Good Girl or Gold-Digger? (4 page)

So, instead, she focused on what he’d said before. ‘You really think I’m one of these women who nibbles on a lettuce leaf?’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘Are you?’

‘I plan,’ she informed him, ‘to order three courses, and petits fours with my coffee, and enjoy every single scrap. What’s the point of coming to a restaurant that has a reputation for phenomenal food if you’re not going to savour your meal?’ She spread her hands. ‘I can assure you, the only way I’d eat just a couple of mouthfuls of anything is if we ordered a tasting menu—and then I’d expect quite a few dishes.’

‘A woman after my own heart. Good.’ He looked approving.

Well, they had some common ground. This was a good thing.

For
business,
she reminded herself.

When the waiter brought their water, Daisy ordered the asparagus soldiers with DIY hollandaise, followed by the salmon and then a trio of puddings.

‘So you get a taste of different things?’ he asked when he’d given the waiter his own order.

‘Absolutely.’

He smiled at her. ‘So tell me—how come you have a cat who thinks he’s a dog?’

‘He was this tiny little kitten who walked into the workshop a couple of years ago and curled up on the engine.’

‘Tiny?’

‘He was, back then. When I stopped for lunch, he came and sat on my lap. And then he climbed up to my shoulders and miaowed very softly into my ear until I gave him a bit of the salmon from my salad.’ She shrugged. ‘I put notices in the ticket office and the local shops, and I took him home with me until he was claimed. But nobody claimed him, so I kept him. We called him Titan as a joke, just because he was so tiny—but he grew into his name.’

‘And became your guard cat.’

‘Absolutely. Shout at me, and you’ll have a big ginger cat in front of you with an arched back, his fur completely on end, and some very sharp claws being waved at you. Not to mention the growling.’

Felix laughed. ‘He really does think he’s a dog, then.’

‘A superior dog. But he’s good company. I’m glad he adopted me. Do you have pets?’

Felix shook his head. ‘My parents have dogs. But I travel a lot, so it wouldn’t be fair.’

So he wasn’t the kind of man who stayed in one place for long. It was a warning, and she noted it.

Before she could say anything else, the waiter appeared with their first courses.

Felix eyed her plate with interest. ‘I can see why you picked that. It’s an engineer thing, isn’t it?’

She looked at him, surprised. He actually understood? The men she’d dated in the past wouldn’t have picked that up. They’d have assumed that she was flirting with them.

Then again, this wasn’t a date.

At her nod, he asked, ‘So how does it work?’

‘You cut the top off the egg, add a little of the butter from the spoon, and a teensy bit of white vinegar from this pipette, then dip the asparagus into the yolk and mix it. Like this.’ She demonstrated.

When she licked the sauce from the tip of her asparagus, she glanced across at him—and realised that his pupils had dilated and his mouth was parted slightly.

She hadn’t been flirting with him—not intentionally, anyway. But seeing his reaction went straight to her head. This was the man who’d just put an image in her head about him giving her a necklace of kisses. An image she couldn’t shift. So maybe he deserved an image in his own head. Time for a little retaliation. She maintained eye contact, dipped the asparagus in the sauce again and took her time licking the sauce from it.

By the time she’d finished eating the first spear, Felix was practically hyperventilating.

‘You did that on purpose, didn’t you?’ he asked.

She pretended to consider the question, then gave him an impish smile. ‘Yes. Though, to be fair, you did start it.’

‘How?’

‘Remember what you said about this?’ She indicated her borrowed necklace.

‘I said that
out loud?’
He looked horrified. ‘I apologise.’

So he hadn’t intended to say it. The fact that she’d disturbed his cool enough to make him behave so out of character sent a warm feeling all the way through her.

‘No problem.’ Honesty compelled her to add, ‘And I shouldn’t have flirted with you. It isn’t fair to your partner.’

‘I don’t have a partner.’ He paused. ‘And I wasn’t intending to flirt with you, either. It isn’t fair to
your
partner.’

She took a deep breath. ‘I don’t have one, either.’ And, just in case he thought that was an offer, she said, ‘There’s no time—not with work.’

‘People don’t tend to be very understanding if you put your job before them,’ he said, sounding rueful.

Was that why he was single—because he was a workaholic and his ex had given him an ultimatum: the job or her?

She’d had that same ultimatum given to her. With an added twist that still made her angry when she thought about it. ‘Tell me about it,’ she said, rolling her eyes. She’d just bet that his reaction had been the same as hers: he’d chosen his job. ‘And I apologise for teasing you. I suppose it was a case of revenge is hors d’oeuvres.’

His mouth gave that little quirk she found so attractive. ‘And I thought it was meant to be sweet.’

‘Ah, no. Pudding’s something else. I might consider sharing, if I get a taste of your lemon mousse.’

He laughed, those beautiful eyes crinkling at the corners.

When he was relaxed, like this, he seemed more approachable.

Touchable.

She really had to stop thinking like that, because he was off limits.

‘I like you, Daisy Bell,’ he said. ‘I like your style. But I don’t think I’m going to be able to look at you until you’ve finished your asparagus.’

‘Try some,’ she invited. ‘This is fabulous.’

He shook his head. ‘I’m fine, thanks. But take my mind off what you just did to me. Tell me how the museum started.’

I
T WAS
a safe subject. No way could she mess this up by flirting with him. Relieved, Daisy began to explain. ‘My great-great-grandfather was an engineer in the textile industry, but he could see how steam engines could work with fairground rides. When my great-grandfather—the one who made the gallopers—took over, Bell’s were already a household name on the showman circuit.’

‘So the museum’s based on your family heritage?’

She nodded. ‘The demand for rides changed over the years, so my grandfather decided to wind up the business. But my grandmother was from a showman’s family and they’d collected some of the machines our family made. Bill took over and added to the collection. You could buy rides really cheaply at one point—sometimes all we had to do was pick up the scrap and haul it to the workshops for restoration—but over the last few years steam engines have become seriously collectable. We could never afford to buy the machines we have now if we had to start again from scratch.’

‘Is your father an engineer, too?’ Felix asked.

‘He designs industrial lifts—well, he did. He’s about
to retire. He thinks the fairground is fun, but there’s no future in it.’ And that she was wasting her talents when she could’ve made a real name for herself in engineering.

‘What about Bill’s children?’

Daisy bit her lip. ‘Bill and Nancy couldn’t have kids. Which is such a shame, as they would’ve been brilliant parents.’

‘I got the impression,’ Felix said, ‘that Bill thinks of you practically as his daughter.’

She nodded. ‘We see things the same way.’

‘Are your brothers interested in the fairground?’ Felix asked.

She frowned. ‘How do you know about my brothers?’

‘Bill told me that you’re the youngest of four.’

‘They’re engineers, too, but they see things Dad’s way. Ed builds bridges, Ben designs cars, and Mikey works in irrigation systems.’ She sighed. ‘Being the much-awaited little girl, I was a huge disappointment to my mother. I was never into pink and frilly stuff. If she put me in a dress and told me to play with my dolls, she’d come in ten minutes later to find I’d left them exactly where she’d put them, and I was busy making something with one of my brothers’ construction kits or taking something apart to see how it worked.’

‘Somehow, I can imagine that,’ Felix said with a smile—a smile that said he was on her side.

‘Sometimes I wish I’d been the oldest. They all might’ve found it a bit easier to accept.’

‘What, that you wanted to be an engineer, too?’

‘Not so much that.’ She fiddled with the asparagus.

‘What, then?’

‘If I’d gone to uni to study engineering, they would’ve been fine about it.’

Felix looked surprised. ‘You don’t have a degree?’

‘I’m the only one of us who doesn’t.’ She bit her lip. ‘The thing is, I always knew what I wanted to do, and a degree would just have held me back for three years. So I compromised; I stayed at school to do my A levels, then trained as a mechanic.’

‘Which I’d guess wasn’t an easy option, either. Were there any other girls on the course?’

‘I was the only one.’ She grimaced. ‘It took me until halfway through my course to persuade my tutors and the other students that I was there solely because I wanted to do the job, and not because I was looking for a man.’

She still wasn’t. Even if the one sitting opposite her was a particularly fine specimen and had fine laughter-lines at the corners of those stunning grey eyes.

‘Ouch,’ Felix said. ‘So I take it you had to come top in your exams to prove to everyone you were serious?’

‘Try every single assignment,’ she said dryly.

‘And they gave you a hard time?’

She shrugged. ‘I qualified, and that’s the main thing.’ She sighed. ‘I know it disappointed my parents and my brothers, but I love what I do. It’s who I am.’

‘Family expectations, eh?’ he said, startling her: she hadn’t thought he would understand. But the expression in his eyes, hastily covered, told her he too must have disappointed his family in some way.

‘It’s the same for you, isn’t it?’ she asked.

There was a long, long pause, and then he nodded. ‘Except I’m the oldest rather than the youngest.’

‘So what were you supposed to do?’

‘Become the third generation in the family stockbroking business.’ He attacked his mushrooms. ‘Luckily my sisters did it for me.’

‘What’s so bad about being a stockbroker?’

That made him lift his head and look her straight in the eye. ‘You really have to
ask
that?’

‘I’d say you didn’t want to do it because it’s not your dream.’

‘Absolutely. I like fixing things. Like you, I suppose,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Except I fix businesses.’

Daisy raised an eyebrow. ‘So you admit that you’re an asset stripper?’

‘No, and if you bother to look me up on the Internet you’ll see exactly what I do.’

She spread her hands. ‘OK, so that was unfair of me. And I haven’t done my homework on you. I meant to.’

‘But you got caught up in the engine you were working on this morning?’

She smiled wryly. ‘Yes. I’ve been working on it for a while, and today was my first day back on it. That’s why I lost track of time and was late for the meeting.’

He coughed. ‘Late?’

‘All right, you had to come and find me. And I’ve already apologised for that.’ What else did he want her to do?

An unbidden image floated into her head of apologising to him in a much more personal way. With a kiss.

Oh, no. What on earth was wrong with her? This was meant to be a business conversation. She needed to get things back on track, right now. ‘You were going to tell me what’s wrong with the way we do things.’

‘For a start, you’ve got all that land and you’re not using it.’

‘Of course we’re using it. It’s a play area for children, and pretty gardens for people to stroll in. Everyone loves our gardens.’

‘But the land isn’t earning you any extra money.’

‘So what are you suggesting—that we should sell it to a property developer?’

He frowned. ‘Why do you keep thinking the worst of me, Boots?’

She felt her face heat. ‘Sorry. It’s…’

‘A defence mechanism?’ he suggested.

‘No, I…’ Her voice faded. Maybe he was right. Usually she always looked for the good, but she was deliberately trying to see Felix’s dark side. It was a defence mechanism, because she found the combination of the way he looked and his quick mind seriously attractive, tempting her to ignore her common sense and break her personal rules. ‘Tell me what you were going to say.’

‘For a start, the fairground would be a really unusual venue for a wedding.’

Daisy shook her head. ‘I did think about that, actually, but when I looked into how much it costs to get a licence for weddings I realised that it wouldn’t pay for itself. Besides, we don’t have a hall big enough to cater for a reception.’

‘You could use a marquee, in summer.’

‘Even when it’s wet?’ She pulled a face. ‘Yes, the gondolas would be fabulous for bride-and-groom photographs. But summer weekends are our biggest earners. Holding a wedding reception would mean having to close to the public and lose a day’s takings.’

‘Not necessarily. You could close in the evenings—that’s when the fairground could be exclusive to the wedding party.’

An unobtrusive waiter cleared their empty plates away and brought their main courses through.

‘You also need to look at your prices and the number of visitors,’ Felix said. ‘I assume you do know that?’

She frowned. ‘Didn’t Bill talk you through that? Yes, of course we do. We have a proper computerised system for tickets, otherwise we’d run into trouble with the tax people. We know exactly how much we take each day. We also know who visits, and whether they’re buying individual tickets, or a family ticket, or using a season ticket.’

‘Then you need to analyse the stats properly and see if you have the right pricing structure.’

She sighed. ‘How do I get it through to you, Felix? We’re about heritage, not making huge profits. That’s why I want a sponsor, not someone who’s going to invest and have a stake in the fairground. I don’t want to hike up the admission price and make it too expensive for families to visit. I want people to come back because they’ve had a great time and they don’t feel they’ve been fleeced.’

‘You don’t have to hike the prices. But at the moment when they buy their tickets they can have as many rides as they like. Maybe you could look more closely at that,’ Felix said. ‘Do a deal where you offer so many rides as part of the admission price, but if people want additional rides they pay for them. That way, it’s fair usage—the heavier users pay more.’

‘I’d rather not put extra pressure on the staff to take money,’ Daisy said. ‘Besides, if we’re handling money in the fairground other than in the ticket office, café or shop, the insurance company will see it as extra risk and our premiums will go sky high—an extra cost we could do without.’

‘Not if you do it as a ticket system, or with tokens that don’t have monetary value outside the fairground.
Then you won’t have to worry about extra cash tills or security.’

She liked the way he thought on his feet. And the way he backed up his arguments.

Again, she met his eyes, and wished she hadn’t. Right now they were a cool, analytical grey, and she could just imagine them darkening with desire. The way they had when she’d teased him with her asparagus. And it would be oh, so easy to…

No. The fairground had to come first. She pulled herself together. ‘That’s definitely worth considering. Thank you. Anything else?’

‘Is there a village hall nearby?’

‘The nearest one’s five miles away.’

‘So you could have a community centre. You have the room to build a hall. If you had moveable seating, you could use it for wedding receptions, for shows and a cinema, and any seasonal events, as well as hiring it out to groups—who will then use your cafe facilities. You could do educational events and children’s parties. I see from the website that you already do something special at Hallowe’en and Christmas.’

She nodded. ‘We don’t have a ghost train—Bell’s never built any—but I’d love one. At the moment for Hallowe’en we do a steam-train ride with pumpkin-lanterns lighting the way, and all the staff and volunteers wear fancy dress that evening. At Christmas, Bill’s a brilliant Santa. And one of the local farmers has a small herd of reindeer that he brings at weekends.’ She smiled. ‘We do trips on the steam train to Santa’s grotto, and we have fairy lights all along the route. The kids love it.’

‘So having a hall would fit in nicely. You could decorate it as Santa’s grotto for your Christmas events, hold pantomimes and music-hall evenings there, and maybe get local craftsmen to have stalls at certain times of the year. Plus it would be easier to keep private than a marquee. It’d be a really flexible space.’

‘But it’s not a short-term solution—and building it would cost.’

‘You have to speculate to accumulate.’

‘What a cliché.’ Was he really not listening to her? ‘Besides, to do that, you need money.’

‘Not necessarily. That’s where external investment comes in,’ Felix suggested.

‘And external investors want to see a good return on their money. No way would a sponsor agree to build a hall for us, even if we named it after them.’ Daisy shook her head. ‘You’re still missing the point. I keep telling you, it isn’t about profit. It’s about keeping our heritage alive.’

‘If you don’t make a profit, how can you afford to maintain the rides?’ he asked. ‘And, if you want to buy neglected vintage ones that you can restore to working condition, you need an investor, Daisy.’

‘A sponsor,’ she corrected. ‘And you’re offering?’

The second the words were out of her mouth she realised that they could be interpreted in a different way. Particularly as she was staring at his beautifully shaped mouth.

She dragged her gaze up slightly, and realised that he was staring at her mouth, too.

Bad.

This was meant to be business.

So why couldn’t she get the idea of pleasure out of her head?

‘Offering to work with the museum, I mean,’ she elaborated—and then was annoyed with her voice for croaking. Oh, no. The last thing she needed was for him to think that she wanted him to offer something much more personal.

Even though part of her did.

‘I’m still thinking about it,’ Felix said. ‘I want to spend a couple of days shadowing Bill and see how everything works.’ His gaze held hers a fraction longer than necessary. ‘Or shadowing you.’

Absolutely not. Apart from the fact that Felix looked far too pristine to know his way around an engine, spending too much time in his company would be a bad move. The more she talked with him and sparred with him, the more attracted she was to him. And she couldn’t afford to be tempted by him. ‘You’d be better off systematically shadowing everyone so you get a better idea of how it all fits together,’ she said. ‘Start with a stint in the coffee bar, do a shift in the shop, then a bit on each ride. And, if you’re very good, I might even let you—’

The sudden heat in his eyes made her stop.

‘Let me what, Daisy?’ he asked, his voice ever so slightly husky. And oh, so sensual. Like melted chocolate.

She hadn’t meant the words to come out that way. Hadn’t meant to stop mid-sentence. To offer things she shouldn’t offer.

What was it about this man that made her unable to think straight?

She pulled herself together with difficulty. ‘Drive one of the trains.’

His expression told her that driving a train wasn’t the kind of reward he’d had in mind.

Thinking about what he’d consider a fitting reward made her wriggle slightly on the chair.

‘Right.’ He was looking at her mouth again. As if he wanted to taste it.

The crazy thing was, she wanted him to do it. Despite the fact that they were in a public place and she barely knew him and it would be completely unprofessional of her.

‘So why is the fairground so short of money?’

The question came out of left field, and she lifted her chin, scenting a challenge. ‘Nobody’s embezzling, if that’s what you’re suggesting. We spent a fair bit last year on rescuing a ride—a chair-o-plane.’