The Wealthy Man's Waitress

CHAPTER THREE

‘I WILL bring that bottle of wine pronto! Emma, you must take the rest of the evening off. Scusi, Mr Redfield, I will be back in a moment.’

When they were alone, Emma struggled for all of two seconds to contain the anger that was threatening to burst like a dam.

‘How dare you lie to him? How will I explain to him later that it was just some kind of sick joke? I don’t know what you’re playing at, Mr Redfield, but whatever it is I don’t want any part of it!’

‘For your information, Miss Robards, I’m not playing. When I see something I want I cut right to the chase—whatever it takes. Do I make myself clear?’ His penetrating gaze signalled his seriousness and Emma felt her stomach flip over in fright. Was he saying that he wanted her? What had she done to warrant such unasked-for attention? This man was rich beyond imagining and could clearly have any woman he set his sights on—so why had he set his sights on her? An insignificant little waitress who’d championed his son’s cause because he was in need and she’d mistakenly believed he was a true friend.

‘It’s not clear at all.’ Her face burning, Emma fiddled with the little silver napkin ring in front of her. ‘I don’t know what you want from me.’ Finally risking a direct glance, she saw a corner of his mouth hitch up slightly into what could be the beginnings of a smile—only she wasn’t entirely sure. Everything about him inspired awe, from the width of those amazing shoulders in his exquisitely tailored suit, to the clean-cut edge of his hard, chiselled jaw and those scintillating eyes that clearly didn’t miss a trick. Imagining him as chairman of the board at meetings with the country’s most prominent and influential businessmen and entrepreneurs, Emma knew there’d be a respectful hush when he entered the room.

‘Your attention is what I want, Emma.’

‘And you had to tell Lorenzo you were my fiancé to get it?’

‘Whatever it takes, remember? How old are you?’ he asked, amused.

‘Twenty-five.’ Her guard down, Emma widened her dark eyes in puzzlement. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘Because you look more like nineteen. Tell me. Are you serious about Lawrence?’

The steely muscles that made up the hard wall of his stomach actually clenched as Piers waited for her to answer. Her features were compellingly beautiful, with skin as fine and pale as alabaster and eyes and lips a man could happily gaze at until he grew old—yet she was also possessed of an extraordinary innocence that intrigued Piers even more. He could hardly believe she didn’t know what kind of effect she could have on a man, but that was the impression he was getting. Look at him, he thought wryly. Just one encounter with her and he’d gone against all his principles and signed Lawrence a cheque for a ridiculous amount to set up some pie-in-the-sky little venture that was surely doomed to failure before it even started. He’d have been better off just throwing his money into an incinerator.

‘I don’t know what you mean.’ Flushing, Emma glanced up almost with relief as Lorenzo descended upon them, flourishing a bottle of the best red wine in the house. Addressing Piers, the young Italian poured the wine, all the while chattering away in his native tongue, then left them to, ‘Enjoy, enjoy!’ with a final departing wink in Emma’s direction and a too knowing smile as he slid behind the bar again.

His fingers sliding around the stem of his wineglass, Piers continued to survey her with an unnerving intensity that made it difficult to corral her thoughts. ‘Would you be heartbroken if you didn’t see him again?’

‘Why? Is he going somewhere?’

‘Cornwall, if everything goes to plan.’ Piers shrugged as if he had his doubts.

‘Then you agreed to help him?’ Her mouth dropping open, Emma couldn’t disguise her astonishment.

‘Let’s just say I had second thoughts after you left.’

‘He must have been over the moon.’

‘I left him getting ready to go out and celebrate with his lady friend.’

‘Oh.’

‘You don’t mind?’ Watching closely for signs of hurt or distress, Piers was gratified when he found none. Instead she looked resigned.

‘Our relationship isn’t like that.’

‘Sexual, you mean?’

Emma felt the heat in her face deepen. ‘Lawrence has lots of girlfriends but our association is purely platonic.’

One fair brow jutted towards his hairline. ‘You’re telling me you didn’t sleep with him?’

Emma sighed and took a careful sip of the dark red wine that Lorenzo had poured out for her. Her tastebuds barely registered the smouldering burst of grape on her tongue. ‘Look, where is this leading? I hardly know you and yet you sit there expecting me to discuss my private life with you as though it was the most natural thing in the world. I’m glad you decided to help your son, Mr Redfield, but as far as he and I are concerned, I don’t actually care if I never set eyes on him again!’

‘So he gave you a hard time when you told him I wasn’t going to help?’ Raking his fingers through his dark blond hair, Piers sat back in his seat and shook his head. ‘That figures.’

‘Look, I really should get back to work.’

‘Stay right where you are.’ Emma suddenly found she had his undivided attention again. Heat ignited in his eyes with all the impact of a dazzling white flare against a coal-black sky, and an answering shiver zigzagged down her spine. ‘We’re supposed to be engaged, remember? You don’t want Lorenzo over there to think we’ve had another fight, do you?’

‘I don’t care what he thinks, considering this whole thing is a complete farce!’

‘I want to see you again.’

‘Why… For what reason?’

‘Because you intrigue me. Isn’t that reason enough?’

She’d never had a man tell her that she intrigued him before and the fact that Piers Redfield—who was generally regarded as a phenomenon himself—said so was more than a little difficult to take in. Try impossible. Emma could only draw the conclusion that he must be up to something…but what?

‘So, you’re intrigued by waitresses? With some men it’s lap dancers or nurses but obviously you—’

‘Emma.’

The soft yet steely command in his voice stopped her dead. Her heart started to race again and she wished her face wouldn’t burn so. ‘What?’

‘I don’t have a fetish for waitresses. Though I’d be lying if I said you didn’t look extremely sexy in that tight black skirt.’

In fact Piers had never seen another woman look half so good in a tight black skirt. Emma was slender but her figure was definitely hourglass-shaped and her fitted clothes showed just how delectable that shape was. Now she was blushing again and Piers sensed his attraction deepening. Surely she was used to men paying her compliments all the time? But there was nothing coy about her response. She merely looked flustered and uncertain, like a young girl out on her first proper date.

She’s too young for you, urged the voice of reason. But Piers was in too deep to pay much attention to it. He was only forty-two, for God’s sake! Nowhere near a mid-life crisis or anything as dull as that, and he didn’t particularly lust after younger women. He’d dated plenty of women his own age and older. He simply enjoyed the company of beautiful women. In his career he’d met many, but he’d never yet met one who intrigued him enough to make that relationship permanent. As far as he was concerned, marriage was out. Been there, tried that and, apart from a few short months when Lawrence was a baby and he and Naomi had felt like a real family instead of two angry people who merely tolerated each other, Piers had hated it. Freedom was far preferable in his opinion.

‘It’s not tight, it’s fitted, and I’m not pursuing this pointless conversation with you any longer. I’ve got to get back to work. We’re already a girl short tonight and you can see that we’re busy.’ Getting to her feet, Emma threw Piers a last flustered look and walked away.

‘Damn.’ Piers’s male friends envied the ease at which women seemed to fall over themselves to get to know him, but somehow tonight it seemed his famed ability had vanished. He was left in no doubt that he’d failed to impress or attract Emma Robards. Signalling a passing young waiter, Piers paid his bill, collected his coat and walked back out into the cold, wintry night, not caring that the rain showed no mercy as it pelted him hell for leather as he walked.

‘Why did that man tell Lorenzo you and he were engaged if you’re not?’ Cradling her much-needed cup of coffee, Liz Morrison sat across the cleared table from Emma in the now empty restaurant, endeavouring to get to the bottom of the most surprising thing that had happened all evening.

‘Oh, he was just playing stupid games.’ Emma shrugged, momentarily shielding her expression behind her own coffee-cup. I’m not playing, he’d said, but clearly he’d lied. She really had no idea why he’d taken the trouble to come to the bistro and find her and nor did she buy the reason he had given—that he was somehow ‘intrigued’ by her. So ‘playing stupid games’ was all her befuddled brain could come up with.

‘He was rather gorgeous all the same. When Lorenzo came into the kitchen and told me I sneaked a look while you weren’t looking. Where did you meet him?’ Liz asked conversationally. But behind her employer’s deceptively casual tone, Emma knew there was a wealth of curiosity just bursting to get out. Liz was always trying to fix Emma up with some suitable male or other but was continually frustrated by the younger woman’s inexplicable lack of interest.

‘Oh, he’s a friend of a friend.’ Hoping to brush him off as just that, Emma prayed they could now change the subject. Piers Redfield’s name and presence had simply dominated her day too much. It was time to get back to reality. Not always easy, but at least it was a devil she knew.

‘Well, I certainly wouldn’t kick him out of bed.’

‘Liz!’ Aghast, Emma stared at the other woman as if she had just confessed to some heinous crime.

‘You know very well I love Adam, but it doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate another man’s good looks, does it? And your friend of a friend was certainly worth taking a second look at. Loved the suit too. Bet that cost a pretty penny.’

‘I wouldn’t know.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake, Emma! You’re a beautiful young woman and you’ve got about as much interest in the opposite sex as somebody who’s gay!’ Her hazel eyes suddenly narrowing, Liz lowered her voice conspiratorially. ‘You’re not gay, are you, darling?’

‘No!’ Not knowing whether to laugh or cry, Emma put down her coffee-cup and licked the cream from her top lip. ‘I can assure you I’m not gay.’ It was the second reference to her sexual proclivities that day—first Lawrence’s hurtful jibe, now her friend’s concerned probe. So what if she didn’t have a relationship? Why did everyone seem to believe that coupledom was the only important choice in life? Couldn’t they see that most people’s relationships fell apart on a regular basis? Who needed the grief? All she had to do was remember how heartbroken her mother had been when Emma’s father had walked out on them when Emma was only nine. She’d never really recovered and they’d never set eyes on him again. They’d heard from a friend of his who’d come around to the house once that he’d emigrated to Australia soon after the divorce he’d insisted on, but after that…nothing. He never even kept in touch with his own mother—Emma’s beloved Gran. He’d obviously wiped out the memory of his previous life with heartless precision and had disowned them both. So who needed a man? Certainly not Emma—not right now, and probably not ever.

But just as she reaffirmed her decision to remain single to herself, an uncalled-for recollection of Piers Redfield’s crystalline blue eyes sliding hotly down her body brought a flush of warmth to parts of her anatomy that hadn’t experienced that sensation in a very long time…

‘Men are a hassle. I have enough to deal with without getting screwed up by some relationship. Stop worrying about me, Liz. I’m really quite happy in my single state.’

‘So tell me a bit more about the guy who came in earlier.’

Smiling in spite of her exasperation at Liz’s tenacity where Piers Redfield was concerned, Emma got up, pushed her chair into the table, and went to collect her coat from the nearby coat tree. ‘Trust me. You won’t be seeing him again.’ If Liz even had an inkling of who he was, she wouldn’t let Emma leave the restaurant until she’d told her everything and Emma had had enough embarrassment for one day, thank you very much.

‘You and your fiancé had another fight?’ Lorenzo shook his head in deep disapproval as he came through the swing doors with his leather jacket on. He being true to his Italian blood, the one thing he held in high esteem was amore. ‘Emma, Emma! What did you say to make him leave? He didn’t even stay to eat!’

‘Once and for all, Piers Redfield isn’t my fiancé!’

As Liz Morrison got to her feet, her surprised glance sprang to the younger woman with all the speed of an arrow hitting the bull’s-eye. Her husband read the financial pages of his chosen broadsheet every day and she knew only too well where she’d heard that illustrious name.

‘That was Piers Redfield?’ she yelped. ‘The Piers Redfield?’

Emma’s body turned hot then cold. Nonplussed, Lorenzo glanced from one woman to the other and back again. ‘Is he famous?’

‘Not in the sense that Brad Pitt or Hugh Grant is famous but the guy’s on the UK Rich List, that’s for sure. Emma, you dark horse! What on earth is going on?’

‘Hey, Piers! You were fierce out there today. What’s going on?’ As his friend and colleague hurried to catch up to him in the locker-room of the exclusive sports club of which they were both members, Piers unzipped his bag, pulled out his towel and draped it around his neck. The sweat he’d expended on the squash court dampened his hair and stood out in beads on his brow but still he hadn’t been entirely able to get rid of some of that huge reservoir of energy that had been flowing through him all day. God only knew how he was going to sleep tonight but if the previous five nights were anything to go by, he’d be watching the dawn come up again tomorrow having hardly slept a wink.

‘Nothing’s going on.’ Peeling off his clothes, Piers wrapped a second towel around his lean, hard middle, collected his washbag then disappeared in the direction of the showers across the cool tiled floor.

‘Not getting any lately? Is that the trouble, hotshot?’ Jim Delaney, an affable American and Piers’s regular squash and racketball partner, laughed out loud before disappearing into an adjoining cubicle. As the water built up a head of steam and sluiced down his hot, aching body, Piers couldn’t suppress the colourful language that escaped with his next few breaths. Leave it to Jim to stumble across the truth without even knowing it. But it wasn’t just the fact he wasn’t getting any, as his friend had so crudely put it—it was the fact that he was lusting after a twenty-five-year-old waitress who’d rather work than take the night off and spend it with him. In terms of experiences with women, this had to be a first. Usually it was the women who did all the chasing and, although he was partly ashamed to admit it, Piers had got used to cherry-picking the best. Now, as he glanced down at the manifestation of his sexual frustration, Piers knew that as far as Emma Robards was concerned he would have to come up with something quite unique to get her attention…but get it he would.

Emma couldn’t sleep. A mole hibernating for the winter couldn’t sleep with that racket going on upstairs. What on earth was Lawrence doing? She’d heard the feminine laughter that accompanied the general noise and mayhem and blushed to think what he might be up to. For a moment the thought had the power to wound but then irritation finally got the better of her and she threw back the bedcovers, shoved her feet into slippers and went through to the kitchen to make a cup of tea. Yawning as she filled the kettle, she glanced around the tiny, cramped kitchen with little pleasure. The pink paint she’d applied to the walls only six months ago in a bid to cheer the place up had already started to crack and peel. Her dark eyes seeking out the culprit, she noted the increasingly large patches of damp on the ceiling and on the walls. She’d been on to the landlord several times already about getting something done about it, but if past experience was anything to go by she’d be waiting for a response until she drew her old-age pension. The flat needed lots of work. More than Emma could afford. She was already fretting about how she was going to find the money to help her grandmother make necessary home improvements, so she hadn’t a cat’s chance in hell of finding enough cash to do up her own place.

Sighing, she reached up to the hooks on the wall for a cheerful mug with a bright yellow daffodil on it, then threw in a teabag. Lucky old Lawrence, escaping to Cornwall. Right now she’d jump at the chance. Though of course not with him. They’d hardly exchanged two words since the afternoon he’d accused her of being frigid and possibly a lesbian and, quite frankly, Emma didn’t care. At first she thought she’d miss his regular visits and ‘putting the world to rights’ conversations, but how could she miss someone who wasn’t really the person she’d thought him to be in the first place? Lawrence hadn’t been a true friend. If he had, he wouldn’t have been so nasty to her when she’d told him his father wasn’t going to help get him out of the fix he was in. And he most definitely wouldn’t have expected her to use her feminine assets to get the result he’d wanted. He would have been grateful that she’d at least tried—at great personal risk too.

But it was all academic now because Piers had decided to help his son after all and so Lawrence was packing up lock, stock and barrel to go down to Cornwall and a new start. Piers… When had she begun to address him with such startling familiarity? She’d only met the man twice, for goodness’ sake, and neither encounter had been exactly pleasant. Pouring hot water into the waiting mug, Emma bit down guiltily on her lip. That wasn’t exactly true, she recalled, remembering the way he had complimented her figure in her ‘tight’ black skirt. But the man was altogether too sure of himself, too arrogant and too…too rich! What else had he been doing but playing games, seeking her out at the restaurant where she worked? Perhaps he’d had a slow day at the stock exchange and was looking for some kind of diversion? Yeah…as if a man like Piers Redfield had to resort to chasing two-a-penny waitresses to get his kicks these days!