More Than Just One Night (The Selwood Sisters Novellas) (2 page)

Being so busy she rarely had time to manage a
proper conversation with Fern. Tonight, she would have to do it. The only
problem was how to word her concerns without causing Fern to take umbrage and
leave. The last thing she wanted to do was lose her daughter over this.

Fern was beating eggs in a bowl. Her
spreadsheet, she noticed, was already spattered.

“Keep it in the bowl, Fern,” she snapped as she
retrieved the sheet of paper. “I need this for a meeting, and I don’t have time
to print another copy.”

“Well, you shouldn’t have left it there,
then.”

Cora pressed her lips together. It was her
kitchen. She had a right to leave her paperwork wherever she damn well liked.

“You’re always like this in the morning,”
Fern said. “Grumpy. You are
so
not a morning person.”

Cora said tightly, “I have to go.”

“Oh, Mum,” Fern called as she neared the
door. “We’re out of milk. I’ve just used the last in my eggs. You’ll get some
more today, won’t you?”

She was doing her best to keep the family
business going in a tough economic climate; her schedule was so packed she’d be
lucky to take a bathroom break. She certainly wouldn’t have time to run out for
milk. She’d show Fern grumpy.

“Are your arms and legs painted on, then?”
she said as she swung around.

Fern’s eyes widened. “What?”

“
You
used the milk,
you
replace
it. And make sure you clean up the kitchen when you’ve finished. I don’t want
to come home to your mess all over the place. It’s about time you thought about
someone other than yourself.” Cora stopped herself before she could say more
than she wanted to, and stalked out.

When she reached the office Cora had to put
Fern and her so-called boyfriend out of her mind, as difficult as it was to do.
Eric, her husband’s long-term friend and a non-executive director of the
company was waiting for her in the outer office. She occasionally called on him
when she needed moral support in a meeting and because he’d always been so much
like Paul, his views gave her a clue to the decisions that Paul might have
taken in the same circumstances. She called on him less now than she had in the
first years following Paul’s death, but still
, he
believed he had a right to advise her on anything and everything, and not just
the business at hand.

She’d always felt that he disapproved of her
taking over from Paul, and that nothing she did was quite good enough. The
irony was that Selwoods was
her
father’s business. Paul had been
production manager, eager to step up when her parents had died overseas and
left the business to their three daughters. He’d proven to be a very capable
managing director, though, and she’d only had the confidence to take on the
role herself because she’d learned so much from him.

“Steven’s not here yet?” Cora said as she
unlocked her office.

Eric tossed the magazine he’d been reading
onto the coffee table. “I haven’t seen him yet. I’ve asked Lily to make a pot
of coffee and get the conference room set up for us.”

“Oh, have you? Was Lily okay with that?” Cora
entered her office, leaving Eric to follow her.

“Why shouldn’t she be?”

“Because Lily is office
manager
, not
office
junior
.”

Eric shrugged. “She didn’t say she had a
problem with it.”

No, she wouldn’t. That was the trouble with
her youngest sister, she was too nice for her own good. She let people walk all
over her, including that husband of hers. Cora clenched her jaw and brought her
mind back to this morning’s meeting.

“Do you think we have a solid case?”

 “Hard to say. If Steven has justification
for all of the variations he’s claiming, then, yes.”

“He tells me he has.” Cora laid her briefcase
on her desk just as the internal phone rang. She reached for it. “Yes, Joan.” She
caught Eric’s eye and nodded. “Okay, put them in the conference room. We’ll be
along in a moment. Oh, and can you chase up Steven, please?”

She hung up. “They’re early.”

“What do you know about this mediator they’re
bringing?”

“Nothing. I don’t even know which one they
selected.”

Eric raised an eyebrow. “I thought it was
supposed to be a mutual decision?”

“They sent me a list of names they’d been
given by the Institute, but I said they should just choose whichever one became
available first. I really didn’t see the point in slowing things down by being
picky. I’m sure they’re all much the same as each other.”

Eric frowned at the spreadsheet she’d taken
from her briefcase. “This is a mess.”

“Breakfast,” she said. “Fern’s.”

He didn’t try to hide his disapproval.

“Let’s go through to the conference room,”
she said.

Steven arrived as they left the office and
made his excuses for being late.

Cora shook her head. “Never mind that now.
They’re waiting for us.”

The last time she’d seen him he was naked.

Cora forced herself forward, but her brain
wasn’t capable of moving on from this thought.

Alexander Hill was his name she learned from
the introductions.

Alex. 

Her
Alex.

He too looked stunned, but at least he was
still able to talk to make the introductions, whereas she could do nothing but
stare. The client had brought along two senior people she hadn’t met before,
but their names slipped straight from her consciousness. She took her seat, and
only just in time because her legs wobbled alarmingly as she sat. She glanced
at Eric. He was watching Alex, apparently oblivious to her turmoil.

As the mediator, it was Alex’s role to open
the meeting, and he didn’t appear to be in a hurry to do so.

“Before we start,” Alex said, breaking the
expectant silence, “I’d like to have a private word with Coralie—”

“Cora,” Eric interrupted.

Alex glanced at the papers in front of him. “Cora,
yes, I’m sorry. If you don’t mind, gentlemen.”

Eric frowned. “Is this necessary? I don’t see
why you should need to speak to her alone.”

“It’s a private matter.” Alex rose. “It doesn’t
pertain to the case directly.”

“Well, I’m not sure—”

“We’ll go to my office,” Cora interrupted.
She swallowed, avoiding Eric’s gaze, and preceded Alex from the room.

As soon as she’d closed her office door behind
them she said, “They’ll be wondering what’s going on.”

“Let them.”

She paced to her desk, then changed direction
and strode over to the window. “This can’t be the normal way for a mediation to
be run. It must look very odd for the mediator to single one person out to
speak to before the session has even started.”

“No, it’s not normal. But then, this is a
pretty abnormal set of circumstances.”

She stopped pacing, sat in her desk chair and
picked up the pen that was lying on the blotter. “I didn’t know you were the
mediator. You do believe that, don’t you?”

“Of course. I had no idea that you were
involved either. I only knew you as Coralie, remember? No surnames.” He paused,
watching her. “So, is it Selwood?”

She shook her head. “That’s my maiden name.”

Narrowing his eyes, he said, “Married?”

“Widowed.”

His face relaxed. “I see. I’m sorry. How
long?”

“Six years. And if your next question is
whether you were the first since him, the answer is yes, you were.”

“It wasn’t.”

“Oh. Well, you know now, so you don’t need to
ask.”

“My next question was going to be whether
you’ve been running the business alone since then.”

“Yes. Yes, I have.”

After a short silence he said, “Why did you
disappear that morning?”

She clicked the ballpoint six times before
answering. “We agreed that it was only going to be one night.”

“We did, but you could have said goodbye, at
least.” He sighed and sat down in the visitor chair across the desk from her.
“I waited in reception for hours, hoping to catch you before you left the hotel.”

Her eyes widened. “I was on an early flight.
I would have been at the airport before you woke up. Anyway, you shouldn’t have
done that. It makes no sense. I don’t know why you would have waited for me.”

Sighing, he said, “Because I thought that
after we’d spent the night together, things had changed.”

She looked down at the pen and realised she
was clicking frantically. She tossed it onto the desk. “Why would you think
that? We slept together, that’s all. Just one night.”

He remained silent, and when she looked up his
expression made her suck in a breath.

“What? You can’t argue with what it was. A
one-night stand, pure and simple. We agreed that before we…before it happened.”

When he didn’t respond, she said, “Right?”

“Right.” He looked at her desk, then at the
artwork on the wall behind her, and glanced at the photos of finished projects
on the other walls, before bringing his gaze back to meet hers. “You know I
have to tell the people in the meeting, don’t you?”

“Oh, God.” She planted her elbows on the desk
and covered her face with her hands. “Do you really have to?” The
embarrassment. She could cope with most things thrown at her in business, but
this…this was too personal. She didn’t do personal.

“Yes. It would be unethical of me not to.”

“Couldn’t you say you’ve changed your mind
and don’t want to mediate the case, or make up some excuse?”

When there was no response, she lifted her
head. “No?”

He shook his head.

“Damn.” She slumped against the high back of
the chair. “They’ll want to know why we didn’t say anything beforehand. I’m
going to look ridiculous.”

“If I’d known your real name, I wouldn’t have
accepted the role of mediator. Why did you say your name was Coralie?”

She shrugged. “It’s not a lie exactly. My sisters
used to call me Coralie, and still do sometimes. Anyway, we’re wasting time
here. We might as well get this horror show over with.”

“I’ll be staying in town tonight since I
already have a hotel room booked. Will you have dinner with me?”

“No.”

“Just dinner.”

“Sydney was a one-off for me. I don’t do that
sort of thing. Ever. I’m not…”

“Single?”

“Yes, of course I’m single! Good grief. But I
don’t—”

“Eat?”

She let out an exasperated sigh. “You know I
eat. I don’t date, okay?”

“I’m talking about dinner.”

“That’s what you said before and look at the
trouble
that’s
got us into.”

His mouth twitched into a smile. “You do have
a point. All right, let’s not put limitations on it then. Dinner and whatever
else happens.”

Which was even worse.

At her expression his smile broadened. Her
heart started to thump. She was shocked that her attraction to the man was
still so strong, and even more so that she was actually considering having
dinner with him. Maybe more than dinner. Right here in her home town where
everybody knew her. More to the point, where everybody had known Paul, had
known them as a couple…but if anybody asked, she could pass it off as a business
dinner, couldn’t she?

She cleared her throat. “I’d prefer that we
did put limitations on it, and that we stuck to them. Dinner, and that’s all
this time.”

“If that’s what you want, we can do that. I’m
staying at the Clarendon Hotel. Apparently, the restaurant there is pretty good.
Will that suit you?”

She nodded. “Fine.”

“I could come and pick you up in a taxi—”

“Don’t bother. I’ll make my own way there.” She
was used to her independence  and besides, with her own car there she’d have
complete control over when she left, and she intended to leave s
traight
after dinner.

“Okay. Shall we say seven o’clock?”

Damn, she’d forgotten her plans to talk to
Fern over dinner tonight.

He frowned. “Problem? I don’t mind earlier or
later. It’s up to you.”

Her conversation with Fern could wait a day
or two, whereas he was only in town for one night. And, she realised, she would
regret it if she didn’t have dinner with him while she had the chance.

“No, not a problem. Seven o’clock it is.” She
took a deep breath. “Now shall we go back to the meeting?”

Good lord, she hoped she knew what she was
doing, because it was all very well telling herself that she was only going for
dinner, but she hadn’t been able to stop there the last time. There was a
difference, though. This was her
real
life. This was the town she had to
live and work in. She wasn’t about to risk having a fling with him on her own
doorstep.