The other two women, who had also been put forward as possible candidates by his friend Russell—the only friend he’d trusted with his problem—hadn’t worked out either. Not being able to have sex for a year hadn’t appealed to either of them. They’d both been looking for the real deal. Soul mates. An ideal he had no faith in whatsoever any more, not after being left humiliated at the altar five years ago by the woman he’d thought he’d spend the rest of his life with. His disaster of a non-wedding, which he now liked to think of as a near miss, had put paid to that ridiculous notion.
Nope, it was short-term, uncomplicated relationships for him from here on in. Or a purely business one like this needed to be, thanks to the bizarre demands stipulated in Great-Aunt Faith’s will.
Just as he was reaching for the glass of water on his desk to relieve his parched throat, there was a loud knock on the door and a petite woman with bright blue eyes and a riot of blonde curls walked purposefully into his office and placed a small basket of assorted cakes on his desk with a flourish.
He frowned down at them, then up at her. ‘I didn’t order any cakes.’
‘I know. They’re an excuse to get some face-to-face time with you,’ she said, folding her arms and looking down at him with a determined expression that made his stomach sink.
‘I’ve been trying to get a meeting with you for weeks but your PA keeps fobbing me off,’ she went on before he had a chance to say anything. ‘So I’ve been forced to take drastic action. On the other hand, I’ve brought you some really fantastic cakes. I made them myself. So it’s actually a win for you.’ She flashed him a half-smile that didn’t entirely convince him she was as self-assured as her spirited speech had made her seem.
He leant back in his chair again and studied her in bemusement.
She looked young, maybe early-to-mid-twenties, with a sweetly pretty face. Her abundance of curly blonde hair, which she’d tried to tame with an Alice band, stuck out around her head, probably due to the windy day. She surveyed him back with intelligent eyes, her button nose, which was scattered with freckles, wrinkling a little under his gaze. She seemed to him to have the air of someone who could cause a great deal of mischief if she put her mind to it.
As he scrutinised her she shifted on the spot and visibly swallowed as if rapidly losing her nerve in the face of his silence. It seemed her blustery, confident entrance had all been an act to get past the temporary PA sitting outside his office. Soon to be his ex-temporary PA.
‘And you are?’ he said with a sigh. He really didn’t need this extra hassle today; his nerves were already strung as tightly as they’d go and he had an important meeting in ten minutes which he needed to have his head in the game for.
‘Solitaire Saunders. Soli for short. That’s what everyone ends up calling me, anyway. It’s a bit of a mouthful otherwise.’
His eyebrow twitched involuntarily upwards.
‘Solitaire? Like the diamond?’
She gave a self-conscious grin. ‘No, like the card game. My dad was a huge fan of games. He set up our board game café on Hampstead High Street—in the unit we rent from your company.’
Board game café?
He was surprised anyone could make a living from a business like that, though, judging by the increasingly irate letters he now remembered receiving from the woman running the place—presumably this woman—after they’d notified her of the upcoming rent raise, perhaps she didn’t.
Despite his reluctance to get into this with her right now, he knew he ought to nip the issue in the bud while she was here in front of him. His executive assistant was fed up with having to field her constant phone calls asking to speak to him directly and he’d never been one to shy away from a legitimate business conflict when it reared its head. Its pretty, curly blonde head in this instance.
‘The trouble is, Soli,’ he said, splaying his hands on the desktop, ‘the market’s moved on a lot since you last signed the rental agreement a couple of years ago—’
‘Four years ago,’ she butted in. ‘And it was my father who signed it. I’ve been running it without him for the last three of them.’
‘Okay, I don’t have the exact details to hand right now,’ he said, trying to remain patient, ‘but I do know that the market’s moved even more since then.’ He lifted his hands, palms towards her. ‘We’re not monsters here, we’ve actually held back on increasing the rent on a lot of our property because we know how hard it can be for small independent businesses to survive in London, but we have to move with the times.’
‘You know how hard it is to run a struggling business, do you?’ she shot back. ‘How utterly heartbreaking it is when a once thriving business starts to fail? How demoralising that can be?’ Her voice rose on each question. She glanced pointedly around his plush office with its high-end furniture and enviable London view then fixed him with a challenging look, her cheeks flushed a deep shade of pink but the expression in her eyes unwavering.
He experienced a shiver of guilt, but knew he couldn’t let it get to him. Everyone he came across these days seemed to have a sob story to tell him so that he’d agree to charge them less money for the property they rented from his company. He couldn’t let his personal feelings get in the way. This was business.
‘We live above the café,’ she said before he could form his careful reply. ‘If we can’t afford to keep the business going we’ll lose our home as well, but then I don’t expect you’d know how a threat like that feels either!’
If only that were the case.
He began to shake his head, but she took a step closer to his desk and put her hands over her heart, her cute little nose wrinkling again in a way that made something twist uncomfortably in his chest.
‘Is there any way I can persuade you to hold off for a little while longer?’ she asked in a voice wobbly with emotion. ‘Please. Just give me a chance to get a bit more business in.’
‘How do you intend to do that?’ he asked, genuinely interested. ‘Aren’t there a lot of other café options on Hampstead High Street?’
Her bold stance deflated a little. ‘Yes. Unfortunately there are. But they’re all chains owned by big corporations.’ She waved a dismissive hand. ‘We offer a more local, family-run atmosphere. And board games! Who doesn’t love playing board games?’
He shuffled a little in his chair. ‘Can’t say I’m a huge fan of them.’
‘You just haven’t played the right ones yet,’ she persisted. ‘If you come in you’ll see how much fun they can be. We have four hundred games to choose from. Something for everyone. We’ll even teach you how to play them.’