car rolled up. She sat behind the wheel for a few moments. Byron got the feeling she was psyching herself up.
Then she got out of the car. She was wearing another suit—the consummate businesswoman. But there was something more about her, something that had attracted him to her from the very first time he’d laid eyes on her. After all this time, he still couldn’t say what that something was.
Whatever it was, he wanted to pull her into his arms and not let go. He’d hired her for a very specific reason—to make sure she knew she couldn’t hurt him. But instead? He’d found out just how much he couldn’t trust her.
He would not give in to the physical temptation that Leona represented. This marriage proposal wasn’t about sex. It was about doing whatever it took to make sure his son was safe.
“Hi,” she said. She looked at the outdoor table.
Was she nervous? Fine. Good. He didn’t want her to think she held all the cards. The sooner she realized he was calling the shots, the better.
He stood and put his hands on her shoulders. She tensed and he swore he felt a current of electricity pass between them. But he wouldn’t give in and pull her into his arms. He couldn’t let her affect him. Not anymore. “Have you given any more thought to my question?”
Leona notched an eyebrow at him. That was better, he thought. He loved it when she was snarky and sarcastic—not shell-shocked. “I don’t remember your asking me anything. I seem to remember more of a direct order.”
Byron pulled the small, robin’s-egg-blue box out of his pocket. Leona gasped. “Ah. Yes. That was a mistake.” He opened the box. The sunlight caught the emerald-cut diamond and threw sparkles across the tablecloth. “Leona, will you marry me?”
If only he’d asked her a year ago...but even as he thought that, he remembered how she’d hidden her name, her family from him. Would she have said yes, if he’d asked her then? Or would she have laughed in his face? Would it have changed everything—or would it all still have happened exactly the same way?
Anything snarky about her fell away as she gaped at the ring, then him, then back at the ring. She reached out to touch the box but pulled her hand back. “We need to discuss work,” she finally said in a firm voice. “Mr. Lutefisk is very particular about his employees having personal conversations while they’re on the clock. He’ll be calling to check in about an hour from now. He’s letting me handle this project on my own, but he keeps close tabs on all of his employees’ projects.”
What a load of crap. She was stalling and he didn’t like it. “Leona. This isn’t just a ‘personal conversation.’ This is our life—together.”
She gave him a baleful look that, despite all of his best intentions to not let her get to him, made him feel guilty. Then fire flashed through her eyes. “I work. This is my job. You can’t think that hiring me and proposing means you get to control every minute of my life, Byron. Because if so, I have an answer to your question. I don’t think you’ll like it.”
In spite of himself, he grinned. “When did you get this feisty?”
“When you left me,” she snapped. “Now are we going to discuss the job for which you hired me or not?”
The accusation stung. “That’s not how I remember it going down,” he said, frustration bubbling up.
She shrugged out of his grasp and sat down at the table as if she was mad at the chair. “I’m not talking about it now. I. Am. Working.”
“Fine. When can we discuss nonwork stuff?”
“After five.”
“When can I see Percy again?”
She looked up at him, her jaw set. “Ah, now that was a question. Lovely. You can see him tonight, after five. I assumed you’d come visit him.” Byron gave her a look and she rolled her eyes. “As you can see, I’m not trying to hide him from you. Can we please get to work?”
“Fine.” He’d let it go for now. But he left the ring on the table, where it glittered prettily.
Leona pulled out her tablet and handed it over. “We have three basic choices for the interior—we can try to lighten it up, keep it dim, or go for broke and make it very dark.”
Byron looked at the preliminary colors she’d chosen. One was a bright yellow with warm red accents. The next was gray with a cooler red and the last choice was a deep red that would look almost black in the shadows. “I like the yellow. I don’t want the restaurant so dim that people have to use their cell phones to read the menu.”
“Agreed,” she said. She flicked the screen to the next page. “I thought we’d want to play off the Percheron Drafts in the name—Percheron Pub?”
“No.”
“White Horse Saloon?”
He gave her a dirty look.
“No, I didn’t think so.” She grinned back. This was better—this was them as equals. This was what he’d missed. He had the sudden urge to lean over and kiss her like he’d kissed her last night, right before his world had changed forever. “I also considered bringing in the European influences. What do you think about Caballo de Tiro?”
“That’s—what?” He thought for a second. “Workhorse?”
“Draft horse, literally. Which fits the brand and also highlights the Spanish influences you’re bringing.”
He glanced at her and saw she wore a satisfied smile. “You like that one, don’t you?”
“It is my favorite, it’s true. I wasn’t sure if you’d get the translation.”
“I picked up enough French and Spanish to get by.” He gave her a look. “At least, enough to cook and fend off advances.”
She glanced back at the ring. “Oh?”
He could hear that she was trying to sound disinterested, but she wasn’t quite succeeding. “It was...well, I guess the good news was that no one cared that I was a Beaumont. That was great, actually. But a lot of people were intrigued by the American with red hair.”
Which was a huge understatement. In Paris and then Madrid, not a week went by when he didn’t leave work to find a beautiful woman—or occasionally a beautiful man—waiting for him.
“I guess that was probably fun.” Leona was now staring at her plate, pushing the potato salad around with her fork.
“Actually, it wasn’t.”
She opened her mouth to say something but then changed her mind. “Right. We’re working. What do you think of the name?”
He sighed. “Right. Working.” Besides, he didn’t exactly want to tell her that, at several points during his self-imposed exile, he’d decided to take a particularly lovely woman up on her offer, just to get Leona out of his system—only to back out before they got anywhere near a bed.
He forced himself to focus. This restaurant was his dream, after all. Caballo de Tiro—it had a good ring to it, and wasn’t too complicated to pronounce.
“I thought we could bring in touches that suggest a draft horse—wagon wheels that are repurposed as chandeliers, maybe a wagon set up outside—it’s reasonable to think parents might bring their children,” she added. “A wagon could be both decoration and something to distract kids.”
He flipped back to the colors. “So you’d paint the walls this color yellow, have red accents—”
“The tablecloths, napkins, that sort of thing, yes.”
“And accent with weathered wood?”
“And leather,” she added, leaning over to flick to another screen, which had several chairs pictured. “Rich brown leather for the seating. And maybe a few harnesses that will serve as