Man of Fortune
Page 21
She had recommended Noah talk to her brother about how much he wanted for the sale of the land, and once Leland disclosed the amount Viviana hadn’t been able to say anything for several minutes. The Wainwright Developers Group had paid them more than three times the prevailing rate for land in a region where many people lived at or below the poverty line. Leland had refused to discuss the negotiations between him, Giles, and Noah, but told her to use the money wisely when making repairs and upgrading the house. Her brother’s warning was not unfounded because her last boyfriend had stolen her identity and ran up debts in her name where she feared losing everything.
She smiled and extended her hand with Noah’s approach. He had called her the day before to inform her he had finished the blueprints for the homes he planned to build in the valley and would stay until the town council approved his prospectus.
“Welcome back to The Falls.”
Ignored the proffered hand, Noah leaned over and kissed her cheek. “Thank you.”
Viviana’s eyes caressed his face, finding him even more attractive than when she first saw him. She normally didn’t attribute the word beautiful to a man, but Noah was just that. “If you’d come earlier I would have introduced you to my father.”
Noah’s eyes caressed her face. “Is he coming back?”
“No. He just drove down from Philadelphia to spend a few days with me. My father is a professional artist who has just been commissioned to paint a mural for the lobby of a major bank’s headquarters.”
“That’s impressive.”
She smiled. “I agree. As an architect I’m certain the two of you would’ve had a lot talk about when it comes to shapes and colors.” Mya Wainwright had disclosed, during Noah’s visit, that he was an architect and her husband an engineer and that they talked incessantly about buying, selling, designing, and erecting buildings. “Please come in and I’ll show you to the suite I’ve assigned to you.”
Noah hesitated. “If it’s all right with you, I’d rather stay in one of the guesthouses. I need the privacy to conduct business with my home office and potential clients. Will that be a problem?” he questioned when her jaw dropped.
“Oh no,” Viviana said quickly. When Noah alerted her alerted about his arrival, she’d assigned him the largest suite of the five she had set aside for guests. “I have a vacancy in the second guesthouse. A writer, who insists on anonymity and is only known by his popular pseudonym, has taken up residence in the first one for the next two months while he claims he’s writing the sequel to one of his blockbuster novels.”
“If I don’t recognize him, then I don’t need to know who he is.”
Viviana nodded. Her reclusive guest had paid for the guesthouse two months in advance. He allowed housekeeping to come in only twice a week to clean while he went for a walk to gather his thoughts. Viviana thought it weird that he only ate freeze-dried prepackaged meals people purchased in the event of a catastrophic event that would destroy the country’s food supply. It did not matter how eccentric he was along as he did not burn down the guesthouse or destroyed it contents.
“Come on in. I have to get your keycard. It’s too late for breakfast, but if you want I can fix something for you to eat,” Viviana said over her shoulder as Noah followed her into the great room.
“Please don’t bother. I told Giles I would hang out with him and Mya later this afternoon. I’ll probably have dinner with them.”
“The last time I saw Lily she was talking up a storm.”
“That’s because she’s a Wainwright. When everyone gets together if you don’t talk fast you won’t get a word in edgewise.”
Viviana walked into the room next to the parlor she had set up as her office. She wiped a keycard over the senor and pushed open the door. The room was off-limits to everyone in the ten-bedroom house. Since the bed and breakfast opened for business she hired a part-time cook, two part-time women assigned to housekeeping and a landscape company to maintain the grounds.
She opened a desk drawer and removed two keycards and activated them. “I’m giving you two in case you misplace one.”
Noah took the keycards and handed her a credit card. “I don’t how long I’m staying, but put all of the charges on this card.”
Viviana stared at the black card as if it was a venomous snake. She shook her head. “I’m not going to take that.”
“Why not?”
She glared at him. “Because I’m going to take any more money from you, that’s why?”
Noah’s eyes flashed with glints of anger. “You’re right when you say that your brother handles the finances, because you stink at this! How do expect to run a viable business when you let folks lay up for free?”
Viviana felt as if he’d given her a stinging slap across her face, as she recoiled from his acerbic taunt. She closed her eyes and counted slowly under she felt her anger subside until she could say what was on her mind without regretting what she actually wanted to tell him.
“You’re only half-right, Noah. I was so blindly in love with a man who took everything from me, and that included every penny in my name. So when I told you to talk to Leland about buying the land I probably would’ve turned down every offer you’d make because I had so little trust in men when it comes to money, and my first instinct was you’d tried to cheat me. I don’t know why you decided to give us what you did, but what I’m not going to do to you what my ex did to me. And that is take advantage of you. You can stay in the guesthouse without me charging you, or you can go and live with your cousin. If you decide not to stay, then give me the keycards and get back in your fancy little sports car and drive away.”
* * *
Noah looked at Viviana as if she had taken leave of her senses, and he wanted to tell her he wasn’t her ex looking to fleece her. The rise and fall her breasts under a white blouse and the slight flaring of her delicate nostrils told him she wasn’t annoyed but angry. All he wanted to do was pay her for living in the guesthouse and she’d gone off on him.
At that point he did not want to do or say anything that would drive a wedge between them. It was apparent he had underestimated Viviana. She had come at him like cat that’d had a litter of kittens. The one time he tried picking up one of the kittens the queen sprang and dug her claws into the back of his hand until he let go of her baby.
“Okay, you win,” he said after an uneasy silence.
“It’s not about winning and losing,” Viviana retorted. “It’s about what is right and wrong.”
Noah threw up a hand in exasperation. “You’re right, Viviana.”
“Please don’t attempt to placate me.”
Noah smothered a savage expletive under his breath as he forced a smile. “I’m sorry. I think I can find the guesthouse without your assistance.” At that point he did not care if she felt he was being facetious. All he wanted to do is get away from Viviana before he said something he would come to regret. This encounter reminded him of the one when she’d shown him the property she wanted his company to buy, and then he had diffused what would have become an impasse if he had not shut it down.
He walked out of the house and got into his car and drove around to the guesthouses. As he unloaded the trunk with luggage and electronic equipment Noah thought about Viviana her attitude towards him during their first encounter. At that time he hadn’t known what had made her unapproachable, but now he knew it had something to do with man—a man who’d used her and nearly ruined her financially. What she would soon learn was that he did not take advantage of women and that he definitely did not need their money.
He had come into his trust at twenty-five and fortunately he never had to concern himself with where to live or where his next meal was coming from. He was a Wainwright and heir to a real estate empire that was the second largest real estate company in the northeast and their goal was to make it number one. And now that they’d expanded their holdings to the Bahamas where they’d purchased and sold a number of islands to those with enough money
to want to own their private island.
Perhaps in the past when he wasn’t involved in his family’s business his days and nights were one continuous party; he would meet a girl, dated her for a month or two, and then break it off whenever she hinted that he give her ring or was bold enough to propose marriage to him. But that was then and this was now. He’d sown his wild oats and now at thirty-three he was looking forward to finding that special woman with whom to settle down. Some of his friends teased him saying he was still too young to talk about marrying and having kids, but few knew that Noah had tired of the nonstop, never-ending parties where he woke feeling worse than when he’d gone to sleep. That he’d dated too many girls—some who had the same names. However, he had always been very discriminating when sleeping with a woman. He really had to like a woman to make love with her. And when he looked back at his nonstop party days he was proud to admit he hadn’t used women because women just because they were willing and available.
He swiped the keycard the door opened. The lingering distinctive smell lemon wafted to his nostrils. It was apparent someone had recently cleaned the house. Noah discovered the structure contained two bedrooms, and there was loft with a king-size bedroom overlooking the living/dining area. The kitchen and bath were updated and the furniture contemporary and functional. A desk, worktable and chair were set up in a corner under a window which was the perfect spot for him to conduct business.
Noah picked up a brochure on the desk advertising the amenities the bed and breakfast offered. There was buffet breakfast for guests from seven to ten. Check out was 11:00 am and early check-in was at 2:00pm. Cordials and sweetbreads were served in the parlor 8:00 pm and all rooms were wired with free cable and Wi-Fi.
He decided to unpack, shower and change his clothes, then drive over to see his cousin. Perhaps Giles could give him a better read on the enigmatic beautiful woman with whom he had found himself enthralled.
Don’t miss
Dealmaker, Heartbreaker by Rochelle Alers,
available May 2019 wherever
Harlequin® Special Edition books and ebooks are sold.
www.Harlequin.com
Copyright © 2019 by Rochelle Alers
ISBN-13: 9781488052453
Man of Fortune
© 2009 by Rochelle Alers
All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 22 Adelaide St. West, 40th Floor Toronto, ON M5H 4E3 Canada.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
® and ™ are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office and in other countries.
www.Harlequin.com