Always and Forever (32 page)

Gender equality is an important belief in Roth Hotels. One of our core beliefs.’

Cleo nodded. A fabulous idea had just occurred to her. ‘I can see that equality is important to you,’ she said gravely.

‘Actual y, I thought of another cute Irish phrase.’

‘Real y?’

‘Real y. You’l love it. It’s very you. Pog mo thon.’ Surely whoever had taught him his few Irish phrases wouldn’t have taught him how to say ‘kiss my backside’?

‘What’s that mean?’ he asked.

‘It means good luck,’ said Cleo, smiling broadly. ‘It’s one of the older sayings, dates back to the er … Brian Boru years, I think.’ A bit of historical flimflam would impress him. ‘And because it’s so old, it’s considered pure Irish, rich and ful of meaning. “May the glorious luck of the Irish and the blessing of God be upon you at al times” is the longer, probably more accurate translation.’

‘It’s a short phrase to say al that, isn’t it?’ ‘Irish is a lyrical and unusual language,’ Cleo pointed out. ‘Simple words have many meanings.’

‘Get you. Say it again so I can learn it,’ he commanded.

Cleo had to bite the inside of her cheek to stop herself laughing. ‘Pogue - a bit like the word rogue … mmo hoe-in, but say it quickly. Hoe-in. Ho-in.’

‘Pog mo thoin,’ he repeated. ‘Gotcha.’

Yes, Cleo smiled inwardly. Gotcha. She couldn’t wait to see him tel people to kiss his ass in Irish.

They talked about their jobs. Pride meant Cleo deliberately didn’t tel him about the Wil ow or her rapid departure from Carrickwel . She was sure he’d know about her beloved hotel if he’d been sniffing around Carrickwel for land to buy, and somehow she didn’t want him to know that she was one of the people who’d essential y run a beautiful hotel into the ground. For the same reason, she’d told him her surname was Mal ey. Malin wasn’t a common name.

Tyler explained that he’d worked his way up through the family business.

‘People think nepotism gets you everywhere,’ he said. ‘It gets your foot in the door, but you’ve got to work to get on.

My dad believes in hard work for everyone and harder work for me. He says he used to push himself twice as hard as everyone else because the buck stopped with him, and that’s what I do too.’

Cleo would have loved to have explained about her upbringing, but she didn’t. Her parents were retired from a smal business, she said, miserably aware she was deceiving him and disliking herself for it.

Tyler lived in Manhattan and it sounded like another world to Cleo.

‘Where are you living?’ he asked.

‘With my friend Trish,’ Cleo said before she’d had time to think about it. Staying with her best friend and sharing Trish’s not precisely comfortable futon would not sound like the behaviour of a thrusting young hotel executive.

‘An apartment in the city?’ asked Tyler.

‘Er, no, a house, a town house actual y, with another friend of ours,’ Cleo added. It wasn’t entirely untrue. Trish did live in a house and there was a friend living with her. Another six in fact. Stil , it wasn’t as if Tyler was ever going to see it.

‘We’re outside the city, we prefer a more laid-back lifestyle, you know; the city’s so busy.’ City apartments were way beyond the gang’s col ective means. ‘Right,’ said Tyler, nodding in understanding.

The plan was to end the night in a pub, the Shepherd, where Trish and Cleo had spent so many evenings when they were in col ege. As arranged, Trish and some of the gang were there. As Cleo hadn’t sent the emergency text message that meant ‘Help, this is a nightmare, phone me and get me out of here!’, Trish was waiting, eyes on stalks to see what Tyler was like. He must have passed some invisible test if Cleo was stil with him and there had been no involvement with security guards or the police. ‘Hi, Cleo, long time no see!’ chirped Trish across the bar as Tyler and Cleo arrived.

The whole bar craned their heads to look and there was a buzz of approval at the sight of such a handsome couple. ‘I didn’t know we were meeting your friends,’ was al Tyler said as he fol owed her to the gang at the corner table. ‘I didn’t know they’d be here,’ Cleo said, sure she was being unconvincing.

‘What a surprise!’ Trish went on, hamming it up like the third spear carrier in an amateur theatre production.

Settling down on the stool beside Trish, Cleo gave her a poke in the ribs to say shut up.

‘Drink, anyone?’ asked Tyler.

Miraculously, the whole group, eight of them, had just finished their drinks and would have another, thank you very much. Tyler didn’t quail at the size of the order. ‘That’s two pints of Guinness, a Paddy, two Diet Cokes, a Heineken, an orange juice for you …’ Diane, whose skirt Cleo was wearing, smiled, ‘a gin and tonic …’ Trish batted her eyelids, ‘and a sparkling water for Cleo.’

As he went to the bar, Cleo glared at the rest of them.

‘Have you lot no pride?’ she demanded. ‘He’s my date, not the Al ied Irish Bank!’

‘Sorry,’ several of them chorused.

‘Yeah, sorry,’ said Barry, owner of the treasured REM CDs.

‘Didn’t mean to be scroungey,’ muttered Ron, who, Trish said, never put the loo seat down.

‘Your date, is he?’ murmured Trish. ‘I thought he was the living incarnation of revenge being a dish best served cold.’

‘Shudup,’ hissed Cleo, but she was smiling. ‘I’m working on it.’ ‘I think he’s gorgeous,’ said Trish’s new friend, Carol.

She was indeed model material. Slender as a reed, palely blonde and very Gwyneth Paltrow.

Cleo said nothing.

Tyler fitted into the group very wel , mainly because he had the gift of being able to talk to anybody. Carol, in particular, was very chatty with him and to Cleo’s intense irritation, Tyler chatted right back.

It was when Carol was offering to show him around - how dare she? - that Tyler said he’d try out his Irish phrases to see if he could remember them. Everyone applauded his cead mil e failte, and his go raibh maith agat. But what real y made them fal off their stools laughing was when he told Trish to ‘pog mo thoin’. ‘Cleo, you brat, I bet you taught him that! What a nasty trick!’ Carol said, patting Tyler’s arm in a very intimate gesture. ‘So it doesn’t mean what you said it did,’ Tyler said, unperturbed. Cleo was puce with mortification at this proof of her nastiness. ‘No!’ shrieked Carol, stil clinging, as she explained the true definition.

‘Cleo likes teasing me,’ Tyler said. ‘Don’t you?’

And he stared at her. Cleo felt her heart flip.

‘He’s nice, isn’t he?’ said Trish in surprise an hour later, as she, Cleo and the rest of the housemates sat on the Nightlink bus, nicknamed the Drinklink because people took it home after a night on the town. None of the housemates’ funds ran to taxis, although Cleo had pretended to Tyler she was getting one. It would look so uncool to clamber onto the bus with the lads like a couple of school girls while he was hopping into a cab. ‘He is lovely,’

Cleo said, sitting back on the bus seat dreamily, ignoring the diesel fumes. More than lovely.

‘Of course, there’s no future in it,’ Trish went on. ‘He’s ani international, rich, playboy type with a wealthy daddy. He’s probably got a mil ion girls on the go,’ she added. ‘Those guys always do.’

‘Yeah,’ said Cleo, feeling downcast. She knew that someone like Tyler could easily have a girlfriend in every port but al evening he’d talked to her as though she was the only person in the universe, despite the horrible Carol’s attempts to cling to him. He’d loved talking to everyone else in the group, sure, but he was one of those people who made you feel as if he was there for you alone. It was very flattering.

‘It’s just a laugh,’ she said now to Trish, and then she realised she was lying. She had never real y lied to Trish before. You weren’t supposed to lie to best friends and they had been through so much together. But Trish would laugh at her if she told her that she no longer wanted to get some horrible revenge on Tyler Roth. She had changed her mind.

Instead, she wanted to feel his arms around her, holding her close, and to feel his breath on her skin. How had this happened?

There was an envelope marked ‘personal’ for her at her place on reception the next morning. More of Tyler’s extravagant scrawl. Funny how his handwriting didn’t look so much like that of a tyrant any more. Forceful, Cleo would have said now, if asked to describe the writer of the short missive.

For a man of many words, Tyler was succinct in print:

‘Second date? What would you like to do? Don’t want to ride roughshod al over you.’

For a giddy moment, Cleo imagined Tyler Roth booted and spurred, ready to ride roughshod. Then she dragged herself back to the current century. Get a grip, Cleo!

‘Mr Roth left that for you,’ said Stan, one of Cleo’s old friends from the night shift. ‘But he has your name wrong on the envelope. He’s written “Cleo Mal ey” not “Malin”.’

‘You didn’t correct him?’ asked Cleo anxiously.

‘Nah,’ said Stan, ‘he was in a rush. Going into breakfast for a meeting with some woman, some babe I should say!’ he added appreciatively.

‘A babe.’ said Cleo, in much the same way as Lady Bracknel enunciated the word ‘handbag’.

Stan, clearing up his things to make way for the day shift, nodded. ‘Some guys have al the luck,’ he muttered.

The thought of the babe bounced around in Cleo’s brain for the next hour and a half. Whom exactly would Stan consider

‘a babe’? Someone utterly stunning, or more of a girl-next-door type? That question haunted her.

But it was impossible to concentrate on checking out the man in Number 172, who insisted that he hadn’t had anything from the mini-bar, even though housekeeping had logged him down as having consumed two whiskeys, three vodkas and a Toblerone when they had gone in at turn-down the night before. Cleo was working alongside Norah, Paige and a sweet Italian guy cal ed Nero. She processed Mr Liar from Number 172, then turned to Paige, who was beside her.

‘I’m just going to the loo, OK?’ she whispered and fled. She did go to the loo, for a quick look at her flushed face, and then she went into the dining room where breakfast was being served. It was stil only half-eight but the majority of the business clientele had either left or were finishing off their breakfast meetings. The people staying in McArthur’s for fun were beginning to amble down for their breakfast, their relaxed dress and progress a sharp contrast to the business-suited men and women, who had places to go to, people to see and no time for another Danish pastry.

Cleo tried to look as if she was on official hotel business rather than spying on Tyler bloody Roth. She peered round the enormous dining room as if searching for a particular guest so she could deliver an important message. Then she spotted him. At a nice, intimate table, without his henchman, Larry McKenzie.

It was just Tyler and a woman who could indeed be described as a babe. Exquisitely groomed, dressed in black, she had the shiny mahogany hair that Cleo envied.

Al glossy and I don’t need serum for my hair, thank you very much.’ Cleo turned in fury and flounced out of the restaurant. How dare he? That woman was hardly a breakfast meeting - she was breakfast! ‘You feeling OK?’

whispered Paige when she got back to the reception desk.

‘I’m fine,’ hissed Cleo.

Paige nodded sagely. ‘You can tel me at break,’ she said.

By the time Tyler appeared, later that afternoon, Cleo was a shimmering haze of bad temper. The Malin family would have known that when Cleo’s eyes glittered and her normal y smiling mouth set like concrete into a thin line, it was time to beware. Tyler Roth, on the other hand, had no idea.

‘Hi,’ he said, leaning down on the reception desk and giving Cleo a sexily lazy look that last night would have melted her bones. Today, her bones were hard as reinforced steel. ‘Hel o,’ she said frostily.

He suddenly caught on that something was amiss. ‘Bad day?’ he asked, arching one eyebrow.

Cleo thought of how he hadn’t shrugged off Carol the night before, and how he’d breakfasted with an identikit glamour babe, albeit with different hair, this morning. He probably did have a girl in every city in the world.

‘Oh, leave me alone,’ she snapped.

‘What’s up with you, Cleo?’ he said equably.

‘I have an early business breakfast tomorrow,’ she said,

‘and I want to go home and fix my hair, my make-up and my nails so I’m perfect for it.’

Ah, he got it.

‘Do you have spies al over the hotel?’ he asked. ‘Not spies

- they’re my friends, they tel me things. Like when a guy who is interested in me suddenly has a very cosy breakfast with another woman.’

‘Right,’ said Tyler, ‘you mean gossip?’

‘I do not mean gossip!’ she snapped back.

‘If I told you she was gay would that make a difference?’ he asked.

‘She’s gay?’ said Cleo. ‘The girl you met is gay?’ That did make a slight difference. It was unlikely that Tyler was interested in the babe romantical y, if she was indeed gay, but then some men loved a chal enge. ‘Is she gay?’ she demanded. ‘No,’ he admitted. ‘I just thought I’d check if it made any difference.’

‘You bastard,’ she said. ‘You are so annoying. Why did I go out with you last night?’

‘Because you like me?’ he said.

‘No, I don’t,’ Cleo replied. ‘I don’t like people who go off

“and have breakfast with strange women and then laugh at me and pretend the strange woman is gay and ‘

‘Wel ,’ he interrupted, ‘if I said it was a business meeting, which it was, you wouldn’t have believed me; you’d have thought I was trying to throw you off the scent. In fact, it was a business meeting. She just happens to be an extremely lovely woman.’ He enjoyed saying it, Cleo was sure. ‘A woman I do find extremely attractive,’ Tyler went on.

Cleo control ed the urge to hit him.

‘However,’ Tyler continued, ‘she’s happily married and has no interest in me whatsoever - not that I’ve ever tried, in case you want to know. We talk business, that’s al . You’re the one who’s so hot on career women. Don’t you think it’s possible for a woman to have a great career and look good? You do both.’ ‘Don’t think you’l get round me by flattering me,’ Cleo snapped, although she had to admit she was a bit gratified. It did al sound very plausible, but then maybe Tyler was the sort of guy who always had a plausible excuse for his behaviour. Cleo decided that she wasn’t going to be one of his conquests. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said formal y, getting to her feet. ‘You know this was a mistake. You and I, we come from different worlds.