month, they all walk away with a smile on their face and nothing but praise for you on their lips.”
Dealing with female tears and temper ranked right up there with root canals and missing the annual suit sale at Armani. He’d wasted enough emotional currency with that on his mother through the years. Keep it light, keep it sexy, keep it drama-free. If Gib were to redesign his family’s coat of arms, that would be the new motto scrolling across the bottom. And not in Latin. In plain English, so nobody missed the importance of it.
“If I do something, I like to do it right. And I like to satisfy women.”
Ben scratched his head. “With none of that breakup awkwardness, though? If you could bottle and sell that trick, you’d be a millionaire. I mean, on top of whatever you rake in off of your alfalfa fields.” He snickered at his own weak pun.
“Trust me, having a wide network of happy women at my disposal is a useful thing.”
“Exactly!” Thoroughly at home in Gib’s office, Ben opened the tiny closet and pulled out a gym bag. To hammer home his readiness to leave, he then stood with one hand on the chrome door pull. “You’re not a one-woman guy. You like your women like your satellite television—hundreds of options on any given day.”
Giving in to the inevitable, Gib turned off his monitor. Maybe they could brainstorm a compelling tweet in the gym. Pounding one foot in front of the other on the treadmill always cleared the debris from his mind. “Variety is the spice of life.”
“My point is that you don’t just have notches on your bedpost. You’ve probably got enough notches to crimp the frame of every bed on the fourth floor of this hotel. So why are you so focused on this one woman? You didn’t see her, you didn’t talk to her, and I’ve seen you literally crook your finger at women and have them fall into your arms. What makes Cinderella so special?”
Good question. One that had kept him nearly sleepless for two nights straight. “I don’t know.”
“You might want to figure that out before you find her.”
Gib waved at the middle-aged woman with a teased crown of brown hair at her command post just outside his office. “Agatha, I’ll be at the gym for a couple of hours.”
“Too many Christmas cookies?” She gave a pointed glare at his midsection over the top of her cat’s-eye glasses. He’d inherited her awesome traffic-controller-like skill set wrapped in rayon from the previous Cavendish manager. Running the hotel without Agatha would be as scary a prospect as—hell, being forced to return to his homeland. Their first two weeks together had been dicey. Learning to listen past her thick Polish accent was a full-time job in and of itself. Determined to hate him on sight for having the gall to replace her retiring boss, she hadn’t cut him an inch of slack. And at the end of those two weeks, as a reward for surviving without burning the place down (and remembering to keep the Frango mint jar on her desk filled), she all but adopted him. Sunday dinner at her house once a month was nonnegotiable. She only excused with serious proof of bodily harm, like a cast, or a minimum of ten stitches. Still didn’t cut him much slack, though.
“Miss Lovell’s cinnamon rolls, if you must know. Their sweet goodness called to me.”
“And you answered their call for two hours straight.” Ben puffed out his cheeks in mock distress. “Our man’s going to pot, Agatha. You might want to reinforce his chair legs while we’re gone.”
“I did that after his date with the tennis player,” she deadpanned.
Ah yes, the lovely Selena with thighs that could latch on to a man with the tensile strength of rebar. Energetic, too. Come to think of it, he’d ended up replacing a splintered coffee table that hadn’t survived their weekend together. Good times. And good to know Agatha kept his office, well, ready for anything.
“Call if there’s an emergency.” Remembering his promise to
Dealing with female tears and temper ranked right up there with root canals and missing the annual suit sale at Armani. He’d wasted enough emotional currency with that on his mother through the years. Keep it light, keep it sexy, keep it drama-free. If Gib were to redesign his family’s coat of arms, that would be the new motto scrolling across the bottom. And not in Latin. In plain English, so nobody missed the importance of it.
“If I do something, I like to do it right. And I like to satisfy women.”
Ben scratched his head. “With none of that breakup awkwardness, though? If you could bottle and sell that trick, you’d be a millionaire. I mean, on top of whatever you rake in off of your alfalfa fields.” He snickered at his own weak pun.
“Trust me, having a wide network of happy women at my disposal is a useful thing.”
“Exactly!” Thoroughly at home in Gib’s office, Ben opened the tiny closet and pulled out a gym bag. To hammer home his readiness to leave, he then stood with one hand on the chrome door pull. “You’re not a one-woman guy. You like your women like your satellite television—hundreds of options on any given day.”
Giving in to the inevitable, Gib turned off his monitor. Maybe they could brainstorm a compelling tweet in the gym. Pounding one foot in front of the other on the treadmill always cleared the debris from his mind. “Variety is the spice of life.”
“My point is that you don’t just have notches on your bedpost. You’ve probably got enough notches to crimp the frame of every bed on the fourth floor of this hotel. So why are you so focused on this one woman? You didn’t see her, you didn’t talk to her, and I’ve seen you literally crook your finger at women and have them fall into your arms. What makes Cinderella so special?”
Good question. One that had kept him nearly sleepless for two nights straight. “I don’t know.”
“You might want to figure that out before you find her.”
Gib waved at the middle-aged woman with a teased crown of brown hair at her command post just outside his office. “Agatha, I’ll be at the gym for a couple of hours.”
“Too many Christmas cookies?” She gave a pointed glare at his midsection over the top of her cat’s-eye glasses. He’d inherited her awesome traffic-controller-like skill set wrapped in rayon from the previous Cavendish manager. Running the hotel without Agatha would be as scary a prospect as—hell, being forced to return to his homeland. Their first two weeks together had been dicey. Learning to listen past her thick Polish accent was a full-time job in and of itself. Determined to hate him on sight for having the gall to replace her retiring boss, she hadn’t cut him an inch of slack. And at the end of those two weeks, as a reward for surviving without burning the place down (and remembering to keep the Frango mint jar on her desk filled), she all but adopted him. Sunday dinner at her house once a month was nonnegotiable. She only excused with serious proof of bodily harm, like a cast, or a minimum of ten stitches. Still didn’t cut him much slack, though.
“Miss Lovell’s cinnamon rolls, if you must know. Their sweet goodness called to me.”
“And you answered their call for two hours straight.” Ben puffed out his cheeks in mock distress. “Our man’s going to pot, Agatha. You might want to reinforce his chair legs while we’re gone.”
“I did that after his date with the tennis player,” she deadpanned.
Ah yes, the lovely Selena with thighs that could latch on to a man with the tensile strength of rebar. Energetic, too. Come to think of it, he’d ended up replacing a splintered coffee table that hadn’t survived their weekend together. Good times. And good to know Agatha kept his office, well, ready for anything.
“Call if there’s an emergency.” Remembering his promise to
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