Soli?’ Xavier asked brusquely, jolting her back to the present.
A shiver of disquiet tickled down her spine. Was he worried she wasn’t mature enough to deal with this?
‘I’m twenty-one,’ she said, setting back her shoulders and fixing him with a determined stare. ‘Old enough to know my own mind,’ she added firmly.
His eyes assessed her for a couple of beats more before he nodded. ‘Okay, then. I guess that’s everything we need to discuss today.’ He put his phone down on his desk, arranging it so it sat parallel with his keyboard, before looking up and giving her his full attention again. ‘Look, I appreciate this is a lot to take in right now, so why don’t you go away and have a think about it, to make sure you’re comfortable with everything we’ve discussed? It’s a big decision to make and I don’t expect you to sign up for it until you’ve had a chance to check me out first.’
She nodded jerkily. Despite her bravado, she was actually glad of the chance to go and think about this away from his discombobulating presence, just to make sure she hadn’t overlooked something important. ‘Okay. I’ll do that. It really wouldn’t do to marry an axe murderer by mistake,’ she said, flashing him a jokey grin.
Ignoring her attempt at levity, he opened a drawer in his desk and took out a business card which he handed to her. ‘This has my personal mobile number and address on it. Give me a call when you’re ready to talk again.’ He paused and frowned. ‘But don’t leave it too long or I might find someone else to marry in the meantime.’
For a second she wasn’t sure whether he was joking or not. He didn’t seem to do smiling, at least not the kind that made him look as though he was genuinely happy. Cynical. That was what he came across as. And reserved.
She wondered fleetingly what had happened to him to make him like that, but pushed the thought away. It wasn’t important right now and she really shouldn’t allow herself to get emotionally attached to him anyway, not if this was going to work as a purely business arrangement.
‘Okay, thanks. I’ll get in touch very soon,’ she replied, taking the card from his fingers.
She shot him a tense smile, then got up from the desk on shaky legs and turned to go.
‘And Solitaire.’
She turned back.
‘If I find out the details of this proposition have been leaked to the Press I’ll know where to find you.’ There was a heavy pause before he added, ‘And you’ll find your business and your family swiftly evicted from my property.’
‘Understood,’ she said, then left the office of her potential future husband, wondering what in the heck she’d just got herself into.
* * *
Back at the café, she relieved Callie, who waitressed for them a lot and had kindly agreed to work an extra shift that morning so Soli could go to the McQueen Property office. Once she’d caught up with the daily tasks and served a sudden rush of customers, she sat behind the serving counter with her laptop and typed Xavier’s name into the search engine with trembling fingers.
She’d already looked him up before the meeting, of course, scouring the web pages for something she could use in her defence against him, but to her frustration had found him to be squeaky clean. At least at first glance. She needed to put in more thorough due diligence here though if she was going to commit to live with the man for a year. The last thing she needed was to find herself sucked into something she’d not anticipated and then couldn’t escape from without causing more harm to her situation.
But as hard as she looked, she couldn’t find anything that threw even the meanest of shadows over his reputation.
The only things that came up about him were on gossip sites, where they mentioned him in relation to the high-society women he’d had flings with over the last few years. The man appeared to be some kind of international playboy, always showing up at high-profile fundraisers and gallery openings with a different, instantly recognisable woman on his arm. He was like a character from one of the romantic novels she liked to gobble up like sweets for escapism from her busy, stressful existence. She’d never really believed such a person could exist in real life, but here he was, a living, breathing, alpha male business tycoon.
So he checked out okay online.
Picking up her phone, she called a friend who was a police officer in the Met and asked him if there was any way he could have a check around about Xavier, pretending she was doing it for business reasons concerning the café. Mercifully, her friend seemed to buy that and asked her to leave it with him.
She spent the rest of the day in a jumpy, nerve-filled state and was mightily relieved when her friend called her back in the early evening to let her know that nothing negative at all had come back to him with regard to Xavier, either personally or with his business. It seemed he was an upstanding citizen of the realm.
The only thing left to do now was to check out exactly where his house was using an online map app—just to make sure he wasn’t expecting her to live in some kind of broken-down hovel. Not that she expected to encounter that. Judging by the high-end furniture and breathtaking elegance of his office, she couldn’t imagine his house being a place she wouldn’t like to spend time in. She could have happily lived right there in his office if he’d asked her to, with that wonderful view over the water. It certainly beat the one she had from their living room window over the busy, vehicle-choked high street, or the one of the bins in their small back yard from the bedroom she shared with her sister.
Not that she was complaining about her lot. Home was where her family was and she’d been happy living here above the café with them. Staying in this flat had made her feel closer to her father somehow. She could still picture him sitting in the battered old leather armchair by the window after long shifts in the café, with a paperback resting on his knee and his requisite triple-shot black coffee on the small table beside him. He’d hated working at the bank and after twenty years he’d finally given up corporate life and they’d all downsized so he could run the board game café, a dream he’d had for years.
Sadly, he’d only worked there for five years before he died. Still, Soli was glad he’d had the opportunity to realise his dream. Ever since she’d lost him the café had become a symbol of hope for her, as well as a reminder that hard work and dedication paid off—something she’d been slow to learn in her younger years, to her everlasting shame.
Shaking off the guilt that always gave her a painful jab when she remembered how selfishly she’d acted in her teens, she got up from behind the counter to close up after the last stragglers made their way out onto the street, waving cheerily to her and calling their thanks. If only they had more regulars like them, the type that bought food and drink every hour as they played, the café would have some hope of survival.
She just needed to find a way to entice those types of people to walk through the door.
After locking up behind them and giving the floor a sweep and the tables one last wipe, Soli walked into the middle of the room and tried to survey it with objective eyes. Why weren’t people coming in as much as they’d used to? Sure, it was a bit shabby-looking now after years of wear and tear and it could probably do with a bit of sprucing up, but it had a friendly, comfortable aura to it, and didn’t people love shabby chic these days?
She hated the idea of messing with what her father had done to the café. He’d sanded and varnished the wooden tables himself, painted the walls, chosen the now slightly chipped crockery,
