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Authors: Nancy Warren

Private Relations (15 page)

BOOK: Private Relations
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15

“I
HOPE YOU ENJOYED
your stay here at Hush, Mr. Garson,” the front desk receptionist said to him when he turned in his keycard. There was a little smile that went with the comment—the sort that suggested he’d be a damned fool or a monk in training if he didn’t have a great time at Hush.

“One of the best weekends of my life,” he assured her, startled to realize that was the truth. He’d wasted too many weekends and weekdays and years without Kit. Starting this weekend, he had really hoped he could convince her that he deserved a second chance.

Naturally, the woman he wished to beg the second chance from was nowhere near the vicinity of the front desk.

“Our limousine is available to take you anywhere in the city,” the desk clerk said.

“Thanks. I may take you up on it, but I have something to do first.”

“Certainly, sir. Let me know when you’re ready to leave and I’ll let the driver know.”

He hooked his overnight bag over his shoulder and went back to the elevator. He wanted to say goodbye properly. He hadn’t done such a smooth job of it earlier. Maybe Kit was in her office.

When he got to the lower level, though, it was pretty quiet. He walked by Kit’s office, but the lights were dimmed, her computer off. Nobody home.

He was about to head back to the lobby when a female voice said, “Well, well. There’s a face from the past.”

He turned and there was Piper, as gorgeous and sultry as ever. She was looking at him quizzically. Friend or foe? He couldn’t tell which she was right now.

He decided to go on the assumption that she was his friend, until she kicked him in the balls or in some other very direct way let him know she was the opposite. He smiled broadly. “Hey, Piper. Looking good.”

She let him approach, let him kiss her cheek and refrained from kicking him. So far so good.

“Thanks for helping me get some time with Kit this weekend.”

“As I told Kit, when she chewed out my ass for the same thing, I couldn’t have done anything if your fantasy hadn’t spoken to her.” Piper regarded him. “You got to her.”

“Yeah. I know.” He puffed his cheeks and blew out his frustration. “But not enough for her to give me another chance at being part of her life.”

“What did you expect?”

He dragged a hand through his hair. “Honestly? I expected closure. And then I saw her again.”

“And?”

He glanced at Piper. She looked truly interested. “And I felt like somebody had let the air out of my lungs. She’s amazing, incredible, more beautiful than ever and—”

“And you broke her heart.”

“She pretends she’s over me.”

“Of course she’s over you. Did you think she was going to sit by the phone for three years?” She laughed, but not unkindly. “But it doesn’t mean she doesn’t still have feelings for you.”

“I’m ready now, in a way I wasn’t ready before. Kit is the love of my life, as corny as that sounds, but I guess I was too young to realize it.”

“Poor timing.”

“Yeah. The thing is, now that the weekend’s over, I don’t know what to do. She doesn’t want to see me anymore.”

“Did she say so?”

“Not in so many words, but the rejection was implied.”

Piper turned. “Come on into my office.” She didn’t bother to see if he was following, but turned and walked with her model’s gait into a doorway farther down the hall.

He followed and entered a comfortable but not exactly swank office.

“You look surprised.”

“I expected leopard skin rugs and a private martini bar,” he admitted.

She laughed. “I keep all that stuff upstairs, for the paying guests. Down here, we work.”

She settled herself in the chair behind her desk, loan officer-style, and he settled on a deep leather couch, which put him lower and at a definite disadvantage. He could stand up, but he had a feeling she enjoyed having the upper hand and right now he’d do anything for her cooperation, including looking up at her.

“So,” she said, tossing her hair over her shoulder with one manicured finger, “you want to see Kit.”

“Yes.” Not a real stretch there.

“And she doesn’t want to see you.”

“I don’t know that for sure. But it was implied.”

Piper pondered the problem for a few moments then grinned and leaned forward. “She’ll see you if it’s about business.”

“You think I should check into the hotel? I’ve already got an apartment.”

“No, I don’t think you should check into the hotel. What good would that do? Kit’s not on the reservation desk. She’s not a chambermaid.”

“Right. She’s in PR.”

“Uh-huh.” She looked at him as though he were supposed to guess what was coming next. He couldn’t so she went on. “And Kit does all our in-house special events.”

“Right.”

“What is your new job?”

“I’m sales director for a New-York-based international marketing firm.”

“And, probably the sales director for an international marketing firm might want to put on—oh, I don’t know—some kind of big event to mark his arrival? Maybe a customer appreciation evening, or a launch of some product?” She leaned forward a little more. “You see where I’m going with this?”

“You think I should create an event so I can use the services of Hush?”

She smiled. “Seems like a swell idea to me.”

“And the fact that your hotel would get a nice bit of business never crossed your mind.”

“Let’s call it a win-win situation.”

“You don’t think that’s a little manipulative?”

She opened her eyes wide. “More manipulative than entering a contest to see your former fiancée?”

He had to grin. “An event that would introduce me to a lot of movers and shakers. Kind of a splashy do that would be totally different from the usual. It’s not a bad idea. I’ll think about it.”

He rose. She stood and walked around her desk to join him. “Here,” she said and handed him a folder with the Hush logo on it. “This outlines some of the corporate services we offer.”

He had to hand it to her. She didn’t miss a trick. “Thanks. I hope to see you soon.”

“I hope so, too, Peter.” And impulsively, she leaned forward and kissed his cheek. “You look way better than you deserve to look.”

He grinned back at her. “So do you.”

 

“L
OOK
,
IF WE’RE
celebrating crystal, I want everything crystal,” Kit insisted. “I want this ballroom to look like the palace at Versailles. Mirrors on every wall, Waterford chandeliers—” she calculated rapidly “—let’s say thirty.”

“But the weight. I’m not sure…”

“Figure it out. See what we need to do to support them.”

She was typing notes into her PalmPilot. Cristal Champagne? Too obvious? Too expensive for the client’s budget? Still, when you unveiled a new romance collection of stemware, including an erotic collection designed for lovers and newlyweds, where else would you host the product launch but at Hush?

She fingered a heavy crystal goblet with twining naked figures around the stem and thought suddenly of her and Peter sipping champagne in the jetted tub. She missed him with an ache that pierced her.

Ridiculous. It was a weekend of sex with a man who
needed to know he could be a casual sex buddy in a city where such relationships were commonplace, but he could never be a serious part of her life.

He loved her, he’d said. She’d fallen for that line once before and look where she’d ended up.

She turned and went back to her notes. Champagne in a crystal fountain. Was there such a thing? There must be, and if it existed, she’d find it; everything in this room was going to be crystal if she could rent, buy, borrow or invent it, from the serving trays to the lights, to huge vases they’d fill with flowers. She’d asked the florist to try and combine some of the crystal pieces into the arrangements themselves. He’d grumbled, as usual, but she knew he’d come through for her. She was concocting a laser light show that would be an artistic representation of the prism effects of crystal. It was expensive, and a little dicey in this ballroom, but it would have a great wow factor.

Her cell phone rang.

She smiled and answered, “Kit Prestcott.”

“I miss you.”

The arrogance of the man. No “Hi, it’s Peter Garson,” just “I miss you,” as though she’d know exactly who it was from the sound of his voice. Which, of course, she did. She wasn’t childish enough to play games and pretend not to know who was on the phone, even though she was tempted.

“What can I do for you, Peter?”

“Have dinner with me.”

“Sorry, I can’t. I’m busy.”

“I haven’t said what night yet.”

“Oh,” she held the phone with her chin against her shoulder so she could gesture to the hotel mainte
nance guys trying to figure out how to hang thirty chandeliers. “I want them in three rows,” she yelled up at the ceiling, her arms gesturing to illustrate approximately where.

“Too heavy,” Mario, the foreman, yelled down at her. “They’ll fall and break.” He was so negative. Honestly.

“Experiment with something that doesn’t break.”

She reshuffled the phone and went back to Peter. “Sorry, I’m up to my neck here.”

“Would lunch be better?”

She stood there, wanting to say yes, in the same way she wanted to believe in him again, but knowing she couldn’t. “I’m pretty busy this month. Why don’t I call you when I have some time?”

There was a pause. Then he said, “The thing is, it’s business.”

“Business?”

“Yes. I want to plan an event at Hush.”

Suspicion had her frowning into her phone—something she never did. “What sort of event?”

“That’s what I want to talk to you about. I want a—spectacle, a party, a—I don’t know, a shindig—that will introduce our services to prospective clients in a memorable way.”

She kept her eye on the workers grumbling and shaking their heads. What? Did they think because she was talking on the phone she was blind to how negative they were being? And she could imagine the names she was being called over there. “Why Hush?”

“Shouldn’t you be telling me why I should choose Hush?” Warm humor laced his words, and she wanted to lean into the sound of his voice.

“I’m…we’re pretty busy.”

“My dates are flexible. Why don’t I come down and meet with you over lunch.”

Two guys had managed to climb on ladders overhead and were poking around up in the ceiling area and looking pessimistic.

“All right.” Piper would kill her if she turned away business. She pulled up her calendar. “When were you thinking of lunch?”

“Today.”

“Today? But—”

“I checked with some woman who answered your phone and she didn’t see any bookings for today.”

“That’s because I’m working through lunch.”

“How about a quick one? I’m in the neighborhood.” Her cell phone sounded funny, as if his voice was echoing. She glanced up and Peter was standing inside the door, his phone stuck to his ear, staring at her.

Her foolish heart leapt in her chest. She snapped her cell phone closed. “So I see.”

He stepped closer, looking crisp and sexy in a suit that had to have been tailored in Europe, a shirt whiter than snow on the Alps and a tie with geometric shapes on it. His shoes were Italian leather, and somebody had spent time recently at the shoeshine.

A thin leather briefcase hung from his fingers. She was shocked at how badly she wanted to take him.

Now that she’d regained her equilibrium, she realized how much she’d enjoyed her weekend with Peter. Everything but the rehashing of old history.

“Well?” he said, a half smile playing over his lips as though he’d been reading her thoughts.

She glanced at her watch, stalling for time, then made up her mind. “I don’t have a lunch date today. I’d
planned to work through the day on the setup for this crystal event. But, business is business. If you’re okay eating in the hotel, then I can sneak away for a bite.”

“Perfect.”

She nodded. Then yelled up to Mario the grump, “I’ll be around the hotel. I’m on my cell.”

She got the usual grunt in reply.

“I gave you the tour of the ballroom when you stayed here last weekend,” she reminded him. “This is where we hold most of our corporate events.”

“It should do nicely. How many does it hold?”

“At full capacity, we can accommodate two hundred and fifty. Of course, we can also add temporary dividing walls to break it down into two smaller ballrooms.”

He stood close to her and she got the faintest hint of his aftershave.

“It looks like an ice palace,” Peter said, watching as the guys wrestled huge mirrors.

“I’m going for the Versailles look. We’ll see.”

“Always going for the wow factor, huh?”

An uncomfortable prickle itched its way down her spine and Piper’s words came back to haunt her. There was the wow factor and then there was the kapow of disaster. She glanced up at the men shaking their heads above her and muttering and said, “Just a second.”

She crossed to where Mario was muttering in Italian. It sounded like he was counting his rosary. “Mario, maybe you’re right. How many chandeliers are you comfortable with?”

He stared at her, his eyes narrowing slightly. Then he glanced up again. “Five,” he said.

“Five?” She wouldn’t have Versailles, she’d have Ivana Trump’s living room.

“Five…maybe ten,” Mario conceded.

“Okay. I can live with that.” Then she shot Mario her most conciliating grin. “Especially if it was ten.”

“Do my best,” he said.

Okay, so maybe the effect would be a little dimmed, but did she really want crystal crashing down like a glacial avalanche?

No. She did not.

“Well?” she said to Peter. “Shall we?”

He followed her out of the ballroom. “Amuse Bouche?” he asked.

“Let’s start in my office. We can talk about your ideas.” If he actually had any.

“Sure. That sounds great.”

“How’s work going?” she asked, as they took the elevator down to her office. That suit was giving her fantasies the way erotic lingerie got to men.

“It’s good. But I need to introduce our services and some new innovations.” He glanced at her and grinned. “I’m looking for wow.”

BOOK: Private Relations
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