do so.

“If it was intended to bail The Fox
out of trouble, why didn’t it? What happened to it?”

Damn, he was good. He’d put his finger straight on her other main problem. “We’ve had a bit of bad luck.” When he suavely hoisted one brow it became obvious that her vague explanation wouldn’t wash, and she had no choice but to come clean. She’d hoped to wow them with her plans before getting down to the nitty-gritty. “The cellar flooded during the summer rains last year, and we lost a lot of stock.”

“Wasn’t it insured?”

“I thought so.” She expelled a frustrated sigh. “Then I discovered that my father hadn’t paid the premiums.”

“What else?”

“We had a chimney fire that smoked out the main bar. We had to close for a week whilst we cleaned it up and got rid of the smoke.” She paused, wondering whether to tell it all. Hell, why not? They probably wouldn’t want to know about her scheme anyway, not now that she’d shown herself in such an inept light. “It wasn’t because the chimney hadn’t been swept, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“Thought never crossed my mind,” Jay said, a hint of amused irony in his tone.

Skye eyed him with suspicion. “Of course it didn’t.”

Luke roared with laughter and reached across the table to touch her hand. “That’s it. Don’t let him bully you.”

Jay threw a withering glare Luke’s way and turned back to Skye. “You were going to tell us how the fire happened.”

Actually, she was hoping he’d forgotten about it. No such luck. “It was because someone had deliberately stuffed the chimney up with rags,” she mumbled.

“Sabotage?” Jay sat forward in his chair, staring intently at her. She got the impression it was the first thing she’d said that he hadn’t already known.

“Yes,” Skye said wearily. “Sabotage.”

“Was anyone hurt?”

“No, just our profits and our reputation. And if all that wasn’t bad enough, the roof on our main outbuilding collapsed during bad weather.”

“The weather must have been terrible to damage a roof,” Luke remarked.

“Well, it was rather old.” Skye didn’t want to tell them that she suspected sabotage there as well. “We had to pay for a complete new roof. If we hadn’t we would have lost the building altogether.”

“Okay.” Jay sat straighter and pinioned her with a gaze. “Basically, what you’re telling me is that you’re up shit street. You have a building with a history and traditional place in village life that’s no longer traditional because people either can’t afford to drink here or don’t because they can’t smoke or drive home. The restaurant breaks even, but no more than that, the entire place needs a complete revamp, and you have less than a month before the bank will foreclose.”

“That’s about the size of it,” Skye said, gathering up her papers, her heart laden with so much sorrow that she actually thought it might be possible to die from a broken heart.

“Where are you going?” Jay asked.

“Well, you’ve just summed it up pretty succinctly,” she said, jutting her chin pugnaciously. “Hearing it like that from someone else, I wouldn’t lend a penny if I was in your…er, boots. Thanks for stopping by, but let’s not waste any more of one another’s time.”

* * * *

Jay heard her out in silence, repeatedly telling himself that this was business. His appreciation of Skye Harrison’s physical assets would play no part in his decision making. Such considerations never had in any of his previous business dealings, but then he’d never had a potential client like Skye before. Her dynamic appearance was one of the reasons why he’d been so brusque with her, hoping to scare her off, make her realize that her madcap scheme to save the pub was a nonstarter. Then he’d be able to get out of here fast.

It hadn’t worked. The indefinable something that compelled him didn’t seem to be going anywhere. He was at a loss to understand why he appeared determined to think with his cock. Hell if he’d let that situation continue. Jay could find a woman anytime he wanted to, and the ones he picked were more beautiful, less fiery, and far more likely to share his sexual persuasions than this uptight babe.

Luke kept shooting him questioning glances, like he couldn’t understand why Jay was acting so out of character. It wasn’t like him to be deliberately rude to anyone.

Get the with the programme, buddy. I don’t have a clue, either.

One thing he did know was that he couldn’t walk away from this project. The Fox, crumbling though it might be, had atmosphere and character by the bucketload. England was so lucky to have such a rich history, and it would be criminal to let this property decay any further. It would take a huge injection of cash but, if her ideas for its future—which he had yet to hear—weren’t as hairbrained as the reasons for the pub’s decline, then perhaps, just perhaps…

Hell, Blanchard, face it, you just wanna get in her pants.

“Sit down, Skye,” he said softly, so softly that it took a moment for his words to register. When they did so she opened those expressive silver eyes of hers very wide and simply gaped at him. “Tell me what you think needs to be done to turn the pub round,” he invited, trying to ignore the raging hard-on that resulted merely from the slow smile that transformed her face from average to knockout status.

“I didn’t arrange for the reroofing of the outbuilding out of sentiment,” she said, all business again. “I did it because it’s pivotal to saving The Fox. Functions,” she said simply in response to his quizzical gaze. “I’ll give you a tour of the place in a minute, but basically we have the pub with six guest rooms over it fronting the road and the kitchen at right angles to that.”

“What’s above the kitchen?” Luke asked, studying the plan she’d spread on the table between them.

“Staff accommodation and my apartment.”

“Right,” Jay said. “And I guess this third wing is the famous outbuilding.”

“Yes, and we have this lovely courtyard in the middle. Well,” she amended, “right now it’s not lovely exactly, more weed strewn and used for stacking beer barrels and crates. But it has great potential.”

She was right about that. “So, you want to refurbish the function room and hire it out for weddings, parties and stuff.” Jay rubbed his chin. “How would that work when you can’t even get people to drive here for a drink?”

“Because they’d come in buses,” she said, flashing a triumphant smile that went straight to his groin. And Luke’s, too, judging by the way he was shuffling uncomfortably in his chair. “Organized parties almost always do, and we have the advantage of space for buses to park. A lot of modern pubs don’t have that facility.”

“Okay, that might work, but have you done any cost studies, worked out how much it would take to set it up and how long for me to recover my capital?” That was the mistake most inexperienced businesspeople made.

“It wouldn’t be feasible, not on its own.” Her tantalizing smile told him she had more and planned to drag it out. “We have six double guest rooms and could convert the staff accommodation to make more because no one lives in them except me.” She spread more plans over the desk. “I think we could easily make ten en suite rooms, accommodating twenty in total. I’d like to have theme weekends—”

“Murder mystery, stuff like that?” Luke asked.

“Yes, but I’d also like to do events that would attract more people than just those staying over.” She looked squarely into Luke’s eyes and then into Jay’s. “I’d like to have Regency weekends, in tune with the age of the building—although, of course, it’s a bit older than that but everyone associates the regency period with…well, lax morals and generally having fun. People like to dress up, we could teach them the dances from the time and—”

“Skye, darling,” Luke said, shaking his head, “I think you’ve got a bit—”

“No,” Jay said, talking across his partner. “Actually, Luke, I think she could be onto something.”

* * * *

Luke blinked back his surprise. “You do?”

“People that still have money are looking for increasingly different ways to spend it,” Jay said. “This might be different enough to appeal.”

“People love dressing up and playing a part,” Skye added, reemphasising her previous point.

Luke shared a brief glance with Jay. She had no idea how right she was.

“We could work out a deal with a local costume company and get a kickback for introducing the business,” Skye mused, probably wondering why they were both grinning.

“Let’s take a look round before we get too carried away with ideas.” Jay stood up. “I need to get a better feel for what’s on offer.”

Skye was on her feet before Jay finished speaking, looking to Luke as though she didn’t want to give Jay time to come to his senses. He and Skye were on the same page on that one. Jay was acting completely out of character. Where was the hard-nosed businessman who should have turned down this cockamamie scheme and hightailed it out of here long before now? There was only one reason Luke could think of for him not doing so. It was five foot eight of sassy female, with hair the colour of autumn leaves and the sort of expressive eyes that made a man want to go that extra mile. Luke grinned. He hadn’t even gotten started on mentally cataloguing Skye’s other attributes yet, and he was already sold on her.

He was going to enjoy this assignment.

They left the snug and were confronted by sounds of arguing voices coming from the kitchen. Skye flashed a worried glance in that direction as a young man in a chef’s uniform barged through it and came straight up to her.

“I’ve had it with her, Skye,” he raved. “Either she goes or I do. Of all the crazy accusations to make. She—”

“Can’t this wait, Steve?” Skye asked, darting furtive glances at Jay and Luke.