Kitabı oxu: «The Love List»

Chapter One

‘What the..?’ Nora King strung together a stream of amazingly coherent swear words for so early in the morning as she flapped her hand around in a wide circle, trying in vain to dislodge the shoe she had just managed to superglue to her hand. This was so not happening.

‘Okay. It’s okay. Breathe,’ she instructed with an edge of panic when it became apparent she was going to do herself a serious injury if she continued to wang her arm about so insanely.

She counted to ten.

Then, calmly and without any sense of drama, lest the shoe somehow suspected she was going to try and wrench it free again, she placed her free hand on top of the harbinger of doom and pulled. Gently at first, then harder, as tears of frustration pooled at the outer rims of her eyes.

‘Damn it, budge, why don’t you?’ Desperate, she glanced around the private bathroom that connected to her office, looking for something to prise it off with. This was what she got for trying to be clever and fix her beloved shoes; the ones with the magical confidence-boosting properties, on the morning of her eight a.m. breakfast meeting with Eleanor Moorfield—designer of the shoe now attached to her hand—instead of the night before, where it had been clearly scheduled on her To Do list. But last night, after getting in late from a day of meetings, followed by an uncomfortable visit with her sister, Sephy, she had bypassed the shoe-fixing in favour of a large glass of red and some sleep.

‘A-hah,’ she exclaimed in a light-bulb moment. One-handed she upended the contents of her bag and rummaged for a nail file. Locating one and holding it aloft triumphantly, she smiled at her genius in the mirror, before trying to slide the file between the sole of the stiletto and the palm of her hand.

No deal.

A trickle of hysteria bubbled its way to the surface.

It was now one hour and fifteen minutes before she was due to deliver the pitch of her life. She’d been working on the presentation for six weeks. Six weeks of silly hours. Six weeks of devising, developing, practising and polishing. She had it on super-secret authority that Eleanor Moorfield, ex-model turned award-winning shoe designer, was looking to relocate her headquarters from Italy back to England. The Moorfield brand was right up there with Louboutin, Jimmy Choo, and all the other ‘have to have’ shoes women salivated over. Securing a contract to provide business premises for the Moorfield headquarters, shop units and manufacturing set-up would be a real coup for the King Property Corporation. Not to mention prove to herself that she hadn’t lost her touch. That she still had what it took to get out there and get the business in.

On her own. Without help.

KPC had been, and always would be, her life.

By the time her father had retired and she’d stepped up as CEO, KPC had over three hundred commercial buildings it owned and leased out and Nora’s first challenge had been to secure the company’s future against an economic downturn. Confidence had come from her passion for KPC, her unwavering dedication, and the knowledge that she could always get guidance from her father if needed.

But when her father suffered a major health crisis she’d been forced to approach her brother Jared in New York, and persuade him to return to the family he hadn’t been part of for ten years and the company he had declined to run—the company she loved, for help.

She had always known her brother’s expertise was on loan and ever since Jared had returned to his own life in New York, she had been working to implement the changes he had helped come up with. Changes that would add to KPC’s portfolio of property services and ensure the family-run company would recover from its dip and go from strength to strength.

Her confidence had taken a battering, though.

So get the Moorfield contract and hopefully she’d stop second-guessing every decision she made since the death of her father seven months ago and then Jared’s return to New York. Get the contract and she’d have so much work she wouldn’t have time to second-guess every decision she made.

She wanted desperately to land the account. For herself. For her father. Okay, mostly for her father. For the faith he had placed in her.

Blowing a strand of straight black hair out of her eyes she swung back to face herself in the bathroom mirror. It had all been going so well. All she’d had left to do was go through the pitch one last time before quickly repairing the spot where the sole had parted from the leather upper on her shoe. Nora sniffed dejectedly. Possibly she shouldn’t have been wearing this pair so much lately, but they made her feel so in control and can-do when she had them on, and today, especially, she’d wanted to show she loved the Moorfield brand. That she owned the vintage editions as well as the latest designs. She should have stuck with the perfectly serviceable but non-Moorfield stilettos she was wearing, or concentrated on doing one thing at a time, like any other normal professional.

Oh, a sudden brainwave had her rushing towards the door back into her office. Opening it she looked left and then right. What for, she wasn’t quite sure, but with perspective now dangling precariously, it felt like the right thing to do. Then, dashing across her office, stopping briefly to grab the large tote bag she had used to transport some of her files that morning, she encased her ‘predicament’ inside the bag, dragged the straps over her shoulder, and fought one-handed to set free some of her trapped hair.

Finally composed, she wished with all her might that salvation was about to take the form of her assistant Fern, who, if luck was on her side, would turn out to secretly be some sort of shoe surgeon.

Pushing open the door to the reception area, which housed Fern’s desk, she squeaked, ‘Fern? Two words: Help, Emergency,’ and then came to an abrupt halt as she spied a tall, gorgeous—if she was absolutely forced to form a fleeting impression—man, dressed in jeans and a charcoal-grey duffel coat, standing beside Fern’s desk. ‘Oh.’

Okay. This was most definitely not her five-foot-and-half-an-inch assistant, Fern. This was a well over six foot tall tree of a man, making five-foot-ten-inch Nora feel unexpectedly petite as she hovered uncertainly in her office doorway.

‘Technically that’s three words,’ claimed the man, turning from where he’d been staring at a portrait of her father to look over at her.

‘Three words?’ Nora blinked. She didn’t have time for a maths lesson. She needed help. She needed a miracle. She needed…a knight in shining armour strong enough to separate her shoe from her hand? Not that she could afford to be fussy. If the hand had to come too, so be it.

‘Mmmn. “Oh” being the third,’ he explained, shoving his hands casually into his coat pockets.

Somehow, despite a warm smile that induced a quite unnecessary, in her humble opinion, heart-skipping-a-beat moment, Nora felt sure actual knights didn’t come equipped with a mean streak in pedantry. She went to finger-quote and realised she couldn’t. Pushing the straps of the oversized carrier bag over her shoulder, nerves jangling on their very last nerve, she rose to the bait. ‘Technically, who are you, the Word-Count Police?’

No reaction. Well, if you discounted the slow sexy amused lift to his grin. Which, she decided, she really must.

Was this the famous boyfriend, then? Maybe he’d dropped Fern off and was waiting around to say goodbye when she came back from wherever it was she was. She looked around and finding the reception area empty, realised that Fern was probably getting the coffees in. She thought about her usual vanilla latte and, with hand clamped to her shoe, couldn’t help thinking she was going to need something stronger.

Of its own accord, Nora’s gaze swung back to Mr Office Imposter. He was definitely noteworthy. If you went for the whole twinkly blue-eyed, full wide smile, chiselled and stubbled jawline look, with the dirty blond slightly overlong hair in a ruffled style that made a woman itch to muss with it further and thus stake her claim. Nora couldn’t help herself; she ran her gaze from head to toe. He certainly had the whole broad-at-the-shoulder, lean-at-the-hip thing going for him.

Yeah, had to be the boyfriend. Shorter women always ended up with really tall men, who looked like they could pick them up and put them right where they wanted them.

Lucky Fern.

Nora felt kind of bad; Fern worked all hours of the day for her, which didn’t leave her much time to meet up with Mr Gorgeous, here. She wasn’t sure she could be so forgiving if the roles were reversed.

She shook her head slightly. Maybe she’d accidentally inhaled the glue while performing the spectacularly stupid stunt of sticking her favourite shoe to her hand, because it definitely wasn’t every day she was struck down by—

Nora breathed in sharply.

No way was she thinking love at first sight.

Lust at first sight, maybe.

Love at first sight was for wish lists that you wrote with your favourite coloured markers when you were ten.

Mr Office Imposter stared right back at her, knowingly allowing her to look her fill, and so, she guessed, it would be rude not to. After all, Nora liked to think she had good manners. And then there was the fact that it was her office he was in.

Shoe-gate was all but forgotten and seconds felt like minutes as she stood there watching him watch her. Worse, the more the laid-back confidence behind his eyes traitorously affected her breathing, the more she was struck by an insane impulse to slake her tongue over parched lips—wanting and not wanting his incredible blue eyes to track the movement.

Excruciatingly bad form, Nora. Fern had obviously got there first and besides, she definitely didn’t have time to indulge in whatever this silent thing was that they had going because none of this was getting her where she needed to be, in shoe-stuck-to-hand-less land.

Hugging the bag protectively to her chest, she tried to find her way back to the idea that she was a professional businesswoman. ‘I’m Nora King,’ she said, introducing herself.

‘Ethan Love. I—’

‘Hey, I see you two found each other,’ Fern said, as she breezed in with the requisite cardboard tray of hot drinks. ‘Sorry I wasn’t here to do the formal introduction, but when I couldn’t find you,’ she added, looking at Nora, ‘I assumed you’d gone on the coffee run. I thought I’d catch you up by taking the lift, but you must have got back first.’ Fern whizzed over to her desk to set down her purse and the tray. Casting Ethan a brief look, she said, ‘Nora has a little thing about waiting for the lift and usually takes the stairs.’

Nora felt heat creep up her neck to tinge her cheekbones. ‘Er, that’s your boss you’re labelling as pernickety and impatient. Not sure your boyfriend and I know each other well enough for you to divulge all my endearing qualities.’

‘My boyfriend?’ Fern looked from Ethan to Fern with a funny look on her face. ‘Holy crap. You haven’t done the introduction thing?’

‘Of course I have. He’s Ethan Love. Your boyfriend.’

‘He is Ethan Love. He is not my boyfriend. He’s Daisy’s uncle.’

Nora felt a spike of something that might have been relief that he wasn’t Fern’s boyfriend before confusion set in. ‘Daisy who?’

‘Daisy, your niece,’ Fern said, speaking extra slowly and looking at her as if she had left her brain somewhere.

‘Don’t be ridiculous. Jared is Daisy’s uncle.’

‘Jared King is your brother, right?’ Ethan said patiently. ‘Well, my brother is Ryan Love…your sister Sephy’s ex and Daisy’s dad.’

‘No, Daisy’s dad is called—’ Love-Rat. At least that was what Nora had privately labelled him when he’d run out on her sister. She managed to stop herself from saying the words out loud. Ethan Love…Ryan Love. The dots got closer together until they joined up. Wow. But why was his brother here? Nora tried to process his presence and suddenly could only think it must have been something huge to have brought Ethan Love to visit. ‘Oh no, please tell me your brother isn’t—’ She couldn’t bring herself to say the words. She might not have ever understood the bad-boy draw of her sister’s ex and she might have been pleased when he’d upped and moved away so that her sister didn’t have to see him around town doing a very passable Peter Pan impression while managing only haphazard interest in his daughter, but Nora didn’t want her sister to go through another bereavement.

‘I’m sorry,’ Ethan was quick to reassure. ‘I should have thought about what it would look like dropping by so unexpectedly. I simply need your help to run something past your sister.’

Nora stared at Ethan. Why did she get the feeling that this wasn’t going to be simple? With a sinking heart she really didn’t see how she could possibly juggle one more thing, but if this had something to do with her sister—if her sister needed her help, she would find a way.

Plan A, to meet with Eleanor Moorfield minus her shoe appendage slipped out of the window and sloped off into the distance, where, the way her day was going, it would undoubtedly be joined by Plan B and Plan C.

‘Would you like me to reschedule your 8 a.m. for later today?’ Fern asked, looking at Nora with concern.

‘I can wait until your meeting is finished,’ Ethan said, mildly. ‘I just got off a plane so I could do with checking in to a hotel and sleeping. I only stopped here first to make an appointment. I’m afraid I didn’t realise how early it was.’

Nora was so busy wondering how he’d managed to charm security into letting him through to her offices that she only caught the tail end of Fern’s repeated offer to reschedule her breakfast meeting with Eleanor. Hand clenching within the confines of the bag, she said, ‘Thanks, Fern, but you’d better cancel it altogether. Something else has come up, which means I couldn’t have made it today, anyway.’

‘Something else? Since when? You were so pumped for the meeting. You’re ready. The pitch is ready.’ Fern glanced down at Nora’s feet. ‘Wait. Those aren’t the shoes. Where are the shoes? Don’t tell me you forgot to bring them in with you. Not you, The Shoe Princess.’

Nora felt Ethan’s gaze drop to the four-inch black stilettos she was wearing before slowly moving up the length of her legs to the hem of her black pencil skirt and then up further, across her cream jacket before finally coming to rest on her face. Fern and Nora knew each other, warts and all, but somehow with Ethan standing there, taking everything in, it was really hard not to feel exposed. And warm. Very, very warm. ‘I can be interested in shoes without being a “princess” about it,’ she said, trying unsuccessfully not to pout.

‘Right, so what’s with the shoe bag?’

Nora glanced guiltily down at the bag clutched across her midriff. It had the name of a well-known Italian boot-maker emblazoned across the front. Of all the ironies… Nora felt her grip on reality slipping as she admitted, ‘Actually, I do kind of need your help.’ She blew out a breath. There, that hadn’t been so very difficult. Doing her best to ignore Fern’s snort of incredulity, she rushed on, ‘Yes, this is really me, really asking for help, which you can tease me for later, but right now I need you to help me come up with a Plan B—a suitable excuse for postponing my 8 a.m. with,’ Nora looked at the wall clock and blanched, ‘with only one hour’s notice.’

‘Just for the hell of it, what happened to Plan A?’ Ethan interjected, pulling out one of the chairs in front of Fern’s desk and obviously settling himself in for the duration.

‘Forget Plan A. I am so beyond Plan A it’s not even funny,’ she answered, a tad more irritably than was perhaps wise, given that it was she who was asking for help and not the other way around.

The heartbeat-altering grin made an appearance. Ethan seemed to find her waspishness more amusing than insulting. He probably never found himself in embarrassing situations.

Taking another deep breath, Nora focused solely on Fern. ‘The problem is, I can’t do my pitch today, on account of a little accident, which doesn’t need a whole Q and A,’ she insisted as Fern stepped forward with a frown on her face, ‘I’m absolutely fine—I simply…need to cancel. And come up with a suitable excuse. I mean I know fact is stranger than fiction,’ when Nora heard her voice rising alarmingly she began pacing, to try and outdistance herself from her own stupidity, ‘but in this case fact sucks. Fact turns me into a laughing stock and I can’t afford that—’

‘Is she always this hyper?’ Ethan asked Fern, as if she wasn’t there.

‘No way. Only when she’s done something…oh, good grief, Leonora, have you been multi-tasking again?’

‘Only a little bit,’ Nora shot out defensively, before squeezing her eyes shut in mortification, because really, who had ever heard of a CEO not being able to multi-task?

‘We’ve talked about this. You know nerves and multi-tasking and you don’t mesh. I swear, for someone so ultra-efficient in every other aspect of life, it beggars belief. What’s happened and why on earth don’t you put the bag down?’

Nora winced.

It seemed a show-and-tell was on the horizon.

‘It is kind of shoe-related,’ she whispered as she started lowering the bag from where her arm was hidden inside, ‘it’s kind of a,’ she gulped and went for broke, ‘help, I’ve super-glued my shoe to my hand, kind of a mess.’

The bag floated silently to the floor and the next thing she knew, Ethan was standing in front of her turning her hand one way and then another, as if she were some sort of interactive museum exhibit.

‘How on earth..?’

‘Oh, by all means, let’s share.’ Nora’s head bobbed up and down as if she couldn’t wait. What was one more ounce of mortification? ‘Let’s see. Well, this is one half of a pair of vintage Eleanor Moorfield shoes. On my feet, these shoes say: This woman knows what she’s about. You can trust her with your business—with your life, which is why I intended to wear them today for a pitch I’ve been working on for weeks. Sure, I may have, technically, been supposed to fix the sole of this one yesterday. But, sometimes life gets in the way and anyway, I found some glue this morning on Fern’s desk and, well, some of the glue must have seeped out while I was pressing the sole closed. By the time I had finished running over my presentation, and,’ Nora’s head dipped as she mumbled, ‘taken a couple of work calls,’ she waved her hand-shoe combo in his face, ‘this, had happened.’

‘Fascinating.’

Nora’s gaze shot to Ethan at the quietly mumbled word. With the heat of humiliation stinging her cheeks, she really could have done with both hands free to fan herself, or at the very least, hide behind.

‘Did I mention Nora is addicted to multi-tasking?’ Fern chimed in helpfully.

‘There’s no way I can win a business pitch like this. Doesn’t exactly make for a great hand-shaking experience, does it?’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Ethan said, his grin full. ‘You’d get my vote for originality. My guess is he certainly wouldn’t forget you.’ He stroked his fingers over her hand. Heat zinged all the way up her arm and into her neck. Okay, so snatching back her hand might send a signal that she was affected by his touch, but at least it would shock her brain back into working. And, a working brain would be good. If only to stop her feeling like some silly ingénue under his gaze.

‘He is a she,’ she answered. ‘And believe me…she won’t be so easily charmed, especially since it’s one of her designs that’s attached to my hand. I’m going to reek of ineptitude. Not exactly the look I was going for.’

‘Never mind all that,’ Fern said. ‘You should be in hospital getting that seen to.’

Hospital? Nora hadn’t really done hospitals much lately. Not since her father—skidding her thoughts to a halt, she tucked her tongue between her teeth and started pacing again. There had to be another way. ‘Ooh, quick. I need your computer.’

‘My computer? Sure but—’ Fern got out of the way in time for Nora to plonk herself down at her desk in order to slowly, single-handedly Google: How to remove superglue.

‘Ha,’ squinting at the screen, she clicked on several entries. ‘Right. I need something containing acetone chemicals.’ She scrolled down the page. ‘Otherwise known as…nail-varnish remover.’ She turned to Fern, who was looking over her shoulder. ‘Here’s the part where you tell me you never leave the house without nail-varnish remover?’

‘Oh, sweetie.’

‘Nooo! Come on,’ Nora looked skywards, ‘I asked for help and everything. Oh,’ Nora sat bolt upright as a new thought occurred. ‘Shops. Shops will save me.’ She looked at the expression on Fern’s face. ‘If they were actually open, that is.’ Whose bright idea had it been to have the meeting at 8 a.m. anyway? It was like some sort of weird conspiracy.

‘I have to win this pitch, Fern. I have to. I can’t f—’ Nora broke off and hung her head as the full enormity of what she’d been about to admit hit her. The last thing she needed was to give Fern the impression she was about to crumble if she failed.

Her vision blurred as she looked down at her hand. She’d have to cancel the pitch. So be it. These things happened. Except, usually she did everything in her power to ensure that these things didn’t happen. Not to her. Providing strong leadership had been what she’d been trained to do by the best in the business—her father. She hated that lately, every business move she made, had her questioning herself. When she’d heard on the grapevine that Eleanor Moorfield was thinking about returning to London, Nora had suited-up, taken the gamble and approached her directly. Now, it stung to have to admit that a little multi-tasking may have defeated her and made her look as if she wasn’t quite as super-efficient and in control as she liked to appear. It was beginning to look as if she deliberately sabotaged her own success.

She breathed in sharply. She did not like the sound of that. Not one little bit.

‘Why can’t you ask someone else to do the pitch for you?’ Ethan asked from where he was stationed the other side of her. ‘You must have account managers who usually handle this sort of thing.’

‘I don’t want to ask any of them to handle this particular meeting for me,’ Nora answered, realising the statement looked as though she couldn’t delegate. Why hadn’t she said something more along the lines of: she liked to lead by example or keep her hand in? Not that she needed to explain herself to him.

‘Why don’t I do the pitch for you?’ Ethan asked.

Nora’s mouth dropped open and she craned her head to look up at him as if he was insane. The raised eyebrow she got back in response suggested its owner cared not one jot what she thought of him.

‘Why don’t you…?’ Again she flapped her hand-shoe in his face. ‘Because despite all evidence to the contrary, I’m in the market of showing KPC in the best possible light at all times. I’m not about to put a complete stranger into a meeting it’s taken me weeks to set up. I don’t know you from Adam.’

‘Hey,’ Ethan held up his hands as if to ward off any histrionics. ‘I rather thought you were making a case for all hands to the pumps. But go ahead. Be Miss Independent. It’s working out really well for you, so far.’

Indignation battled alongside embarrassment. ‘I’m sorry, I seem to have missed the part where you mentioned you were a property acquisitions lawyer, salesman or account manager or used to securing major business contracts.’ She raked her gaze down to his battered trainers and back up again. ‘You’re not even dressed appropriately.’

‘But maybe he could do it, Nora,’ Fern said.

Her head whipped in the opposite direction to stare at Fern. ‘You’ve only just met the man.’

‘But, well, he’s kind of family, isn’t he?’

‘He is not family. Besides, if he’s anything like his brother, he’ll get distracted by something pretty before he even gets to the meeting.’

In the stark silence Nora couldn’t quite believe she’d been so rude. Asking for help was new enough to her. Graciously accepting it was obviously still at the conceptual stage.

The urge to run and escape was immense. A feeling that was becoming increasingly persistent of late.

‘It seems to me,’ Ethan said, as if her words had had no effect, ‘you need someone who can represent your company without making a fool of himself, charm the client into outlining their needs and then promise you can deliver those needs within a reasonable time and for a reasonable fee. I don’t see a problem. I am such a guy.’

His arrogance astonished her. But while she sat there staring at him like a stunned mullet, couldn’t she actually see him charming Eleanor Moorfield right out of her shoes?

‘The idea is preposterous,’ she said to counteract the vivid imagery.

‘Clock’s ticking,’ he said patiently, testing her resolve.

‘You’re not even wearing a suit.’

He turned to indicate two travel bags stowed by the desk and she remembered he had said he’d come from the airport.

Her mind raced. It would take months to scout out another client the size and scope of the Moorfield brand. By then, KPC might still be surviving, but would it be flourishing under her guidance? What would she have if she didn’t have KPC? Her brother Jared had his own corporation and a beautiful new fiancée. Her sister, Sephy, had a fledgling business and a darling daughter. It was up to her to keep the family company run by someone in the family. She couldn’t bear the thought that she might run her father’s legacy into the ground—not when she believed so much in the company and not after Jared had helped her set KPC back on track for a bright future.

She looked at Ethan. At this point, what did she have to lose? If he didn’t land the account, no one within KPC would be any the wiser and she’d just work her butt off finding another lucrative contract to beef up the company’s profile. If he did land the account…

No.

She shouldn’t even be entertaining the idea.

But the thought of the Moorfield account slipping away…

She looked at the wall clock before her gaze settled back on Ethan. ‘But why would you help?’ she asked without filtering.

For the first time since she’d laid eyes upon him, his casual demeanour altered slightly and for all the caution she threw at herself, she was intrigued by the chink in this knight’s armour.

‘Call it family loyalty,’ he said, obliquely.