seem to help but let those two words—and the tragedy they encompassed—define her in his mind.
Her spark seemed dimmed, and it hurt him to see it. Maybe this week could be useful in more than one way. He’d help her with her hotel, of course. But how could he not try to bring that spark back too? To make sure she was really okay here, alone with a crumbling hotel, a small boy and her memories.
Just as a friend. Obviously. Because there was no way she’d let him close enough for anything else now, if she never had before. Besides, given the position she was in, he wouldn’t risk it. Not if it would just make things worse for her. All he had to offer was the money she needed and business support maybe. Then he would be on his way. He wasn’t Adem and he never had been.
Dylan knew himself too well—at least as well as Neal, Adem and Sadie always had. He was too like his father to ever settle to one life, one set of possibilities—not when the next big thing could be just past the horizon. So this was temporary, and that was fine with him.
It just meant he only had one week to find the promise in the Azure Hotel and come up with a plan to make it good. He needed to get started on that, pronto. Priorities, Dylan.
Their starters arrived without him ever seeing a menu, but as he examined the seafood platter he decided he didn’t mind at all. If all else failed, at least he could honestly say the food and drink at the Azure were good. It was a start.
‘Did Adem make you memorise all that?’ he asked, as Sadie reached the end of her spiel and reached for a calamari ring.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Well, just some of it.’
‘But it’s all his plan, right?’ He’d known Adem since they’d been eighteen. He’d recognised his friend’s touch before Sadie had reached the second bullet point.
‘How can you possibly...? We worked on it together. Of course.’
‘Of course. But this was his dream.’ He followed her lead with the calamari, hoping it tasted as good as it looked. One piece of rubbery calamari could ruin a whole meal. But, no, it had the perfect mixture of crunch in the batter and melting seafood. He reached for another.
‘His heritage.’ She shrugged, her shoulders slim and delicate now she’d taken her jacket off, and more tanned than he remembered. ‘He wanted a future here for our family.’
Family. Stop thinking about her shoulders, Jacobs, and focus on what really matters to her. ‘Where is Finn, anyway?’
A shadow crossed her face, and he almost regretted asking. ‘He’s staying with my parents for the week. I’m flying over to England to collect him after you leave.’
‘Because I was going to be here?’ That stung. He may not have seen much of the boy since he’d been born, but that didn’t make him any less of an honorary uncle.
Sadie gave him a look—the sort she used to give him in the pub when they’d been twenty-two and he’d been acting like an idiot. ‘To be honest, I didn’t know you were the one coming, which I think you must have guessed. Besides, that wasn’t it. He’s due to start school next year, and my parents wanted to spend some time with him outside the holidays before then.’
There was something else, hiding behind the lightness of her tone, but he couldn’t put his finger on it, and it was still too early to press too hard for information—frustrating as that was. He had to have patience. Eventually she’d open up to him again.
A waiter cleared their starter platters, even as another brought their main course—some sort of delicious, spicy, lamb stew thing that Dylan vowed to find out the name of before he left. But right then he had bigger priorities than his stomach.
‘Okay, so, I’ve heard all the grand plans,’ he said between mouthfuls. ‘How far have you actually got with them?’
Sadie put down her fork and ticked the items off on her fingers as she spoke. ‘The lobby, restaurant and bar are finished, as you’ve seen. So is the spa. Of the bedrooms, the top floor with the penthouse suite—your suite—and the other family suites is done, and the first floor of luxury doubles.’
‘So that leaves you, what?’ He tried to recall the floor numbers from the lift. ‘Another four floors to go? Plus any other reception and function rooms?’
She nodded. ‘We had a timescale planned but...’
‘The money ran out.’ Not a surprise. He’d seen it often enough, even in projects less plagued by tragedy and uncertainty.
‘Yes. So we opened anyway, to try and get enough funds to keep going. But at least one of the floors is uninhabitable as it stands, so occupancy is never very high.’
‘What about the outside space?’ That had to be a selling point in a climate like this.
‘The outside pool needs retiling and the path down to the beach needs some work. Fortunately the inside pool is attached to the spa, so got done in the first wave, before...’ She trailed off, and he knew exactly what she wasn’t saying. Some days, he thought that if he didn’t say it, it might not be true, too.
‘There’s a lot left to do,’ he finished for her, cutting short the moment.
‘That’s why we need your money.’
His fork hit china and he looked down to see he’d eaten the whole bowl without tasting anything beyond that first delicious mouthful. What a waste. He put his cutlery down. ‘Dinner would be worth investing in alone. That was truly delicious.’
She blushed, just a little. ‘I’m glad you enjoyed it. Somehow I suspect one meal isn’t quite enough to win over your shareholders, though.’
‘Maybe not. Okay, listen. I’m going to tell you a bit about my company, and you can decide if you want us involved. If you do...then we can discuss what else I need to see and do, what questions I need answered, before I can take a proposal to the board.’ She’d been straight with him, as far as he could tell. Time for him to do the same.
‘Okay.’ Eyes wide, her nerves were back, he realised, pleased to still be able to read her so well.
‘My company isn’t generally interested in long-term investment. Mostly what we do is take on a failing business, tear it down or build it up until it’s successful, then sell it on.’
‘In that case, I’d think the Azure would be perfect. We have “failing business” written all over us.’ She reached for her wine—a local red, he assumed—and took a gulp.
‘The key is, the business has to have the potential to be a huge success,’ he clarified. ‘In the right hands.’
‘Yours, you mean.’ She sounded more sceptical than Dylan felt was truly necessary.
‘Or whoever we put in charge. In this case...we’d need to be sure that you could turn this place around on your own, with just money and guidance from us.’ Make it clear upfront that he wouldn’t be staying around—not that he imagined she wanted him to.
‘I see.’ This time her tone gave nothing away at all, and he found himself talking just to fill the silence that followed.
‘Unless,
