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“Enjoy, Mr. Bravo.” The waiter beamed them a big, bright smile.
“Armand is a single father.” Fletcher sent Cleo a meaningful glance. “He has a three-year-old son, a little boy named Alain who is very much in need of a quality preschool.”
Armand nodded, a quick dip of his dark head. “My Alain is a bright child. He needs a challenge. Day care isn’t giving it to him.”
“But then,” Fletcher chimed in right on cue, “a good preschool can be so expensive—not to mention that there’s often a waiting list. Plus, there’s the difficulty of getting the kids to and from where they need to be. If we could provide a preschool here, on-site, at a significantly reduced rate to our employees, it could make a lot of difference to a number of hardworking, concerned parents like Armand.”
“Ah,” said Cleo as if she hadn’t heard all this in their previous meeting a week before. The waiter nodded again and left them. She looked at the man across from her. So brilliant. So dynamic. “So sneaky,” she said.
He picked up his fork. “It’s true. When I want something, I pull out all the stops to make sure I get it.” His look said that KinderWay wasn’t all he wanted.
She felt that sexy, shimmery sensation beneath her skin—and willfully ignored it. “How many more employees with needy preschool-age children will I be meeting this afternoon?”
“A few,” he replied with an easy shrug. He tipped his head toward her plate. “Eat your salad. It’s excellent. More champagne?”
“One glass is my limit—especially around a world-class operator like you.”
After lunch they went through the glittering casino at the heart of Impresario, a casino housed in a giant red windmill several stories high. From outside, the massive vanes of the windmill turned, crisscrossed with thousands of bright golden lights. Inside, visitors looked up at a wide dome painted the color of night and studded with a thick blanket of gleaming artificial stars.
As they crossed the busy casino floor, Fletcher stopped now and then to introduce her to certain employees: a dealer, a security staffer, a cocktail waitress. Not the least surprisingly, they all had young children. And they all worked long hours. They really needed a service like the one she could provide….
They left the casino and emerged onto a fully enclosed, cobbled imitation-Parisian street. As they strolled along between the bright-colored, shuttered facades of fake buildings, she told him, “You are shameless.”
He answered without the slightest hesitation. “You bet I am.”
Cleo had suspected she would be impressed with the facility he’d managed to have built in such an impossibly short period of time. But impressed, as it turned out, was too mild a word.
The play yard surrounded the classrooms, so any children who went to school there would look out on a garden—a garden landscaped in succulents and other plants that would thrive in an arid climate. There were just enough patches of grass to make it inviting. Bougainvillea climbed the high stucco fence, softening it, and there was a large playground, complete with jungle gym, slides and a giant-size sandbox. He’d even included several drought-resistant trees: magnolias, sweet gums, red maples.
The Olympic-size pool—dug, but not poured yet—had its own fence, for safety. Fletcher showed her where the separate boys’ and girls’ cabanas, each with showers and restrooms and grooming areas, would go.
He led her inside the main building, from one classroom to the next. Each was just as they’d discussed that day in his office, with large central areas, generous supply closets and accessible learning stations. The many chalkboards and expanses of cork walls for pinning up displays weren’t installed yet, but they would be up tomorrow, he said. Each class had its own storage and coatroom, with nice big cubbies for every student. Finally he took her down a hallway to the administration area and she saw the room that would be her office—if she agreed to his plans.
Which she wasn’t going to do.
Was she?
Somehow, as the afternoon sailed by, it got harder and harder to remember all the reasons she’d taken a firm stance against opening a KinderWay at Fletcher Bravo’s resort.
“After you.” He pushed open the door to the director’s office for her.
She went in. Across from the door, a big window looked out on the play yard. She crossed to it. As she stared through the glass, it seemed she could almost hear childish laughter, see the happy kids swarming the slides, hanging all over the giant jungle gym and the big wooden play structure, spinning on the carousel, swinging on the swings, crawling through the tube tunnels that snaked around the sandbox….
“You approve?” Fletcher asked. She turned to face him. He stood several feet away, beside the wide, well-made desk. He put his lean hand on the desktop. “Italian walnut. Nice clean lines. I thought you might like it.”
She told him honestly, “It’s beautiful. Ideal. And I wouldn’t have believed it was possible. All this. So quickly …”
“Anything’s possible. With a good plan, the right people—”
She cut in. “—and enough money.”
He shrugged. “That goes without saying.”
“Well. I’m … amazed.”
He dropped his gaze and for a split second he almost seemed shy. “Good.”
And she was in big trouble here. In a moment she’d be saying yes to his offer. How could this have happened? “Fletcher, I really think—”
He cut her off for the first time that afternoon. “I’d like you to meet my daughter before you make your decision.”
But I’ve already made my decision, she thought. She didn’t say it, though. Somehow, right then, she just couldn’t. Right then, to say it would have been too cruel somehow.
Clearly this meant a great deal to him. Much more than she’d imagined the first time she’d met with him. During that other meeting—was it only last week?—she’d been certain that his commitment to KinderWay would never be more than temporary at best.
But this office, that play yard, the open, welcoming classrooms he’d just led her through …
He might have had it all built with remarkable speed, but none of it seemed temporary. Far from it.
She said, “The years go by fast. Your little girl will grow right up and out of here. What would happen to KinderWay then?”
“We’d have a contract. You’d be in charge here. I have a strong suspicion you’d make certain that the Bravo Group held up its end of our commitment to the program.”
She almost smiled. “No doubt about that.”
Those pale eyes gleamed. “So it wouldn’t be my commitment that mattered, would it?”
“When you put it that way, no. It wouldn’t.”
He ran his palm over the desktop again. “Do you want children of your own, Cleo?”
The question seemed far too personal. Still, she answered him truthfully. “Yes. I’d like about a dozen kids. But that’s probably going to be impractical, so I’ll settle for two or three.”
Something happened in his eyes. She wasn’t quite sure what. He said, “When you have kids, things change. You … see things differently. Before Ashlyn came to live with me, I hardly gave a thought to the child-care needs of the people who work for me. But now I find I don’t work at optimum level if I’m worried about Ashlyn. So I thought …” He let the sentence trail off as if he knew she could finish it for him.
She did. “If you worry about Ashlyn, your employees are probably concerned about their kids, too.”
“That’s right. So I did my homework. I dug up the results of several studies correlating dependable child-development programs with the parents’ job performance. I brought those results before the board. Since the board approves anything that will boost our bottom line, my plan got approval. Even better, the chairman of the board—”
“Your cousin, right? Jonas Bravo?”
“Yes. Jonas liked my proposal so much that he decided to set up a foundation to help fund it.”
“A not-for-profit?” Cleo folded her arms across her chest. “There are a lot of rules controlling a nonprofit business.”
“Relax. Jonas set up the foundation to fund the facility itself—meaning the physical plant, everything I’ve just shown you, the classrooms and the play yard and the landscaping. The KinderWay program, including the day-to-day operation of the school, which belongs to you, will be run as for-profit, just the way you run your other facility.”
She realized they were discussing this as if it were a done deal, as if she fully intended to hire a staff and run his preschool for him.
But it wouldn’t be his preschool, she found herself thinking. It would be hers. It would be KinderWay. Yes, taking on a project of this size would be a challenge. She’d have to be careful not to spread herself too thin.
Then again, to grow any business, the boss needed to learn how to delegate. And a lot of kids would benefit from the exceptional program she could provide here….
She let her arms drop to her sides. “We’re getting way ahead of ourselves.”
He looked at her, a long look, one that affected her in dangerous ways. At last he said, “Come on. Meet my daughter.” He took her arm. She felt the touch of his hand all through her, a shudder of awareness that centered down to a warmth deep within.
She didn’t pull away.
Fletcher lived in a penthouse suite on the top floor of Hotel Impresario’s central tower. The elevator let them off in a hallway paneled in a rich dark wood with a striking wood-inlaid stone floor. Overhead, an oval skylight let in the winter sun.
“This way,” Fletcher said.
A set of big double doors led into a private foyer. The foyer widened at the opposite end, opening onto a living room with floor-to-ceiling windows providing sweeping city views.
Fletcher took her hand again and wrapped it over his arm. She was far too conscious of the heat of his strong body so close, of the clean, expensive scent of him, of the hardness of his forearm beneath the fine fabric of his beautifully made suit jacket.
He led her away from the living room, through another opening to their right. They walked down a hallway, past a marble-walled kitchen on one side and an elegant dining room on the other, into a family room with walls upholstered in some warm reddish-brown fabric and comfortable-looking soft sofas and chairs.
A little girl sat cross-legged on the kilim rug in the middle of the room. She wore blue capris with pink piping at the hems and a lime-green T-shirt, also trimmed in pink. On her small feet were pink socks with green appliqués and pink Keds. A book lay open across her knees.
She looked up as they entered and regarded them with shining, oh-so-serious brown eyes. “Hi, Daddy.” She closed her book. “I was reading Livvy The Funny Little Bunny.”
A plump, friendly-looking blond girl rose from an easy chair not far from the child. “Hello, Mr. Bravo. We’ve just been reading a bit before Ashlyn goes down for her nap.”
Fletcher said, “Cleo, this is Olivia, Ashlyn’s nanny.” Cleo and the nanny smiled and nodded at each other.
Ashlyn jumped to her feet and held out her little hand. “And I’m Ashlyn. I’m almost five.”
Cleo took the small fingers in hers. She looked into those big brown eyes and she wanted to pull the child close, to press a kiss to the sleek crown of her head.
She couldn’t help herself. She was captivated by Fletcher’s bright, beautiful, oh-so-serious child. There was something about Ashlyn that reminded Cleo way too much of herself as a child, something in her solemn manner, in those wide, too-wise eyes.
Ashlyn said, still in that grave way of hers, “You’re pretty. And very tall.”
“Why, thank you, Ashlyn.”
“You’re almost as tall as my Daddy, I bet.”
“Just about.”
“You can let go of my hand now.”
“All right.” She released the small, soft fingers.
Ashlyn put both hands behind her back but held her ground, dark head tipped back, those serious eyes scanning Cleo’s down-turned face. “It’s nine days.” She brought her hands front again and held up all her fingers, small face puckered up. Then she bent her right thumb to her palm and turned both hands, backside-first, to Cleo. “Nine.”
“Very good.”
“It’s arithmetic.”
“Yes. What’s nine days?”
“Until my birthday. I’m having a party. Not on my birthday but the Saturday after. There will be clowns and rides and a magic show. A lot of kids are coming.” She seemed to reach a decision. “You can come, too.”
“Why, I …”
“There will be cake.”
“Well, that is tempting.”
“And ice cream.” Fletcher spoke from behind her.
Cleo looked back at him and knew by his carefully composed expression that he was hiding a smile. “Devious,” she muttered.
He said, “Whatever it takes.”
She turned back to the child. And Ashlyn asked, so simply and sweetly, “Will you come to my party?”
Cleo said the first word that popped into her head. It just happened to be, “Yes.”
Fletcher insisted on escorting Cleo to the parking garage and out to her car.
Neither spoke as they got off the elevator they’d taken from his apartment and crossed to the ones that went to the parking garages. They got on an empty car and went down to C level. When the doors slid open, she turned to him.
“It really isn’t necessary for you to—”
“But I want to.” He signaled her to exit ahead of him and then fell in beside her once the elevator door had shut behind them. Their footsteps echoing on concrete, they walked the five rows to her green SUV.
Cleo had her key ready. She pushed the remote lock button. The SUV beeped twice, the sound very loud in the cavernous space.
She made the obligatory polite noises. “Thank you. It was an excellent lunch.”
He moved in closer—too close, really. She saw again the blue that rimmed those pale gray irises. She smelled that tempting aftershave. She might have moved away a step, put a little space between them. But the SUV was at her back.
He said, as if continuing a conversation that had never been interrupted, “So many children here and at High Sierra who can gain so much from what you have to give them …”
Again she tried to remember all the reasons it wouldn’t work to put a KinderWay in his resort. Those reasons seemed meaningless now. “I can’t believe I’m thinking of saying yes to this.”
“Believe it. Say yes.”
“There are … permits and procedures we’d have to—”
“We’ll cross every T in sight, dot every last damn I.”
“I’ll have to hire an entire second staff, start from the bottom up. That will take—”
“It’s manageable. All of it. And it won’t take long. Believe me.”
