‘I take it that’s the fee you’re offering me to take on the most impossible job on the planet?’
Lukas told himself to forget about whether her eyes were more green or more gold. ‘If it was that impossible,’ he quipped, ‘you wouldn’t have suggested being a partner in it.’
She smiled. ‘Touché, Mr Kuznetskov, but I do think it’s impossible. Well …’ She bit into her plump bottom lip. ‘Almost impossible. But I don’t want your money. I want Harrington’s name above the front door.’
He paused. Had he really just heard her right? ‘No way.’
She shrugged as if that was that. ‘Then I’m not interested.’
‘You forget,’ he said, relaxing his posture, ‘there are other contenders out there.’
‘I haven’t forgotten that,’ she returned coolly, ‘but I know you’re desperate and you won’t find anyone else as good as me.’
She held one hand behind her back and he wondered if she didn’t have her fingers crossed. Regardless, she was right about how desperate he was.
‘Touché yourself, Eleanore.’
She smiled like a woman who held all the aces. And with her haughty nose raised in the air at him and her curvy little body, maybe she did. How he had ever thought her marginally pretty was beyond him. She was so much more than that in the flesh. Warm, sparkling and…feisty. An alluring combination of intellect and innocence he found strangely appealing. Not that any of that meant he’d give in to her request. She was about to find out that a willingness to compromise was not one of his stronger traits. ‘Why do you want Harrington’s name on the door?’
‘Because I’m a Harrington and it will be my designs you use.’
‘It’s my hotel.’
‘It’s your money putting up the hotel, yes, but if you use my designs, then conceptually it’s equally mine.’
Lukas scoffed. ‘Equally? I don’t think so.’
‘But you do need me. You said so yourself.’
As much as he admired her sassy comeback he wasn’t going to give in on this. And he knew she was more interested in working on his hotel than she was letting on. ‘Maybe it’s you who needs me.’
Her eyes cut to his, wide and wary. ‘What do you mean?’
‘You’ve thought about this hotel a lot since I mentioned it, have you not?’
She wasn’t happy with his question; he could see that in the tightening of her mouth. She shrugged as if trying to act casually but it was too late. When you dragged yourself up from the dirtiest streets in the world to become one of the wealthiest men in it, you learned a fair bit about how to read people and Eleanore was a babe in arms when it came to negotiating. Not that he wasn’t enjoying sparring with her. In fact, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so invigorated by a woman’s intellect instead of her body.
She arched her brow. ‘Not as much as you,’ she parried.
‘Tell me,’ he asked softly, ‘who else is ever going to give you an opportunity to spread your wings on such an interesting project?’
She lifted her chin. ‘My sister.’
Lukas doubted Harrington’s could afford the spend. He smiled. ‘Who is presently tied up battling the Chatsfields for control of your company from what I read last night. Why would I tie my business to such a circus?’
Her mouth flattened even more. ‘Harrington’s is not a circus and if you think that horrible Spencer Chatsfield will succeed in taking over our business, then you don’t know my sister very well.’
‘Actually, I don’t know her at all but irrespective of who controls Harrington’s at the end of the day your sister doesn’t have the finances to put up a hotel like the Krystal Palace.’
Eleanore wrinkled her pretty little nose at him and he knew he’d guessed right. ‘You have no idea if that’s true or not.’
Lukas relaxed back in his chair and pushed his mobile phone toward her. ‘Call her and ask. I doubt you could afford to pay for the front step after the amount spent on that bar last night.’
‘That bar will pay for itself in time.’
Lukas held her hostile gaze and wondered if she wouldn’t tell him to go to hell. He probably would if their positions were reversed.
‘Come on, Eleanore,’ he encouraged softly, ‘come work for me. Harrington’s name isn’t worth that much any more.’
He could see immediately that he’d made a tactical error in reminding her of how he had inadvertently slurred her hotel chain once before.
‘It is so worth something.’ She practically vibrated out of her chair. ‘It took my father years to establish a line of boutique hotels that are respected all over the world. Why do you think the Chatsfields want us so badly? We’re a powerhouse and you should be thanking me for wanting to put our name on your hotel.’
Maybe he should and he wondered what it would feel like to have someone loyal to him as she obviously was to her family. What it would feel like to have all that passion wrapped tightly around him.
‘And might I remind you,’ she continued haughtily, ‘that it was you who sought me out and told me you wanted my help. Well, it comes at a price. And I’ve just given it to you.’ She stood up and his first thought was that she was magnificent in her wounded pride. His second was that he was sorry he’d somehow caused that and he was shocked by the realisation. Since when did he care about wounding an opponent’s pride?
But Eleanore wasn’t an opponent, was she? She was…He frowned. As much as he hated to admit it she was someone he needed. Oh, he was sure, given time, that he could find someone else who could pull off his ice hotel but time was something he had precious little of and she had made all the right suggestions so far. He shook his head. ‘I’ll take you on as a consultant, but not a partner.’
She muttered something under her breath—something he doubted was complimentary—before striding to his side and flipping his laptop around to face them both. ‘Which one of these preliminary ideas did you like the most?’ She sat down, stroking the mouse key and scrolling through the images until she came to a picture of the reception area. ‘You know with very little effort we could turn these vaulted cathedral ceilings into glass domes that made them look like they touched the sky. But maybe you prefer the idea about the themed guest rooms. Off the top of my head my favourite would be the captain’s quarters of an old-fashioned pirate ship with carved atlases and a four-poster bed. You might like a room with a Japanese infusion—ice futon and a tropical fish tank in the ceiling.’
‘You can put a tropical fish tank in the ceiling?’
She straightened away from him, breathing hard, her eyes chips of green fire. ‘I can do anything.’
Right now Lukas didn’t doubt it.
And it wasn’t often that he had been surprised in his life—well, in his adult life. Or impressed.
He turned his head and caught a whiff of apples. If she turned her head toward him they would be inches apart and he had a sudden and very primitive urge to taste her.
As if sensing his thoughts she went still and then shifted very subtly away from him. Harnessing a driving need to follow he clamped down on his unusually wayward libido and forced himself to relax back against the sofa. ‘Actually, I quite like the sound of that pirate’s cabin.’
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