Somehow that last phrase had come out a bit wrong: too sensual, too possessive. Dammit, it had sounded as if he was offering to put her up as his mistress.
And she was looking like a pretty sable rabbit that wanted to take the bait but was wary of anything offered by a wolf.
Suddenly she looked him square in the eyes, rose to her feet and smiled. The pretty rabbit disappeared, replaced by a very human, very lovely woman. “This is very tempting and totally unexpected. When I came downstairs today I was looking for a menu, not a job. I love my home. I have friends there that I don’t want to give up. I have hopes and dreams, and all of them are based in San Diego.”
That statement alone should have sent chills down his spine. People who used the term hopes and dreams tended to be breakable people. He steered clear of them.
“Your…dreams,” he said, “may be centered in San Diego but taking this job would help you reach your goals much more quickly. You could raise the capital you need.”
She closed her eyes.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
She didn’t answer at first. For a second he thought he heard her counting beneath her breath. He did hear her counting. But when she got to six, she opened her eyes.
“What am I doing? I’m trying not to say yes,” she said with a groan. “I need time. Because if I make the wrong decision we might both regret it. This whole situation…it’s completely crazy. I just came here for the weekend. I have friends I’m flying back with.”
“I’ll refund the price of your airline ticket.”
She raised her brows. “Somehow that won’t solve the problem.”
“Problem?”
“I have a reputation for jumping into fires that burn me. I promised myself I’d stop that. Agreeing to do this…I mean, just look at you.”
Wyatt waited. She clearly had more to say.
“I can hear their thoughts already. Some good-looking resort owner asks Alex to please help him and what does she do? She leaps right in. They’ll think I’ve lost my mind. I—no. I need to be smart.”
Don’t push her, Wyatt told himself. Hadn’t everything she’d told him indicated that she had a tendency to let her emotions guide her? No matter what his gut instincts were saying, that wasn’t what he was looking for. He’d had a lifetime of bad experiences with people whose emotions dictated their actions, and up until he was old enough to be on his own he’d been forced to suffer the bitter consequences.
Still, this was short-term work they were discussing.
“A sensible person trying to save money would go for the gold, wouldn’t she?” Wyatt asked.
Alex frowned. “Maybe she would. But I…This is a big step. I really should go. I’ll need to think this through.”
Before he could say one word, she had moved to the door.
“Alex?” he said, before the door had opened an inch.
She turned to look at him.
“Don’t think it through too much,” he said. “Stay here. I’ll make it worth your while.”
A woman—someone other than Alex—gasped. Alex swung the door wide to reveal three women. Wyatt wanted to groan. He was very careful to keep his personal and business life separate. In fact, he’d opted not to have much of a personal life.
Alex was blushing prettily, but she held her chin high. “Jayne, Serena, Molly—meet Wyatt McKendrick, my potential new boss. Wyatt, these are my best friends.”
And obviously very protective of Alex, from the looks of them. He nodded to the three openly curious women. “It’s very nice to meet you. I’m hoping that Alex will make me a very happy innkeeper. I need her.”
Wrong thing to say. Her friends’ expressions said that he was a wolf and Alex was a tasty lamb. They would try to convince her not to take the position.
But he was determined to have her. It wasn’t just the way she’d handled Belinda’s situation and the customers. It was how she’d stood up to him. Not many people dared to question him. She was brave without being overbearing. It was a good quality for a concierge.
Or a woman. He frowned at that out-of-place thought and, leaning down, whispered in Alex’s ear, upping the salary he had proposed earlier. “I really do need help,” he said.
“What did he whisper to you?” one of her friends asked. Good. They were looking out for her. He liked his employees to have strong support systems. He’d grown up without one, so he didn’t require one, but most people did. It made for a happy, productive employee.
Still, he was on a mission. “How much time do you need?”
“I leave tomorrow afternoon.”
“Then think it over tonight. I’ll meet you here tomorrow morning at eight. And…Alexandra?”
The startled look in her eyes told him that very few people called her by her full name. Good.
She waited.
“Say yes,” he told her.
“You might regret it,” she said, “but I’ll consider it.”
Was she right? Would he regret being hasty? Most likely. Alex Lowell was very appealing. That could be a problem. He didn’t make personal connections, and that was an unbreakable rule. Yes, he would regret pursuing Alex.
But he would also regret not pursuing her. He only hired the best, and his infallible instinct, which had enabled a rebellious, angry young man to build an empire out of nothing, told him that she was the best.
And he wanted her.
ALEX felt as if she’d just jumped out of an airplane and realized she didn’t know how to pull the cord on her chute. A thousand questions were firing in her brain as she and her friends headed to her room. What had just happened? She had expected Wyatt to ask her to give him a play-by-play of her experience with Belinda. Instead he’d offered her a job and an obscene amount of money. She remembered that much. But mostly she remembered how every time Wyatt had looked at her, her entire body had reacted as if she’d just discovered, at age twenty-eight, the difference between men and women. And why some women got into hair-pulling contests over a virile man or tattooed men’s names on their bodies.
Wyatt was going to be a problem. And not because of anything he would say or do. Oh, no.
It was all her. She was the problem. The man made her hands shake with awareness of her body. She’d practically had to sit on them to keep them still, and she couldn’t have that. Her relationships with men had always been awful, starting with her father’s and stepfather’s abandonment of her. She still remembered running after her stepfather’s car, begging him to stop. It had been the beginning of a life of over-achievement, of volunteering to help men with their problems, only to get her heart broken. But her last awful experience with Michael had been the worst. A child had been harmed by that relationship, so she was through. And since she loved being independent with no need of a man, her instant reaction to Wyatt should have been a blaring warning that she was in danger of making a major mistake. The only sensible thing to do in such a situation was—
“Run back to San Diego.” She muttered the words beneath her breath.
“What did you say?” Molly asked.
“I