28

She couldn’t resist teasing him. ‘Would I have made you rich?’

He glanced up, a strange expression on his handsome face. ‘If I had more people like you working for me then my life would be a great deal simpler, meu amorzinho. How do you manage to keep the cafés so busy?’

She shrugged. ‘I’m good at ideas. I’m hopeless at financial detail and probably always will be, but I see the bigger picture. I know what people want and what is likely to work. I was good at pulling in the customers.’

‘Don’t put it in the past tense.’ He dropped the accounts onto the table and looked at her thoughtfully. ‘How would you feel about extending Café Brazil?’

Her eyes widened. ‘You mean across the country?’

‘Actually I meant across the world,’ he said drily, the faint smile that touched his mouth telling her how amused he was by her provincial ambitions. ‘I think it’s an idea that could become a global phenomenon.’

‘There are already lots of very successful chains of coffee shops.’

‘True, but none o