They’d talked about getting a place for the two of them, but had decided they couldn’t afford it yet.
Reception was busy, with lots of early checkouts. There were four staff members working on the desk and Tyler joined the queue in front of Cleo. After ten minutes where she was conscious of him looking at her tired face, there was only one person left before she’d have to deal with him.
Norah, the next receptionist in the line, sent her last guest off happily and was free. ‘Can I help you?’ she beamed at Tyler. He shook his head and gave Norah an absolute kil er smile, the type guaranteed to send ripples down into any woman’s underwear, no matter what time of the morning it was. ‘No thanks, I need to speak with Cleo.’
Norah swivel ed slowly to Cleo with a wicked grin that said,
‘Get you, babe!’ On the pretence of reaching over for Cleo’s stapler a second later, she whispered, ‘Are you up to something with that fine man?’
Tyler was watching them both and smirking.
Cleo felt the heat rise from her chest right up to the roots of her hair. ‘He’s annoying me,’ she hissed at Norah. ‘He can annoy me any time he wants,’ Norah whispered huskily, in a credible impersonation of Mae West. ‘Yes, this looks about right,’ said the harassed-looking man whom Cleo was actual y supposed to be dealing with. He signed the bil before rushing off.
Tyler moved smoothly in.
‘Can I help you?’ Cleo said. ‘Checking out?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ve a query about something I asked for and haven’t got yet. I’m a little surprised, I’ve got to say. A hotel of this calibre should see to al the guests’ needs.’ ‘Oh, and what’s the problem?’ Cleo said, instantly professional, wondering where the hotel had failed.
‘I wanted a bottle of champagne to share with a special someone and the mini-bar doesn’t carry the brand I favour.
Worse, the special someone from the hotel never arrived.’
He smiled pointedly at Cleo. The insinuation was obvious.
Norah had a guest again, an elegantly dressed elderly gentleman with a set of matching hand-tooled leather luggage and a charming manner. He looked at Cleo and grinned. Cleo felt a surge of irritation. ‘Wel ,’ she said, ‘Sir could contact the bar about the champagne. We carry most brands here, and I’m sure that if we don’t stock it, we can get it for you. However, general y the hotel doesn’t provide dates for guests. The five-star rating doesn’t cover that type of service, although perhaps it does in the Roth Hotels group.’ Norah stifled a giggle and the elderly gentleman laughed out loud at this. ‘Looks like the lady’s tel ing you off, son,’ he said to Tyler.
‘I keep tel ing him off but he just doesn’t pick it up,’ Cleo remarked. ‘He’s not too bright.’
‘Can’t blame a trier,’ the guy added. ‘And he looks bright enough.’
‘She’s playing hard to get,’ Tyler said, ignoring Cleo, and turning to the other man. ‘What is it about women?’ ‘My second wife did that,’ the older man said thoughtful y. ‘No, wait a minute, that was my third.’
‘And what about the current Mrs …’ Norah looked down at her screen to check before giving him a dazzling smile, ‘…
Mrs Lewis?’
‘There’s no current Mrs Lewis,’ Mr Lewis smiled. ‘Four wives are enough for any man.’
‘Four?’
‘Four. Unlucky for some.’
‘Thirteen is unlucky for some,’ chipped in Norah hopeful y.
He was rather charming.
‘For me, it was four,’ Mr Lewis said drily. ‘Good luck with her,’ he nodded to Tyler. ‘Take my advice and make sure you get her to sign a pre-nup before you marry her. No offence,’ he added to Cleo.
Cleo exploded. ‘I despise any woman who tries to take a man to the cleaners when they split up,’ she said in outrage.
‘I’ve always earned my own living and that wouldn’t change just because I got a divorce. Anyway, it’s hardly an issue here. I can’t stand this man.’ She glared at Tyler.
‘She can’t stand me,’ Tyler agreed. ‘I am the most irritating man she ever met, but that’s a start, because I like sparks.
What sort of excitement could you have with a woman if she was goofy about you? Cleo and I, we could have wild times together.’ The way he said ‘wild times’ made Cleo’s pulse speed right up.
‘Now that sounds like wife number two,’ warned Mr Lewis.
‘Sparks are kinda sexy but dangerous. Although,’ he reflected, ‘I stil love her. She left me. I oughta phone her.’
‘You do that,’ said Tyler. He reached over the desk, which was easy because he was so tal , and he deliberately brushed his hand gently against Cleo’s before moving back. He hadn’t touched her since that awful night in Carrickwel when he’d picked her up off the ground, and Cleo felt the spark he’d been talking about shear through her. She jerked back. ‘Dinner? Pick you up at seven? I know a great little place we can go to,’ Tyler said, hooded dark eyes staring fiercely into hers.
‘My shift ends at seven,’ she gave in, determined not to lose her cool. ‘And I don’t go out in my work clothes. I’l pick you up here at half-eight, and I’l show you a great little place that I like. Yeah?’
‘Masterful,’ sighed Mr Lewis. ‘Wife number four.’ ‘I like masterful,’ grinned Tyler. ‘It’s fun taming it.’ And he left, blowing Cleo a kiss as he went.
‘It’s only seven thirty a.m. and you’ve already got a date for the evening,’ Norah sighed.
‘She’s got the looks,’ Mr Lewis said, admiring Cleo. ‘That guy’s Tyler Roth. He’s what my mother would have cal ed “a catch”.’
‘I’m not out to catch him,’ said Cleo, stil smarting after the remark about the pre-nuptial agreement.
‘That’s plain to see,’ Mr Lewis said. ‘He’s the sort of man wouldn’t be interested in you if you were.’
If only he knew, Cleo thought. She didn’t want a date with Mr Heir To The Roth Mil ions because of who he was: she wanted a date so she could humiliate him the way he’d humiliated her. Then she’d be happy.
‘You’d swear you liked him the way you’re worried about what to wear on this date,’ Trish grumbled as she sat on the floor in their shared bedroom. The bed was covered with al Cleo’s clothes, most of Trish’s clothes, and some belonging to Diane, who also shared the house, and who had a real eye when it came to vintage stuff.
‘Course I don’t like him,’ said Cleo. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.
And it’s not a date.’ She turned sideways to try to see Diane’s flippy black lace skirt in the mirror from another angle. Diane said she normal y wore it with a pastel pink scoop-neck top, but Cleo wasn’t sure if pink was her colour.
And with her long legs, the skirt was shorter than it was on Diane and just skimmed her knees. ‘I’m not sure about the skirt and is the top too low?’ she asked, pul ing at the neck and considering the effect her cleavage had on it.
‘Too low? Too bloody high, if you ask me,’ Trish said. ‘You don’t want to look like you’ve just got off the bus from Bal ygobackwards.’
‘I don’t want to look like a total slapper either,’ Cleo said, twisting some more at the mirror. ‘That’s what he thought the first time.’
‘Oh, don’t go on about it,’ grumbled Trish. This was a minor bone of contention between them. Trish was the one who’d been so deliriously drunk that she had tarred her companions with the same brush. ‘It wasn’t my fault. I was only celebrating. And who cares anyway?’
‘I care,’ said Cleo. ‘It’s not the ideal message for women to be giving out to the world at large: that we get so plastered we fal down outside clubs and have blackouts.’ And certainly not the message to give to handsome men that, under other circumstances, you’d like to impress.
Then do it,’ countered Trish, ‘why not women?’
‘If it had been anywhere else but in Carrickwel …’ Cleo said. ‘People talk and my family would be mortified to imagine I’d been sitting drunkenly in the gutter. To think of the times myself and Dad have helped people out of the hotel bar when they’re plastered …’
‘Have any of your precious family been on the phone discussing it with you?’ asked Trish tartly.
‘No.’ None of Cleo’s family had been on the phone at al . An even sorer point. ‘Truce?’ she added.
‘Truce. Sorry. That was bitchy,’ Trish said mournful y.
‘Forget it. What about this?’ Cleo twirled in the black lace skirt with a simple white shirt.
‘Classy,’ commented Trish. ‘Honestly, Cleo, anybody watching would think you were crazy about this guy.’ ‘I don’t like him,’ Cleo insisted again.
‘Then why are you going out with him?’
Cleo had asked herself the same question al day. ‘It’s about revenge.’
‘You could have got that without going out with him,’ Trish pointed out. ‘Connect his room TV to the porn channel for hours on end so he gets the most embarrassing bil on the planet, put laxative into his breakfast, book him alarm cal s every fifteen minutes from three a.m. - there are endless things you could have done,’ she finished airily.
‘You have an evil mind,’ said Cleo in amazement. ‘Thanks,’
grinned Trish.
‘That’s al too sneaky.’ Cleo didn’t like sneakiness. ‘When I get my own back, I want him to know I did.’
When she walked into McArthur’s and saw Tyler sitting in the lobby, sleek dark head bent studiously over Newsweek, the taste for revenge momentarily weakened. He wore dark trousers, a fine knitted sweater that moulded his powerful shoulders, and was receiving admiring looks from the girls on reception. Cleo decided that it had been a bad idea to meet him here in gossip central: the fact that they were going out would be on the news next. Tyler glanced up and looked genuinely pleased to see her, as if this was an ordinary date. Hel , thought Cleo. This lying stuff was harder than she’d thought.
‘You look beautiful,’ he said, getting to his feet. He leaned down and kissed her formal y on the cheek.
In her borrowed outfit, with her hair flowing loose around her shoulders and her eyes made up in beguiling shades, Cleo knew she looked her best. ‘Thank you,’ she replied, as directed by al those magazine articles on graciously accepting compliments. Saying ‘I borrowed the skirt and my hair’s a bit wool y because I’m out of serum’ would have sounded stupid. ‘You look nice too,’ Cleo said. She was a modern woman, after al , and didn’t believe that compliments should be the preserve of the male. And he did look pretty good. ‘Thanks,’ he nodded, seeming pleased. ‘What’s the plan, Cleo?’
She was a bit taken aback by this because she’d anticipated a whole battle over what they’d do and had been quite looking forward to it. Maybe Tyler confined his ruthless persona to business matters.
‘The plan is there’s no plan,’ she replied, although there was. She’d spent the whole day working it out, which had rendered her reasonably useless as a receptionist. ‘I’m going to take you on a walk round the parts of Dublin the tourists don’t see,’ she said. ‘Not that there’s anything wrong with the tourist trail, but I don’t want you to think that we’re al about old knitted geansais and wool y hats.’
‘What’s a geansai?’ He hadn’t heard it quite right. ‘Gan,’
she said, ‘zee. It means jumper, sweater, jersey.’ ‘Can you teach me any other words?’ he asked enthusiastical y. Cleo grinned. He’d definitely left the ruthless streak in his suite.
‘Of course.’
They walked into the city, enjoying the warm early summer air, and talking non-stop. Walking made it easier to talk, Cleo found. If she wasn’t looking at Tyler, she could be more normal, but when she stared up at his face, she found herself behaving strangely. Like some idiot girl who fancies a guy like crazy, she thought. How utterly embarrassing.
Final y, they arrived at the French restaurant Cleo had chosen. Both of them were starving, and ordered quickly.
Cleo had scal ops, Tyler had Dublin Bay prawns. A flock of girls in flirty dresses showing lots of leg sashayed past their table, and a couple of them eyed up Tyler very openly.
‘How trashy,’ said Cleo crossly.
Tyler did that arching thing with the eyebrows that irritated her so much. He seemed to like teasing her.
‘Too much gold, too much flesh and too much bleach,’ she snapped in explanation.
‘You disapprove of too much flesh, then?’ Tyler asked silkily. ‘I guess it’s a religious thing. You’re Catholic, right?
And you went to school in a convent and wouldn’t dream of having sex before marriage, and confess your sins to a priest, right?’ As soon as scientists came up with eye lasers to blast people with a single glance, Cleo was getting one. ‘For your information, Mr Roth, while I did go to a convent school…’ he grinned evil y at this, ‘I consider myself a Christian first and foremost. Some people describe it as being an a la carte Catholic: we pick what we want from the menu. The same way you’re an a la carte Jew,’ she added sweetly, nodding at his plate. ‘If you were orthodox, you would not be eating that prawn.’
Tyler just smiled at her and speared another prawn, before biting into it with his very white teeth.
‘My first boyfriend was Jewish,’ she said by way of explanation. ‘He was very interesting on Jewish customs.’
‘Rebel ing even then, huh? And the same for him, dating a shiksa. ‘He respected my cultural heritage just the same as I respected his,’ snapped Cleo, enraged yet again.
‘I respect your heritage, Cleo,’ Tyler said equably. ‘I’m just winding you up because it’s such fun. You are so windable.
Is that a word? You Irish are supposed to be the literary geniuses, you should know.’
‘If Ireland’s famous for literary geniuses, what’s Manhattan famous for then?’ she growled. ‘Smartasses who ought to go home and mind their own business?’
‘I remember the other thing Ireland’s famed for - the friendliness,’ Tyler added with great insincerity.
Cleo changed her mind: he could be ruthless and edgy when he wanted.
‘That’s the other great Irish schtick, isn’t it?’ Tyler went on.
‘A hundred thousand welcomes. Cead mile failte.’ He pronounced the Irish words perfectly. ‘I love those Irish phrases. What’s that other one … ? “Thanks be to God.” That’s cute. What’s it in Gaelic?’
He was winding her up, Cleo told herself. ‘Buiochas le Dia,’
she translated. ‘Wonderful,’ Tyler nodded in delight and if he hadn’t been so irritating when he was being smart, she would think he looked adorable.
Even his ears suited him. Not those big jugs that stuck out of the side of some men’s heads when they had cropped hairstyles. No. Tyler Roth’s ears were neat, refined, sat close to the perfectly shaped skul and didn’t detract from the chisel ed masculinity of his jaw. God, why was she noticing these things? ‘Irish phrases are so cute. Like the girls. No offence.’ He held up his hands. ‘I wouldn’t care to offend you, Cleo, by implying anything with that comment.