Michelle Conder – Russian's Ruthless Demand (страница 7)

‘A month!’ Her eyebrows shot up. ‘How much of it is already completed?’

He counted a list off with his fingers. ‘The ice blocks have been harvested and stacked in the warehouse, the arched corridors are done and waiting to be tractored onto the site. The vaulted steel support walls are up, and the construction crew and some of the ice carvers are in place.’

‘That’s not a lot.’ She did some calculations in her head. ‘I’d say a month is leaning heavily on the optimistic side of things.’

‘So you’ll do it?’

‘I didn’t say that,’ she said, feeling railroaded.

‘Why don’t you go and freshen up and think about it? I need your answer now. This morning.’

‘That’s impossible.’

He shrugged. ‘I have found nothing is impossible, Miss Harrington, for good or bad.’

Something in his tone, a bleakness, hit her in the stomach and made her pause. Unable to understand it she frowned. ‘I can’t decide about this on the spot.’

He folded his arms across his impressive chest and she wondered how he managed to look so fresh on probably less sleep than she had had. ‘Why? Do you not have the authority to make the decisions?’

No, she didn’t. But that was another thing she wouldn’t tell him. ‘Businesses don’t function like that.’

‘I’m only asking for a month of your time. If you can’t do it say so now.’

Fuming at him and desperate to use the bathroom she shoved the blanket aside—refusing to see it as a thoughtful gesture on his behalf—and swung her legs over the edge of the sofa. Her dress was bunched up around her hips and she flushed as she noticed Lukas’s eyes drop to her legs.

Expecting him to make some sexist comment she was surprised when he turned away toward the window instead. Another nice gesture? Probably not.

Escaping to the bathroom she was appalled to see she looked like a bad rendition of a panda. A panda with really bad hair.

Well, was it any wonder he’d turned away? She was about as attractive as … She stopped. Stared at herself.

‘You do not want that man to find you attractive no matter what you think,’ she told her wide-eyed reflection.

So he was good-looking. Since when had she been shallow enough to want a man for his looks? His body?

Disgusted with her train of thought she splashed warm water onto her face and used a cloth to scrub the excess of make-up away and wished she hadn’t left her clutch purse beside the sofa. Not that it had anything useful in it other than money and her keycard.

Something Lukas had said before reformed in her mind—about her family appreciating her loyalty—made her pause. She wasn’t sure that Isabelle appreciated it as much as she took it for granted but an idea was taking shape.

If Lukas agreed to hire her as a consultant for his project and would form a partnership with Harrington’s, then Isabelle would be forced to sit up and take notice of her achievements. And she had no doubt, given Lukas’s passion for the project, his budget would be huge.

Would Isabelle go for the idea?

Eleanore chewed on her lower lip. She might dislike Lukas Kuznetskov, but as he had said to her, business was business, and she was pretty sure Isabelle would see it the same way. And the opportunities were obvious.

This would be Harrington’s first hotel in Eastern Europe. A foot in the door to another market with zero capital outlay up front. It was like a gift, but a conditional one, because it came with Lukas Kuznetskov attached.

Could she work with a man she found so incredibly attractive and resist him? Eleanore scoffed at her reflection. Well, of course she could.

CHAPTER THREE

‘A PARTNERSHIP?’

Lukas felt his eyebrows climb his forehead. Was the woman crazy? He’d never had a partner in his life. Not that he didn’t admire her chutzpah in putting the idea to him.

She had guts, and he admired that in a person. ‘And you think I’m an opportunist?’ he quipped.

‘I didn’t say that.’

He smiled at her quick back step. ‘First I get the brush-off tune and now I get the suck-up tune. I can’t wait to see what comes next. Will it be the seduction tune?’ Not that he wanted that …

‘Listen, Mr Kuznetskov.’ She planted her hands on her slender hips. ‘I haven’t changed my tune at all. I said you were self-important and obnoxious and comments like that only confirm my view.’

He studied her in her crumpled dress and face free of make-up, her hair pulled back neatly once again. She had the most translucent skin he had ever seen and his fingers itched to trace over her face to see if it was as soft as it appeared. He wondered if she had any idea that standing before him all riled and cranky made him want to channel all that pent-up energy into another activity. One that involved her naked on the carpeted floor and him buried deeply between her soft thighs. All the blood in his body surged south at the idea and it took some effort to force it to return to his brain.

With time running out what he needed to do right now was get Eleanore Harrington’s expertise and knowledge to complete his ice hotel, not be thinking about how her breasts would feel in the palms of his hands.

‘I don’t do partners.’ But he did do money and in accordance with that he named a figure to procure her services that even a pampered heiress would find difficult to refuse.

She blinked her pretty eyes at him a couple of times and he wondered if he’d just found the golden key to securing her cooperation.

‘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.’