Can't Help Falling (14 page)

In the last seven days they'd gotten approval from the board for the row-off and the cricket match and agreement for Peter and Emelia to work up a more detailed proposal for a winter ball. He'd gone into the office to run a few things past her, only for Elizabeth to give a knowing smile at his clothes and say Emelia was working from home for most of the week.

“Can I get you a drink while I'm up?”

Emelia rolled her head across her shoulders. “A soda, please. There should be some in the fridge.”

Walking into the kitchen, he grabbed a couple of chilled cans and headed back toward the bunker. “What are you working on?” He sat down on the couch next to her, maintaining appropriate distance.

“Our plan of attack. Look.” Emelia turned her screen to face him, and he was hit by a haze of boxes and bright colors.

Had he stepped into some kind of time warp or something? Been frozen like a Narnian statue and brought back to life a few months later? How on earth had she managed to achieve all this in the few days since the board meeting? He blinked, the colors spinning in front of his eyes. “So, I got a phone call on the way here.”

Emelia tilted her head. “About?”

“It was the eighties. They want their fluoro back.”

“Oh, you're a comedian now, Drinian?” But she was unable to stop a grin from spreading across her face. It filled his chest with the kind of feeling usually reserved for winning big races.

“You make it too easy.” Peter grinned back at her and something jumped between them that he'd never experienced in his life. He cleared his throat, turned his attention back to the spreadsheet. Right across the bottom there were even more marked tabs. Venues. Caterers. Florists. Rental places. The list went on.

Emelia clicked on the one marked
Venues
. Another color-coded screen. “So, I created a matrix listing all the material characteristics. Most important of which, obviously, is availability, but you can't get that off websites. But then I added in scoring based on criteria including location, cost, capacity, in-house catering or whether you can bring your own, indoor and outdoor options, those sorts of things. And I'm thinking we should
probably talk to Elizabeth to run the weightings past her. I mean, availability is obviously critical, but after that would she rather be somewhere farther out but cheaper? Somewhere that you can bring your own caterers or somewhere that has a superior layout? Once they're all weighted and we've scored them, then the formula will practically make the choice for us.”

Emelia leaned closer into him as she pointed at the screen. “We could also further distill the variables. And we'd probably have to allow a category for gut reaction as well. There's a lot to be said for instinct, don't you think?”

She blinked up at him, eyes shining, cheeks rosy.

Marry me.
The words flashed through his head. That was the instinct that he had when faced with a woman who could probably have made organizing the Normandy invasion look easy. Except that when he mentioned going to church she'd looked at him like he'd sprouted an antenna and started talking in Klingon. He swallowed it back down. “Yes. Definitely. A lot to be said for instinct.” His words came out husky and a little stilted. But she didn't seem to notice.

“I've done some short-listing.”

“Of course you have.”

Emelia raised an eyebrow at him. “Anyway, using the very rudimentary criteria I've already drawn up, I've got us fifteen places to go visit.”

Peter almost choked on the gulp of soda he'd just taken. “I'm sorry. Did you say fifteen? As in one-five?”

“What were you thinking?”

Peter shrugged. “I don't know. Three.” Seemed like a good number. More than two, less than five.

Emelia skewered him with her gaze. “
Three
. You have got
to be joking. This is saving SpringBoard we're talking about here. We can't leave any stone unturned. Twelve. And that's me being generous.”

“Ten.” Peter uttered the word in desperation.

“Twelve.” Emelia smiled with satisfaction, as if she knew she had him.

“We can't do twelve. When are we going to look at twelve venues?”

“This weekend. We need to get it done before it gets busy with the row-off. They're all scheduled.” She flipped to another screen and there he saw it, his entire weekend laid out in Technicolor glory.

“Seven? We're seeing the first one at seven in the morning?”

“They have two weddings. It was the only time I could get. Besides . . .” She smiled sweetly. “Seven is luxuriously late for you, isn't it, rower boy?”

He couldn't have stopped himself from grinning if he tried. Lord help him, he liked this girl. More than was smart. Why? Why did she have to be so perfect in every way except the one that mattered most? More importantly, how on earth was he going to hold on to his self-control while spending the next seven months planning a ball with the one person he desperately wanted but couldn't have?

“C
OFFEE
?” P
ETER ASKED THE QUESTION
as they got back in the car after viewing venue possibility number four.

“You just had one before the last place.”

He quirked an eyebrow at her. “Don't judge me. I thought all you Americans would consume the stuff intravenously if you could.”

“I'm not judging you. I'm just . . .” Emelia trailed off before she could ask the guy if he had a bladder the size of a planet. When he'd arrived to pick her up at six forty, he had been clasping a venti-size coffee cup like it was his firstborn. Plus one for her, which she'd made it about a quarter of the way through.

Since then, he'd had another two. And no bathroom break. And not a single hint that he might need one in the future. She might've suspected he'd decided to answer the call of nature somewhere if not for the fact that the only time she'd left his side, for her own bathroom trip, he'd been in the care of the venue's events coordinator, who had been flirting up a storm with him.

It was totally ridiculous, since Peter had a good foot on the girl, so most of her eye-batting was directed straight at his armpit. Not to mention, the man himself was completely oblivious.

“Fine.
I guess coffee can wait until after this one.”

Emelia started, realizing she'd left the conversation hanging and he thought she was still thinking about his caffeine habit.

“Where to next?”

Emelia consulted her color-coded list. “Rhodes House.”

Peter let out a low whistle. “Nice.”

“Have you been?”

“Not personally, but I've heard of it. Didn't realize we had that kind of budget.”

Emelia consulted her spreadsheet. Rental cost was eight hundred and forty pounds including tax, which put it midrange of all the places on her list. “It's pretty reasonable, actually.”

Peter glanced at her but didn't say anything as he pulled out into the road. Emelia tried to look anywhere except out the windshield. Even after a couple of months, driving on the left still caused her blood pressure to climb like one of those never-ending stair climbers at the gym.

Time to find something to talk about. Anything. “So, is the team ready?” She blurted out the first safe thing that came to mind. Between all the ball organizing, she couldn't lose sight of the “friendly” row-off that was taking place in a few weeks' time. Its head-to-head nature was getting more press than she'd imagined. She could only hope the money would follow.

Peter kept his eyes on the road. “More than. They're all still feeling pretty cocky from the big win.”

“Is it weird? Being on the other side?” She regretted the question almost as soon as she asked it.
Good one, Emelia. Nothing like reminding the guy of what he can't do.

His fingers tightened as he changed down a gear. “Very.”

She waited for more but realized after a few seconds it wasn't coming.

“How's your shoulder doing?”

“Not great.” Another two-syllable answer. She'd interviewed rocks more talkative than this guy.

“I'm sorry.”

Peter pulled in front of the gray mansion she'd seen in the website photos. In real life, it was even more impressive. And enormous. Four huge stone columns lined the front of the verandah, with another four behind them, guarding the black front door. The entryway of the house, covered with a dome-shaped roof, connected onto a Colonial-style building.

“Oh. Wow.” For a second, Emelia was speechless and glad they'd both dressed up for the day in smart casual clothing, instead of the pair of jeans she'd been tempted to put on. But even in her knit dress, the towering building made her feel like she should apologize for not wearing designer cocktail attire.

Getting out of the car, they crossed the sidewalk and approached the doors, stepping up to the porch, whose ceiling was so high she had to tilt her head back to see the top.

“Good morning.” A thickset man with slicked-back gray hair and fierce eyebrows opened the door before she had even knocked.

Emelia stared at him for a second. If Carson from
Downton Abbey
had a brother, this guy was it. “Good morning, I'm Emelia Mason. We have an appointment at ten o'clock to tour the venue.” She pulled out her snootiest voice. The one she'd always used to get herself into parties she had no business being at.

The man inclined his head. “Miss Mason. My name is Stuart Goldfinch. I will be showing you around Rhodes House today.”

“Nice
to meet you. This is Peter Carlisle.”

The man's ramrod posture grew even straighter. “Mr. Carlisle. Of course.” He was practically fawning as he held out his hand to Peter. “Welcome to Rhodes House. May I say, I was so sorry to hear about your retirement? But of course, such great luck for the Blue Boat to have you with them.”

“Thank you for seeing us on such short notice.”

Emelia stared at him. Apparently she wasn't the only one who could put on the posh accent. Peter suddenly sounded like he lived in a palace and regularly took tea with the Queen.

“It is our pleasure. Now please . . .” The portly man gestured into the mansion.

Emelia tried to take in the soaring walls of oak and stone, the huge windows giving a glimpse of extensive gardens. It had looked gorgeous on the website, but that didn't even come close to doing its grandeur justice. She barely listened as the man rattled off the selling points of the venue. Room sizes, layout options, they all flowed over her head. She hoped Peter was taking it in, because she was ready to sign on the dotted line.

This was it. She could feel it in her bones. She could see men in tuxes and women in gowns dancing. Tables set with silverware and huge arrangements. Waiters in white gloves with silver trays.

Before she got her hopes up, she knew she should double-check . . . “Now, as I said on the phone, the ball is going to be in early December. Is it correct you've still got a weekend available?”

“Yes. Generally, our weekend dates are booked far in advance. But it has just so happened that this weekend we've had a cancellation for the first Saturday. Fate, may I suggest?”

“Maybe.”

“Now, you'll
see in our brochure we have a number of excellent catering firms we partner with. I can guarantee you they all serve exquisite cuisine. Fit for royalty, one might even say, should any be joining you.”

“I'm sure,” Peter said evenly.

Emelia half listened to the exchange as she flipped open the brochure she'd been handed. A set of numbers seared her retinas. Oh. Wow. Oh. No. She read them again, hoping that maybe she was seeing things wrong. But no, that had been the first time. This venue wasn't the reasonable eight hundred and forty pounds she'd thought it was. Try adding a zero. Try eight thousand four hundred pounds.

“Emelia?” The way Peter was looking at her suggested it wasn't the first time he'd said her name.

“Yes?”

“Would you like to see the gardens?”

“Yes.” Her voice sounded weak. “Some air would be excellent.”

E
melia had realized her mistake. Peter had seen it the instant her pupils had dilated as she'd read the brochure and her face had gone a shade paler. He'd known there had to be an error the moment she'd called Rhodes House “reasonable.” Sure, if she was secretly a multimillionaire heiress.

Maybe he should've asked more questions. But he couldn't bring himself to ruin the satisfaction she derived from her perfectly coded and mapped spreadsheet. And, he had to admit, there was a certain amount of fun in watching her discover something was ten times more expensive than she'd thought when she was making him suffer through twelve potential locations.

“You okay?”
He bent his head toward hers, lowering his voice so their escort couldn't hear.

Emelia licked her lips. “There's . . . I seem to have . . .” She must have seen something in his expression because she promptly whacked him on the arm. “You knew!” She hissed the words under her breath.

“Ow.” He rubbed the spot above his elbow. The girl packed some power.

“You've been having a great time, haven't you, Smirky McSmirkster. Watching me fall in love with a place, thinking I'd found the venue bargain of the century.” Her words were sharp, but a touch of a smile hovered at the edge of her lips.

“I can neither confirm nor deny.”

“As is no doubt evident, the gardens are award winning.” Their tour guide spread his arms and gestured around him. Peter had to admit the garden was impressive. If he had almost ten grand to spare, they would've won him over.

“They have entertained many a distinguished guest.” The man waggled his caterpillar eyebrows at Peter meaningfully. Peter wished he would stop. Emelia wasn't stupid. He didn't want to rouse her suspicions. Didn't want her knowing who he was until she needed to. Emelia was one of the few people he didn't have to worry about being a groupie. A rowing one or a peerage one. He preferred to keep it that way for as long as humanly possible.