by Trish Morey
The maître d’ threw her a worried frown as she entered the buzzing room, mouthing the warning, ‘Table one,’ and flicking his head in Dante’s direction as she passed. She forced a thin smile and nodded, knowing the staff needed her to be confident and strong right now, rather than a weak-kneed woman who’d just been bedded by the boss. A pity that was exactly how she felt.
She stopped close to the table where he sat flicking impatiently through the business pages. Beyond him the picture windows revealed nothing but a wall of white as fog still held the hotel prisoner. Right now it felt like that same fog had shrink-wrapped her lungs. Oh God, how the hell was she supposed to do this?
‘Mr Carrazzo.’
He tossed a careless glance in her direction before glancing down at his watch, and then turning his attention back to the paper. ‘I’ve already ordered.’
‘You asked for a meeting, Mr Carrazzo,’ she ventured, trying to keep the tremor from both her voice and her fingers as she held out her hand to him. ‘Mackenzi Keogh.’
This time the look he gave her took much longer, the appraisal much more thorough, and Mackenzi felt her cheeks begin to flare as his eyes lingered on her face, a slight frown creasing his brow.
‘You’re Mackenzi?’ he asked, without taking her hand.
‘That’s right.’
‘You’re a woman.’
She raised an eyebrow, half-tempted to tell him he’d well and truly discovered that fact already. Instead she dropped her hand, grateful beyond belief that he hadn’t taken it—and that she hadn’t been subjected to the warm press of his flesh once more—and let go an uncharacteristic retort. ‘That’s right. At least, last time I checked I was.’ And she proceeded to slide into the chair opposite.
He scowled at her as a waitress appeared, curtailing conversation as she poured Mackenzi a coffee before topping up his. And Dante continued to regard her while she busied herself arranging and then rearranging her napkin in her lap, steadfastly avoiding his gaze as she declined an invitation to order breakfast. Nothing was going to sit comfortably in her stomach today, but the coffee might at least lend her strength.
‘What kind of name is Mackenzi for a woman?’
‘It’s my name, Mr Carrazzo,’ she answered, still edgy, but for the first time daring to look him anywhere near in the eye, her confidence edging upwards. If he hadn’t recognized her yet, then maybe, just maybe, he never would. After all, she’d hardly been a face to him last night—merely a service-provider. ‘And I presume,’ she continued, ‘you didn’t arrange this meeting to discuss the merits or otherwise of my parents’ choice.’
Not many things surprised Dante Carrazzo. Not any more. But Ashton House had already provided him with a hat trick of surprises. First had been the discovery of the welcome package warming his bed, the woman who’d ensured him a rapid and very satisfied descent into sleep.
Second had been her absence this morning. Sure, he’d been intending to throw her out anyway, but it had grated that she’d been the one to leave before he’d really had a chance to determine when he was finished with her. Surely a welcome package should hang around until she’d outlived her welcome?
But he’d woken this morning and found nothing more than her scent imprinted on his pillow and a need for her in his loins that had had to go unsatisfied.
And now yet another surprise—a manager with a man’s name and an attitude that wavered between acute edginess one minute and open hostility the next. He’d been expecting the latter, he was well used to it, but he’d also been expecting the same smell of fear that the night clerk had radiated. Yet the way she’d blushed when he’d looked at her, and then plucked at her napkin like an adolescent on her first date rather than meet his gaze across the table, was something different.
By rights she should be fearful. Surely she realized how vulnerable her position was? He sipped his coffee, all the time weighing her up, trying to put his finger on exactly what it was about her that struck him as not quite right. She sat shifting in her chair, her eyes never quite meeting his, her teeth plucking at her lower lip like she was uncomfortable in the pause. Good.
Silence could be useful like that, telling you more about a person than when they spoke. Like her body was telling him right now. So she was uncomfortable when he looked at her—why was that? Most women had no problem with his perusal—most welcomed it, many more invited it.
And she must be used to men looking at her. She was really no hardship to look at, even in her mousy little manager’s outfit. She had pleasant enough features; maybe her nose was a little crooked, but there were curves under that corporate shirt that hinted at some kind of promise.
She made a small sound in the back of her throat, and he unapologetically adjusted his gaze higher. ‘Mr Carrazzo,’ she ventured cautiously, staring from behind her glasses at a point somewhere over his shoulder. ‘I’ve taken the liberty of pencilling in a ten-thirty a.m. meeting with the staff to outline what plans you have for Ashton House, but in the meantime, perhaps you might permit me to summarize some of the staff’s concerns?’
He gave a brief nod, still more interested in what it was about this woman that bothered him than any pointless attempts at getting him to change his mind.
‘Ashton House is the premiere hotel accommodation in the Adelaide Hills,’ she began. ‘A boutique-hotel, whose roots go back to the mid-eighteen hundreds. Here we employ fifty staff, all of whom are now anxious to know where their jobs stand. More than anxious given the way you’ve seen fit to close at least half of the other properties you’ve acquired in the last two years. Naturally, the staff is nervous. They need to know if they have a future here, and for that they need an assurance that Ashton House will be retained by you as a boutique-hotel.’
‘Is there any particular reason why I should keep it?’
Mackenzi blinked, clearly thrown by his question. ‘Because it’s worth it. Nothing else in the Adelaide Hills, probably in all of Adelaide, comes close.’
‘Why?’ he demanded, already bored. ‘What is it that brings people here?’
‘The beauty of the district, for a start,’ she countered. ‘The views…’
He turned his gaze pointedly to the expanse of windows beside them, where nothing existed but a swirling world of white. ‘Oh yes,’ he mocked. ‘I can understand that.’
She slumped back in her chair and he smiled. She’d dropped herself into that one and she knew it. Maybe that was what her nervousness was about—she was just completely out of her depth, too inexperienced to know what it felt like to have the rug pulled out from under your feet. In which case this experience could only benefit her.
He took a sip of his coffee, already satisfied he would meet little opposition with his current plans, and turned his attention back to the article he’d been reading.
‘Mr Carrazzo.’
He looked up, half-surprised she hadn’t already scampered off somewhere to nurse her shaky nerves and bruised ego.
‘If you don’t mind me saying, the staff has a right to know what the future holds for their jobs. They need to know, now that you’ve taken possession of Ashton House, exactly what you have planned for it.’
His breakfast arrived and he bided his time, letting the tense-looking waitress place his plate just so, grinding on pepper, and topping up his coffee. On the waitress he could sense the familiar fear, the overwhelming need to please and then get the hell away from him. So why not on the woman sitting opposite—who appeared to be all fire and sparks one minute, nervous like a schoolgirl the next?
‘I own Ashton House,’ he said, injecting his voice with more than a hint of menace. ‘I can do with it whatever I damn well please.’
He watched her chest swell on a breath as she sat up ramrod straight, her hands clasped tightly together on the table. ‘Like you’ve done with those others you’ve acquired?’
‘Those properties are hardly your concern.’
‘But what you’ve done with them is! Three perfectly goo
d businesses destroyed, three hotels gutted and turned into apartment blocks. And all for what?’
Revenge, he thought, rolling the word around like he was savouring it. How sweet it is. But he didn’t expect anyone else to understand. Nobody else could. Nobody else had been to that black hole he’d been thrust into and had had to clamber his way out of, one bleeding hand over the other. ‘That’s progress,’ he tossed off casually. ‘The world moves on.’
‘And is that the kind of progress you have in mind for Ashton House? Are you planning for the world to “move on” here too—so you can fill up the world with more of your precious apartment blocks?’
Dante put his knife and fork down deliberately before taking another sip of his coffee, contemplating her over the rim of his cup. Her colour was up again, the chest below her shirt rising and falling rapidly, and once again he had the feeling there was something he was missing.
Or was it just that she was the first person he’d met along this journey who hadn’t moved out of his way and bowed to the inevitable? He would never have expected such impassioned argument from someone who’d looked so meek and nervous when she’d first appeared.
‘Not an option,’ he said, shrugging off that line of thought, and getting back to her question in the next breath. ‘The local council here would never approve it.’
‘Which means you’ve considered it, then!’
It was an accusation rather than a question, but he ignored the jibe. He hadn’t come here to make friends with anyone, and he didn’t care what anyone thought. It was far too late for that. ‘As it happens, I have an entirely different fate in mind for Ashton House.’
‘What does that mean exactly?’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘Do you plan to keep Ashton House going after all?’
Despite her cautious words, he could see the hope lining her features, hope that he knew would be tragically short-lived. He leaned back low in his chair, his hands finding his pockets as a smile of satisfaction tugged at the corners of his mouth. He’d achieved almost everything he’d set out to do just seventeen short years ago, and the proximity to his goal was like a drug fuelling his bloodstream. Now there was just one final act.
He couldn’t think about it without smiling. ‘I’m going to destroy it,’ he told her. ‘I’m going to pull out every window and every door and then leave it to the elements to moulder, until it’s nothing more than a crumbling ruin.’
Shock exploded inside her, wrenching away her voice, so that when it came it was more breath than voice, a whisper that felt like she’d swallowed sandpaper. ‘Why would you do that?’
‘Because I can.’
His voice was cold as ice, his eyes devoid of life. No, Mackenzi realized, shaking her head with disbelief at his callous announcement—not lifeless. They were frozen and hard, but there was anger lurking in those dark depths, anger that swirled between them now like the dank fog rolling past the windows.
Terrifying eyes on a terrifying man. No wonder the former owners had been devastated when they’d finally lost control of Ashton House to this man. Poor Sara and Jonas. They’d tried valiantly to fend off the corporate raider, losing property after property to his insatiable greed.
Shock now turned to anger on their behalf. ‘That’s no reason for wanting to pull down such a beautiful building and destroy a thriving business in the process. What are the employees supposed to do?’
He shrugged, a careless hitch of his shoulders that ratcheted up her anger tenfold, before he sat up, turning his attention back to his breakfast. ‘Find other jobs, I expect.’
‘Just like that?’
‘If they’re any good, as they should be in a place that, as you say, claims to be the best, then it shouldn’t be a problem.’
Every answer as callous as the one that went before. Every answer building on the burgeoning rage she already felt inside. But she’d be damned if he thought she was going to sit by and watch him destroy such a beautiful building—the very building in which her own parents had celebrated their marriage forty years ago—and jobs and careers into the deal. There had to be a way of saving the hotel from this madman. But she would need time.
‘So when’s all this supposed to happen?’ she asked, doing all she could to keep the snarl out of her voice. ‘Given we have forward bookings more than twelve months out, are you saying the hotel’s got a year? Eighteen months? How much time will the staff have in order to find new positions elsewhere?’
He shook his head. ‘No.’
‘What do you mean, “no”?’
‘I mean that there is hardly any point advising people that their positions will no longer be required in twelve months’ time when they may well be gone in six. Then there would be positions to fill. Better that there is a clean break all around.’
‘So…how long do we have?’
‘The hotel will close in three months.’
‘What? That’s impossible. There’s no way—’
‘Ms Keogh, one thing I have learned in business is that nothing is impossible. The hotel will close. End of story.’
‘But I…I can’t let you do that.’
He laughed, and the sound fed into her anger.
‘And how do you propose to stop me?’
‘By convincing you that this property is worth much more to you as a going concern. I’ve prepared reports for you, projections—’
‘You had a hearing,’ he argued. ‘You told me people come here for the view.’ He lifted one hand towards the fog-laden exterior. ‘So it’s not like they’ll be missing out on one hell of a lot if I close this place down, is it?’
Her knuckles turned white in her lap. ‘It’s winter in the Adelaide Hills, Mr Carrazzo. And, in winter, we sometimes get fog. Not every day. Not every other day. Just on occasion. This happens to be one such occasion.’
He didn’t rush to respond, just bided his time that way he did, like he was bored and wanted to be done with it.
‘Three months. That’s all you have.’
Her anger turned incendiary. ‘You’re insane! You must be. What about all the forward bookings? We have weddings booked—and conferences. People have paid deposits. You can’t just cancel them.’
‘They will be cancelled. Compensated as well, if need be. As manager that will, of course, be your job.’
She scoffed. ‘So you expect me to be the apologist for your act of bastardy? I don’t think so.’
‘You’re refusing to do your job, Ms Keogh? I’m sure we could arrange an earlier termination for you if that’s so. Say, today?’
Mackenzi gasped, the cold, hard reality that she might walk out of here jobless, not in three months but as soon as today, starting to bite. She was luckier than most—her home, a tiny stone cottage deeper in the hills, was almost paid off courtesy of a single life and a reasonable income. Still, a termination payment would keep her going only for how long?
On the other hand, there was definitely something to be said for getting out of here as soon as possible—very definitely before he discovered the truth. If she wasn’t going to have a job in three months, that was one very attractive option.
‘Put it like that,’ she said, her voice crisp as frost as she made up her mind, ‘and you leave me no choice. I’ll go. Today.’
She had him there, she could see by the brief flicker of surprise across his features that her acceptance was the last thing he’d been expecting. He’d thought she was going to beg for her job—no way!
He raised one cynical eyebrow. ‘Making the grand gesture? Don’t expect me to ask you to stay on.’
It was liberating, she realized, losing your job. Empowering. For now there was no reason for her to curb her tongue; she no longer had a job to lose. And suddenly all the things she’d been itching to say since she’d first sat down could have their moment in the sun.
‘You know, Mr Carrazzo,’ she said with a smile, returning his own formality, ‘despite what we’d heard, I actually believed there might be some point talking to you, some po
int in pleading our case to your better self. But there is no better self, is there? You really are a heartless bastard.’
‘That’s half my problem,’ he acknowledged with his own wry smile, finding this intercourse much more entertaining than he’d been anticipating when the mouse had first appeared. ‘I do have a reputation to uphold.’
‘I don’t understand how you can sleep at night!’
‘Is that why you provided the woman? Because you assumed I’d need entertaining while my guilty conscience kept sleep at bay?’
Twin slashes of red stained her cheeks. Her eyes shakily held his before she hastily turned her face away, pretending an interest in the sea of fog beyond the glass, while in her lap her hands twisted her napkin into a rope. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
Dante smiled at her. At least, he projected a smile, one that would no doubt have made a crocodile proud. ‘The woman in my bed last night. You’re the manager here. Don’t tell me you didn’t arrange for her?’
Her eyes snapped back, her mouth set grimly, the knotted napkin forgotten as she rose shakily to her feet. ‘I don’t have to listen to this.’
He stood up and barred her exit from the table. ‘Did you honestly believe that having some whore waiting for me in my bed last night was going to make me feel more kindly towards keeping the hotel operating as a going concern?’
He watched her chin kick back on a swallow, saw her hands fisting at her sides. ‘So, tell me, where is this “whore” now, Mr Carrazzo? Waiting for you to return for a repeat performance of your no doubt magnificent services? I’m surprised you could drag yourself out of bed.’
Her words grated, rubbing him raw. She knew more than she was letting on, that was for sure, and she was guilty as hell. They’d set him up with some whore in the vain attempt that she might soften his intentions. Not likely, especially when she’d barely managed to soothe anything before she’d so rapidly disappeared. ‘You know she’s gone. What were you doing—paying by the hour?’
‘While I can quite understand why it would be necessary to pay anyone to sleep with you, Mr Carrazzo, I can assure you nobody was paid to be in your room. Maybe this so-called woman was never even there. Most likely she was just a figment of your imagination. So perhaps now you might let me pass? I have an office to clean out.’
