Blind Date Rivals

Sara pushed her lips together. ‘Let me down? Is that what you call breaking up with me and running off to Australia with his office junior? No, Gorgeous. I love you and you have been my best friend since the first time we shared homesick stories aged eight, but no boyfriends. Thank you all the same but I am sure that Caspar’s friend will have a great time at the party without me boring him to tears with talk of orchid fertiliser.’

Helen glanced around the wooden walls, shivered and sniffed dramatically and dropped her voice down to a pleading whisper. ‘Fair point. Except, you know this could be the last time we go out partying together as single girls, don’t you? In only a few weeks’ time, I am going to be Mrs Caspar Kaplinski. I shall try to understand that you are so busy in your own life that you can’t spare a few hours to help your old friend celebrate her last birthday as a single girl. Although it is going to be quite a struggle. I … I don’t know if I can go through with it knowing that my one and only bridesmaid is going to be sitting in her tiny hovel all evening. Lonely and rejected while we are all enjoying ourselves …’

Her voice tailed off with a dramatic over the top fake sob, and she pressed a real silk handkerchief to the inner corner of each eye.

‘That. Is emotional blackmail. And my cottage is not a hovel. Yesterday you called it a bijou gem!’

‘Absolutely!’ Helen replied with a wide grin, already on her feet and heading for the door. ‘So, it’s decided then. Cinders, you shall not stay home with only your elderly cat for company. Not this Saturday night. I shall slip through the back gate to collect you at eight with the props and stuff. Leo will take one look at you and be totally smitten, you wait and see. This is one party you’re going to remember. Ciao.’

‘Props? Helen! Wait!’

Sara stared at the space where her best friend had been sitting. How did Helen do it? A costume party and a blind date? Sara pressed her eyes tight shut and slumped back in her chair. Oh, no. She had a horrible feeling that she was going to regret this.

‘Leo, my old mate,’ Caspar bellowed down Leo’s car telephone system, ‘where are you? Helen is starting to panic that you’ve run away in terror at the thought of meeting your blind date this evening. You have to help me out here.’

‘Me? Run away from a gorgeous lady? Perish the thought.’ Then there was a pause before Leo asked, ‘She isn’t another of Helen’s old school friends, is she?’

The less than reassuring silence on the other end of the telephone confirmed his worst fears. ‘Ah, well,’ Caspar answered. ‘This one is different! Sara might be a country girl but she is very sweet.’

‘A country girl?’ Leo laughed. ‘You do remember you are talking to a city boy? London born and bred. I don’t do country. I have no idea why Helen thinks I’m in desperate need of female company. Perhaps she has a se cret yearning to change direction and set up shop as a match maker?’

‘That’s my girl!’ Caspar snorted. ‘Always looking out for her friends. Anyway. Any idea what time you might be arriving? I need to get your costume ready.’

Leo checked his car navigation display. ‘Apparently I should be with you in about ten minutes. In fact I’ve just turned into Kingsmede and seen the sign for the hotel. Kingsmede Manor, here I come.’ And then he paused, distracted for a moment by another car. ‘Did you just use the word costume? Caspar?’

‘Brilliant! Ring me when you’re settled. I owe you a drink.’

And, with that, Caspar’s voice closed off, leaving Leo to the luxury of the hum of the powerful engine as the car made its way down the country lanes of the sleepy English countryside on a warm Saturday evening.

A blind date! And of course Caspar had only informed him about that small detail when he was already halfway to the middle of nowhere! Helen had a heart of gold but the last thing he wanted at this precise moment in his life was a blind date, or any date at all for that matter. He already had more than enough on his plate at the moment.

Of course he would be polite, and he was grateful for the rare chance to enjoy himself with Caspar and celebrate Helen’s birthday but the rest of this weekend was going to be work!

He felt guilty about not telling Caspar the truth but his aunt Arabella had made it clear that she did not want anyone to know that she had hired Grainger Consulting to work on a very special project. Her company had bought Kingsmede Manor three years ago and invested heavily to restore it.

Now she was determined to leverage the asset and maximise the returns to justify that investment.

The latest idea from the management team was to buy the land next to the hotel and build a luxury spa extension. But Arabella wanted a second opinion—his opinion—before they gave the spa idea the final go-ahead.

Normally he would have sent one of his team along to do the work, but not this time. He owed his aunt more than he could ever repay. And for that he was willing to take time away from the London office and do the work himself as a personal favour, when he could least afford to. His workload over the past few months had been hectic.

Worse. He had a deadline. And it was tight. He had to come up with something very, very special in five days. The entire board of directors of Rizzi Hotels would be meeting at Kingsmede Manor over lunch on Friday for their annual general meeting.

Nothing so unusual about that.

Companies paid Grainger Consulting to make the hard decisions about what they needed to do to survive in hard times, and he had built his reputation on doing precisely that. But this time it was personal.

Leo’s fingers wrapped tight around the steering wheel.

The Rizzi Hotel chain owned some of the most prestigious boutique hotels around the world, but it was still a family business, with one domineering and driven man at the top—his own grandfather. Paolo Leonardo Rizzi. The man he despised for his uncaring ruthlessness. The man who expected his orders to be obeyed by everyone, and especially by his own family.

There was no room for sentiment or consideration of the human costs to the hotels they bought out in Paolo Rizzi’s world.

Of course Arabella knew that he would create something outstanding to present to the family on Friday. Clever, shrewd and powerful, his aunt was giving him the chance to settle the score with the grandfather who had so fundamentally rejected his own daughter and her family.

And Leo was determined to prove just how big a mistake that had been.

All he had to do was to create a stunning proposal on how to make Kingsmede Manor Hotel more profitable, and keep the project secret for the next few days. Nothing to it.

Leo Grainger eased his foot off the accelerator and turned slowly into the long paved drive that led to the hotel. Each side of the drive was lined with full-size beech trees with branches so high and wide that they joined in the middle to create a tunnel of soft green leaves, shading the drivers from the June sunshine. At eight in the evening, the shadows and sunlight created a dazzling display on the windscreen of his sports car.

These tree-lined avenues had been created centuries ago to impress guests arriving at the house for the first time in horse-drawn carriages. According to the dossier his aunt had sent over, Kingsmede Manor had been a private house until only three years earlier and had actually remained in the same family since the time it was built.

That had to be a useful selling point. Overseas visitors adored English heritage—especially when it was as eccentric as this.

Coming out of the shadows and into the low sunlight of the summer evening, Leo squinted through the windscreen and took his first sight of the house. The drive in front of the house turned into a wide circle around a central fountain where a swan frolicked in the cascading spray.

A brief smile flashed across his lips. Impressive. No wonder his aunt had snapped the house up the minute it came onto the market. She had impeccable taste.

Minutes later, Leo threw open the car door, swung his body out of the bucket seat and stepped out onto the cobblestone car park. His favourite designer black boots emerged first, followed by the rest of him, all six foot two of gym-toned muscle, sharp reflexes and an uncanny instinct for what made a commercial business a success … or at least that was what the financial press liked to say.

In his high-profile work with international clients, superficial aspects such as his designer clothing were simply parts of a business image he had spent years perfecting. His clients expected prestige and results and that was what they got. It was as simple as that. They did not care that he had started his working life washing dishes in the kitchens of his aunt’s boutique London hotel. Why should they? He was paid to make a difference to their business. Nothing else mattered. This was business, not personal.

And now it was time to do the same for Kingsmede Manor.

Leo strolled around to the back of the car and lifted out his leather weekend bag. His only hope was that there would be a marked absence of those boring white orchids that every hotel in the world seemed to have at the moment. Perhaps this time he was going to get a pleasant surprise?

It was almost nine that evening when Sara finally tottered in her evening sandals through the familiar white marble hall with its twisted double staircase and grinned up at the huge scarlet banner which hung suspended from the ornate plasterwork arch above her head.

The words ‘Hollywood Night’ had been printed in enormous gold letters across the banner. Trust Helen to choose a movie theme for her birthday party. And subtle did not come into it.

Shaking her head with a low chuckle, Sara could not resist checking on the pair of stunning orchid plants which she had delivered only two days earlier as a special order.

This variety of Phalaenopsis was a triumph. At the heart of each of the huge ivory blossoms was a crimson tongue speckled with gold dust. Of course she did not expect the guests and staff at the hotel to appreciate how much work went into create such perfect flower spikes from each plant, but they did look amazing. She had suggested other colour combinations, of course, but the Events Manager had insisted on the ivory blossoms. They were a lovely match for the antique console table which stood along the length of the hall below the huge gold framed mirror which had once belonged to her grandmother.

It had been heartbreaking for her to watch so many of her favourite pieces of treasured antique furniture being sold off in auction to strangers, but her mother had been right for once. Huge heavy pieces of furniture and enormous gilt mirrors belonged in a house large enough to appreciate them and not in some minimalist apartment or tiny cottage. And of course they had needed the proceeds of the sale so very badly.

At least the luxury hotel chain who had bought Kingsmede Manor had the good sense to snap up as many of the lovely original pieces as they could while they still had the chance.

At that moment the front doors opened to a gaggle of laughing guests who swept into the hall, bringing a breeze of evening air to waft through the orchid spikes. Sara did not recognise anyone in the group—but that was hardly surprising. Helen’s jewellery design business was based in London and it had been three years since they had shared a flat together. Their lives had changed so much since then it was little wonder that they had different friends and such different lives.

For a moment Sara looked past the orchid blossoms and caught her reflection in the mirror. Her hand instantly went to her hair and flicked back her short fringe. There had been a time when she had been one of those laughing, happy city girls, with their smart high heels and expensive grooming habits, who could afford wonderful hairdressers. Now she was simply grateful that the pixie style was back in fashion.

Sara checked her watch. She was late. Correction, make that very late. Perhaps her blind date was already here and waiting for her? Frightened of being stood up? And probably as scared as she was.

She lifted her chin and fixed a smile on her lips as she wandered into what had been her grandmother’s drawing room and stood on tiptoe to see if she could spot Helen.

At five feet nothing, Helen had always been petite enough to make Sara feel like a gangly beanstalk. That was one reason why Sara had chosen medium black sandals to accompany her simple black shift dress—one of the many treasures her grandmother had left behind in the dressing-up box! Helen had supplied the pearl necklaces and huge black sunglasses but she had turned down the plastic tiara. Not with her current hairstyle. The long black evening gloves and cigarette-holder were the only other props she needed to become Audrey for the evening.