“Keira …”
She hopped up, plopped onto the couch beside him and leaned in, staring at the computer screen. “Okay, okay. So you have to work. Tell me about it. Talk to me.”
He sighed in resignation, and Keira hid a smile. “I'm working up a new schedule for impromptu visits to my hotels.”
She looked at him, stupefied for a second, then burst out laughing.
“What's so funny?”
She waved one hand, shook her head and fought for breath. Laughter spilled from her throat, bubbled into the room and crashed down around them as she wrapped her arms around his shoulders and gave him a fast hug. “Nathan, you're really something,” she said when she finally got control of her giggles.
“I'm so happy I can entertain you.”
“Don't you get it?” she asked, grinning. “You're making a schedule for impromptu visits. The whole point of impromptu is no schedule.”
Nathan scowled at her, then at the computer screen. He felt like an idiot. But in his own defense, he'd only been making busy work anyway. Anything to keep his mind off the fact that Keira was here and way too accessible.
He had no intention of getting in any deeper with her. And the best way to keep from doing that was to keep his hands to himself. Yet … everytime he heard her breathe, or caught a whiff of her scent, all he wanted to do was carry her back upstairs and bury himself inside her.
He wanted to experience again that incredible warmth that he'd only found with her. But it wouldn't be right. He wanted to enjoy her, enjoy their time together and still be able to walk away. Because he would be leaving. Nothing would stop him.
She reached out and closed the computer, then clambered onto his lap. Threading her arms around his neck, she looked into his eyes and asked, “What do you do when you're not working?”
He didn't have an answer. Strange, but he'd never really thought about it. “I'm always working.”
“Well, let's see what we can do about that.”
Nine
An hour later, Nathan rolled out of bed, his body replete, his mind racing. He glanced at Keira languidly stretching on the mattress and had to fight down an urge to lay back down and gather her up close. And because that thought was uppermost in his brain, he took a step or two away from the bed just for good measure.
“Now,” she said, sweeping her hair up to lay across the pillow like a red-gold banner, “wasn't that more fun than planning schedules?”
He grabbed his robe from the end of the bed, slipped it on, then stood up to look down at her. “If we spend the next few days like this,” he said with a smile he couldn't quite prevent curving his mouth, “by the time the storm ends, we'll be dead.”
“I can think of worse ways to go.”
So could he. That was one of his problems. Always before, Nathan's relationships with women had been uncomplicated and straightforward. Before he took a woman to bed, he made sure she felt as he did about affairs—that they should be undemanding, easily slipped in and out of, with no hard feelings, no promises made, so no promises broken.
Ordinarily, he never would have become involved with a woman like Keira. She had “complications” written all over her. And yet, at this moment, he couldn't really bring himself to regret what he'd found with her.
Regrets would come later. Once he was gone and safely wrapped up in his normal world. Once he was far enough away from her eyes that they didn't haunt him every damn minute.
“You're an unusual woman.”
She sat up, completely comfortable with her own nudity, and swung her hair back from her face. “Thanks.”
“You're welcome,” he said, his gaze dipping to the swell of her breasts, then back to her fathomless green eyes. She was tempting. More tempting than anyone he'd ever known before. He was walking through unfamiliar territory here and he felt as though he were trying to negotiate his way through quicksand.
What he needed was a little space. A little time to himself to gather his defenses and shore up the inner walls she seemed so determine to shatter.
Decision made, he said, “I'm going downstairs to get some work done.”
She looked at him for a long second or two, shook her head, then flopped back onto the bed, dragged the quilt up to cover herself and muttered, “Of course you are.”
A few hours later, Nathan was hunched determinedly over his computer, doing an excellent job of pretending Keira wasn't in the room.
Tossing the book she'd been trying to read for the last half hour onto the sofa cushion beside her, she frowned at the back of his head and said pointedly, “What're you doing?”
“Working.”
“Again, you mean. Well, I can see that, Mr. Chatty. Working on what? Still trying to find a way to schedule spontaneity?”
“No.” He shook his head, turned back to the computer and typed something else.
“Then what?”
“You're not going to give me any peace at all, are you?”
“Probably not,” she said.
“Fine.” He leaned back into the couch, winced and retrieved the book she'd dropped out from behind his back and set it on the coffee table. When he was settled again, he glanced at her and said, “I'm making some notes on how to confront the manager of the Gstaad Barrister.”
“Switzerland,” she said with a sigh. Then she asked, “Confront? About what?”
“I gave him specific instructions last time on how I wanted him to deal with the housekeeping staff, and they haven't been implemented.”
“Why not?”
He looked at her. “How the hell do I know?”
She curled her legs up under her, propped her elbow on the back of the sofa and leaned in. “What's wrong with the way he's handling things, then?”
Nathan sighed. “He's very … relaxed in his position. He allows the employees too much leeway in their work.”
“Does it all get done?”
“Yes, but—”
“So maybe,” Keira said, “he knows his people better than you do?”
“Maybe, but—”
She smiled. “So if you weren't stomping around bellowing orders like a bully, maybe you'd get more cooperation out of him?”
“I do not bellow,” Nathan said and sat up straight.
“But you do bully.”
He blew out a disgusted breath. “You don't understand. There's a right way and a wrong way to run a business, Keira.”
“Oh, I understand,” she said, reaching out to pat his shoulder, then letting her fingertips linger there just a moment or two. “Believe me, as mayor, I have to deal with people all the time. And it's just not logical to assume you can use the same strategy when dealing with different types of people.”
“It's always worked before,” he pointed out, scowling at her.
Keira scooted closer, leaned down and looked him dead in the eye. This she knew about. He might own all of the gorgeous hotels in the world, but Nathan Barrister was not a people person.
“But the thing is, Nathan, you don't know if it might work better doing things differently.”
“The company's policy has been in effect since my grandfather started the