Page 58 of Booked for Summer

‘But you’re too keen to find out the answer to your question.’

‘You probably don’t even know,’ she grumped. ‘It’s not like you and he are besties. He doesn’t even have a bestie.’

‘And you’d know this, how?’

‘Oh no, you’re not getting anything out of me. I am a vault.’ She mimed zipping her mouth shut.

‘Yet you expectmeto dish the gossip on our boss?’

Our boss. It was a timely reminder that the thoughts she’d been having about him, the unprofessional, at times downright carnal thoughts, were not appropriate. Even if he wasn’t also ridiculously out of her league and a moody, complicated man fixated on business who didn’t let anyone close. ‘Yes.’

Jeremy chuckled. ‘I like you, Jade Taylor. You’re a breath of fresh Atlantic air wafting across this sometimes-stale island.’

‘Yeah, I definitely don’t waft, I’m more a charge full speed ahead and fall arse over tit sort of girl.’ She turned to face him. ‘And you still haven’t answered the question.’

He pursed his lips. ‘You’re right, I’ve tried, but so far the man has stubbornly refused my overtures of friendship so I don’t have any information on his personal life that can be considered as being direct from the horse’s mouth.’ He bent closer to whisper in her ear. ‘However, the hotel grapevine is buoyant with rumours that he once dated Sabrina Ellis, heir to the international Ellis Hotels and Resorts chain for which, interestingly, our boss used to work.’

She felt her eyes grow wide. ‘He slept with the big boss’s daughter?’

‘Apparently.’ Jeremy smirked. ‘So he’s hardly going to be fazed by, let’s phrase it more delicately than I did earlier, how about “interwork non-curricular relations”?’

Even as she tried to get her head around Jeremy’s convoluted phrasing, she knew it didn’t matter. Being her boss’s booty call was not going to do her self-respect any favours.

‘Have you two come to help, or to gossip?’ Mary bustled over, giving them both a very school-teacherish look. ‘And if it’s the second, why am I not included?’

Jade laughed. Mary was one of those women who took a while to warm to you. Once she’d decided you were okay, though, a twinkle was never very far from her eye. ‘No gossip,’ she lied. ‘Just wondering if Liam Haven is going to turn up.’

‘Well you should be more worried about the line Claire tells me is building at the front door.’

‘There’s aqueue?’ Jade felt a bubble of unrestrained joy.

‘No, I’m just making it up to get you back for not including me in your little tittle-tattle.’ Mary must have seen her bubble burst, because she patted her arm. ‘Actually, the queue isn’t just outside the entrance, it’s winding round the side of the building.’

‘Oh, my God.’ Jade squeezed her hands together, feeling a kick of adrenalin. This was happening. ‘We have real people wanting to come and talk books.’

‘Better hope one of those real peopleisn’tyou-know-who,’ Jeremy whispered. ‘Or you’ll have some explaining to do.’

She watched as he made his way elegantly across the room, bestowing smiles to everyone who looked in his direction. A good friend to have, she mused. How sad that his boss didn’t have the sense, or was too burned by past experience, to see it.

Would Liam turn up? She shook off the worry. He’d only be annoyed if the evening was a failure, and how could it possibly fail when an army of book lovers were chomping at the bit to talk to each other about their specialist chosen subject?

* * *

Liam had a business to run and three resorts to oversee; Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard, and the newest in Provincetown. He was also managing the Nantucket resort until he chose a replacement from the so far very unappealing list of candidates the agency had supplied. Despite that full-on workload, he knew exactly which meetings his company had agreed to sponsor.

Bookish Speed Datingwas not, and would never be, on the list.

So why was he currently staring at a poster for the event, with ‘Haven Resorts’ splashed across it in awful purple font?

He yanked out his phone and called Jeremy. ‘Why the fuck am I sponsoring a fucking speed-dating event at the fucking library?’

There was a pause on the other end, followed by the sound of footsteps. ‘Can you repeat that please? I couldn’t quite hear what you were asking between the f-bombs.’

He pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘Why is “Haven Resorts” plastered all over a poster advertising an event I have no knowledge of?’

‘Maybe the email asking your permission slipped into your junk mail?’

‘I check my junk mail twice a day.’

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