‘Right, well, if you’d just like to check in? Card, or...’ She looked towards the table where the old-fashioned leather ledger was kept beside a book inviting guests to add their hopefully complimentary comments.
The book and the flowers and twigs she’d arranged in the old zinc jug the previous day were there, but not the leather ledger.
Ivo watched as she pressed a finger to the groove above her nose, her smooth brow puckering in concentration, but it was the dark purplish smudges beneath her blue eyes that drew his attention. He pushed away a waft of feeling that fell short of being empathy but nevertheless was distracting.
And he didn’t need any more distraction, he decided, the initial gut-punch reaction when the door had opened to reveal a diminutive flame-haired figure still raising some uncomfortable red-line-crossed feelings that he felt the need to rationalise. He had clearly subconsciously been expecting a replica of her sister, the tall willowy blonde who had bewitched his brother, and he was still adjusting to the reality. Add that to him not factoring in the possibility he might find the woman that stood between him and his nephew attractive.
He had acknowledged it now and moved on... It would only be a problem if he allowed it to be.
And he wouldn’t.
His confidence was justified: the last time Ivo had allowed his libido to rule him he’d been a teenager and his brother had not yet abandoned everything for a woman. Ivo had been in lust a number of times but had so far avoided anything that could be termed in love. He’d never been in what people would call a long-term relationship, because, in his experience, before he’d ever got close to long term the woman in his bed, who had begun by telling him how much she loved him the way he was, had begun chipping quietly away, trying to change what she had claimed to like about him.
A massive red line of a deal breaker; the woman did not exist that he would change for. The woman did not exist that he could not live without. Even the thought drew the corners of his lips into a cynical smile.
‘You are the person in charge?’
His words brought Flora’s chin up. Obviously this guy’s personality was not as perfect as the rest of him.
‘I am the person in charge,’ she confirmed, sounding a lot calmer than she felt while she wondered what sort of write-up punching him on his nose would earn her.
Actually, during the past nightmare weeks, in charge was the last thing she had felt, but luckily she could put on a good act. She did so now as she walked confidently across to the bar, as if there were no doubt in her mind that she would find the old-fashioned bookings diary where it lay concealed on a shelf.
Luck was on her side.
‘Here we are,’ she said, laying it on the reclaimed wood surface.
The satellite dish meant to connect them to the Internet and the twenty-first century was arriving next week, which might make this old-fashioned ledger redundant. It was another of the outstanding bills that was keeping her awake nights.
She turned from the back where the restaurant bookings were written down, all this evening’s cancellations highlighted by a red line drawn through them, to the front where room bookings were recorded. Sure enough, above one of the cancellations one of the rooms had been booked out for tonight.
She looked up, struggling to feel the professional warmth she had infused her smile with. ‘I’m sorry I missed this one, Mr...?’ She shook her head unable to decipher Fergus’s scrawl or throw off the peculiarly strong antipathy the man had evoked in her.
‘Rocco,’ Ivo responded, giving his middle name as he had on the telephone when booking. He hadn’t wanted to commit himself to a course of action before he’d read the situation.
‘Right, Mr Rocco, sorry about the miscommunication and the welcome.’
‘Or lack of it,’ he inserted smoothly.
‘Just so, afraid I’d assumed that everyone had cancelled due to the storm.’
His dark gold-flecked gaze slid to the window where relentless rain was lashing. ‘You mean it’s not always like this?’
The comment was delivered without the leavening humour which would have made it acceptable. Flora resisted the impulse to rush to the defence of her beloved home.
Her smile frayed a little at the edges as her sister’s face floated into her head. Sami would have had this man eating out of her hand by now. She flinched at the physical impact as the fresh loss hit her all over again. She almost wished that Jamie would wake up so that she would have something practical to focus on to dull the pain. Maybe being too tired to think was not such a bad thing, she mused, ignoring the bleak voice in her head that told her she was only delaying the inevitable, she’d have to feel at some point.
‘Would you like a wee dram to warm you after your journey?’ She bent down to reach the forty-year-old single malt they kept behind the bar for occasions such as this.
The bottle of last resort, Bruno had called it, to be used when everything else failed with awkward or upset customers. They had very few of those, and so far it had been brought out to toast special occasions, like newly engaged couples.
Ivo watched, with what he told himself was academic interest, as the denim of the redhead’s jeans stretched attractively over her taut, rounded rear as she bent over. There was nothing academic about the flash of heat down his front.
Flora straightened up, planted the bottle on the bar so that he could see the label, but his expression did not melt... Could granite melt? ‘On the house, of course,’ she added hastily.
‘No.’ The guest responded to the generous gesture with a look that flattened her smile. ‘If I could see the menu?’
Her expression fell. ‘Menu...?’
He arched a sardonic brow and watched the angry colour wash over the fair freckled skin.
She bit her lip. ‘Fergus, the chef, has gone home actually...’ She stopped. Was it such a good idea to tell this bad-tempered beautiful stranger with his indefinably menacing air that they were alone but for a baby lying asleep upstairs? Feeling ashamed of the sudden flurry of fear, she lifted her chin, squared her shoulders and added a very unconvincing, ‘Sorry.’
‘So your kitchen is closed?’ Of course it was. Ivo had stopped trying to imagine the urbane sophisticated brother he remembered living in this cold, misty, uninviting backwater. He sent up a silent apology to his grandfather, who he had assumed was guilty of over-exaggeration when he’d described the place his great-grandson needed rescuing from. Ivo no longer needed convincing.
From his expression she could see there was no five-star rating heading their way. ‘I could make you a sandwich?’ It wasn’t that she couldn’t cook, but Flora was intimidated by the restaurant’s industrial-looking catering kitchen with its shiny stainless-steel surfaces and latest top-of-the-range gadgets.
She didn’t ask for a translation of the sound he made in his throat, quite happy to take it as a rejection.
‘Right, then,’ she said briskly. ‘Shall I show you to your room? We’re having a little storm-related problem with the heating,’ she explained putting an awful lot of effort into the lie. It was glaringly obvious by his attitude that he didn’t actually believe a word she was saying. ‘But I’ll bring up an electric heater and you’ll be toasty in no time.’ She crossed her fingers while making the over-optimistic prediction. ‘If you’ll follow me?’
One foot on the bottom step of the staircase, she stopped as the fire chose that moment to belch a fresh flume of acrid smoke that filled the entire room. Flora stopped cursing long enough to cough. ‘The wind must be in the wrong direction,’ she excused hoarsely.
‘There is a right direction?’ he asked