Читать книгу Taking Over The Tycoon - Cathy Thacker Gillen - Страница 11

When Harry Bowles returned from his shopping expedition, he was wearing a pair of loose-fitting trousers, a short-sleeved shirt and sneakers. He’d added a souvenir cap that said Folly Beach across the front, and he looked a lot more relaxed as he and Kristy sat down in her office to go over the work she had slated. Kristy took two bottles of water from her office fridge and handed him one. “I hate to tell you this, Harry,” she said as she sat down behind her desk, “but we’ve really got our work cut out for us if we want to be ready for that insurance agents convention next week.”

Harry smiled, unperturbed. “I’m used to hard work.”

Kristy was glad to hear it. “If you don’t mind my asking, what exactly did your duties as Winnifred Deveraux-Smith’s butler include?”

Harry unscrewed the lid to his water and drank sparingly. “A little bit of everything, as it happens,” he said rather formally. “I arranged parties, oversaw the household help that came in to cook and clean, dealt with the decorators and handymen that were hired for various tasks. I even managed Winnifred’s social calendar until her aunt Eleanor came in and took over those duties.”

It sounded as if he was a flexible guy, willing to take on whatever needed to be accomplished.

Kristy frowned. Here came the hard part. “Well, we don’t have maids yet and probably won’t for another week or two, so for the moment all those duties are going to fall to the two of us.” She paused, not sure how this was going to go, and regarded him seriously. “Are you up to that?” Because if not, he was not the man for the job, after all.

“Absolutely.” Looking ready for action, Harry put the cap back on his water bottle. “What do you need me to do today?”

Kristy rose and escorted him out, past the reservation desk to the center of the lodge. “Well, as you can see the lobby, club room, kitchen and dining room are in fine shape. So is the exterior of the hotel now, and all the cottages, and the apartment on the second floor of the south side of the building where my daughters and I reside. But all four wings of guest rooms are in need of a lot of TLC,” she warned, knowing he was in for a shock there. “We only need one wing for the conference next week, but all twenty-five rooms have got to be stripped and cleaned and put back together again, before next Wednesday. Actually, Tuesday, since the guests will be arriving Wednesday before noon, and we don’t want to still be doing any of that when they get here.”

“Sounds doable,” Harry said. “Where would you like me to begin?”

“I’d like you to take down all the draperies in the rooms. They’re going to need to be laundered. And the same goes for all the bed linens, including blankets and bedspreads.” Still not entirely sure that Harry wasn’t going to change his mind and bolt when he grasped the gargantuan task ahead, Kristy led him down a short hall to the big laundry room, where a half-dozen large commercial washers and dryers lined the walls. Kristy made her way over to a canvas cart. “You can put the linens in this and then bring them back here, and begin washing them.”

“Which rooms will I be stripping?” Harry asked, as he pushed the cart out into the hall.

“One hundred to one twenty-five. I’ll be working in the same wing. I’m going to start on the bathrooms.” Kristy handed him the maid’s set of room keys.

“Right-o, madam.”

Kristy stopped in her tracks, figuring they might as well get this cleared up right now. “And, Harry?”

He paused. “Yes, madam?”

“You’ve got to start calling me by my first name,” she insisted.

“Oh. Right. Kristy.” He smiled at her. She smiled back. He began pushing the linen cart again as the front door of the lobby swung open and Connor Templeton walked in. He was dressed as he had been earlier that morning, in a T-shirt and jeans. Kristy’s shoulders tensed, even as her heart took a little leap. She should not be so glad to see him. Particularly after the way they had parted a few hours ago….

Harry looked at her, the polite, formal butler again. “Would you like me to see what the gentleman wants, mad—er, Kristy?”

She shook her head. “I’ll handle Mr. Templeton.” She pointed in the direction of the north wing. “You go ahead and get started.”

Kristy crossed the lobby. Unsure whether it was excitement or annoyance speeding up her pulse, she noted dryly, “Like a bad penny, you keep turning up.”

“Ha, ha.” Smoky-gray eyes twinkling, he strode over to her. Before she could do anything to stop him, he curved a possessive hand about her elbow and leaned over to kiss her cheek in that casual Southern style of greeting he favored. Kristy knew it didn’t mean anything—Connor probably kissed dozens of female cheeks in the course of a single day as he said hello to women he knew—but she couldn’t keep her face from tingling at the soft-as-a-butterfly touch of his lips. Or keep from thinking how those same lips had felt—so sure and so right—over hers the night before, as they had ended the evening in a way that had felt anything but casual.

“So? What’s going on around here today?” Connor asked, as he stepped back.

“We’re working.” Or about to start, Kristy amended silently. “What did you need?”

Connor looked deep into her eyes. “I thought maybe we could go for coffee,” he suggested softly.

And darned if she didn’t want to forget everything and just go. “I don’t have time for that.” She had a business to run, even if it was a fledgling operation at the moment.

Some emotion she couldn’t quite identify flickered in Connor’s face. Kristy didn’t know why, but suddenly she felt as if she were in the midst of some sort of test. A test she was destined to fail.

“Why not?” he asked, still holding her gaze.

“Because,” Kristy continued, attempting to insert some levity into the conversation, “I’m getting ready for a group of insurance agents and their spouses.”

Connor shrugged his shoulders. “That’s not until next week.” For him, that was light years away.

It didn’t matter, Kristy thought, beginning to feel completely overwhelmed again. She turned and headed for the reservations desk. To her chagrin, Connor was right behind her.

“I have a lot to do between now and then,” she told him bluntly.

“Such as…?”

His sympathetic attitude invited confession. And right now Kristy needed someone to unburden herself to. “Clean rooms, do something about the ratty-looking carpet in the one-hundred wing, see if I can’t get a crew in to paint the hallway. Polish everything until it gleams. Wash windows. Scrub down bathrooms that haven’t been touched in over six months. Need I go on?” Feeling as if she was wasting time standing there gabbing—or flirting—with him, she yanked open the drawer where all the room keys were kept. Grabbing the old-fashioned master key ring for the north wing, with all twenty-five keys on it, she brought it out and clipped it to the belt loop of her shorts.

As if he had all the time in the world, Connor lounged against the polished wooden counter. “Sounds like you have your hands full.”

Kristy shot him a wry look. “Gee. You think?”

He straightened. “What would you like me to do?”

Stop standing there as if you were my white knight, riding in to the rescue, she thought. But not about to say that, she brushed past him purposefully and headed for the end of the reservations desk. “Besides leave me alone and stop badgering me about selling the resort?”

He followed her through the swinging wooden door that separated guests from the check-in clerk. “I won’t say another word,” he promised as he caught up and fell into step beside her.

Kristy narrowed her eyes at him. If she didn’t know better, she would think she wasn’t hearing right.

“I’m serious, Kristy,” Connor insisted softly. He reached out and gently clasped her upper arm, stopping her headlong flight. “I’d like to help you.”

She folded her arms and regarded him skeptically. “Why?”

Once again the agenda he wasn’t quite willing to reveal to her—in its entirety, anyway—became part of their conversation. Connor rubbed his chin and sent her a playful grin. “Because I’m trying to get on your good side?”

Telling herself she was not going to get involved with a man who deliberately kept things from her—hadn’t she already done that once, with disastrous results?—Kristy responded, “Not possible.”

He merely smiled, looking every bit as determined to have his way in this as she was to have hers.

Which brought them to another subject Kristy knew they had to discuss. “Also, while we are on the subject of you helping me out…”