Regrets would come later. Once he was gone and safely wrapped up in his normal world. Once he was far enough away from her eyes that they didn’t haunt him every damn minute.
“You’re an unusual woman.”
She sat up, completely comfortable with her own nudity, and swung her hair back from her face. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” he said, his gaze dipping to the swell of her br**sts, then back to her fathomless green eyes. She was tempting. More tempting than anyone he’d ever known before. He was walking through unfamiliar territory here and he felt as though he were trying to negotiate his way through quicksand.
What he needed was a little space. A little time to himself to gather his defenses and shore up the inner walls she seemed so determine to shatter.
Decision made, he said, “I’m going downstairs to get some work done.”
She looked at him for a long second or two, shook her head, then flopped back onto the bed, dragged the quilt up to cover herself and muttered, “Of course you are.”
A few hours later, Nathan was hunched determinedly over his computer, doing an excellent job of pretending Keira wasn’t in the room.
Tossing the book she’d been trying to read for the last half hour onto the sofa cushion beside her, she frowned at the back of his head and said pointedly, “What’re you doing?”
“Working.”
“Again, you mean. Well, I can see that, Mr. Chatty. Working on what? Still trying to find a way to schedule spontaneity?”
“No.” He shook his head, turned back to the computer and typed something else.
“Then what?”
“You’re not going to give me any peace at all, are you?”
“Probably not,” she said.
“Fine.” He leaned back into the couch, winced and retrieved the book she’d dropped out from behind his back and set it on the coffee table. When he was settled again, he glanced at her and said, “I’m making some notes on how to confront the manager of the Gstaad Barrister.”
“Switzerland,” she said with a sigh. Then she asked, “Confront? About what?”
“I gave him specific instructions last time on how I wanted him to deal with the housekeeping staff, and they haven’t been implemented.”
“Why not?”
He looked at her. “How the hell do I know?”
She curled her legs up under her, propped her elbow on the back of the sofa and leaned in. “What’s wrong with the way he’s handling things, then?”
Nathan sighed. “He’s very…relaxed in his position. He allows the employees too much leeway in their work.”
“Does it all get done?”
“Yes, but—”
“So maybe,” Keira said, “he knows his people better than you do?”
“Maybe, but—”
She smiled. “So if you weren’t stomping around bellowing orders like a bully, maybe you’d get more cooperation out of him?”
“I do not bellow,” Nathan said and sat up straight.
“But you do bully.”
He blew out a disgusted breath. “You don’t understand. There’s a right way and a wrong way to run a business, Keira.”
“Oh, I understand,” she said, reaching out to pat his shoulder, then letting her fingertips linger there just a moment or two. “Believe me, as mayor, I have to deal with people all the time. And it’s just not logical to assume you can use the same strategy when dealing with different types of people.”
“It’s always worked before,” he pointed out, scowling at her.
Keira scooted closer, leaned down and looked him dead in the eye. This she knew about. He might own all of the gorgeous hotels in the world, but Nathan Barrister was not a people person.
“But the thing is, Nathan, you don’t know if it might work better doing things differently.”
“The company’s policy has been in effect since my grandfather started the first hotel.”
“Jeez,” she said softly. “No wonder it’s out-of-date.”
“I didn’t say it was out-of-date.”
“Nope. I did.” Turning around, she sat back beside Nathan, tucked her hand through the crook of his arm and cuddled in. “Like, for instance, when Donna—she owns the pottery shop on the outskirts of town—wanted to increase her number of parking spaces in front of her shop, I went to bat for her with the town council. After all, her shop is out of the way, it wouldn’t infringe on anyone else’s parking. Why not?”
“Okay…”
“But, when the Clearwater wanted the same deal, I had to tell them no. Because they’re in the middle of town, lakeside, and we just couldn’t afford to lose tourist parking slots to make more room for their customers. Different situations, different rules.”
“Ah,” he said, smiling at her, “but the situations in my hotels are all the same. Each one is a Barrister. So the rules should apply evenly.”
She nudged his shoulder and laughed shortly. “The hotels are all in different places. Different traditions, different employees.”
“But—”
“Would you decorate your Barbados hotel the same way you decorated the one in say, D.C.?”
“No…”
“So, same thing applies.” Leaning her head against his shoulder, she added, “Cut your managers a little slack, Nathan. Trust them to know their people and their hotels. Lighten up a little and you might be surprised by the results you get.”
He frowned thoughtfully and shifted his gaze to the screen of his laptop, where his carefully written-up notes were marked with bullet points. “You couldn’t have made your point an hour ago? Before I started working on this stupid list?”
Keira laughed and Nathan took a heartbeat of time to simply enjoy the sound as it swirled around him. She was cuddled in close and he liked the feel of her pressed against him. He liked knowing she was sitting beside him reading quietly—or that she was in the kitchen making grilled cheese sandwiches—or tripping over a rug on her way down the hall.
He just liked knowing she was here. Outside, the storm was still blowing and Nathan was willing to admit, at least to himself, that if he had been here, trapped by himself, he would have been half crazy by now.
But having her here made for a different sort of crazy. Keira was becoming too much a part of his world. He hated knowing that he was beginning to count on hearing her move through the house. That he was looking forward to their next argument. That he wanted her even more now than he had the first time they were together.