Things We Never Say Read Online Free PDF Page B

upset at how Calvin had been able to continue in his role at the chain whereas she had suddenly become an embarrassment. Admittedly walking into a board meeting and dumping the entire contents of a Waterford crystal vase over his head hadn’t done much for her reputation, but he’d bloody well deserved it. He’d cheated on her and lied about cheating and his goddam colleagues knew it. Nevertheless, publicly emptying dirty water and half-dead flowers over your husband’s head, when he was a member of the board and more senior to you, wasn’t the way to get on in business. Suzanne knew that. She knew that they had decided there and then that she was unreliable and flaky even though she was one of the best people who’d ever worked for them, and …
    She took a deep breath and banished the memory. That was all in the past. Her ill-fated marriage, which she’d rushed into less than a year after her mother’s death, was long over. She hadn’t seen or heard from Calvin Schwartz since their divorce, although she knew, from insider gossip, that he was still in the States and that he was seeing someone else (although not, it turned out, the woman with whom he’d had the affair). Anyway, nothing for her to care about there. Nothing to get upset about. Except that she couldn’t help the occasional rush of anger she felt whenever she thought about him and his betrayal.
    But things had turned out for the best. As they so often did. She’d left the chain and got another job and eventually moved to Girona and started working in the boutique hotel, and she’d suddenly realised that this, for her, was what running a hotel was all about. Meeting real people rather than businessmen (the majority were still male) who were simply in town for a meeting or a conference which could have been in any other city in any other country, staying in a big hotel because they felt safer in the security blanket of a chain where everything would always be the same.
    Being in charge of El Boganto had been a revelation to her and she’d enjoyed every single minute. But now she wanted more. She wanted to be the owner, not the manager. She wanted to be able to make the long-term strategic decisions. She wanted to give it a go herself. She knew that she’d never be able to do it all entirely on her own, so she’d built up a network of contacts in the region’s hospitality industry. She knew that they’d been impressed with her credentials – and impressed by the fact that El Boganto’s occupancy rate had soared under her management. As a result, she’d sounded them out about potential opportunities and the response had been heartening. But whether it would be as positive when she actually had a deal on the table would be another matter altogether.
    She knew that the Mirador would be a massive undertaking. She knew that she’d have to pitch it perfectly. She also knew that – even with the consortium that she and Petra, her financial adviser, had put together – it might be difficult to get the financing she needed. But she had a strong track record (if you excluded the emptying of Waterford crystal vases over the heads of board members) and she knew what she was doing. She’d seen other hotels over the past few weeks. The Mirador was the only one that had excited her.
    She opened the folder that Jaime had given her and spread the brochures out in front of her. This hotel had a certain something about it. Had the potential to be wonderful. The fact that its potential hadn’t been realised in the past didn’t make it a bad bet for the future. From what she’d learned, the previous owners had borrowed heavily at the top of the market to take it over, but business had slumped and they hadn’t been able to keep it going. Suzanne thought they’d got their business model all wrong. And that they’d got the feeling of the hotel all wrong too. The Mirador wasn’t the sort of place that should ever have had plastic chairs around its swimming