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I stared at him in shock. ‘What? You just happen to have a factory vacant in France? Really?’
‘I have lots of different companies doing different things. And yes, one of those things is a factory in France that just happens to be vacant. Or rather, it produces automotive parts and I’m sure we can make a few adjustments for your Pythons.’ He frowned and I could almost see him sorting through all sorts of ideas and plans, weeding the wheat from the chaff. ‘I’m happy to fly your father and any engineers he might want to bring out. In fact, I’ll get Petra to contact him. No, scratch that, I’ll contact him myself.’ He had his phone out already, his thumb moving swiftly over the screen, obviously typing out some notes to himself.
I kept on staring, dumbfounded at how quickly he moved when he wanted to. ‘But I—’
‘Unless you want to call him?’ Ash suddenly lifted his gaze to mine. ‘After all, you were the one who came here to solve his debt problem. If this works out, he’ll be making some returns even sooner than we anticipated.’
It was true. But the thought of talking to Dad felt wrong. I would be excited and he wouldn’t. He’d try and damp it down somehow, turn a big deal into something small. And I didn’t want small. Not yet. Right now, I wanted to enjoy the excitement of it all.
‘You can tell him,’ I said. ‘He’ll like that you called him directly.’
Ash scowled. ‘He should be fucking grateful that I thought of him at all. And I only did because of you.’
I flushed, feeling a little disloyal at how pleased that made me, but feeling it anyway. ‘I think he will be,’ I said. ‘Anyway, I’ll be helping—’
‘No, you won’t.’ Ash’s eyes gleamed as he waved away the chauffeur, opening the door to the limo for me himself. ‘I’ve thought of
something else that you’ll be doing.’
‘Oh? And what’s that?’
There was a hot, feral light gleaming in his eyes. ‘Get in the car, Miss Little. Monaco can wait, but my cock can’t.’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Ash
IT TURNED OUT to be longer than a few days in Dubai.
It soon turned into a week.
Yes, we had stuff to organise but it wasn’t anything that couldn’t be managed via email and phone. The rest of the time we spent either lounging naked beside the suite’s private pool and sipping cocktails, or in the bedroom fucking each other senseless. Or sitting comfortably in the suite’s lounge, just talking.
A couple of times we went out into the city and I showed Ellie around since I’d been to Dubai a lot. She wasn’t at all fazed by the heat and loved the cultural differences, the markets, as well as the high-tech luxury playgrounds. We even spent a night in the desert, in a well-appointed tent, where I made her scream at the stars high above us.
There was only one issue: spending time with Ellie only made me want to spend even more time with Ellie.
Her honesty and directness I already knew about, but I soon got to know her dry sense of humour, too. She was ridiculously easy to tease and blushed adorably when I did, which meant I spent quite a lot of time teasing her. To which she responded in kind.
Apparently—or so she told me—I was easy to tease, too, though my response wasn’t to blush. It was to take her to the floor and have my way with her, which meant she ended up on the floor quite a lot, given how much she liked teasing me in return.
I also managed to slowly draw her out about her electric supercar project, which she was very reluctant to talk about. I soon found out why—her father thought it was nonsense. Which incensed me, since I thought it was brilliant. No, I thought it was visionary.
I made no bones about my opinion, too, and though it took a couple of days and several rounds of convincing in bed, soon she was telling me in intricate detail about the five-year design process she’d gone through to get the car to the prototype stage.
Her passion for it shone in her eyes, coming slowly but surely, like the sun rising.
‘I honestly don’t understand why your father wouldn’t even contemplate a prototype,’ I said on our last night as we watched the sunset from the pool area. ‘Why is that?’
She was lying on one of the sun loungers, her naked body gone a lovely deep gold after days in the sun, the sunset gilding her like a statue. She sighed, swirling the tall glass of lemon, lime and bitters she liked drinking in the evening. ‘He prefers internal combustion engines. He thought the technology wasn’t good enough to get the kinds of speeds people like these days.’
I’d already talked to Oliver Little at length, a laconic Australian who’d been pleased to hear the news I’d given him of the Australis coup in Monaco, though not overly effusive about it. He and a couple of his sons were already in France getting the factory I’d set aside as a Python workshop up and running.
He hadn’t mentioned Ellie once in any of the conversations I’d had with him, and I could imagine him not knowing how to deal with his ebullient and honest daughter, whose passions ran deep and yet bubbled up no matter how hard she tried to keep them down.
‘Yet you kept working on it,’ I said.
Her eyes gleamed. ‘Yes, of course. I wasn’t going to give it up just because he didn’t like it. Electricity is where the automotive industry is heading and he really needs to get with the programme.’
