Falling for the Secret Millionaire Read Free Page A

You need a haircut and your roots are showing. And there’s a massive spot on your nose. It’s like the red spot on Mars. You can see it from outer space.
    Jupiter’s the one with the red spot, she corrected. But I get the point. Head now normal size. Thank you.
    Good.
    And he just bet she knew he’d deliberately mixed up his planets. He paused.
    Seriously, though—maybe you could sell the property and split the money with your mum.
    It still feels like thirty pieces of silver. I was thinking about giving her all of it. Except I’ll have to persuade her because she’ll say he left it to me.
    Or maybe it isn’t an apology—maybe it’s a rescue.
    Rescue? How do you work that out? she asked.
    You hate your job.
    She’d told him that a while back—and, being in a similar situation, he’d sympathised.
    If you split the money from selling the property with your mum, would it be enough to tide you over for a six-month sabbatical? That might give you enough time and space to find out what you really want to do. OK, so your grandfather wasn’t there when your mum needed him—but right now it looks to me as if he’s given you something that you need at exactly the right time. A chance for independence, even if it’s only for a little while.
    I never thought of it like that. You could be right.
    It is what it is. You could always look at it as a belated apology, which is better than none at all. He wasn’t there when he should’ve been, but he’s come good now.
    Hmm. It isn’t residential property he left me.
    It’s a business?
    Yes. And it hasn’t been in operation for a while.
    A run-down business, then. Which would take money and time to get it back in working order—the building might need work, and the stock or the fixtures might be well out of date. So he’d been right in the first place and the bequest had come with strings.
    Could you get the business back up and running?
    Though it would help if he knew what kind of business it actually was. But asking would be breaking the terms of their friendship—because then she’d be sharing personal details.
    In theory, I could. Though I don’t have any experience in the service or entertainment industry.
    He did. He’d grown up in it.
    That’s my area, he said.
    He was taking a tiny risk, telling her something personal—but she had no reason to connect Clarence with Hunter Hotels.
    My advice, for what it’s worth — an MBA and working for a very successful hotel chain, though he could hardly tell her that without her working out exactly who he was— is that staff are the key. Look at what your competitors are doing and offer your clients something different. Keep a close eye on your costs and income, and get advice from a business start-up specialist. Apply for all the grants you can.
    It was solid advice. And Nicole knew that Clarence would be the perfect person to brainstorm ideas with, if she decided to keep the Electric Palace. She was half tempted to tell him everything—but then they’d be sharing details of their real and professional lives, which was against their agreement. He’d already told her too much by letting it slip that he worked in the service or entertainment industry. And she’d as good as told him her age. This was getting risky; it wasn’t part of their agreement. Time to back off and change the subject.
    Thank you, she typed. But enough about me. You said you’d had a bad day. What happened?
    A pointless row. It’s just one of those days when I feel like walking out and sending off my CV to half a dozen recruitment agencies. Except it’s the family business and I know it’s my duty to stay.
    Because he was still trying to make up for the big mistake he’d made when he was a teenager? He’d told her the bare details one night, how he was the disgraced son in the family, and that he was