"Oh, wait a minute." With another laugh she pulled up short. "I think the restaurant'll be a lot smarter."

Justin studied her a moment, then reached into his pocket.

"Oh, Justin—"

"Heads, my suite, tails the restaurant."

With lowered brows she held out her hand. "Let me see that coin." Taking it from him, Serena examined both sides. "All right, I'm too hungry to argue. Flip it."

With a deft movement of his thumb, he did. Serena waited until it lay on the back of his hand, then let out a sigh. "We'll take the elevator up," Justin said blandly.

Chapter Eight

"I'm still going to beat you one of these days," Serena said with a yawn as Justin pressed the button for the penthouse. "And when I do, it's going to be worth more than breakfast." She glanced around at the smoky mirrored walls. "You know, I hardly noticed the elevator when I was in your office."

"It's an escape route," he said, then gave her a small smile when she looked at him. "We all need one occasionally."

"I don't suppose I thought you would." She remembered the two-way glass in his office and sighed. "Do they crowd you at times, Justin? All those people only a thin wall away?"

"More lately than they used to," he admitted. "I suppose you felt the same way on the boat occasionally. Isn't that why you went out on deck when everyone else was asleep?"

She answered by lifting her shoulders. "Well, I'll have to get used to it if I'm going to be living here. In any case, I've always seemed to live in a crowd." When the doors slid open, Serena stepped through. "Justin, this is really lovely."

He used bolder colours in his personal rooms, slashes of indigo in the cushions of a low, spreading sofa, the flash of chartreuse in the shade of a glass lamp. For balance there were sketches in pastel chalks and a bevelled mirror in a gilt frame.

"You can relax here," Serena decided, picking up a carved figure of a hawk in mid-dive. "It hardly seems like a hotel at all with your personal things around."

Oddly, when he saw her with her hands on what was his, Justin felt his first intimacy with the room. To him, it had always been a living arrangement, nothing more, nothing less. A place to go when he wasn't working. He had similar rooms in other hotels. They were comfortable, private and, he realized suddenly, empty. Until now.