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She had ducked her head, refusing to look directly at him for the first time since they’d begun their conversation. “Well, I’m not actually close to having the capital. It’s expensive living in California. But I’m working on it and getting closer.”
Alex sounded so apologetic that Wyatt wanted to smile. As if the state of the economy was her fault. Still, he saw one last opportunity—one he would grasp. He’d been called a lone wolf before, a man with no ties, one who followed the scent of whatever he wanted, relentlessly. It was an apt description. He needed to succeed, and right now he felt the thrill of having discovered Alexandra’s weak spot.
“So if I offered you a better salary—” he named an amount large enough that Alex jerked her head up “—and promised to find you work equivalent to what you’ve been doing if this doesn’t work out, or when you return to San Diego in two months, even that wouldn’t convince you to become my concierge?”
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.
CHAPTER THREE
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 hairpulling 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 said that you don’t have to worry about me,” she told her friends as they entered the hotel room she was sharing with Jayne. The truth was that she could handle the worrying about herself part of things just fine.
“You can’t come to Las Vegas for a weekend and end up staying,” Jayne said. “Alex, that’s insane. You could get hurt.”
Alex shook her head. “No, I can’t. I have new rules for myself. Parameters. If I took this, it would be just a job.” One she’d have turned down instantly if Wyatt hadn’t made it difficult to say no. “I love your hair, by the way.”
Alex, Molly and Serena had pitched in to give Jayne a salon treatment, and she’d had her waist-length hair cut short. Alex knew it was because Jayne’s fickle fianc´e had loved her long hair.
“Thank you, but that won’t work,” Jayne said.
“What won’t?” As if Alex didn’t understand.
“She means that you can’t distract us,” Molly said, frowning. “Alex, we’re worried about you. We know running into Michael and his daughter hurt you last week. If you stay here alone…well, we don’t want you to stay here alone.”
Alex’s throat began to close up. Molly, Serena and Jayne had been there for her when Michael had broken her heart and her spirit. They’d had her back…always.
“Thank you, but don’t worry. I haven’t decided yet what I’m doing.”
“Decide no,” Serena said. “This is too big a change to make so quickly.”
“Yes, it is,” Alex agreed. “I totally agree.”
Jayne and Molly and Serena looked at each other.
“You’re going to do it, aren’t you?” Serena asked.
“I probably shouldn’t, but when he was whispering to me…”
Alex’s breath caught at the memory of Wyatt’s breath lifting her hair, tickling her ear.
Molly snapped her fingers in front of Alex’s face. “Come back, Alex.”
Alex blinked. “I wasn’t daydreaming. I was thinking.”
“About…?” Jayne prompted.
“She was thinking about Mr. McKendrick whispering in her ear. In that very sexy way,” Serena said.
Serena didn’t miss a trick. It was best not to let anyone focus too much on how irresistibly sexy Wyatt was.
“This has nothing to do with Mr. McKendrick’s hotness factor. The thing is…he offered me three times my current salary,” Alex said. “Then he upped it again.”
Jayne’s eyebrows rose. “I think we better sit down while you tell us what happened. You only stepped out to get a menu.”
“Talking about this is a great idea,” Molly agreed, sitting on the bed. “Talking you out of it would be even better.”
“Spill it, Lowell, and make it good,” Serena said.
Alex sighed. They had a point. Going through what had happened would clear her thoughts. As it was, the whole episode was a blur of excitement.
“Okay.” She sat down cross-legged on the bed. “It all began with the pregnant concierge going into labor…”
A smile lifted Serena’s lips. “You certainly know how to begin a story.”
But Jayne wasn’t smiling when the story ended. “Careful, sweetie. I smell heartbreak if you stay. Wyatt McKendrick looks like a man who’s run through a lot of women. Rich, sophisticated women.”
And Alex wasn’t either rich or sophisticated.
“But he’s offering you your dream, isn’t he?” Molly asked. “The chance to open your shop sooner. That’s the appeal, isn’t it?”
“Partly,” Alex said. “Without this chance I might never make enough money to open the shop. But it’s more than that. All my life I’ve ended up in situations where I had no power and no stable home. After my father and my stepfather left, my mother struggled to support us. Sometimes we got evicted. We never had a real home. Later, there were men. Always temporary. Robert, the athlete I tutored, who left me for the prom queen; Leo, the painfully shy guy I mentored and turned into a woman-magnet only to have him slip away with someone he’d known all his life. Then Michael…He was struggling to be a single father. I was helping him. I thought we were going to make a home together, but we’re not.”
“Alex,” Jayne said. “That’s what worries me. I read somewhere that McKendrick’s is competing for an award and…we know you so well. You’re too darn warm-hearted. You jump in to help and end up getting hurt by men who don’t appreciate what you’ve done for them.”
“Which is exactly why I’m safe this time,” Alex said. “Jayne, I’m aware of the mistakes I’ve made in the past. Those men I helped and fell in love with but who didn’t love me back—they were my training ground. The scars I picked up will protect me, because now I know that if I want a home—and I do, more than anything—I’ll have to make my own. From now on I’m declaring my independence from men who never offer forever or stability, anyway. I’m going after what I want, and when I get that shop I’m putting my whole heart in it. The money Wyatt is offering me could help speed up that process.”
“What about your Web site?” Molly asked.
“I can update that from anywhere.”
“You’ll probably be living at the hotel. That won’t be anything like a home. You know how you cling to that little apartment you’ve lived in for four years.”
“I know, but I won’t be here long.”
“So you’re staying?”
“I don’t know. It’s difficult. I’d miss all of you and…wow…this has happened so quickly that I’m not thinking straight. I do know that during those moments when I was manning the concierge desk it was exciting and…powerful. A little taste of what it’ll be like running my own place. It was totally crazy, but I liked it.”
“And then along came gorgeous Wyatt McKendrick, offering to let you have that power every single day,” Serena suggested.
Alex and Serena studied each other. She knew that Serena was worried about the possibility of Wyatt hurting her if she stayed here without her friends as a buffer.
“If I stayed, it wouldn’t have anything to do with Wyatt,” she said. “I only spent a few minutes with him.”
“So in those few minutes what did you think?” Molly asked.
“He runs a great hotel,” Alex said. Good answer.
“How about those eyes? I love amber eyes,” Serena said.
“But they’re green.” Alex frowned…and then groaned.
“Alex…” Jayne said, but Alex shook her head.
“If it makes you feel better, if I do decide to take this job, it won’t be because Wyatt has gorgeous eyes.”
“But I’ll bet it doesn’t hurt,” Molly said sympathetically.
No, it didn’t. And that might be a problem. If she stayed, she would have to keep a constant watch over her traitorous body and emotions. Fortunately she’d already been exposed to the dangers of making emotional mistakes. She was getting quite good at the recovery and moving on part, and she was determined to conquer the avoidance part, too. All she had to do was remember one thing: Wyatt was the kind of man who would break her heart without even being aware of it. So there could be no fantasizing about him. At all.
“Just…don’t make this decision in haste,” Jayne said.
