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‘What about our family?’ Spencer asked quietly. ‘What would you do for them, Ben?’
‘This isn’t about family...’
‘The hotel is always about the family, and the family is about the hotel,’ Spencer said flatly. ‘You know that, Ben, even if you don’t like it. One fails or succeeds with the other.’
‘I wouldn’t,’ Ben answered, ‘call our family a success.’
‘I know.’ They were both silent for a minute, remembering the anger and pain of their childhood. All the arguing. All the insults and impatience from their father, all the mute misery from their mother. All the lies. ‘This is all I’ve got,’ Spencer said quietly, and Ben heard the ache of honesty in his voice. ‘I’ve poured my life into this hotel, Ben. It is my family. I’ve made it so, for better or for worse.’
Ben didn’t answer. He knew he’d done the same with his business. Used it to fill up the empty spaces, to channel all the emotion. He didn’t have anything else in his life either.
‘Please...’
‘Okay.’ He didn’t need or want his brother to beg. ‘Fine. I’ll do it. But don’t ask me for anything else, Spencer. I mean it.’
‘I won’t.’
Ben hung up the phone, stared into space for a while, memories of his childhood churning through him as he battled between anger and resignation. And tried not to think about pretending to be Olivia Harrington’s boyfriend.
* * *
Olivia hurried through the lobby, keeping her sunglasses on celebrity-style and her head down low. Thank God she didn’t see Ben anywhere, and she made it to the bank of elevators without running into anyone. She needed time to regroup and think of just how she was going to deal with Ben. What role she’d take with him.
The lift pinged open and she stepped inside, exhaling in relief to see it was empty. She’d just pushed the button for the floor of executive suites and the doors had started to close when a hand—a brown, masculine hand—slammed onto the door and forced it open. Olivia shrank back against the wall as Ben entered the lift.
‘Well,’ he drawled, his eyes two narrowed hazel slits, his body radiating suppressed, lethal tension. ‘Fancy meeting you here.’
Olivia managed a breezy smile even as her stomach clenched. And other parts of her clenched too, because even when he was angry—and Ben Chatsfield was definitely angry—he still looked almost unbearably sexy. The rumpled, just-got-out-of-bed hair. The designer stubble. The crooked tie. The dimple. All of it made Olivia take a deep breath and attempt to calm her raging hormones.
So he was sexy. Fine. She could deal with it. She’d have to deal with it, especially if she wanted to convince him to act like her boyfriend for the next ten days.
And just what would that entail?
‘It’s a small world, isn’t it,’ Olivia answered back, still trying for breezy. And succeeding, because she didn’t think Ben could tell how nervous she was. His eyes remained narrowed and he folded his arms across that impressive chest and gave her a steady, smouldering stare. And not the good kind of smouldering.
‘So,’ he asked as the doors closed and they soared upwards, ‘you weren’t trying to avoid me, by any chance?’
Olivia widened her eyes in pseudo-innocence. ‘Why on earth would I try to do that?’
‘Because of the stunt you pulled this afternoon, perhaps?’
She hesitated, her mind racing as she considered how to play this. Light and flirty, or humble and contrite? What was likely to get Ben on her side?
The answer, Olivia suspected, was nothing.
‘No answer for once?’ Ben asked, one eyebrow cynically arched. ‘Or are you just scrambling for a way to excuse your appalling behaviour?’
Ouch. Honesty it was then. ‘I’m afraid I didn’t think through what I was saying.’
His eyebrow arched higher and his mouth compressed. ‘Oh, really? So you didn’t tell the entire world’s media that we were dating as some sort of revenge?’
He sounded so disbelieving that Olivia could only stare for a second. The doors pinged open and neither of them moved.
‘This is my floor,’ she said needlessly.
‘I realise, since it used to be my floor.’
‘Right.’ She swallowed, and then smiled. She was going to go for light, at least for now. ‘Would you like to come in, so we can discuss this reasonably?’
Ben’s smile reminded her of a shark’s. Not that she’d seen many sharks smile, or look so sexy.
‘I’d love to,’ he said.
Olivia’s back prickled as Ben followed her to her suite. She fumbled with her key card and skidded on the marble tile of the suite’s foyer, nerves jangling inside her. She took a deep breath and turned around, gave him what she hoped was an appealing smile.
