Chapter Sixteen
“I can’t tell you.”
I bite back a groan, and Reid puts a hand on my shoulder. It’s odd how comforting that hand is. When we moved this meeting to the hotel across the street from Banover, Reid followed along, joined by his brother. I warned Ani that this is New York and seating a large party without reservations is damn near impossible, and then realized that kind of truth is for the normal people of the world as the ma?tre d’ fawned all over her and assured her it was no problem to open a private dining room for us.
When Reid slid in next to me and his arm went around the back of my chair, I have to admit my heart did a fluttery thing. It was weird. And warm. I kind of liked it.
I turn to Ivy. “Do you know?”
Ivy shakes her head. “No. And I don’t think she does either. Not really. She knows the name, but I doubt she has a relationship with the person.”
“I can tell you it was purchased with cash, and the new owner sounds very British. At least her husband does. He’s the one I’ve been communicating with over the phone. She is strictly emails to me and Reid,”
Anika explains. “And we had to sign nondisclosures. I think it’s either a celebrity who wants to do this under the radar or some royal. Maybe from the British royal family.”
“I thought she was doing it for her daughters.”
I’m extremely confused as to why this is so hidden. Property records would have to be filed. “Can’t we look it up ourselves?”
“Technically the sale doesn’t go through until we’re finished, but the couple has been more than happy to pony up cash for some of the unexpected problems we’ve found.”
Anika takes a sip of her mimosa. “The good news is the owners agreed to pay for the whole electrical fiasco. So Reid’s budget isn’t blown.”
A long sigh goes through my guy. “Thank you, rich people.”
Like he’s not one of them, but I’m grateful, too. “Excellent. I already put a call in to an expert. I sent him the full scale and he thinks he can have the whole place done in two to three weeks.”
Reid nods. “We can focus on the rooms he’s finished. There’s plenty to work on. Especially now that we’re building out three separate residences.”
It makes my heart hurt. “Does that mean what I think it means?”
Anika looks my way. “I told her the ballroom was nonnegotiable.”
The ballroom. The heart of entertaining for that magnificent home. But Reid’s right. It’s impractical for today. There are plenty of spaces for entertaining. No one throws grand balls anymore, and Anika needs this sale. It sounds like the owner is actually being helpful if they didn’t blink at 100K for electrical. I’ve known clients who would spend thousands and thousands on things like marble bathtubs and skylights and heated floors, but mention how much an HVAC unit costs and it’s like I’m trying to bleed them dry.
The truth is it’s not my house. “Ani, I’ll do whatever you need me to do.”
“I thought we were sticking together,”
Reid whispers.
I turn to him, seeing him differently than I did before. This man held me all night. He didn’t have to. I certainly didn’t expect him to. The night before was a weird revelation that’s starting to sink in. “You honestly care about keeping the historical integrity of the ballroom?”
He’s quiet for a moment. “I care that you care. I meant what I said. I’ll back your play.”
Damn it. He’s supposed to be an asshole. He is not supposed to make me tear up. I’m supposed to be questioning all of my choices.
I’m not supposed to lean over and kiss him in front of my friends like we’re together. He’s not supposed to make me feel all warm and gooey. He’s not supposed to utterly distract me from my goals.
And yet I let my lips brush over his.
A long sigh comes from the end of the table. “I thought I wanted my brother to find a nice girl, but it’s kind of icky, isn’t it?”
“Only a little,”
Ivy says. “But I do admit I’m not the most romantic sister.”
Anika gently slaps at Ivy’s arm. “Don’t you make her feel bad about this. Jeremiah is jealous because Patrick is not moving.”
Oooo, gossip. I sit up, and Reid sends his brother a stare. I look at him because he’s got to have the goods. I’ve been ignoring everything except work, and now I wonder why. Life has become such a ritual because I’m holding myself apart. That stops now. If I’m in, I’m in. “He hasn’t cracked that code yet?”
Reid’s lips curl up. “He has not. I’ll be honest. I took one look at that grumpy asshole and knew my brother was going to lose it over him.”
“I have lost nothing,”
Jeremiah insists, but he’s pouting a bit. It looks super cute on him. “We spent some time together, but he says I’m not being my authentic self. What is that supposed to mean? How do I be anything else?”
Reid turns thoughtful. “He said that?”
Jeremiah sips on his coffee. He and Reid both skipped the mimosas, as did I since I work with power tools. But Ani and Ivy are making up for it. “Yes, and it’s ridiculous. We even had the hottest make-out session of my life, and let me tell you it did not happen on an air mattress. What were you two thinking? So it’s obvious the man is attracted to me. I catch him looking all the time, but he’s playing hard to get. I don’t understand. This is not the way of my people. Emotionally hard to get, yes. But physically? I’m at a loss and I would simply move on to the next cutie patootie, but I really want this patootie.”
Ivy’s eyes go wide. “Maybe you need a therapist.”
Anika huffs. “Patrick is not that bad.”
“He’s grumpy, but I kind of like him,”
I admit. “I’ve come to appreciate his honesty. I did look like a ghost the first couple of days. Now I make sure I have blush on even though it’s weird to put on a bunch of makeup when I’m installing drywall.”
“You look cute installing drywall,”
Reid says, and I feel his hand on the back of my neck.
Jeremiah is staring at us like he’s never seen his brother with a woman before. Though I know he has. I’ve seen tons of pictures of him out with Britta and Reid.
Britta. I am not letting her ruin this. Reid told me they aren’t together, and he doesn’t have a reason to lie to me. I’m going with the flow, and the idea of her is not going to get in my way.
“Well, it’s going to be his loss,”
Anika says, giving Jeremiah a supportive smile. “I thought the two of you would hit it off.”
“I’m intrigued by the use of the word authentic,”
Reid says as his fingers move over the nape of my neck like he can’t make himself stop touching me. “My brother is generally the person he presents to the world.”
“I don’t know. I think I have my secrets like anyone else,”
Jeremiah replies.
Reid’s gaze softens. “Your secrets are your own. You don’t owe them to anyone, brother. You don’t lie to the world. You don’t pretend to be someone you’re not.”
Jeremiah suddenly seems to find his plate interesting. “I don’t know about that.”
He takes a long breath and seems to shrug off whatever emotion he was experiencing and he’s back to peppy. “But we should talk about the ballroom because splitting it up will cause as many issues as keeping it. What would that space be for?”
Reid sits up. “This is supposed to be for a mom and her daughters. We’ve been treating this like a normal property. When we do that, we have to consider things like the resell value of the space and if we’re creating a design that will speak to the most buyers we can find. But what if instead we consider this a multigenerational home?”
I’m not sure what he’s talking about, but it causes Jeremiah to sit straight up and a gleam to come into his eyes.
“I like that,”
he says. “It opens up a world of possibilities.”
Anika looks my way. Ivy just keeps drinking. “Any idea why they’re so excited?”
Reid moves to the opposite end of the table, pulling a chair around, and suddenly Jeremiah has a pen in his hand and they’re jotting things on one of the notepads Reid always seems to have.
I shake my head. “I don’t know. I make things structurally sound and they make them pretty.”
Anika moves down to take Reid’s seat. “You’re taking this better than I thought you would. Unless you’re hiding it and you’re going to have a meltdown later.”
“Why would she melt down?”
Ivy shifts, too, her voice going low. “I think Reid’s made himself plain. He’s not acting like a dude who’s embarrassed by his one-night stand with the contractor. He’s been all over you. I think he’s under your sexual spell.”
I snort. “I’m not going to melt down. And he is not under a spell. I don’t have a spell.”
“But you do have really strong thighs,”
Ivy points out. “I’ve seen you do that thigh master thing at the gym. All the guys drool.”
Ivy could totally watch me because it wasn’t like she was going to actually work out. “I don’t think he’s attracted to my thighs.”
“You don’t go with the flow.”
Anika looks worried.
“I’m trying something new.”
I steal a sip from Ivy’s mimosa. One sip won’t make me go crazy with a sledgehammer, and we’re veering back into uncomfortable territory. “Look, we’ve got two months tops on this project. We don’t work well together when we’re sniping at each other. Let’s see how it goes when we’re both loose and relaxed. He’s already looking peppier than he’s been the whole time he’s been here.”
“I don’t know if it was only the sex that pepped him up,”
Anika begins. “I’ve talked to Jeremiah, and he thinks the turning point was meeting you. Says Reid has been more himself since that day than he’s been in years. Since the accident.”
I’m sure there’s more to it. “I think he’s feeling like himself again. The accident was bad.”
He showed me the scars the night before. I traced them with my fingers and then kissed my way around them. “His hands still hurt from time to time, but I think his recovery is finally solid.”
Ivy’s head shakes. “No, there’s more to that story. I’ve held off asking some questions.”
I don’t like the sound of that. “You think something’s wrong with the accident?”
I glance down the table, but Reid and his brother are still deep in conversation. “I don’t think he would hide something.”
“I don’t think they’re bad guys. I like them. I do have some questions, but I think I’m going to back off because like Reid said, they don’t owe us explanations,”
Ivy finishes.
“I think they wanted to avoid a lawsuit,”
Ani says quietly. “The palace did do some questioning. They have to run a deep dive on anyone Luca works with. They found Reid didn’t do anything but get distracted while driving at night. He was sober. It was an accident, but it somehow led to everything going wrong for him. I think his injuries are why he ended the show.”
Nothing they’ve told me makes me think I’m wrong. “I can imagine having a life-threatening accident like that could affect you for a long time. He went to therapy. Both physical and emotional.”
The more I think about it, the more I admire him for it. “He’s back on his feet, and maybe being with me for a few months will be good for him.”
The way I hope it will be good for me. I might have walked into this restaurant thinking this was all a huge mistake, but his tenderness won me over and I can’t even think that way anymore. Something warm opened inside me, and I have to see where it takes me.
Anika gives me a little smile. “That sounds good.”
I nod. “I’m going to try to not get in my own way. Maybe this is a bright spot in an otherwise dim time of my life.”
“Yeah, I hate that you think that way.”
Ivy’s mood seems to shift. She’s way more serious now and has a look that lets me know she doesn’t particularly want to have this chat. “Because it’s not. This should be a great time in your life. You’re young and financially stable. You have a great group of friends. I think we should address what’s dragging you down. It’s not Reid. It’s not this project.”
“It’s your family,”
Anika says.
Ivy’s head shakes. “It’s the business.”
I send her a pointed stare because that feels like hypocrisy. “Really? You spend all of your time working.”
“Not so much these days. Heath doesn’t let me. At first it was that he needed to rest on Sundays, and wouldn’t I like to lay around and watch a movie or go for a walk by the food trucks? And then I didn’t work on Sundays anymore. Then he attacked Saturdays. I’m only working a couple of hours on Fridays now. Huh.”
She looks up like she’s having a revelation. “He’s kind of lazy.”
Heath is anything but lazy. Heath provides balance to Ivy’s ambition. Ivy is happier now.
“Not the point,”
Anika counters. “What Ivy is trying to say is that while we’re all about our jobs, we can’t make our jobs everything.”
Ivy’s head shakes. “Not my point at all. Look, I’ve literally built the whole ship and gone down with it before. When I built up Jensen Medical it was eighty-hour weeks, and I was passionate about it. I sometimes wonder if I would still be at it had my boyfriend at the time not been a dickwad. I did find purpose in that work. And now I find it in building Emma and having this life with Heath. But both of those things serve me. They place value on my quality of life. I’m not saying you shouldn’t sink into your work. That can be a magnificent thing to do when the work is right for your soul.”
“Like rebuilding a country,”
Ani says with a sniffle. “I feel the responsibility, but I also feel the love from the people we’re working for.”
“I’m trying to save a company, too,”
I point out. I don’t understand what any of this has to do with my soul. It’s business and family and responsibility. I honestly don’t know how they think any of that is supposed to feed my soul. It mostly drags me down, but I know how disappointed everyone will be if I fail.
Ivy nods. “Yes, and how is that serving you? Is the responsibility worth it because of the love you get out of it? Does it fill your soul or suck it dry?”
“You don’t understand. It’s a family thing.”
No one does. No one I know was left with a whole family to take care of. Ivy only had to deal with her mom. Anika’s parents split when she was in school. Heath has the greatest grandmother in the history of time. Luca has a country. Okay. I’ll listen to Luca about this because he does understand. But I’m the one with a family’s life hanging over me like the sword of Damocles. A stubborn family who doesn’t understand how badly it can go. They don’t know what it would mean to not have the company to fall back on. I don’t know why, but apparently my cousins’ parents didn’t tell them all kinds of horror stories about what it was like to live without a dime to their names. I can still remember my grandfather telling me how two of his siblings died because they couldn’t afford adequate medical care. He told me it haunted him because he was the oldest and his siblings were his responsibility. Then he told me I was the smartest and had to take care of things now.
Why is that your responsibility?
I try not to listen to the voice in my head. It’s nothing more than selfishness.
“I understand far more than you think,”
Ivy says and seems to come to some kind of decision. “But you’re right that I don’t understand the whole family thing. It was just me and mom.”
Damn. I didn’t handle that well. Ivy’s family life was hard in a different way. Diane Jensen only recently got her shit together and with the help of therapy. I sometimes wish my mom would get some therapy.
Reid mentioned it. Therapy. Had he gone in to deal with his awful father and the damage he left him and Jeremiah with?
How much damage did my dad do to me? Is my mom still doing it every time she tells me I’m failing her?
It doesn’t matter because I’m tough and I can handle it. I am handling it. “Ivy, I didn’t mean to say something hurtful. I don’t want you to worry about me.”
“Hard to do when you’re my sister,”
she replies. “If there is one thing I’ve learned by being kind of alone the majority of my life it’s that you make your own family. We spend all this time thinking blood is thicker than water, but sometimes that thickness is something that drags you down. Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
I hate that I put that serious look on her face. I love how much she smiles now, how comfortable she is in her own skin.
“I call you my sister. I truly think of you and Anika that way. If anyone asks about my family, it’s you two and Heath I talk about. How do you think of me? What place do I hold in your heart?”
She holds out a hand. “It’s okay to say I’m a friend. It won’t make me love you less or think of you in a different way. I don’t have the ties you have so I might not understand them. I’m just curious.”
Tears prick at my eyes, and I reach for that hand. I need her to hear me. “You are my sister. I don’t need blood to know you two are my core family. Hell, I’m the one who poked and prodded when you were in San Francisco. I did everything I could to keep us all connected. I love you and I appreciate that you’re worried, but I have this.”
Even as I say the words and she squeezes my hand, I doubt them.
Do I have this? There are days when I want nothing more than to never have to think about my mom and cousins again.
Ivy nods and leans over, hugging me. “I know you do. But if you ever want to talk, I’m here.”
“You ladies look serious,”
Reid says from the opposite end of the table. “Everything okay? Is this a sister thing?”
At least my temporary boyfriend understands. I sniffle. “Definitely a sister thing. We’re fine.”
“Good.”
He gives me a brilliant smile. “Because we figured out how to save the ballroom.”
Now that is a plan I can listen to.
Confessionals
Reid
The electrical is done, so we’re hoping for smooth sailing from here on. The ballroom is going to be shared space for all three residences. An inner courtyard, so to speak. Harper and I have been working on how we’ll deal with access, but we think the garden should be a shared space as well, and the ballroom would be the back door for all three residences. She’s got some great ideas. I’m sorry. What did you ask? Oh. The team. I think we’re all working very well together. Certainly Jeremiah and I work well, but Harper turned out to be a great fit with us once we found our groove. There’s something special about Banover Place. It’s got both a historical feel, and it oddly seems like home. I can’t put my finger on it. I’ve never lived in a place like this. I’ve spent my entire life in a high-rise. I’ve designed hundreds of interiors, and not once did I get attached. I’m definitely getting attached to Banover.
Jeremiah
He said that? He said he was attached? He said that to the camera? Does Harper know?
Harper
Well, I’m attached to Banover Place, too. I don’t think it’s weird for him to say that. I think it’s rather lovely. It’s kind of a magical place. Now that I’m over the shock of splitting it into three residences, I’ve grown to kind of love the idea that a family gets to live here. They get the best of both worlds. I like my apartment, but I have to say I’ve started thinking about how small it is. I think it would be hard to have a family in. Not that I’m, like, planning a family or anything. It’s just…you know… Banover Place makes you think.
Reid
She said she’s thinking about a family? Seriously? Why am I smiling? I don’t know. I guess the weeks I’ve spent on this place have maybe made me start thinking about a family, too.
Jeremiah
I think I liked it better when they were yelling at each other. Has anyone mentioned where we’re putting the sippy cups? That seems to set them both off. Also, could someone explain to me what a sippy cup is?