Chapter Nine
Four days later I stand outside the gorgeous, high-tech building where Reid Dorsey lives and makes his plans to ruin the world and all of the beautiful things in it. And history. This is where the fucker plots and plans to shove all history aside in exchange for turning Banover Place into some kind of spa. I don’t even understand half of what this man is expecting me to do to that poor multimillion-dollar work of art and history.
I only know I can’t let him do it.
This is not what Anika signed him up for. I have to stop this crap before we start work on Monday.
“You’re one of Mr. Dorsey’s guests?”
Naturally this isn’t the kind of building where one simply buzzes in or waits until someone else does and slips inside. Nope. There’s real security and everything. An older man in a crisp blue suit stands behind the security desk, bringing his glasses up and staring at the screen. He frowns. “I show them all checked in.”
The words don’t mean anything to me. If he’s got Britta up there or is having a party with all his uber-rich friends, then they can get an earful, too. It will serve him right. “I’m a coworker of his. It’s an emergency.”
Yep. It’s a design emergency because this project is about to fall apart.
The security guy raises a bushy brow as though proving to me that he knows what the Dorsey brothers do for a living. Well, for work at least. I think the billion-dollar trust fund fixes the whole living thing. “I’ll call up. What was your name, dear? I’m sorry for all the trouble but we’re worried about reporters. The press is coming around again.”
“Yes, so I’ve heard.”
Even one of the New York rags picked up on Reid’s epic love story. There have been days the last week or so that I wish I could go back to the bubble where I had no idea who this man is. Now I know and he’s everywhere. He’s invading my life, and it’s only going to get worse because the man annoys me and we’re not even working twelve-hour days together yet.
I hate the fact that at some point my phone heard me say his name enough that now my socials all offer me information about Reid Dorsey and his fabulous brother and his stunning fiancée/ex-fiancée, depending on who you ask.
I now know that he was voted one of New York’s most eligible bachelors five times since he turned twenty-one. People magazine put him in their sexiest issue. I’ve read all kinds of rumors about why their popular show stopped filming, and they are mostly about how arrogant and controlling Reid Dorsey is.
He’s about to find out I can’t be controlled. Well, if I get past his security.
“Yes, I need to speak to Mr. Dorsey,”
the security guard says. “He has another guest. She says her name is Harper Ross and she works with him.”
He nods my way. “The housekeeper is going to ask him.”
Of course there’s a housekeeper. I’m sure she’s imported from France or something and makes him croissants every day. Except there’s no way that man eats carbs. None. I got my hands briefly on his abs and there was not a single pastry detected.
And honestly, that’s a strike against him, too, because pastries are delicious, and it’s men like Reid who make other guys feel bad about eating them. Men might be way easier to deal with if they weren’t hungry all the time.
“He’s such a nice man.”
The guard gestures around. “You know he designed the lobby and a couple of the common spaces. And he didn’t charge at all. Just said we deserved updated spaces.”
Sure. The wealthiest of the wealthy for his pro bono work, and he charged the rest. Asshole. I want to point this truth out to my new friend, but I simply nod and give him a “sure.”
He puts the phone back to his ear. “Well, yes, thank you. I’ll send her up. And if there’s any of your delicious food left over that those boys can’t finish, you know where to send it.”
He giggles like a schoolgirl. “Damn straight, Aggie. See you soon.”
See, normally I would be deeply interested in this man’s love life and his obvious flirtation with the Dorsey brothers’ housekeeper. I live for that kind of thing. But all I can see right now is beautiful period-appropriate wallpaper and sconces being ripped out so Reid can turn half the ballroom into a stone wall complete with creeping ivy and night-blooming plants. Because that’s how people live. They grow walls of plants in their mansions. Nothing bad could ever come from that.
The guard is still smiling when he directs me to the last of the bank of elevators. “It’s a private elevator for the upper floors, so I will program it to take you straight to Mr. Dorsey’s penthouse.”
Excellent. Everything is state of the art. I tromp over to the elevator, well aware that I do not look like I belong here. I got Reid’s plans about an hour ago, and I was on a job site. The plans came in late, of course. Likely because he knew damn well I would be angry. He knew how I would react and so he sent me the plans on the Friday before we start shooting. He’s already put in purchase orders. He’ll use that against me. So that’s why I’m wearing jeans and steel-toed boots and look like I’m cosplaying a lumberjack. I watch a woman in a cocktail dress shake her head as I walk by.
The doors to the elevator open as if they know I’m there. Which apparently they do. This whole building is sleek and futuristic and devoid of any warmth and humanity. And the elevator walls are all mirrored, so some poor schmo has to come in and Windex the whole thing seven times a day. There’s a keypad but it only goes to the three highest floors, and the highest one is lit up because this elevator is now my AI overlord. I’m having such a talk with Ivy. Her baby seems like a good idea. I mean what bad could happen by letting an artificial intelligence take over your dating life? Nothing. Not a thing. Except she thinks I’m a near perfect match with a man who wants to gut history. Also, I gendered the AI. What the hell?
Needless to say, I’m a whirling ball of rage by the time those doors slide open, and I find myself in the most elegant foyer ever. It’s like I stepped into Fifty Shades and I’m asking for Mr. Grey to see me now.
Except I’m going to punch Mr. Grey in the balls, and we’ll see who ends up getting a spanking.
“Ms. Harper,”
a woman who has to be Aggie says in a perfectly posh British accent. She’s dressed in a sturdy pantsuit, an apron around her like she just walked out of the kitchen. “I’ve informed Mr. Dorsey of your change in plans.”
She looks me up and down. “You seem far…angrier than was described.”
“Someone described me?”
“Oh, yes. Jeremiah is excellent at descriptions. He said you were lovely and had a pleasant energy. Where did that go?”
Aggie asks with a frown. “Also, you are not up to dress code for this evening’s event.”
“Somehow I don’t think she’s here for this evening’s event,”
a deep voice says. Reid steps out looking so deliciously masculine in a three-piece suit he’s taken the jacket off of. It makes him look elegant and lean and predatory, and I wish this man didn’t get my motor running.
I wish he didn’t make me feel the way he does. If this was anyone else, I would sit down and have a long discussion. I wouldn’t stand here feeling my adrenaline shoot sky high. “I’m here because the plans you sent me aren’t happening.”
A brow rises as he looks me over and then turns to Aggie. “Thank you, Aggie. I’ll deal with her from here.”
“Are you sure?”
Aggie doesn’t look sure. “She seems to be in a state.”
“I’m not in a state. Unless the state is righteousness because that man is not going to turn my mansion into some cheapo massage parlor.”
Now those blue-green eyes widen. “Excuse me. I think we should take this to my office.”
I’m not going to be further drawn in. We can do this right here. Especially when I have examples of what I’m about to protest. Reid’s foyer looks an awful lot like what he’s proposed for the ballroom. Dark wood floors and a whole wall dominated by a waterfall feature and a bunch of plants that make me think I’ve walked into one of those James Bond sets. You know the ones where the over-the-top bad guy lives and interrogates Bond and the floor opens up to a shark tank below? I could buy that coming from him. “No. What I have to say won’t take long. I need you to understand that you are not turning Banover Place into…”
I gesture around. “Whatever this is.”
“Oh, I think you called it a cheap massage parlor,”
he replies.
That might have been a tad over the line, but I can’t exactly take it back now. “I thought we discussed the fact that this whole project is about restoring Banover Place to its former glory.”
Reid’s eyes narrow. “No, this project is about getting Anika and Luca enough money to get their projects off the ground.”
“Yes, by restoring Banover Place to its former glory.”
He’s forgetting a few important points.
“You know if we were going to do that, it should have been purchased by a historical society.”
He seems to think. “Wait. It was. They sold it to Anika’s production company. So guess what—we get to do whatever we like with it.”
“The only reason they sold it to us was we promised to keep everything as period appropriate as possible,”
I point out. “I sent you all of my historical research.”
“First of all, there’s nothing in the contract that says we have to decorate or renovate in any particular way. That doesn’t exist, Harper, and you’re na?ve to think it does. The society we bought the house from wanted to get rid of it.”
I shake my head. “No, they couldn’t afford the taxes.”
“They couldn’t afford anything because for years it’s been held up by tourist dollars, and they don’t care anymore. I know this is some kind of magical place for you, and that’s precisely why I told Anika we should consider another contractor. You’re far too close to the project to be able to see things clearly. You’re too emotional.”
Oh, that is the last thing he should say to me. “Am I?”
“Yes,”
he says with a shrug.
“What should I do about that?”
“You should probably calm down and listen to reason.”
A hiss comes from behind Reid as Jeremiah rounds the corner. “Damn, brother. You are supposed to know better than to tell a woman to calm down. She set a trap and you fell right into it. What is it with hetero men? Do you never think maybe you should sit down and figure out the female psyche? Do you enjoy getting your balls busted again and again. See, we do not have this problem. Harper, is there any way I could talk you into maybe castrating my brother in his office?”
The Dorsey men want to get me somewhere private. So I’m not going. “No. I’m not staying, and you can’t talk me into seeing logic. I know women with our tiny brains can’t possibly understand logic. Isn’t that what you think, Reid?”
He huffs and his hands shoot to the air. “Sure. I’m a misogynist douchebag, and you are named properly because you’re a harpy. Tell me something—how many men do you run off with that attitude? Is there some reason you’re the last of your friends without a date?”
“Reid,”
Jeremiah says, obviously shocked.
Reid’s head shakes. “No, if she’s going to stereotype me with no real reason, I can do the same.”
“Or you could be the bigger person and maybe figure out what’s behind all of this?”
Jeremiah offers.
“What’s behind it is not wanting your brother to ruin a very important job by throwing up shitty shiplap everywhere or deciding that we join the farmhouse revolution.”
Jeremiah put a hand to his chest, his eyes wide. “We never do farmhouse. Ever. We are not monsters.”
Oh, I disagree. “But you happily take out a mural that’s been in the ballroom for a hundred years to put up cheap plants and make someone feel like they’re on the set of the revival of Little Shop of Horrors.”
Reid’s spine seems to stretch, and he feels impossibly tall as he snarls my way. “It is called biophilic design, you plebian. Do I need to get you a dictionary so you can figure out how I insulted you?”
I get right in his face. I have to go up on my toes, but I do it. “Oh, I know exactly what you think of me, you elitist asshole.”
“I actually don’t think it was an insult. The show reference, not the plebian thing. That was absolutely an insult, but I don’t see why we’re hating on Little Shop. I love that show,”
Jeremiah adds. “I do a great rendition of ‘Suddenly Seymour.’ My high school was progressive. I doubt in the current political climate that I would have been allowed to play Audrey, and that would be a shame. I was very good.”
We’re not paying attention to Jeremiah anymore.
“I assure you my designs are not some shoddy, off-Broadway play,”
Reid replies, his face taking on some pink as he points my way. “And I don’t think I have to take this from a woman whose highest heights of taste is an apartment building that looks like it’s probably built on cinder blocks. I wouldn’t let you build a bodega much less an actual home someone is going to live in. Do you think I haven’t seen the lawsuits you’ve dealt with?”
“Every builder deals with suits.”
My rage is reaching a pulse point. I can feel my blood pressure rising. How dare this man who has never actually run a business question me? “Would you like to mansplain the US legal system for me?”
“We could have a lawyer do that,”
Jeremiah offers. “I think there’s one inside. Though the scary lady just called him Lawyer. Do you think that’s his name?”
Reid never takes his eyes off me. “I wouldn’t dare. As often as you’ve been sued, you should know it backward and forward. And yet you still don’t understand the concept of taxes since your company was in arrears for years. I like that. We could make you a T-shirt.”
I hate this man and yet I can’t miss the fact that he seems to find this argument exciting. “If you designed it, it would be the most boring shirt in the history of time. Are you going to staple some greenery and stones on it so it can be biophallic?”
“It’s biophilic,”
he corrects.
I give him a smirk of my own. “I was talking about your pants, Dorsey, since they seem to be tighter on you than they were before. Is that a swatch or are you happy to see me?”
His jaw tightens. “Well, I could say the same damn thing about your nipples, Harper. Because those headlights are on, baby, and they definitely seem happy to see me.”
Damn, my overly sensitive nipples. It’s the cold. Except I’m not feeling cold. I’m actually feeling weirdly alive for the first time in forever.
“I don’t know whether to cry or start live streaming this,”
Jeremiah says under his breath.
Reid isn’t through. “And if you think I’m going to spend the next several weeks of my life fighting you, you’re wrong. I’m not listening to this. I do not need a contractor complaining constantly.”
Oh, we’re back to me being a harpy. “I’m just some nagging woman out to ruin your life, is that it, Reid? Is that what that night in Ralavia was about? You thought maybe since you couldn’t get my friend to fire me, you could control the pathetic wallflower with sex?”
The smirk on his face is pure arrogance. “I thought maybe I would see if the room got warmer if you lost some of that ice, Princess.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,”
Jeremiah says under his breath as his head shakes. “We should have invited a therapist to dinner. Always. Anytime we have a party, there should be a therapist on call. I would have invited my friend but he’s a vegan, and I really wanted some red meat.”
“I’m an ice princess?”
It’s nothing I haven’t heard before, but it hurts. And when I’m hurt I tend to…well, hurt right back.
He gets in my space, looking like a gorgeous, angry bull about to charge. “If the frost fits…”
“You are a lying cheater,”
I shoot back. He wants to do it this way, he’ll find out I can throw it right back in his face.
His head shakes. “Oh, am I? Who exactly am I cheating on?”
“History for one, and that blonde idiot for another.”
I don’t care what Jeremiah told me. He’s looking out for his brother.
“First off, I can’t cheat history. I simply choose not to worship a time when they didn’t even have running toilets. I also think we’re not talking about the same history. You don’t care about Banover Place because it was once a smuggler’s home or because some famous author once lived there. This is about you. You want to take this place back to some sad-sack moment in time when you and your friends thought you could take on the world or something. It’s the sad dream of a pathetic teenager, and I’m not going to wreck this project so you can feel like you’re seventeen again.”
The words split something inside me. Is that really what I’m doing? Am I causing all this trouble because I’m desperate to hold on to some moment in the past when the world seemed softer and warmer than it does today? When life held promise?
Reid’s expression falls and he runs a hand over his hair. “Harper, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. You came at me with claws flying and I…I wasn’t ready for a fight tonight.”
“Harper, I would like to speak with you privately,”
a deep voice says, and I look up to see Luca St. Marten standing there looking especially regal in a button-down and perfectly pressed slacks. And he is pissed. His eyes are narrowed, and every muscle seems rigid with irritation.
I started this fight and I’m about to get fired.