One-Man Woman. Carole Mortimer

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СКАЧАТЬ you just ask the man? You know him, don’t you?’ she prompted reasonably, still shaken from her narrow escape in his suite earlier.

      ‘Not exactly.’ Her sister shook her head slowly. ‘I’ve only met him once, and that was at the wedding just over a year ago. He’s always so busy that James sees him rarely himself, although he did enjoy the couple of years he worked for him. So we haven’t met up with him again since the wedding. Why don’t you ask him?’ Beth suggested frowningly, chewing on her bottom lip. ‘You’ve always been so much more forward than me, and—’

      ‘Because I don’t know the man at all!’ Ellie pointed out impatiently. ‘If you remember, I missed the wedding completely because I was rushed into hospital at the last minute for an emergency appendectomy—’

      ‘I offered to cancel the wedding—’

      ‘Don’t be silly, Beth; I wasn’t complaining, just explaining,’ Ellie dismissed irritably. “The wedding had been planned for weeks; you don’t cancel something as important as that just because one of the guests can’t make it.’

      ‘That guest was my sister!’ Beth protested.

      ‘And I talked to James and persuaded him that going ahead with the wedding was the right thing to do,’ Ellie sighed.

      ‘He shouldn’t have listened to you.’ Her sister shook her head. ‘He—’

      ‘Beth, I don’t really think it matters who was or wasn’t at your wedding, when the two of you now seem to be talking of divorce—Oh, God, I’m sorry.’ She was instantly contrite as she saw the way her sister paled; she had always had an uncanny ability to say the wrong thing at the wrong time! It was the reason why she was still unmarried at twenty-seven, according to her equally straight-talking mother; no man was strong enough to brave her vitriolic tongue long enough to fall in love with her.

      ‘But, Beth, the wedding is unimportant now, can’t you see?’ she continued more gently. ‘It’s a fact that I didn’t meet Daniel Thackery there, and it now appears he has returned to our hotel and we have to be wary of him on two fronts. But I certainly can’t just march up to him and ask him outright what he’s doing here!’ She frowned deeply.

      Beth’s expression lightened. ‘I don’t see why not; it’s what you would usually do!’

      But Ellie acknowledged that Daniel Thackery wasn’t the type of man she usually met; she was sure he would just turn round and tell her to mind her own business. And she would have no choice but to do exactly that. She would also have alerted him to the fact that they were curious as to his reason for being here and thereafter he would be on his guard, which wasn’t going to help anyone.

      ‘Do you know what I think we should do—you should do?’ she corrected pointedly. ‘Invite the man to dinner with the two of us,’ she announced triumphantly. ‘It has to be you, Beth, because you know the man and I don’t,’ she said persuasively as she saw that her sister was about to protest at the idea. ’He was a guest at your wedding, is a friend of James’s, and as far as I’m aware you haven’t even said hello to him yet.

      ‘I accept you’re a bit wary of him,’ she added hastily at Beth’s increasingly dismayed expression. ‘But it would be perfectly natural for you to invite him to dinner in the circumstances, whereas it would look damn funny if I did the inviting—a woman who doesn’t know him from Adam!’ Besides which, she still felt very uncomfortable about her presence in his suite earlier this evening. He couldn’t possibly know about that, of course, but she did, and she was going to find it difficult facing him again.

      Beth still didn’t look convinced. ‘I doubt that he will stay here very long—’

      ‘Then make the invitation for tomorrow evening,’ Ellie interrupted impatiently, standing up to smooth down her straight black skirt to its just above the knee length. ‘I have to go and take over in Reception for the rest of the evening now, so I’ll leave you to think about it. But if you really want to know if he’s at least seen James I think dinner would be the best way of finding out.’

      This last remark was perhaps a little below the belt on her part, but if they were to find out Daniel Thackery’s motive for being in the area someone had to make a move, and as she’d pointed out, it would look odd if she approached him with a dinner invitation.

      It was quiet on Reception at this time of night, and Ellie took advantage of the lull to catch up on some of the paperwork that seemed never-ending where running a hotel was concerned.

      Her parents had run the hotel until two years ago, when her father had suffered a mild heart attack and been ordered to take it easy for a while—an opportunity her mother had taken to whisk him away to Spain to live in early retirement. Their parents had given the hotel equally to Beth and Ellie, but since taking over Ellie had realised exactly why the hotel had been such a strain on her parents; it was a twenty-four-hour-a-day job, and left little time for anything else. She—

      ‘Good evening, Ellie,’ greeted a huskily male voice. ‘Do you ever get away from this place?’

      The question so echoed the sentiments of her own thoughts that she wasn’t able to maintain her usually bright smile as she looked up at Peter, their master chef, as he stood at the other side of the reception desk.

      The restaurant was open to the public as well as to guests, and it was one part of the hotel that did make a profit. And justifiably so; Peter was a chef of a calibre Ellie had never met before, and had brought people into the restaurant from far and wide since he had taken over in the kitchen six months ago. She knew they were lucky to have found him and didn’t question their good fortune too deeply—she just gave thanks for it every day. Without Peter’s expertise as a chef she knew they would be in even more dire financial straits than they already were.

      ‘Not as often as I would like, Peter,’ she answered somewhat wistfully, her chin resting on her palm as she leant on the desk-top looking up at him; he was one of the few men she could look up to when she was wearing high-heeled shoes, as she was now—Peter was a little over six feet tall, a good-looking man in his late thirties.

      He shook his head. ‘I wish you would accept my invitation for the two of us to go out. I see by the rota that you’re off tomorrow evening too...’

      This was, as Peter had so rightly pointed out, far from the first time he had invited her out. It wasn’t that she didn’t find Peter’s blond good looks attractive, because she did, very much so; she just didn’t think it was a particularly good idea to go out with someone she was working with almost every day. It could be very uncomfortable for everyone if it didn’t work out. And Peter really was an excellent chef...

      Besides, she was hoping that tomorrow evening she and Beth would be dining with Daniel Thackery!

      She gave Peter an apologetic smile. ‘I already have an appointment tomorrow evening. I’m sorry.’

      He grimaced, obviously in no hurry to leave. His shift was over for the evening and the restaurant would be closing shortly—only the lingering coffee-drinkers were left. ‘Out of luck again,’ he said teasingly. ‘Who’s the lucky man?’

      He didn’t know who he was himself yet, and she somehow doubted he would think of himself as ‘lucky’ when he did—although hopefully a sense of politeness towards James’s wife would make him accept the invitation. ‘No one you know.’ She shrugged dismissively.

      ‘Aha!’ Peter looked interested now, СКАЧАТЬ