Erin grimaced down at the keys. ‘Thanks, Sam, but it’s too much—’
‘Nothing’s too good for you. Take a look at the balance sheets for the spas since you took over,’ Sam advised her drily. ‘Even according to that misery of an accountant I employ I’m coining it hand over fist. You’re worth ten times what that car cost me, so let’s hear no more about it.’
‘Sam…’ Erin sighed heavily and he filched the keys back from her to stride over to the BMW and unlock it with a flourish.
‘Come on,’ he urged. ‘Take me for a test drive. I’ve got some time to kill before my big appointment this afternoon.’
‘What big appointment?’ she queried, shooting the sleek car into reverse and filtering it out through the arched entrance to the courtyard and down the drive past the immaculate gardens.
‘I’m having another bash at the retirement thing,’ her boss confided ruefully.
Erin suppressed a weary sigh. Sam Morton was always talking about selling his three country-house hotels, but she believed that it was more an idea that he toyed with from time to time than an actual plan likely to reach fruition. At sixty-two years of age, Sam still put in very long hours of work. He was widowed more than twenty years earlier and childless; his thriving hotel group had become his life, consuming all his energy and time.
Thirty minutes later, having dropped Sam off at his golf club for lunch and gently refused his offer to join him in favour of getting back to work, Erin walked back into Stanwick Hall and entered the office of Sam’s secretary, Janice, a dark-haired fashionably clad woman in her forties.
‘Have you seen the car?’ she asked Janice with a self-conscious wince.
‘I went with him to the showroom to choose it—didn’t I do you proud?’ the brunette teased.
‘Didn’t you try to dissuade him from buying such an expensive model?’ Erin asked in surprise.
‘Right now, Sam’s flush with the last quarter’s profits and keen to splurge. Buying you a new car was a good excuse. I didn’t waste my breath trying to argue with him. When Sam makes up his mind about something it’s set in stone. Look at it as a bonus for all the new clients you’ve brought in since you reorganised the spas,’ Janice advised her. ‘Anyway you must’ve noticed that Sam is all over the place at the moment.’
Erin fell still by the other woman’s desk with a frown. ‘What do you mean?’
‘His moods are unpredictable and he’s very restless. I honestly think that he’s really intending to go for retirement this time around and sell but it’s a challenge for him to face up to it.’
Erin was stunned by that opinion for she had learned not to take Sam’s talk of selling up seriously. Several potential buyers had come and gone unmourned during the two years she had worked at Stanwick Hall. Sam was always willing to discuss the possibility but had yet to go beyond that. ‘You really think that? My word, are half of us likely to be standing in the dole queue this time next month?’
‘Now that’s a worry I can settle for you. The law safeguards employment for the staff in any change of ownership. I know that thanks to Sam checking it out,’ Janice told her. ‘As far as I know this is the first time he’s gone that far through the process before.’
A slight figure in a dark brown trouser suit, silvery blonde hair gleaming at her nape in the sunlight, Erin sank heavily down into the chair by the window, equal amounts of relief and disbelief warring inside her, for experience had taught her never to take anything for granted. ‘I honestly had no idea he was seriously considering selling this time.’
‘Sam’s sixtieth birthday hit him hard. He says he’s at a turning point in his life. He’s got his health and his wealth and now he wants the leisure to enjoy them,’
Janice told her evenly. ‘I can see where he’s coming from. His whole life has revolved round this place for as long as I can remember.’
‘Apart from the occasional game of golf, he has nothing else to occupy him,’ Erin conceded ruefully.