‘How’s your back?’ she shot right back at him. She was in no mood to take prisoners.
‘It’s early days.’ Then, once Francis had gone, ‘The coffee helped, though.’
‘I’m glad to hear it,’ she replied, helping herself to a glass of water from a Thermos jug. ‘And what’s on that tray had better finish the job.’
‘You’re just teasing me with false hope.’
‘It’s chilli,’ she said, in no mood for teasing him or anyone else. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you own this place?’
‘Does it matter?’
He said it lightly enough, but there was a challenge in those dark eyes that suggested it did.
‘It does when the manager feels he can’t ask you to leave, despite the fact that the room has been bought and paid for by a bona fide guest,’ she replied.
‘None of my resort managers would expect a sick guest to leave. You, I take it,’ he said, ‘have no such inhibitions.’
‘Too right. Although, since we both now know that you’re not a guest, you’d better enjoy that chilli while you can.’
‘That sounds like a threat.’
‘I don’t make threats. I make promises. Unless you make your own arrangements to leave, I’ll be ordering up an air ambulance to take you out of here first thing in the morning. You’d better decide where you want it to take you.’
‘Ambulances only have one destination,’ he pointed out. ‘They’re not a taxi service.’
‘Right. Well, that’s an additional incentive because I’m betting they don’t have an la carte menu at the local hospital,’ she replied, refusing to think what that would be like.
He was successful, wealthy. Hospital would be a very different experience for him, she told herself, blocking out the memory of her mother shrinking away to nothing in a bare room.
Gideon McGrath would be in a private suite with the best of everything. Maybe. Would the local hospital have private suites?
‘Is that really chilli?’ he asked gently, as if he genuinely sympathised with her dilemma. And, just like that, all the hard-faced determination leached out of her and she knew that she couldn’t do it.
‘I wanted you in a good mood,’ she admitted. ‘I even phoned your PA and gave her your message.’
‘What did she say?’
‘The exact word was unrepeatable,’ she replied. ‘Have you never heard of Serafina March?’
‘March? That’s Cara’s name. Is she a relative?’
‘Her aunt. She’s the queen of the designer wedding. She wrote The Perfect Wedding, the definitive book on the subject.’
‘I take it there is some reason for you telling me this.’
‘You can relax, Gideon. This hasn’t got anything to do with your marketing department thinking up new ways to drum up business. Serafina visited her niece in the office and saw some photographs of this place. Quiet, off the beaten track, just what she was looking for.’
‘Why didn’t someone just say no?’
‘Apparently she is unfamiliar with the word. Cara offered to take the blame, fall on her sword if it will help.’
‘Only because she knows she’s indispensable.’
She’d said that too, but Josie didn’t tell him that. Instead, she swallowed a mouthful of water, then, hot, tired, she pushed her glasses onto the top of her head, tilted it back and poured the rest of it over her face, shivering as the icy water trickled down her throat, between her breasts. Then she poured herself another glass before turning to find Gideon staring at her.
‘Did you want some water?’ she offered.
‘Er…I’ll pass, thanks.’
She glanced at the glass in her hand and then at him. ‘No…’ Then, despite everything, she laughed. ‘You really shouldn’t put ideas like that into my head. Not after the morning I’ve had.’
‘Pass me the chilli and take the weight off your feet,’ he said. ‘My shoulder is at your disposal.’
It was a very fine shoulder. More than broad enough for a woman to lay her head against while she sobbed her heart out. Not that she was about to do that.
‘You already said,’ she reminded him, uncovering the chilli and passing it to him, along with a fork. ‘But if your shoulder was truly mine I’d have it shipped out of here so fast your feet wouldn’t touch the ground. The wise decision would be to go with it.’
Gideon grinned as he tucked into the first decent food he’d had for two days. She was a feisty female and if they’d been anywhere else he’d have put his money on her. But it was going to take more than tough talk to shift him. This was his home turf and all the muscle was on his payroll.
She poured herself another glass of water, this time to drink, and needed no encouragement from him to sink onto the lounger beside him.
‘Damn, this is good,’ he said. Then, glancing at her, ‘Aren’t you hungry?’
Her only response was to lift her hand an inch or two in a gesture that suggested eating was too much effort. Maybe it was. Now she was lying down, her eyes closed, the I’m-in-charge mask had slipped.
He’d seen it happen a dozen times. Visitors arrived hyped up on excitement, running on adrenalin and kept going for an hour or two, but it didn’t take long for the journey, the heat, to catch up with them. It had happened to him once or twice and it was like walking into a brick wall.
‘Okay, give,’ he said. ‘Maybe I can help.’
‘You can, but you won’t.’ She caught a yawn. ‘You’ll just lie there, eating your illicit chilli and gloating.’
No…Well, maybe, just a little. He was in a win-win situation. He could make things as difficult for her as possible but, no matter what horrors occurred at this wedding, he knew the pain wouldn’t show on the pages of Celebrity.
Short of the kind of disaster that would make news headlines, the photographs would show smiling celebrities attending a stunningly original wedding, even if they had to fake the pictures digitally.
In the meantime, he had the pleasure of the wedding planner doing everything she could to make him happy.
He smiled as he lifted another forkful of his chef’s excellent chilli. Then lowered it again untasted as he glanced at her untouched lunch.
Was she really not hungry? Or was the food…?
He eased himself forward far enough to lift the cover on her plate.
Steamed fish. Beautifully cooked, no doubt, and with a delicate fan of very pretty vegetables, but not exactly exciting. Clearly, she’d taken the ultimate culinary sacrifice to give him what he wanted.
‘I won’t gloat,’ he promised.
‘Of course you will,’ she replied without moving. Without opening her eyes. ‘You’re hating this. If you could wave a magic wand and make me, Crystal, Tal and the whole wedding disappear you’d do it in a heartbeat.’
‘My mistake,’ he said. ‘I left the magic wand in my other bag.’
Her lips moved into an appreciative smile. ‘Pity. You could have used it to conjure up another couple of rooms and solved all our problems.’
‘Two? I thought you were just one room short?’
She rolled her head an inch or two, looking at him from beneath dark-rimmed lids. Assessing him. Deciding whether she could take him at his