The Player (Rouge Passion #1) Read online

  As he lay the tray on her desk, he chuckled. ‘Apparently, you won the lottery – that’s according to Milena.’

  ‘Oh God, I’d have thought Milena had more sense than to come up with that,’ she moaned, putting her head in her hands as Dean pulled up a chair on the other side of the desk.

  ‘Oh no, she didn’t. The whole housekeeping team were given that information as fact . . . from Derek,’ he said, as he helped himself to a salmon sandwich.

  ‘Derek?’ she cried, finding it difficult to believe that the fifty-something concierge would make up such a ludicrous ‘fact’.

  Chewing on his sandwich and picking up a bottle of sparkling water, Dean nodded. ‘Although to be fair, he’d heard it from Charlie. Do you have glasses in here? I couldn’t fit any on the tray.’

  She rolled her eyes. Charlie, the site supervisor, was lovely. Really lovely, but as gullible as anything so she knew he hadn’t invented that piece of fiction. ‘I don’t have any glasses, no, but there are some in Nigel’s office . . . well, what was Nigel’s office. No, you sit, I’ll get them while you tell me who told Charlie.’

  Chuckling, she opened the interconnecting door to the General Manager’s office and gasped, ‘What the fuck?’

  ‘Hmm? What?’

  ‘Come here,’ she whispered, barely able to speak.

  As Dean reached her side and peered into the office, he whistled. ‘Holy crap! Who’s going to be working in here . . . Alan Freaking Sugar?’ He walked into the room, looking around in wonder.

  The room had undergone an unbelievable transformation since she’d last seen it on Friday evening. The office had been similar to hers, only larger, and just as unimpressive: cheaply furnished and dull. Now it was breathtakingly beautiful. Gone was the dark burgundy carpet and the mahogany effect furniture that had made it seem so dark. Instead, the flooring was thick pale-cream carpet which your feet sank into, as Isla found when she finally dared to venture inside. The lighting had been changed too; it had sprung to life as soon as she’d opened the door. And the furniture was some sort of very pale wood. Real wood, she realised as she ran her fingers along the top of a bookcase filled with books that didn’t look new.

  Dean shouted, ‘Isla, come here, quick! Holy shit! Look at this!’

  She looked around to find Dean hopping around behind the enormous desk like an excited kid who’d won a new games console or something. ‘Get your arse over here, woman! You really ain’t gonna believe this shit!’

  Hurrying over to the desk, his excitement infectious, she peered at it and found that, apart from the same luxurious wood and a scattering of expensive-looking office essentials, there was nothing to make Dean so childlike. ‘I don’t get it,’ she declared, looking at him quizzically.

  ‘Waaait,’ he said, sitting down in the huge, cream leather seat. ‘Et voila!’

  Instantly, a large flat screen smoothly slid up out of the desk and sprang to life. Attempting to ignore Dean bouncing up and down on the chair, Isla tried to read the writing on the screen but the screen began to slide down inside the desk again.

  ‘How fucking cool is that?’ He sounded truly awed. ‘I mean, look at the desk – you can’t see where it goes. Look!’

  As he pointed to the seemingly flawless woodgrain and then dashed around to the front of the desk to point out that the solid panelling hid it from view when it was inside the desk, Isla began to see herself sitting in this office. She wandered over to a cream leather sofa on the other side of the room, thinking, Let the staff ignore me. When I’m ensconced in here in the height of luxury all day, I’ll be having the last laugh.

  ‘Oh my God! I’m getting a tech-boner! This beauty’s touchscreen and . . . oh fuuuck!’

  ‘What?’ she called, turning back to face him and seeing the screen had risen again. Gone was the excitement from his face. In fact, to say he was panicking was an understatement. ‘Dean Rogers? What the hell have you done?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he retorted. ‘I only touched the screen and a countdown started in the centre. Now it’s locked.’

  Isla shook her head. ‘Look, we shouldn’t even be in here. Let’s get out before you break anything. It wouldn’t surprise me if all this high tech stuff wasn’t linked to an alarm system somewhere.’

  Dean paled instantly. ‘You don’t really think so, do you?’

  She shrugged in reply.

  ‘Yeah,’ he announced. ‘It’s probably best we leave. But I tell you something, if this is going to be your office when you’re the boss, I expect you to let me in to play.’

  ‘Play with what, exactly?’ The deep, distinctly unimpressed voice made them both jump out of their skins before they turned around.

  Isla’s mouth almost fell open. There, almost filling the door frame, was a man who wasn’t exactly knicker-droppingly gorgeous, but there was something about him that demanded your attention. He was . . . godlike. Well, that was the only word that Isla could think of to begin to describe the feeling of being in his presence as he strode into the room. If he were in a cartoon, flowers would shrink back as he walked past. In fact, he seemed to have that effect on her and Dean. Never before had she felt so small, and it wasn’t simply to do with being caught in the office, or his physical size . . . this man was immensely powerful, she could feel it. She didn’t know how and she also instinctively knew that getting on the wrong side of him would be a big mistake. He was obviously either the new owner or the new general manager. And this was his office. And they shouldn’t be in there.

  ‘Impertinent as well as intrusive, I see. Mr Rogers, you are dismissed.’ He spoke with such a deep, authoritative tone that Isla felt it vibrate through her. She’d expected an accent, probably because his bronze skin and dark hair insinuated a Mediterranean heritage, but he didn’t have one.

  As Dean shot out of the door like a greyhound out of a trap, she wanted to challenge this stranger about his insulting attitude. How dare you call him impertinent and treat us like children, dismissing Dean like a headmaster dismissing a naughty pupil?

  She determined that he was older than them but she found it impossible to say by how much. Even so, that didn’t give him the right to treat them like juveniles. She turned to fight fire with fire, as was her usual manner when she felt affronted, to find him shrugging out of his black suit jacket and hanging it on a coat stand behind the desk. Her gaze swept from his bulging shoulder muscles, clearly visible even through his light-grey shirt, and try as she might to fight it, her gaze refused to comply, taking in the narrowing of his torso to his lean waist and down to his arse where it lingered for just a little too long.

  ‘I guess it’s fair enough that you’d be curious about me, since I’m your new boss, but I didn’t realise that meant you’d be checking out my glutes so keenly. Have you finished or do you need another minute?’ His tone was completely neutral.

  What? How the hell . . .? The nerve of the man!

  Disliking him more by the second, she looked around furiously before she noticed the narrow mirror in front of where he was standing. Their eyes met for just a fraction of a second before he turned to face her. She felt her cheeks colouring – something that never happened – she’d never before felt truly embarrassed yet, right at that moment, she felt utterly mortified. He’s my new boss. Probably the most arrogant man I’ve ever had the misfortune to meet and I’m not only caught checking out his body, but I get embarrassed about it. Did I wake up in a parallel universe this morning? Did I even wake up?

  She was rudely shaken from her thoughts when he said, ‘Miss Hamilton, please get a grip. I asked you to take a seat. If you’d rather not, please say so. I find your continual ignorance irritating.’

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t hear you,’ she replied, as she shot forwards and sat down.

  He sat across from her, activated the control to lower the flat screen and, as it descended, regarded her through narrowed grey eyes for a few seconds as if evaluating her. It made Isla want to shift in her seat. The breathtaking intens
ity of his presence was nothing compared to being pinned by his gaze. When he finally looked down to open the desk drawer, she felt she could breathe again. That she’d been released. Although she was grateful to be spared that piercing stare, she felt that she’d come off badly, that somehow she’d disappointed. She found herself wanting to explain, and although she told herself that it was purely because she didn’t want him to think she was a crap assistant general manager, she also found herself not wanting to fall short of his expectations in any capacity.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, trying to act relaxed although she felt anything but. ‘My head’s all over the place today. It’s been a difficult morning because the staff are anxious about being kept in the dark about details of the new ownership and how it will affect them. They’re convinced that I know all about it when really, I know nothing at all.’

  Again, that stare! There was an overall hardness to his expression, but those harder-than-stone, deep grey eyes unnerved her – she felt as though she were being interrogated, although he hadn’t opened his mouth. Finally he did. ‘So what would you like to know about me?’ His eyebrow arched slightly as he awaited her reply.

  ‘Um . . . well, I’d like to know your intentions for the hotel. Whether you plan any changes, that sort of thing.’

  And whether you plan on promoting me to the position of general manager. She only just managed not to blurt that sentence out. He unnerved her and she wasn’t used to the experience.

  He nodded. A tiny movement but that’s all it took for Isla to register it. Maybe it was because she’d unwittingly failed to pay close attention to him earlier, when she was reeling from the knowledge that she actually could be embarrassed, but she’d bet anything that anyone in his company felt compelled to give him their full attention. He was obviously used to having people’s undivided attention because he hadn’t liked it one bit when he didn’t have hers.

  ‘You don’t want to know anything about me?’ he asked. ‘Or did you find out all that you wanted to know when you were snooping in my desk?’

  ‘I didn’t find out anything . . . I mean I wasn’t snooping!’ she exclaimed indignantly. Damn this man and his ability to make me feel flustered. Okay . . . stay calm . . . it’s because he caught you in here that you feel wrong-footed, she told herself. She knew she needed to get past that fast or he’d never see her as general manager material; if he indeed was the new owner. ‘So, would you mind sharing your plans for the hotel?’

  ‘You don’t even want to know my name?’ he asked, his face impassive, but she got the distinct impression that he was toying with her.

  She lifted her chin defiantly. ‘Well of course I do. But I do feel it’s important that you keep me in the loop. It’s unprofessional for the assistant general manager to be kept in the dark.’

  ‘It’s Xander,’ he said, almost cutting her short and making her feel that he wasn’t interested in her views on professionalism.

  She squared her shoulders and made another attempt at getting some answers from him. ‘So Mr Xander, what are your plans?’

  ‘Just Xander,’ he informed her and continued to sit there patiently.

  She began to feel extremely irritated by his I’ll-sit-here-and-make-you-look-stupid-without-giving-you-the-information-you-need stance. ‘I apologise. What are your plans, Xander?’ she asked as politely as she could manage.

  Again, he ignored her question. ‘So, what do people around here call you?’

  She felt her hands grip the sides of the chair in pure frustration. ‘By my name,’ she said simply, fed up with his line of questioning.

  For a second, his whole face changed and then she felt bathed in glorious sunshine when he laughed. And boy, did he laugh . . . the sound echoed off the walls until she began to feel that he was laughing at her. Clouds immediately obscured the sunshine and she knew that working for this man was going to be more than challenging. If this was his office and he planned to be around a lot, it was going to be damn near impossible.

  His laughter tapered off until he was once more regarding her closely. ‘You have a fiery nature to match your fiery hair, I see.’

  That old chestnut. She was spectacularly unimpressed. She almost told him her name but couldn’t bring herself to undermine her own sarcastic remark. He knows my name. He knew my last name so it stands to reason that he’d know my first name. He does own the hotel after all. Well, I assume he does – unless he isn’t the owner – maybe he’s just the new general manager. Well, one thing’s for certain, if he’s the new GM and he continues like this, I’ll be taking up the matter of his insolent attitude with the owner.

  He seemed to be waiting for her to speak. It was almost as if he were deliberately goading her. She resolved not to give him the satisfaction. She sat back and regarded him with what she hoped was her best disinterested expression.

  ‘I shall call you Red, since you aren’t forthcoming with your name,’ he announced suddenly. She opened her mouth to protest but he continued speaking. ‘So what is it that you want to know about my plans?’

  Oh at last! ‘I’d like to know how hands-on you intend to be,’ Isla replied eagerly, again sitting forward in her seat.

  He took a moment and, if it were possible, his gaze appeared to intensify. ‘Very. I hope.’

  A shiver shot down her spine but she couldn’t say why. ‘So does that affect my role?’ she persisted.

  ‘Quite possibly. I haven’t had a chance to think it through properly but there’s every reason that your role could change. I’d like to see how we get on for a little while. See how successful it is with you working away beneath me.’ Again, he slightly raised one eyebrow.

  Isla swallowed. There are no two ways about it; that was a very suggestive remark! And if it was intended to unsettle me . . . then he’s sadly succeeded, but I’ll be damned if I’ll let him know.

  She kept her face impassive and her tone neutral. ‘Fair enough,’ she said, feeling a perverse satisfaction when she saw that eyebrow hike fractionally higher. ‘Now, is there anything else? I have things to be getting on with.’

  His lips pursed slightly and when he spoke his tone was flat and dismissive. ‘No. I’m done with you. For now.’ The screen rose silently from the desk, screening him from her view.

  Seething with annoyance at being dismissed in such a manner when she’d intended to get the upper hand, she returned to the safety of her office. She tipped the tray of curled up sandwiches into the waste paper basket – she had no appetite now. As she sat at her desk, she felt relaxed for the first time since he’d set foot in his office. She frowned as she realised it wasn’t relaxation she felt, it was exhaustion.

  He remained in his office all afternoon, for which she was thankful. Her hopes of becoming the new GM had been well and truly dashed and, by the end of the day, she felt totally deflated. She briefly contemplated knocking on the door to inform him that she was leaving, but the mere thought sapped the last of her enthusiasm so she didn’t bother. She stormed past the reception desk, lest she be ignored, or worse, besieged with questions about Xander.

  *

  Once back inside her apartment, Isla flopped down on her bed and bemoaned how the day had gone from being brightly optimistic to drably depressing with the arrival of that man. She briefly contemplated forming a plan of attack, or at least defence, for the following day but, frankly, she couldn’t be bothered. Instead, she headed to the fridge and pulled out a bottle of Chardonnay. Two large glasses later and the general consensus was that Xander Whatever-His-Name-Was could go fuck himself. She decided to cheer herself up by putting on some music. She stood, swayed unexpectedly and sat down again, cursing herself for drinking on an empty stomach. ‘Oh well,’ she declared and promptly drained her third glass. She attempted to pour another but found the bottle only contained a trickle. ‘Boo you,’ she declared, glaring at the bottle as though it had gone from best friend to mortal enemy as it emptied.

  She stood up carefully and staggered over to the
radio and, on the fourth attempt, managed to jab her finger on the correct button to turn it on. Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black blared at near full volume. Startled, Isla stepped back, swayed, overbalanced and promptly fell on her arse with a thud. The lyrics washed over her like a tsunami of hurt, dragging up events from a few months ago that she’d rather not relive. By the end of the track, mascara marks of misery lined her cheeks.

  Some boy band or another began whining on about love and she curled her lip. What do they know about love? They’re only kids. She felt like shouting at the radio, telling them that love was like a disease that ate away at you like a cancer and they should protect themselves against it at all costs. But she knew they wouldn’t listen even if they could hear her. She knew how intoxicating and infatuating it was. How it brainwashed you and left you vulnerable. Until one day, when you realised how fragile love was and how it could smash into a thousand jagged pieces that all locked on to your heart like heat-seeking missiles until there was nothing of it left.

  Her mobile alerted her to a new text message. She struggled to fish it out of her pocket and open her messages. Trying to hold it still, she wiped her wet eyes, squinted and made out that it was from Dean.

  The boss came into the bar looking for you a few minutes ago. He seemed pissed when I told him you’d left. His face was like thunder when he stormed out. D x

  Peering at the time, she saw it was a little after 8 p.m. Does Xander really expect me to be there at this time of night when I was in before 8 a.m.? She huffed, although she’d been putting those kind of hours in for the last two months, picking up Nigel’s slack and trying to get herself noticed. Maybe if he’d sat and discussed things properly instead of behaving like an egotistical prick, he’d know what my hours of work are. ‘Well he can kish my arsh!’ she slurred. ‘Who the fuck does he think he ish anyway?’

  She tapped in the reply box and managed to type:

  Fuck him. Arrognat twat. Proves wht I say ALL MEN AR E BASTARDS

  She felt incredibly pleased with herself until she realised that Dean was also a man and he might think her rant was aimed at him too. So she sent another message saying simply: