Page 28 of Sparring Partners
“Night, Luca. Have a nice, pleasant evening.”
CHAPTERTHIRTEEN
Luca shut down the spreadsheet and tilted his head at Alex.
“You happy with the way it’s all going?” It was a rhetorical question. The hotel was moving from strength to strength. It was, as the saying went, a gold mine. Just one of Alex’s many.
“What do you think?” Alex eyed him over the rim of his cup.
Luca laughed. “I think you should open more hotels. Replicate what you have here because it works.”
“Its success is down to you.”
“There are a lot of people in the industry just like me, who’d have achieved the same result. I could put you in touch with a dozen of them right now. Which you know I’m going to have to do.”
Alex sighed, a deep, exaggerated sound. “I don’t know why you seem so keen to go. Have you got another offer? Somewhere that’s putting pressure on you to give them an answer?” Alex leant forward, his voice taking on a sharper edge.
“I’ve always got offers.” And it was true. Most he could dismiss as wrong for one reason or another, but there had been one or two that had been tempting, had made him stop and think. But he’d declined, unsure why.
“Well, I don’t want to have this conversation now. I don’t want to have it at all.”
“Don’t be petulant. And stop pouting. Wewillhave the conversation, because if we don’t you’ll be left without a general manager. You wouldn’t want anything to mess with your bottom line.”
“You know how to wound me, don’t you?”
Luca grinned. “Yes, right in the bank balance.”
“Ouch! Painful. You know me far too well.”
“After all these years? Yes, I think I can say I do.”
They both laughed, heading off the conversation they would soon have to confront.
“Talking of offers, Ry told me you were on a date with Jonathan the other night.” Alex lounged back in the sofa, his smile inviting, intimate. It was Alex Love at his most dangerous. “Jonathan looked… what was the word Ry used? Ah, yes. Smitten. Pure puppy dog, apparently. Except there was a fly in the ointment, otherwise known as Adrian Hardy. Who, apparently, wasn’t looking too happy that you and Mr. Owen-Jones had a romantic evening planned. Why would that be?”
“Jonathan and I were not about to embark on a romantic evening. It most certainly wasn’t a date. Dinner. Two friends. That’s all.” Luca snapped, harder than he’d meant.
Confusion, edged with concern, replaced the mischievous glint in Alex’s eyes.
“R—ight.” Alex stretched the word as he eyed Luca. “Your personal life’s your own, but if something’s bothering you…”Then we can talk, and it’ll go no further.It was the subtext they both understood. It was also the truth. Good friends, who’d long ago been more. Each knew the other’s strengths and weaknesses, faults and foibles, and more than a few of their fears and secrets. More than anything, they trusted each other.
Luca hesitated. What had happened with Adrian had unnerved him, turned him upside down and shaken him. He felt like he was in a snow dome, all his thoughts and feelings swirling around him.
“Jonathan’s a nice guy…” Nice. The word caught in his chest, and he coughed to clear his throat. “He’s under the impression we’re more than we are. I made it crystal clear from the start that anything between us was strictly no strings, and there was no way I wanted it to lead anywhere. He said he was onboard with that, but now?—”
“So what is it, some kind of friends with benefits arrangement? The only benefits I’ve ever known you to be interested in have been about, I don’t know, pensions and private medical cover. The other kind, you know, just casual, that’s never been your thing.”
“Yes, well, I thought it was about time I changed my M.O., because being Mr. Relationship hasn’t exactly done me much good, has it? Sorry,” he said, “I shouldn’t have snapped. But complications were exactly what I wasn’t looking for when I came here. Yet now I appear to have them. The thing is, I like Jonathan. But what I like and value is his friendship. Not anything beyond that.”
“His friendship. Okay. But what about the benefits? They seem to have been dropped from the equation.”
“Because they have been. By me.”
“Ah. That, I’m guessing, was an awkward conversation.”
Luca puffed out a long breath. “We weren’t… a good match. It’s not like we lit up the night sky. So I thought he’d be okay with it.”
Alex barked out a laugh. “Okay with it? Are you serious? There isn’t a man on earth who wants to be told he’s as much fun in the sack as a lump of wood. How’d he take it?”
