CHAPTER 20 – SAWYER
Martha knocked twice, opened the door, and there was Nellie Fuller standing in the frame of it, canvas bag on one shoulder, boots still carrying what appeared to be traces of the northern slope, and braid slightly windswept, probably from having Dolores’ windows open on the drive over.
She was looking absolutely, infuriatingly, perfectly like her chaotic self.
“Ms. Fuller,” Martha said, the corner of her mouth twitching as if holding back an I-saw-this-coming smile was causing her physical pain.
“Thank you, Martha,” Sawyer said.
Martha went back to her desk. The door didn’t quite close.
Sawyer crossed the room in long strides, reached past Nellie’s shoulder, and shut it herself.
Then she moved to the long glass wall that faced the open floor—the one through which forty-odd members of her executive team could, if so inclined, observe her running the company—and drew the blinds.
When she turned back, Nellie was still standing approximately where she’d left her, watching the process with her head tilted, eyebrow up, the canvas bag slipping an inch off her shoulder.
Sawyer closed the remaining distance and kissed her.
Nellie made a small, surprised sound against her mouth, then dropped the bag entirely and kissed her back, hands coming up to grip the lapels of Sawyer’s jacket. It lasted considerably longer than she had originally intended.
When they came up for air, Nellie’s eyes were wide and her bottom lip was slightly bitten.
“Hi,” she breathed.
“Hi.” Sawyer stepped back. “That was my congratulations. For winning our little deal.”
“I haven’t won yet,” Nellie said, immediately. The automatic modesty of it was almost charming. “Technically, the county board hasn’t—”
“It doesn’t really matter either way.” Sawyer turned and walked back toward her desk, noting with some private satisfaction the way Nellie’s eyes tracked her hungrily.
“I’m not congratulating the county board.
I’m congratulating you.” She stopped at the edge of her desk and turned around.
“Which I am doing humbly, as the person you defeated. The first time I’ve lost a deal in—”she paused, made a brief performance of doing the math—“ten years.”
Nellie’s eyebrows skipped up toward her hairline. “Ten?”
“Give or take.”
“Give or—” Nellie laughed, a short, disbelieving sound. “Sawyer, that’s… You’re not supposed to say it like it’s something to be proud of.”
“I’m not proud of losing. I’m impressed by the margin.” Sawyer leaned against the desk, crossed her arms. “You should be too.”
Nellie opened her mouth, presumably to argue—the woman’s default setting, in Sawyer’s experience, was argue first, agree quietly later—and Sawyer kept going before she could build any momentum.
“Besides,” she said, “the county board is a formality at this point, because I’ve already instructed Gina to formally withdraw the development proposal.” She watched Nellie go very still. “Phoenix Ridge stays as it is. The trees, all of them, will remain untouched. Permanently.”
The stillness lasted about three more seconds.
Then Nellie crossed the room in a kind of half-sprint, which was the closest she ever came to restraint when she was excited about something, and threw her arms around Sawyer’s neck.
“Permanently,” she repeated, into Sawyer’s collar.
“That’s what I said.”
“Say it again. Please.”
Quietly groaning at how addictive hearing that word from Nellie’s lips was becoming, Sawyer tightened her arms around her. “Permanently,” she said, against the side of her head.
Nellie pulled back far enough to kiss her—harder this time, and longer, both hands cupped around Sawyer’s jaw like she needed something to hold onto.
Sawyer let it happen. She let herself be held.
These were both things she had needed practice at, and both were considerably easier with this specific person doing them.
When Nellie finally pulled away, she was grinning like the Cheshire cat.
Then she turned, dropped her bag on the nearest chair, and commenced exploring the office.
Sawyer had to bite back a laugh. The sweet, little ecologist looked so wildly out of her element.
There was no other word for what Nellie did.
She explored, the way she explored everything, with the unselfconscious thoroughness of genuine curiosity: running a hand along the shelving built into the north wall, crouching briefly to examine the spine titles she found interesting, straightening to peer out through the floor-to-ceiling windows at the financial district laid out below.
Forty stories of glass and altitude. The city in its efficient grid, its crawling traffic, its distant green corners where parks interrupted the concrete.
Nellie pressed her fingertips lightly against the window and looked out with the wary reverence she usually reserved for old-growth canopies.
“God.” She made a small retching sound. “How do you get anything done up here? I’d get vertigo.”
“It stops being as terrifying after the first week or so.”
Shaking her head, Nellie turned around. Her eyes ran the length of the plush carpet—the kind of carpet you didn’t find by accident, that required procurement and consultation and a not inconsiderable budget line—then traveled up to the height of the ceiling, then around to the raw-edge oak of the boardroom table in the far corner, the framed architectural prints.
“How the other half lives.” Nellie sighed again. She seemed sad and delighted at once, the two things so evenly matched it came out as neither.
“Tenth,” Sawyer chuckled. “At most.”
“Oh, much less than that.” Nellie spun slowly on the spot. “I’ve been in cheaper museums, Sawyer. This carpet alone, it’s softer than my bed.”
“That’s a low bar.”
“My bed is perfectly comfortable.” Nellie stepped further into the carpet and appeared to test this theory with her boot, pressing down. “Okay, that is unfair. How does carpet feel expensive? What are they putting in it?”
Still holding back laughter, Sawyer, who genuinely did not know and had never thought to ask, settled into her desk chair and said nothing.
It was its own kind of vulnerability, watching Nellie move around the perimeter of this room that tended to make people either gape or cower.
The forty-thousand-dollar art piece on the west wall she spent approximately four seconds on.
The client-approved awards displayed on the east wall, she gave a politely skeptical eyebrow.
She had, Sawyer was fairly confident, just been more interested in the carpet.
She would not have described the feeling of watching Nellie survey her office as smug, exactly; there was too much hesitation in there to really be confident.
She still hadn’t figured out where the scales settled between impressed and disapproving when it came to Nellie Fuller’s assessment of her position. And she wasn’t about to ask.
“You should see the boardroom,” Sawyer called to her.
“Is the carpet better?”
“It’s marble.”
“Of course it is.” Nellie came to a stop at the near end of the desk—Sawyer’s end, the commanding end, the end that faced the door for reasons that were both architectural and psychological—and looked down at her.
At the desk. At the view from this precise angle.
At the way the leather chair sat, and how Sawyer sat in it.
“Come here.”
Nellie smirked. “Why?”
“Because I have an idea, and it requires your presence.”
Nellie came around the desk slowly, stopping a foot away. Sawyer reached out, took her gently by the hips, and drew her in closer.
Then she patted her own knee.
Nellie simply stared. “You want me to sit on your lap?”
“I want you to sit where the CEO of a billion-dollar company sits,” Sawyer said calmly. “Educational opportunity.”
“You are such a—” Nellie laughed despite herself, a reluctant, helpless laugh, and then, with her cheeks flushing a faint pink, she sat.
“Hm,” she said, in a tone of mock assessment.
“Well?”
“The view is good. The chair is… Frankly, the chair is outrageous, and I need to know who made it.”
“I’ll have Martha send you the information.”
Nellie swiveled, very slightly, left and right, testing the motion. Her hand drifted toward the desk surface, and she picked up a pen, examined it, and set it down again. Then she found the computer mouse and gave it a small, experimental shake.
The monitor lit.
Nellie looked at the screen. Sawyer looked at Nellie, at the line of her jaw and the tilt of her head and the small smile that was beginning its slow, private escalation at the corner of her mouth. She recognized that smile. That smile was cause for mild, affectionate alarm.
“What are you doing?” Sawyer asked.
“Nothing,” Nellie said.
She clicked, navigated, clicked again. Sawyer watched over her shoulder as she opened Sawyer’s email application—entirely without invitation, and entirely without shame—then created a new message with a small, triumphant tap.
The To field: Nellie.Fuller@.
Sawyer pressed her lips together.
Nellie typed.
She typed with one finger, then switched to two when she got into her stride, and the message took shape in the draft window. Sawyer bit her lip as she read it over her shoulder.
Congratulations, Nellie Fuller, for defeating the one and only Sawyer Alburn in the deal of the century. This is to formally confirm you have won. P.S. You’re also sexy as fuck, even if the receptionist thought you looked like a homeless person.
Sawyer lost the battle with herself and dropped her head back with loud, unrestrained laughter.
“The deal of the century?”
“The deal of the century,” Nellie confirmed, making a small editing pass. She changed the period after “won” to an exclamation point. “I was going to put the deal of the millennium, but I thought that might be overstating it.”
“Might be, yes.”
“I’ve left you a tasteful amount of credit.”
“‘The one and only’ is tasteful?”