Chatsfield's Ultimate Acquisition (The Chatsfield: New York Book 1)

by MELANIE MILBURNE

  Why hadn’t she told him of her innocence? Or had she been keen to appear as sophisticated and streetwise as she acted?

  Hammer blows of guilt pounded at his temples. He was not a cad. He was a playboy, sure, but not a man who didn’t respect and honour women. He had never slept with a virgin, not even his first time had been with another virgin but someone three years older and with far more experience than him.

  Up until Isabelle, sex had been sex, a physical need that could easily and conveniently be satisfied with a partner who wanted the same thing—a no-strings fling. He lived in the hook-up culture and made the most of it.

  Was that why she hated him so vehemently? Because he hadn’t lived up to her hopes of a happy-ever-after? Didn’t all women cling to their first love? Imagining them to be The One. Had Isabelle seen him like that? As someone she could spend the rest of her life with?

  There was a time when he had considered the possibility of marrying and continuing the Chatsfield line, but overhearing his parents arguing that Christmas had ripped that plan to shreds. He wasn’t part of the Chatsfield line. The blood that flowed in his veins belonged to someone who had nothing whatsoever to do with hotels, other than to drink in them, a habit that in the end had cut short his life.

  Spencer had thought Isabelle’s hatred towards him was because of that ridiculous bet and more recently because of the hotel takeover. But to find she had another axe to grind against his guilt was lowering to say the least.

  He had done some discreet research and found out she hadn’t been in a serious relationship since her time with him...or none that anyone knew of. Didn’t that say something? Had she been so invested in their relationship she had been devastated when it ended? She hadn’t acted devastated. She’d acted angry. Coldly angry. And he had conveniently used her anger to get out of a relationship he hadn’t known how to handle.

  He wasn’t used to needing people. He prided himself on his self-reliance, a self-reliance that had served him well once he found out about his biological origins. The thought of needing someone was anathema to him. Needing someone made you a bull’s-eye target for disappointment.

  Isabelle lived and breathed The Harrington. She worked long hours and lived on-site...with a contraband cat. That had truly gobsmacked him. She didn’t present as the nurturing-a-pet type. She was aloof and standoffish in her dealings with people. Even her handpicked staff were held at arm’s length. But maybe a cat suited her. Cats were known to be aloof and haughty, a slave to no one.

  There were health issues with having a cat in the hotel. He hadn’t been making that up. But he could see why a single woman living in a hotel where she worked would want one. It was company of sorts. Someone to talk to when no one else would listen.

  Sheesh, maybe he should get himself one.

  Spencer moved away from the window with a ragged sigh. The muscles of his neck and shoulders felt like concrete. He had a headache behind his eyes that was creeping dangerously close towards one of his migraines. His stomach was curdled with remorse. Shame. Disgust at himself.

  How could he have been so blind? What defect in his personality—in his bastard lineage—had allowed something like this to happen? What if he had hurt her and she wasn’t admitting it? He knew her to be proud. Her uppity manner was one of the things he’d found so attractive.

  He was her first lover.

  The thought kept coming back at him like the bars of a song he couldn’t get out of his head.

  He hadn’t taken things slowly that first time. He hadn’t made any allowances. He had been so driven with lust they had come together in a firestorm of passion. The lead-up to their fling had been the longest and yet most enjoyable foreplay of his life. She had resisted his attempts to seduce her, which had only made him all the more determined. When she finally capitulated he had been triumphant.

  The sex had been amazing. Not just because he’d had to work for it harder than normal, but because their bodies had a certain chemistry he hadn’t felt before or with anyone else since. And not just that first time, but every time. There was a level of intimacy between them. There was both passion and tenderness. He remembered the way her fingertips would play up and down his spine. He used to shiver with the delight of her touch. She could bring him to his knees with a single stroke of her fingers. She hadn’t been coy in pleasuring him. She had gone down on him with an expertise he could only marvel at now he knew she had been a novice. How had she known to touch him like that? To read his body, to stroke him with her lips and tongue until his knees buckled and he exploded.

  How was he going to handle this situation between himself and Isabelle now? The attraction was still there. On both sides. He felt it every time he was with her. She said she hated herself for it and no wonder. He was the enemy. He had acted with a scant disregard for her feelings. Feelings he had not sensed, not intuited, because he didn’t deal in the currency of emotions. He was a facts-and-figures man. Feelings were something he ignored. Dismissed. Discounted. He wanted results and he went after them with a dogged determinism.

  He was her first lover.

  The sense of pride in that thought was probably leaning towards Neanderthal-like but he couldn’t help it. He had been the first one to pleasure her, to bring her to orgasm with his body and his touch. He had been the first person to hold her in an intimate embrace that had shaken her body, creating shudders of ecstasy that he had felt reverberating through his own. He had been the first one to fill her with his length, to feel her body surround him, grip him, to contract against him in tight ripples of pleasure. How could he not feel some element of pride in being the first to share that with her? It made every other experience of sex he’d ever had seem almost tawdry in comparison.

  Could he risk another fling/relationship with her? Would she accept it? She had offered herself to him in his office like a hooker. Cheapening herself as she accused him of cheapening her. He could so easily have taken her. His body had thrummed with need. Ached with it. Burned with it.

  But he wasn’t going to be manipulated by game playing and point scoring. He liked to be the one in control of his affairs. If he got involved with her again there were things to weigh up. How would he juggle the complication of a relationship with his biggest work challenge of his career? Was that why she was offering herself to him? Knowing it would distract him from his goal? Why else would she want an affair with him? She hated him. And it seemed he had given her good reason for it.

  But hate and lust were not uncommon bedfellows. Hating someone didn’t mean you didn’t want them like an addict wants a fix.

  But how would the press see a relationship between him and Isabelle? As a marketing ploy it certainly had merit, but what did Isabelle want? What did she really want? She said she was a career woman. He got that. He understood not every woman wanted the domestic setup. But something about her made him think she wasn’t being completely honest. In the past she had spoken briefly on the loss of her mother when she was seventeen. She hadn’t gone into detail. He got the feeling she was relaying the information from some place outside of herself, as if the loss and grief had happened to another person and she was only reporting it. Her relationship with her father had become distant after his marriage to Liliana. But he had heard that from others, not her. He had heard nothing but praise for her from the hotel staff. They spoke of her dedication, her loyalty to them and to the hotel brand, the way she treated them as a family unit, all pulling together to achieve the best for the company. But for all that he could see she held herself at a professional distance. He noticed no one called her by her first name. Had she insisted on that or was that part of The Harrington ethos?

  She kept so much of herself behind the screen of her poise and aloofness. Was it wrong to want to get closer to her, to get to know the woman behind the ice-maiden mask? Was it selfish to revisit what they had shared, to see if it was as unique and dee
ply satisfying as he remembered it?

  * * *

  When Isabelle turned up at her office the next morning there was a huge bunch of spring flowers on her desk.

  ‘They’re from Mr Chatsfield,’ her secretary, Laura, said. ‘He delivered them himself half an hour ago.’

  Isabelle felt a blush crawl over her cheeks. In amongst the heady perfume of the flowers she could pick up a faint trace of Spencer’s lemon and lime aftershave. It made her senses sing in spite of the pounding headache she was fighting off. ‘Send a thank-you note to him,’ she said.

  Laura gave her a quizzical frown. ‘You don’t want to write it yourself?’

  Isabelle kept her expression and her tone coolly indifferent. ‘No, why would I?’

  Laura handed her the morning newspaper. ‘Hmm... Maybe you shouldn’t read this until you have some caffeine on board.’

  She looked at the gossip section Laura had folded the paper open to. There was a photo of her and Spencer in the bar last night and a caption that said Romance behind Chatsfield hotel merger? Then the article below went a little further.

  The David and Goliath battle between the giant Chatsfield hotel chain and the stately Harrington has come to a truce...or should we say tryst?

  Sworn enemies Englishman Spencer Chatsfield and New Yorker Isabelle Harrington were seen leaving The Harrington hotel bar together late last night. Our source hinted there is more behind the Chatsfield takeover of The Harrington than meets the eye.

  Has Miss Harrington’s earlier resistance to the takeover been a cover-up for a clandestine affair with the now-major shareholder, Spencer Chatsfield?

  Isabelle shoved the paper to one side before she could read any more. ‘You’re right. I need some caffeine.’

  Laura let out a wistful sigh. ‘If I were forty years younger I’d make a play for him myself.’

  Laura had been at The Harrington for as long as Isabelle could remember. Whenever she used to come into her father’s office, Laura would sneak her a couple of pieces of candy from her supply in the drawer of her desk. Isabelle knew she should have replaced her with someone a lot younger and a lot less interested in her private life but she hadn’t been able to bring herself to do it. Yet.

  She gave her a speaking look. ‘Don’t you have work to do?’

  Laura was undaunted. But then it was probably hard to be daunted by someone you had seen go from bobby socks to braces and budding breasts and puppy fat to adulthood. ‘I think it’s unfair how your stepmother handed Spencer Chatsfield those shares. You’re the one who’s done all the hard work around here. I’d hate to see the hotel lose its special charm. It’s not that The Chatsfields aren’t great hotels or anything. And I’m sure Mr Chatsfield is a very nice person and all. But they’re not The Harrington, are they?’

  Isabelle let out a short breath. ‘No.’

  Laura picked up the newspaper off Isabelle’s desk and examined the photo. ‘He’s very good-looking, isn’t he? Gorgeous blue eyes.’

  ‘Have you sent those outstanding accounts I asked you to send yesterday?’

  ‘And his accent is so posh,’ Laura said. ‘I could listen to him read the phone directory. I wonder if he went to Eton like Prince William and Prince Harry?’

  Isabelle pressed two of her fingers to the left side of her temple where a pneumatic drill seemed to be boring into her skull. ‘Forget about the coffee. I’ll have tea instead. Black, no sugar.’

  Laura lifted her brows so high they disappeared beneath the neatly trimmed bangs of her steel-grey bob. ‘But you never drink tea.’

  ‘Once you’ve done that, I don’t want to be disturbed.’

  ‘What if it’s Mr Chatsfield?’

  ‘Especially if it’s Mr Chatsfield.’

  Laura frowned again. ‘But he’s your boss now, isn’t he? You can’t order him about as if he’s one of the junior staff.’

  Isabelle ground her teeth and then wished she hadn’t as it caused another fissure in the plates of her skull. ‘He’s also your boss so you’d better keep on your toes. He might want someone fresh out of nursery school instead of someone nudging retirement.’

  ‘I really like him,’ Laura said. ‘I know that sounds a bit disloyal and all. I expected him to be stuck-up but he spoke to me as if I was really integral to the hotel. Mind you, I’ve been here long enough to know a few things about the business.’ She chuckled. ‘The stories I could tell him. I could write a book.’

  ‘Every staff member is integral to The Harrington,’ Isabelle said as if she were reading it from the mission statement.

  Laura tucked the newspaper under her arm. ‘I’ll get your tea.’

  Isabelle leaned her elbows on the desk and cradled her aching head in her hands. She hadn’t thought about what the press would make of her and Spencer being seen together. Well, she had but preferred not to think about it. Spencer was in and out of the papers all the time. He and his cousins kept readers entertained with their supposed exploits. If they did even half of what the press documented they would never get a wink of sleep or do a day’s work.

  She, on the other hand, did her best to steer clear of gossip and innuendo. It was undignified. She didn’t want to tarnish the hotel’s brand with anything unseemly, even if it was entirely fabricated, which most of the sensationalised gossip pieces were. The very small private life she had was conducted out of the glare of the spotlight and she intended to keep it that way.

  The door of her office opened and she didn’t bother looking up. ‘Just leave it on the desk.’

  ‘Hangover?’ Spencer said.

  Isabelle lifted her head so quickly she saw a school of silverfish float past her eyes. She blinked them away and averted her gaze from his. ‘If you haven’t got hot tea or paracetamol with you, then don’t come any closer.’

  ‘How about an apology?’

  She chanced a quick glance at him. ‘Thanks for the flowers,’ she said. ‘I was going to send a note...’

  ‘Yes, so your secretary said.’

  She dropped her gaze and began to chew at the corner of her mouth. ‘I suppose she showed you the paper?’

  ‘She’s very efficient, isn’t she?’

  Isabelle looked at him again. He looked disgustingly fresh and vital. Clean-shaven, clear-eyed and well-rested. He clearly hadn’t been up half the night restless with unspent sexual energy. Or maybe he’d called in someone to fix that little problem for him. The thought made her stomach clench. ‘Did you see anyone taking a picture of us last night?’

  ‘No, but do you know how many smartphones are in any one place at any one time?’ he said. ‘Everyone’s a celebrity snapper these days.’

  She pushed back from the desk and winced as her head protested. ‘I don’t like being talked about. My private life is my business, no one else’s.’

  ‘Do you even have one?’

  Isabelle raised her chin. ‘Like I said, it’s my business.’

  His eyes studied hers for a lengthy moment. ‘Did you read my card?’

  ‘What card?’

  He unpinned it from the arrangement of flowers and handed it to her. Her stomach flipped over when his fingers brushed hers. She slipped the card out of the tiny envelope and looked at the dark scrawl of his handwritten note. I’m sorry. S.

  Isabelle poked the card back inside the envelope and gave him an arch look. ‘Does that mean you’re going to hand me the two per cent shares?’

  A frown pulled hard at his forehead. ‘No, it does not.’

  She handed him the card. ‘You can keep your apology.’

  He ignored the outstretched card. ‘Damn it, Isabelle,’ he said. ‘If I’d known I would’ve—’

  ‘What?’ she said in a mocking tone. ‘Been gentle with me?’

  A dull flush rode over his aristocratic cheekbones. �
��If I hurt you, then I’m deeply sorry.’

  She folded her arms across her body and shot him a fiery glare. ‘You hurt me more by all but stealing my hotel off me.’

  He tightened his mouth until it was almost flat. ‘I didn’t force your stepmother to hand those shares over. You heard what she said. She thought it was the best thing to do under the circumstances.’

  Isabelle flung her arms out in scorn. ‘Oh, yes, how could I forget? Liliana knows the best thing to do for me under the circumstances. What a load of crock. She doesn’t know me. She doesn’t understand anything about me because if she did she would never have given you those shares.’

  ‘Did she know we were once involved?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you tell anyone about us?’

  Isabelle gave him a hard look. ‘I certainly didn’t give a tell-all interview to the press the first chance I got.’

  His brows came together again. ‘You think I’m responsible for what’s in this morning’s paper?’

  ‘Aren’t you?’

  ‘No.’

  There was a knock at the door and Laura came bustling in with tea for two on a tray. She gave Isabelle a beaming smile as she set the tray down on the desk. ‘I figured you and Mr Chatsfield would have heaps to chat about. I brought cookies too.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Isabelle said stiffly.

  ‘Thanks, Laura,’ Spencer said with a smile. ‘Chocolate chip are my favourite.’

  Laura walked out backwards as if she couldn’t bear to drag her gaze away from Spencer’s tall handsome frame. Once the door was closed Isabelle turned to him with an arch of her brows. ‘Another conquest?’

  ‘How long’s she been here?’

  ‘I inherited her. She was my father’s secretary. She’s excellent at her job. She knows the business inside and out.’ Isabelle knew she sounded like she was rationalising Laura’s continued employment but she was dreading the time when she would have to let the older woman go. Laura understood her need to hold on to The Harrington. She understood it was the only family Isabelle could identify with now. The loss of her mother, and then her father’s remarriage and then his death, Jonathan’s irresponsibility and her sisters’ lives outside the hotel business meant the hotel was the only constant she could cling to. It was her anchor, the only place where things could be controlled and timetabled.