The Tycoon and the Wedding Planner. Kandy Shepherd
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great to hear you’re such an entrepreneur.’
Kate basked in the admiration she saw in his eyes. At age twenty-eight, she’d had a few false starts to her career; now she was exactly where she wanted to be. ‘I’m still a bit dazed that it’s actually going to happen,’ she said.
Ben turned to Kate. ‘I want you to be our liaison person with Sam—starting from now. I’ll be away on my honeymoon after next week and this week too caught up with work at the hotel.’
She blinked at Ben. ‘Th..that’s a surprise.’
‘But it makes sense,’ said Ben. ‘You know more about the project than anyone else but me. You can start by taking Sam to the site for him to take a look at it. That okay with you, Sam?’
‘Of course,’ said Sam, though Kate thought he looked perturbed.
‘I’ll leave you to two to discuss the details,’ said Ben, ushering Sandy away.
Finally Kate was left alone with Sam, exactly what she’d longed for all evening. She’d never been more aware of his big, broad-shouldered body, his unconventionally handsome face.
Only now she would value a few minutes on her own to think over what had just happened.
Ten minutes ago she’d been ready to drag him outside and arrange a date. Or two. Except now things were very different. She would have to put all such thoughts on hold. Sam was no longer a stranger blown into town for a week, never to be seen again. He was someone with ongoing links to Dolphin Bay. She’d be working with him as a professional in a business capacity.
How could she possibly think she could have any kind of personal relationship with him?
SAM HAD BEEN knocked sideways by the news that he’d be working with Kate on Ben’s new resort development. He’d always enforced a strict rule in the company—no dating clients. Without exception. Not for his employees, not for him. He’d amended a number of his father’s long-standing edicts when he’d taken over but not that one. It made good business sense.
How ironic that it now applied to Kate—and company protocol was too important to him to have one rule for the boss and another for the rest of the team.
He felt like thumping the wall with his clenched fist, right through the tastefully restored wooden boards. He clenched his jaw and uttered a string of curse words under his breath.
He had to get out of this room. On top of his frustration, he felt stifled by all the wedding talk buzzing around him. When it came to his turn to get hitched—his own derailed wedding hadn’t turned him off the idea of getting married one day—he thought elopement would be a great idea.
Then there were the overheard murmurs that had him gritting his teeth. They had all been along the lines of what a shame it was about Kate and Jesse—immediately hushed when he’d come near. Whether that was because they saw him as an interloper, or they could tell he was interested in Kate, he didn’t know. But he didn’t like it.
Everything he’d heard about the oppressive nature of small-town life was true.
He hated everyone knowing his business. How Kate could bear it was beyond his comprehension. Anything smaller than Sydney, with its population of more than four-and-a-half million, would never be for him.
A middle-aged woman was bearing down on them. No doubt she wanted Kate’s opinion on the colour of ribbons on a flower arrangement or some such waste-of-space frivolity.
‘I’m going outside for some air,’ he muttered to Kate and strode away before the woman reached them.
He realised his departure was being watched with interest by everyone else in the room. Tough. There’d be nothing for them to gossip about now. Kate was strictly out of bounds.
It was dark outside now but the moon was full, reflecting on the quietly rippling waters of the bay. He gulped in the cool evening air, then let out those curse words at full volume as he kicked at the solid base of a palm tree as hard as he could.
His first thought was that after the site inspection tomorrow he would get the hell out of Dolphin Bay. But he’d promised to be Ben’s groomsman. He cursed again. He was trapped here—with a woman he wanted but suddenly couldn’t have.
The door opened behind him, a shaft of light falling on the deck. He moved away. He was in no mood to talk. To Ben. To Jesse. To anyone.
‘Sam?’ Her voice was tentative but even without turning around he knew it was Kate.
He turned. There was enough moonlight so he could see the anxiety on her face. She was wringing her hands together. He ached to reach out to her but he kept his hands fisted by his sides.
‘Let’s walk out to the end of the dock,’ she said. ‘You feel like you’re on a boat out there. And no one can overhear us.’
He fell into step beside her. A row of low-voltage sensor lights switched on to light them to the dock. The builder in him admired the electrics. His male soul could only think of the beautiful woman beside him and regret about what might have been.
They reached the end of the dock without speaking. A light breeze coming off the water brought with it the tang of the sea and lifted and played with the soft curls around Kate’s face. She seemed subdued, as if the moonlight had sucked all that wonderful vivacity from her.
She turned to him. ‘I had no idea you were building the resort.’
‘I had to keep it confidential. I didn’t know you were involved in any way.’
‘It was the first time I heard I was to liaise with you. I hadn’t seen that coming.’ She looked up at him. Her face was pale in the weak, shimmering light, her eyes shadowed. ‘This...this changes things, doesn’t it?’
‘I’m afraid it does,’ he said, knowing from the regret in her eyes that she was closing the door on him before it got any more than halfway open.
‘It...it means I have to say no to that date,’ she said.
One part of him was plunged into dismay at the tolling finality of her words, the other was relieved that he hadn’t had to say them first.
‘It means I have to rescind the offer,’ he said gruffly. ‘I have an iron-clad no-dating-the-clients rule.’
Her short, mirthless laugh was totally unlike her usual throaty chime. ‘Me too. I’ve never thought it was a good idea. There can be too many consequences if the dating doesn’t work out but you still have to work together.’
‘Agreed,’ he said. ‘There are millions of dollars at stake here.’ And his company’s reputation—especially at the time of a publicly scrutinised buy-out bid. The company had to come first again—as it always did. This time, it came ahead of him dating the only woman who had seriously interested him since his broken engagement. Again he had that sense of the business as a millstone, weighing him down with protocol and obligation—as it had since he’d been fourteen years old.
Kate laughed that mirthless laugh again. ‘Funny thing is, I suspect it’s Ben’s clumsy attempt at matchmaking and it’s totally backfired.’
He gave a snort of disbelief. ‘You think so?’
‘The groomsman thing? The cooked-up excuse to get me to show you the land when there’s no real need for me to?’
‘My take on it is that Ben thought you knew more than anyone else about the plans for the new resort. You were the best person for the job. Why would you believe any differently?’
‘I guess so,’ she said with a self-deprecating quirk of her pretty mouth. ‘But the out-of-the blue request to be a groomsman?’
Sam snapped his fingers. ‘I get it—you were concerned an extra member of the wedding party would