Chapter 1 #2
“You’re my first call when it’s officially on the market.”
“Look both ways,” she says, and hangs up.
“Are you the listing agent?”
The voice in my ear startles the hell out of me, but I don’t scream. I suck in a pretty dignified gasp and jump a foot to the right, landing gracefully in my heels.
“I’m sorry,” the man says as I clutch my sign from the show to my chest. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“You didn’t.” My voice shakes, so I give him a big smile.
It doesn’t take much effort. He’s handsome.
Dark hair with dimension, like it might be slightly reddish in full sunlight.
Summer-tan skin. Dark eyes. Full lips. He’s wearing navy slacks that have been tailored—I can tell, I’ve just been a highly important assistant at New York Fashion Week—and a cashmere sweater—I can just tell—in a color that’s probably called camel or sand and costs seven thousand dollars.
“You didn’t! I’m just highly strung. What was your question? ”
He glances over me, so clearly not checking me out that I notice the shadows under his eyes. Maybe we’re both highly strung.
“Are you the listing agent?”
The…listing agent?
For the building?
Why would he think that?
Because I just said you’re my first call when it’s officially on the market to Liz, and this man overhead me.
I can’t tell him I’m the listing agent.
Wow, Liz’s voice whispers in my head. Not with that attitude.
His shoulders droop, and I realize I’ve been staring at him without blinking for so long that I’m about to miss my chance.
“Yes! Yes.” I shake my head a little as if to clear my head of a misunderstanding. “The listing agent, yes. Audrey Morgan.”
This is probably the moment when I should name-drop a real estate agency, but I stick out my hand to shake instead.
“Leander Harrow.” He’s wearing gloves. I didn’t notice them before because they’re almost the same color as his sweater. I only notice now because the fabric is pressed between our hands in the firm grip of the handshake. “This hasn’t been listed yet?”
“Nope.”
“I want to make an offer.”
“Oh! I—okay.”
“I’ll email it to you now. What’s your email?” Leander takes out his phone. He’s serious about emailing me the offer right this very second.
Thank God I have a professional email at my own domain. I made it freshman year, and I’ve never needed it until this moment.
“I’ll give you my number,” he says. “So you can contact me as soon as you hear from the seller. Ready?”
“Go ahead.” I put his number into my phone with shaking fingers, then go to my email app and refresh. “And I have your offer.”
“Call me as soon as you hear anything.” That’s a demand if I’ve ever heard one. Leander Harrow blinks. “Please,” he says, quieter. It doesn’t make anything about him seem less urgent.
“Of course.”
“Thank you.” He puts out his hand again, and I take it. “A pleasure to meet you, Ms. Morgan.”
“You, too.”
As he drops my hand, I get a third somebody’s-watching chill, but when I turn to go, nobody’s looking.
“I’m screwed, and you’re to blame,” I tell Liz forty minutes later. “I could be arrested.”
“I’ll bail you out.”
“I’m serious.” I drop my head back against my couch and stretch out my legs under the coffee table. This is my favorite research spot in my apartment and usually feels like a command center. Now it feels like I’m screwed. “I could get fined. I could get…disgraced.”
“Only if you get caught.”
“If I get caught, I’m blaming you.”
She laughs. “I wasn’t there!”
“You were in my head, saying wow.”
“Not with that attitude,” Liz says under her breath. I showered and changed into my pajamas when I got home, then settled in for an evening of Google searches and quietly freaking out. “So you’re the listing agent for the property. What’d you find out about the street guy?”
“The street guy is Leander Harrow. And he was one of those plane-crash kids.”
“What?”
“Yeah.” It’s not every day that a group of boys from an elite prep school almost die in a fiery plane crash. Liz and I talked about it for days after the news broke. That was ten years ago—maybe eleven—and I still feel buzzed from meeting one of them. “So I’m double-screwed.”
“Triple, I think, if you count the rent.”
“You’re being the worst.”
“I know.” Knitting needles clink softly in the background of the call. “But it’s out of love. Did you find the owner of the building?”
I pick my head back up and click over to one of my fifty open tabs. “I think it’s owned by a company. But it’s the most generic company name in the world.”
“Oooh. Mysterious holding company?”
“Or just generic. Legacy Management Property Group.” I do another search for it, and a long page of results comes up.
I click on the fifth one down, skim over it, and stop.
“But maybe not generic. Because it’s registered on the same street.
” Another search. “The same block. Right across from the lonely rowhouse.”
“No name?”
“No.”
“Well,” says Liz. “I think you know what you have to do.”
At eight in the morning, I leave my apartment in fresh sunlight, Leander Harrow’s offer printed out and tucked in my purse, and head back to the lonely rowhouse.
It doesn’t look less lonely today. I thought the late-afternoon sunlight might’ve made it seem abandoned, but it has the same vibe as before.
Hopefully, I’ll find some answers across the street, in the building with…
A smoothie shop. There’s a smoothie shop at street level, and five floors above it that look like apartments. A shadow catches my eye in the top-floor windows, but the sun shining directly down the street brightens the glass, so it’s hard to tell if it’s real.
The address above the door of the smoothie shop matches the records I found. It’s the right building.
I cross the street. As I go past the smoothie shop’s front entrance, a woman jogs by going the opposite way.
“I love your skirt,” she says. Good omen. It has to be. I take that good omen with me and step into the alcove by the smoothie shop. It’s not hidden, exactly, but it doesn’t draw the eye or anything.
An entry panel on the left has five spaces. The one on the top just reads LMPG.
Is it weird that a business would be in an apartment?
I guess it’s not that weird.
It doesn’t matter how weird it is. I take a deep breath and push the button for the buzzer.
For a second or two, I don’t think anyone’s going to answer. The shadow was just a shadow. The shell company was a dead end. I’m just a woman who lied to a guy about being a listing agent for a building.
But then there’s a click over the speaker, and a smooth, masculine voice says, “Yes?”
“Good morning,” I say in my best absolutely-real-listing-agent voice. “Is this the correct address for Legacy Management Property Group?”
“Yes.”
“Awesome.” I want to cringe more than I want to pay my rent, but I don’t in case the panel has a camera in it. “My name is Audrey Morgan, and I had a few questions for the owner of—”
“Questions about what?”
“About one of the properties registered to you.”
“Which property?” He lets me get the address numbers out. “It’s not for sale.”
Then there’s another click.
I stare at the names, and the buttons, and the speaker for a minute. I consider walking out of the alcove and not stopping until I get to Liz’s house in Indiana.
Then I press the button for the buzzer again.
A click over the speaker. “Yes?”
“If you could give me a minute of your time—”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because it would really make my day.”
There’s a long silence. I hope he can tell I mean it. I would say so, but I think he’d quit answering. I would suggest he come down, but that seems like too much to ask. I go with the safe option of keeping my mouth shut.
“Come up,” he says. The door to my right unlocks with a buzz.
It’s a walk-up, which makes me feel almost at home. The difference between us is that I don’t own a whole separate building across the street from my walk-up. It’s probably the difference, anyway—I don’t know this man’s reasons for the company or the lonely rowhouse.
When I get to the top floor, I’m slightly out of breath, but I don’t waste a second catching it. My pounding heart could mean I’m either terrified or brave. I choose to believe it’s brave, march over to the door, and knock on the very normal apartment door.
The soft footsteps from inside are barely audible.
Then the door cracks open just enough to give me a glimpse of the man inside.
He’s not a shadow at all. He’s gorgeous.
Fair skin. Blond hair that’s many shades lighter than Leander Harrow’s sweater.
Hazel eyes with a ring of gold around the pupils that shouldn’t be visible in this light but is.
My heart does a wild thumping thing, and goosebumps cascade down my arms. I have never—never—felt like this looking at someone. Never.
My mouth is open, just a little. The only thing that saves me is that he’s watching me, too, and for a few seconds it feels like the building doesn’t exist, and neither does my lie about being a listing agent, and we met here at his door because it was meant to happen.
Except there’s something about him that’s untouchable, like the iron gate.
“Yes?” His voice is even smoother without the crackle of the speaker.
“My name is Audrey Morgan, and—”
“I heard your name the first time, Audrey. What is it you want?”
“Yes. I—” Now I do have to catch my breath.
His eyes drop from my face and travel over my body.
It’s not a quick glance. He’s definitely checking me out.
I’m learning in real-time that a person’s gaze can generate heat.
He drags his eyes back up to mine, and I have to blink to get myself together.
“I saw online that your company—the company registered to this address—owns the property across the street.”
“Yes,” he says again, an edge to his tone.
“I wanted to present an offer to you on behalf of—”
“No.” He starts to close the door.