Tempting the New Boss(45)

“Daddy, don’t worry.” Her eyes started to tear again and she swiped them, laughing as he shook his head.

“When Carly finally told me what a sweat shop that law firm you were at was, all I could think was you should have left years ago.” He glared at Mason. “And if this one’s no better, I say his loss. Not everybody goes to Harvard, honey.”

“A lot of them on Wall Street do, Dad. Anyway, Mason’s fine.” If she decided to quit, she’d revise that opinion with her dad. Not that her parents ever tried to control any of their children’s career moves. If she wanted to quit a job, they’d be nothing but supportive.

Loan companies weren’t so accommodating.

“I better check in myself. What about you guys?”

“We’re all set. Got here about a half hour ago,” her mom said. “That Miss White is so sweet. She insisted that Mr. Talbot wanted to pay for everything. And then that private jet. Ooh la la!”

Mason probably didn’t even know he was paying for everything. And private jets had lost their allure for Camilla.

“Okay, hang on, I’ll go check in, and then maybe we can go to an early dinner or something.”

Mason was in the front of the line when she got there.

At the check-in desk, the elderly clerk hustled to get the room key, since “Mr. Talbot’s assistant had taken care of all the checking-in arrangements.” Apologizing that the whole party couldn’t all be on the same corridor, he handed Mason the key just as her father appeared behind her, hugging her again.

“And here’s your card key, Mr. Talbot, for the room for you and Miss Anderson. Our best suite on the executive VIP floor, one I like to call our Bridal Suite.”

Her head whipped up to register her father’s shocked expression, his face frozen.

Room? Room?

“Do you need a second key?” the clerk asked politely as steam came out of her ears. My God, how could Mason have put them in one room without even asking her? Forget about the pilots finding out, or Marcia knowing, but her parents? Her parents!





Chapter Seven

“Room?” Camilla asked. “I think you mean the plural. Rooms. As in one for each of us.”

“I’ll go see what Brandy and Joey are up to,” her dad mumbled, wandering off.

The clerk looked uncomfortably between her and Mason. “I’m sorry. I thought Mr. Talbot’s assistant specified one room for the both of you. The best we had.”

With the glare Talbot was giving the clerk now, she wouldn’t be surprised if he bought the whole hotel chain to fire the poor guy. He had probably instructed Marcia to tell the front desk to pretend there was only one room left or some other crap.

Good old, straightforward Mason Talbot was learning a few new tricks to go with his otherwise clueless “Got sex?” approach to satisfying his biological urges. Nice to know her brief tenure as his in-house counsel had accomplished something.

“I’d like a separate room,” she said to the clerk. “And if you plan on claiming there’s only one room left in the whole hotel, you can give me the key to it, and Mr. Talbot here can sleep on a chair in your lovely lounge there.”

The clerk’s helpless panicked look at Mason almost made her feel sorry for him. But Mason said nothing.

“No, we have another room of course. We have one hundred and twenty rooms in this hotel. Just not another, er, Bridal Suite. That’s the best room we’ve got. The others that are left are regular singles.”

“I’ll take the Bridal Suite,” she decided immediately, resolving to have her parents see the room was just hers and explain the “confusion” before they went to dinner. “You can give Mr. Talbot a regular room.”

He deserved it for assuming she would share a room with him now that they were back in civilization and for not making it clear once her parents showed up that he needed different arrangements. She wasn’t too happy with Marcia, either, if this was her doing. She at least should have known better.

The clerk handed her the key and she added, “And let me hasten to inform you that I’m an attorney, and if you give the key to my room to anyone else without my express permission, I’ll sue the pants off you. Got it?”

The clerk nodded. She had planned to either invite Mason to her room to talk or go to his, maybe even invite him to dinner with her family, but his incredible gall in arranging one room made her think better of it. It was probably safer for both of them now if she just talked to him in the morning anyway. They needed some distance from each other after the intensity of the last day.

“Good night, Mr. Talbot,” she said, heading toward her parents. “I’ll see you in the morning.”