Stolen Kiss with Her Billionaire Boss
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Susan Meier
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16
PROLOGUE
AT ITS HEART, betrayal was always personal. It plowed deep ruts in a man’s soul and weakened him until he almost couldn’t breathe.
Though only seventeen when his betrayal hit, Hugo Harrington had fought the emotions threatening to suffocate him. He’d been framed for the embezzling done by his stepfather, and his mother had taken the side of her new husband, who had ordered Hugo to leave their home.
He hadn’t been given time to say goodbye to his younger brother and sister, twins. He’d been told to pack and go. Every year, he’d sent a Christmas card to his siblings. Every year, he’d had no response. It was as if he’d been erased. Forgotten.
Still, he’d refused to let his losses or the wounds from being cast aside destroy him. Recognizing that if he let himself wallow he’d live the rest of his life alone, in the muck and mire of grief—taking the blame for something he hadn’t done—his brain had sharpened. Not to save himself, but because some losses were unacceptable. Some wrongs had to be avenged. Some wounds wouldn’t heal without justice.
He’d waited seventeen years for the chance to take possession of London’s Harrington Park Hotel, and with it the opportunity to extend an olive branch to his brother and sister, but it had finally arrived.
“Mr. Harrington...” The voice of his personal assistant entered his private office via the speaker of his phone.
He turned from the wall of glass that displayed a jaw-dropping view of the Manhattan skyline with buildings appearing to be so close he could reach out and touch them. The sense that he was standing on top of the world filled him. That bolstered him too. It hadn’t been easy getting here. But just like his opportunity, he had also arrived.
“Yes, Victoria.”
“Your ten o’clock appointment is here.”
“Send her in.”
He walked from the window to his desk but didn’t sit. The door opened and Erin Hunter entered. Her straight red hair fell to her shoulders in a blunt cut that always reminded Hugo of her no-nonsense attitude about work. Her efficient navy-blue wool suit appealed to the buttoned-up businessman in him. He currently resided in Manhattan, but he was a Londoner, born and raised. Precise and driven, he’d surrounded himself with only the best.
Erin Hunter was the best.
“Good morning, Erin.” He motioned to the chairs across from his desk. “Please have a seat.”
She sat, primly angling her legs toward the back of the chair and crossing her ankles.
“I have a new project. Probably the most important project of my life.”
Her eyebrows rose. But a prudent subcontractor of his hotel development firm, she didn’t pounce at his first words. She waited.
“The property in question is old and in need of so many repairs that work will be nonstop. It’s in London. Formerly family-owned—” He nearly choked on those words. He wouldn’t explain that it was his family who had owned it. The horrible truth would come out in good time. Maybe in London, after they’d been at the hotel a few days, when the sting of it wouldn’t be so sharp, so cutting. “It passed to the hands of an incompetent and fell into bankruptcy. I scooped it up for a song.”
She smiled. She loved a good business deal as much as he did.
“I want the grand opening to occur on Christmas Eve.”
At that her mouth dipped. He was telling her they had weeks, not months, as they usually had. Still, she’d always risen to every challenge.
“Christmas Eve? Four weeks from now?”
“Yes.”
She might have risen to every other challenge, but today she pushed herself up off the chair. “I’m sorry, Mr. Harrington. I’m booked.”
“Booked?” He stood too. It wasn’t that he didn’t realize she had other clients. He simply assumed the high fee he paid her always propelled him to the top of her job list.
“You’re talking about me spending the next weeks in London.” She shook her head, causing her curtain of shiny red hair to sway. “Christmas in London. It’s not possible.” To soften the blow, she smiled at him, a quick, professional, no-hard-feelings lift of her lips.
For the first time since he’d known her, he reacted to the fact that she was beautiful. He’d noticed before. But something about the spark in her eyes at refusing him shifted her from beautiful to stunning and caused an unexpected scramble of his pulse.
Ridiculous!
He took a quiet breath to clear his head. Hugo Harrington didn’t mix business with pleasure, and the crackle of heat that raced through his blood definitely signaled pleasure.
Had to be an aberration.
“What do you mean, not possible?”
She raised her hands. “I have things scheduled. It is the holiday season. Plus, you typically give me more lead time.”
“There’s a reason I didn’t.” A master at winning arguments and swaying decisions, he motioned for her to sit again. “The property became available suddenly. I put in a bid they couldn’t refuse, paid cash, and voilà, it was mine. I didn’t have lead time.”
“Maybe a later grand opening date?”
He gaped at her. “No! In its heyday, the hotel was renowned for its elaborate Christmas Eve celebrations. That’s the prime time for the grand opening. The best way to demonstrate that the hotel everyone remembers is back!”
And the perfect way to remind his brother and sister of their shared past. A way to soften everyone enough that they could have the kind of conversation needed to clear the air.
Her brow furrowed. “Maybe next Christmas Eve?”
The weird heat crackled through his blood again. It was almost as if he enjoyed her arguing with him.
Couldn’t be. He loved haggling and bartering. But he never argued with subcontractors. He paid them. They did what he wanted.
He spoke logically and concisely, as he motioned for her to sit again because she hadn’t taken the last cue. “This hotel is very important to me.”
Once again, she didn’t sit.
His nerves jangled with annoyance this time. “You could even say it’s personal.”
“I’m sorry.” Regret filled her eyes. “But being away from New York at Christmastime doesn’t work for me.” She extended her hand to shake his. Baffled, he took it. “Thank you, though, for thinking of me for this opportunity.”
With that she was out the door. He stood behind his desk, in front of the magnificent view of the Manhattan skyline, the proof that he was at the top of his game. Not someone to be refused.
He heard the elevator doors open, then close, and his flummoxed thoughts cleared. She’d regretted turning him down, but she had turned him down. What the hell could be so important that she’d refuse him?
He grabbed his overcoat from his private closet and strode past his assistant’s desk. “Have my car downstairs when I reach the street.”
“Yes, sir.”
He pressed the elevator button and one of three sets of doors opened. He hoped to catch Erin in the lobby. If he didn’t, he had his coat and could follow her wherever she walked on this cold late November day. If she walked too fast, he would have a car.
That’s the kind of guy he was. His plans had plans and those plans had contingency plans.
He didn’t lose. Especially not someone as important as Erin. She was the preeminent party planner in Manhattan, but he’d used her all over the United States. If anyone could bring to life his memories of Christmas Eve at the Harrington Park Hotel, it would be Erin.
He caught up to her at the curb. When she saw him suddenly beside her, her blue eyes widened.
“We never talked money.”
She frowned. “There’s no reason to. I’m booked.”
“For a bunch of office Christmas parties?” He made a pfft noise. “What if I agree to pay three times your normal rate?”
A taxi pulled up. She walked over and opened the back door. “I’m sorry, Mr. Harrington. The timing doesn’t work for me.”
She got into the taxi and the blasted thing drove away. Hugo jumped into his limo. Though it sounded like something out of a bad movie, he said, “Follow that cab.”
He expected Erin’s car to stop in the business district. Maybe at one of the high-rises housing the offices of one of the clients for whom she’d be working in December. Instead, it kept going. It seemed as if they turned every few blocks, and after forty long minutes, including driving through a tunnel under the Hudson, Hugo found himself in Jersey City.
Jersey City?
The taxi stopped at a modest four-story building. Hugo instructed his driver to hang back until Erin made a move.
After enough time passed for her to pay for the ride, she exited the vehicle, ran up the front steps and disappeared inside. He jumped out of his car and raced after her. He didn’t reach her in time, but saw the elevator stop on the third floor.
When it returned, he followed her up. The doors opened and he stepped out cautiously, glancing around like Dorothy in Oz. He didn’t expect Munchkins to pop out at him. He’d simply never seen an office building like this with white doors with two-digit identifiers. These couldn’t be businesses. The doors had to lead to...apartments?
He knocked on the first one. An elderly woman in a housecoat answered, confirming his suspicions. He winced. “Sorry, wrong flat.”
She laughed. “Flat?”
Baffled that he’d forgotten to shift his British slang to Americanisms, he apologized again and moved to the next door. No one answered. He knocked on the third door and a little boy opened it. The kid couldn’t have been more than three.
Hugo froze for a few seconds, then said, “Sorry. Wrong...apartment.”
“Noah! What are you doing answering the door?” Erin stepped out of a kitchen area, drying her hands on a towel. When she saw him, her mouth dropped open.
Well, she could join the club. Now he didn’t feel like Dorothy in Oz. He felt like a man who’d inadvertently overstepped some boundaries.
The little boy had Erin’s coloring—red hair and blue eyes—but a totally different face and eye shape. The flat behind them was simple, including an old-fashioned floral sofa that sat in front of a big window with plain beige drapes, and a kitchen without modern cabinets or shiny granite countertops. The cupboards were stained oak from another era. God only knew the material of the countertops.
Confusion and disbelief battled. From her familiarity with the home, he assumed she lived here. But why? He paid her a small fortune.
And the child who had her coloring—
It couldn’t be—
Could his top-performing, always-there-for-him, executive-level event planner be...a mum?
“Can I come in?”
She hesitated. Hugo couldn’t tell if it was from embarrassment or annoyance with him. But he hated this feeling of not being in the know. He always investigated everyone in his employ thoroughly. But as a subcontractor, Erin wasn’t really in his employ—
Still, he needed to know.
He raised his hands imploringly. “I feel like we didn’t sufficiently discuss my project.”
She walked to the little boy—Noah—and put her hands on his shoulders to shift him away from the door. “Sure. Come in. Would you like some coffee?”
“Yes. That would be great.”
Hugo Harrington stepped inside Erin’s apartment, shrugging out of his cashmere overcoat. Their dealings had always been so crisp and professional, she hadn’t for even a minute thought he wouldn’t accept her refusal of his latest project.
But here he was. In her little condo. Her gorgeous, sexy as sin, biggest client, who always looked better in a suit than anyone had a right to, was in her apartment.
Tall and broad-shouldered, with dark chestnut hair that gleamed in the light from her overly bright kitchen, and brooding gray eyes, he’d been the object of her fantasies for the two and a half years they’d worked together. She’d never said a word, never made a move, always kept things strictly professional between them because she wasn’t ready for another man in her life, but it didn’t hurt to look.
And, oh, he was fun to look at.
She stopped the shimmer of attraction that lit her nerve endings. Nothing would come of her being attracted to him. Because that was how she wanted it.
As she popped a one-cup pod into her coffee maker, her short, auburn-haired mom called up the hall that led to the bedrooms. “Erin? If you’re home for the day, I’m going out to get in my walk.”
Seeing Hugo, she stopped dead in her tracks. “Oh, hello.”
“That’s Hugo Harrington, Mom. Mr. Harrington, that’s my mom, Marge Winters.”
He faced her mom with his always proper smile. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
She almost rolled her eyes. She might be super attracted to him, but she’d seen the way he’d looked at her apartment, the disdain that became confusion as he took in her out-of-date furniture and the cramped quarters. The attraction hadn’t ever been mutual, but now that he’d seen how she lived she wasn’t even sure he’d keep her as a friend.
Though come to think of it, they weren’t really friends either. Her other clients invited her to parties and dinners to discuss their projects. Hugo Harrington only did business in his office.
Which might be for the best considering how attractive she found him.
“Can Noah go on your walk, too?”
“Sure,” her mom said, overly cheerful, because she knew Hugo Harrington didn’t merely pay for their apartment; he was the biggest contributor to the money she’d been saving to expand her business, employ more people and hopefully make enough to buy a condo in Manhattan, closer to her work, something with sufficient space that all three of them could be comfortable.
In the thirty seconds it took to brew Hugo Harrington’s coffee, Erin’s mom slid Noah into a coat and pulled a knit cap over his red curls. Erin bent down, placed a smacking kiss on her son’s cheek and watched them leave the apartment.
Then she faced Hugo Harrington. He might be gorgeous and the object of her fantasies, but as a businessman he was single-minded. She’d told him no. He would try to talk her out of it.
Walking into her living room area of the open–floor plan space, she handed him his cup of coffee and motioned for him to sit. “I’m not sure what part of my decision you felt left room for discussion. But there is no room.”
He looked around at her meager home. “I offered you three times your rate.”
And assumed she should have been eager for it.
“There’s more to a life than money.” That’s why her expansion was basically a dream right now. Noah was the only part of her deceased husband she still had. He was her world. Not her career and certainly not money.
Hugo Harrington blinked as if the concept of there being more to life than money was completely foreign to him.
She stifled a sigh. “December is Christmas, discussions about Santa, buying gifts, teaching my son to be generous and kind...” She lowered herself to the sofa across from the armchair he’d chosen. “I can usually work around your schedule and still have time for my son...but not if I’m in London.”
Hugo’s confused expression shifted as comprehension dawned. The fact that she had to explain the excitement of Christmas to him reinforced all her beliefs about the real Hugo Harrington. He wasn’t the romantic, sensual man who inhabited her daydreams. He was a hard-nosed businessman, a guy who didn’t have time for family, who didn’t understand the meaning of the word family, a man who lived to work.
Well, she didn’t live to work. She couldn’t. Her mom may have been able to move in with her to help care for Noah when Josh died, but it wasn’t the same for her little boy as having a dad. Erin knew that she had to be both mother and father and she refused to abdicate that responsibility...the way Josh had.
She closed her eyes briefly, hating that she felt that way. After all, her late husband hadn’t asked for the heart attack that had taken him.
Thoughts of Josh rippled through her, her despair over his death, the sense of betrayal that came when she learned he’d been sick for months and hadn’t told her—but he had confided in a woman he’d worked with. She’d told Erin that Josh had believed he was saving her the heartache of knowing her husband was dying while she was pregnant.
But good as his intentions might have seemed, not only had he confided in another woman, proving she and Josh didn’t have the deep, wonderful bond Erin had always believed, but also they rang hollow as she’d stood at his graveside, ready to have his baby, without the opportunity to say goodbye.
She could have cried with him. They could have absorbed the first waves of loss together. Made videos of him laughing for their son. Made videos of him teaching Noah the kind of things a father longs to share with his child—
“You don’t have any other clients, do you?”
She forced herself back to the present, to her discussion with Hugo Harrington. Sexy man with a heart of stone. Maybe that’s what had reminded her of Josh?
“It looks to me like you can’t afford to lose me.”
Not about to give up Christmas with Noah, she sat taller. “I have other clients. Especially in December.”
“But not clients who pay you as much as I do. Scattered Christmas parties. Grand openings. Not clients who pay a fee over the norm.”
She took a breath. Part of her wanted to bluff her way through. The other part didn’t like lying or even hedging. Josh hadn’t out-and-out lied, but he’d kept a secret that had leveled her. She would never, ever again lie, distort the facts or omit anything.
She would face the truth. Always.
“You are my biggest client.”
“Then let me suggest a compromise.”
She brightened with hope. “I could supervise the project from New York?”
He chuckled. “No. But I could fly your son and your mum to London with you.”
Her breath stalled in her chest. The casual way he’d called her mom “mum” hit her oddly. He did not sound like always proper Hugo Harrington. For a few seconds, he was the man in her fantasies. Not a businessman. Not a keen negotiator. But just a guy.
A handsome guy with chestnut hair and intriguing gray eyes—
“You may not be able to take your son to see Macy’s Santa, but we have Santa in London. And wonderful shops.” He caught her gaze. “Think of it as an opportunity to show Noah a more diverse Christmas.”
She blinked, trying to see the real Hugo Harrington—the businessman, not the guy who suddenly seemed family friendly—as his idea of her mom and Noah going with her to London tickled her brain and began to take hold.
“I won’t put you up in a hotel. I’ll find you a flat. A place you can decorate with a tree and garland. And I’ll make sure you leave work in time to tuck your son into bed every night.”
She stared at him. She knew she did a good job for him. So it wasn’t outlandish that he’d want her for a project with a looming deadline. And showing her son more of the world than one little corner in New Jersey appealed to her on so many levels. Noah would see one of the most beautiful cities on the planet, experience new traditions. She could teach him to think wider, beyond himself—
It was a generous offer from a guy who normally wasn’t this kind.
Skepticism rose. “I’d still get three times my usual fee?”
He frowned.
She smiled shrewdly. “You can’t take back something you’ve already offered.”
He rose. “Sure I can. This is a negotiation.”
And the real Hugo Harrington was back.
“Yeah, well. The way I see it, I have to pay staff extra to compensate for the fact that I won’t be around to supervise my bread-and-butter projects in Manhattan.”
He caught her gaze. “And the way I see it, you’re already getting paid for those projects. The money will simply shift from your profits to the employees who assume your tasks.”
“Which just took away my incentive to go to London.”
His frown returned.
“Do the deal,” she said, confident that if he really wanted her, he’d pay.
He sighed. “You don’t have me over a barrel.”
“Wouldn’t think of even considering that. I’m simply someone who knows how to hold her ground.” Her smile grew. “Whether you want to admit it or not, you like this side of me because I negotiate some very good prices for food and decorations and fancy pastries for your parties. You simply don’t appreciate that I’ve turned that skill on you.”
He rolled his eyes. Took a breath. And suddenly the ordinary guy was back. In all the years she’d done business with Hugo Harrington, he’d never been as normal, as human, as he had been today. He certainly wasn’t the romantic man in her dreams, but she could swear he had a beating heart.
He sighed and said, “All right. Three times your usual rate. Lodging in London for three.”
“And airfare.”
“And airfare.”
She extended her hand to shake his. “We have a deal.”
