Chapter 5
FIVE
Avril
As I arrive at Hotel on Ninth Street on Monday morning, I can still feel Ben. His fingers on my hips. His tongue on my skin. I can still taste him. Every time I blink, I see him bare chested, his hands thrust into his pockets as he watches me leave in his car.
It was certainly unlike any other night I’ve ever had. I laugh to myself as I think about him making omelets for us. Any other guy would have just skipped straight to the good part. Not Ben.
“Good morning, Avril,” Dina on reception says.
I smile and wave. Despite being distracted by Ben for the last thirty-six hours, I need to do my best to keep focused. Worth is due any moment, and he, Poppy, and I are sitting down to figure out how we can get the Boston project back on track.
I step into the office I share with Poppy and Aurora, and Worth is already sitting at the table under the window.
“Good morning,” he says. “Poppy has gone to get us coffee.”
I bite back a grin. Cappuccinos, maybe? I can’t believe I booted Ben out of his own bed yesterday morning.
“You seem happy this morning,” Worth says.
“Do I? Let’s go to the boardroom.”
“How was the engagement party?” he asks as he stands.
“Good. Very beautiful. Understated but lovely.” We head out across the lobby and I tell Dina to send Poppy into the boardroom. It doesn’t get booked very often, and I make a mental note to raise whether we should be repurposing the room or at least renaming it.
Just as we’re sitting down, Poppy comes in with coffees and pastries.
“I got cappuccinos for everyone,” Poppy says.
I can’t hold back my grin.
“You okay?” she asks. “You look very smiley.”
I frown and take a coffee out of the tray. “I do not.”
“Let’s get down to business,” Worth says.
“Yes, what happened?” I ask. “Did you speak directly to the seller?”
My brother shakes his head. “He won’t take my calls. We’ll have to try Ben.”
I wince as my phone conversation with Worth—in Ben’s bed, while Ben made us coffee—slowly comes back to me.
I must have blocked it out because the irony was too overwhelming.
Worth had told me that the Boston deal was dead, and the only possibility of resurrection was to reach out to a contact of his called Ben East—the man who I’d spent the night with, naked.
But my brother must be wrong. There must be another solution.
My heart starts to race. I can’t bear the thought of asking Ben for help. He can’t be our only option.
“But we have the commercial realtors involved, right?” I ask.
“Right, but they’re out of suggestions. They’ve advised us to walk away. When I mentioned it to Jack, he was the one who suggested Ben East. I’ve met him a few times, but I don’t know him well.
I can’t make the same claim. I’m pretty confident that I know Ben better than everyone in this room right now.
“I’m sure there’s another solution,” I say.
“He was there on Saturday night, wasn’t he?” Poppy asks. “Wasn’t he the guy sitting next to you and opposite me?”
“I didn’t get his last name,” I lie.
“I’m sure that’s what Aurora said. He’s Aurora’s fiancé’s best friend,” she says to Worth.
Worth pulls his eyebrows together, like he’s not following. But he doesn’t need to. No one here is asking Ben for help.
Not ever.
“I’m going to talk to the realtor,” I say.
“Or we could just abandon the idea of Boston,” Poppy suggests. “I heard murmurs that there’s a building on Fifth Avenue that’s coming up for sale.”
“The building is up for sale alongside the lease?” Worth asks.
“I think so,” Poppy says.
“Yeah, I think looking in Manhattan makes sense,” Worth says. “There will be more options. Boston doesn’t have the same commercial real estate turnover as New York.”
“But you said it yourself, you can get much bigger returns in Boston,” I interject quickly. I thought we’d been through this already, and I’d managed to convince them Boston was a better idea.
“I know, but managing it remotely is much more of a challenge,” Worth says.
“I’ve said that I’ll do all the in-person trips up there. Neither of you two ever need to see the place.”
“There’s no way we’re going to let you do that,” Poppy says.
I sigh. “I don’t mind.” I want them to stay away.
I want Boston to be my baby. I know that Poppy and I worked our assess off on Hotel on Ninth Street, and I’m proud of what we’ve achieved and I’m so grateful to them both, particularly Worth.
But I did it hip to hip with my sister, and with my brother’s checkbook.
In so many ways it was amazing to work together as a family, but I’d like to prove to myself that I can succeed on my own.
I want Boston to be the way I prove to Worth and Poppy that I’m capable.
I’m not the baby anymore. Yes, I’d be using Worth’s money, but if they sat back a little more and I could run things, they might be able to see what I’m capable of.
“Why don’t you just let me see what I can do?” I say. “I can speak to the realtor, maybe try and get the seller back on board.”
“I don’t want this taking up any more of my time,” Worth says.
“It won’t.”
“We need to move on,” Worth insists.
“Give me a little while longer. We’ve put so much effort in already. Let’s see if it’s salvageable.”
“It’s all sunk costs. We need to accept that.”
“Give me a couple of weeks and then we can look at New York.”
Usually Worth is a teddy bear when I’m asking him for things, but for whatever reason, he seems a little more tense today.
“You get two weeks,” he says. “And if you really want the Boston thing to work out, you’ll give Ben East a call. It’s worth a shot.”
Worth makes his excuses and leaves. Poppy and I head back to our office.
All I can think about is what an absolutely and completely bad idea calling Ben would be.
For a start, Ben would probably think I was using it as an excuse to see him again, and that would be unbearable.
And it would mean I’d have to see him again.
That would be…unwise. Saturday night had been unexpected.
So unexpected that I couldn’t risk seeing Ben again.
It’s not that I didn’t like him. He’s one of those men who’re impossible to dislike, and that’s a huge red flag.
If everyone likes you, then you’re not showing your true self to anyone.
What’s he hiding? He doesn’t come off as inauthentic.
Far from it. He’s relaxed and confident and wants to make eggs when sex is the alternative option.
He said I’d find him charming by the end of the night, but the fact was, I found him charming in the first five minutes.
That’s a sure sign that I should keep as far away as possible from him.
He also said that I’d fall in love with him in seven days.
And that’s one hundred percent not going to happen.
I just need to keep my distance to make sure.
“So, what’s the deal with you being so anti-calling Ben East?” Poppy asks. “He seemed nice enough.”
“The guy I sat next to?” I ask, trying to sound like I barely know who she’s talking about. “We don’t actually know if it’s the guy Worth is talking about, do we?”
“No, so talk to Aurora and make sure.”
“She’s not in today,” I say. Aurora is Hotel on Ninth Street’s general manager, and Poppy and I share an office with her. Lucky for all of us, we manage to be good friends along with having a great working relationship. Probably because Aurora is so good at her job.
Poppy’s eyebrows pull together. “Right, so ask her tomorrow.” She sighs. “Or maybe you shouldn’t,” she says. “I do think that another hotel in Manhattan would be a much better option.”
It wouldn’t be a better option for me. I need some physical distance between Worth, Poppy, and the new hotel.
That way, it’s less easy for them to swing by and chat with the project manager or the designer.
They’ll be less involved and that’s what I want.
I’ll do whatever it takes to get the Boston project back on track.
Except one thing.
I can’t call Ben and ask for his help. That is where I draw the line.
We’re interrupted by Dina, coming into the office with two huge Bergdorf’s bags in her hand, her eyes sparkling and excited. “Someone just dropped these off for you, Avril.”
“Me?” I ask, glancing between her and Poppy.
“Have you been shopping?” Poppy asks.
I shake my head and take the bags from Dina. “Weird. Do you think we should open them?” I ask. “It won’t be anything sinister, will it?”
“I’m not sure Bergdorf’s stocks anything sinister,” Poppy says.
“Right, so it would be the perfect place to put a bomb or something, wouldn’t it?”
Poppy pulls a face like she thinks I’ve lost it. Maybe I have. I’m still catching up on my lost sleep from Saturday night. “Who on earth is sending Hotel on Ninth Street a bomb?”
She has a point.
“Just open it,” she says. “Maybe they delivered to the wrong person. You can send it back.”
“Right,” I say, delving into one of the bags. I pull out a tissue-paper-wrapped package. When I break the sticker seal, I instantly wish I hadn’t opened this in front of Poppy.
It’s the Oscar de la Renta dress I wore on Saturday night. The one Ben sliced off me because he was too impatient to undo the buttons.
He told me he’d replace it. It feels like popcorn is exploding in my stomach, and I try to ignore it. I’m definitely not excited about a guy replacing a dress he ruined. It’s just the decent thing to do. Right?
I close the tissue paper and put the dress back in the bag. “Oh, they’ve made a mistake. I told them if they had my dress in the size up, they should send it to me on Friday. It’s too late now.”
Poppy stayed over at the hotel on Saturday night because she was working on Sunday, and we had a couple of rooms vacant.
It’s good to experience the hotel as a guest occasionally.
It meant Poppy didn’t know I hadn’t gone home on Saturday night.
And even though we had dinner together last night, I didn’t mention Ben.
I don’t know why. Normally I’d tell Poppy everything, but I was still processing.
I’m still processing what happened on Saturday night.
“Your dress fit you perfectly,” Poppy says.
“You don’t think it was a little tight?” I ask. I feel bad for lying to my sister, but I can’t get into it with her. She’ll think that the reason I don’t want to ask Ben to try to help with the Boston deal is because of the mind-blowing sex. And she’d be right.
“What’s in the other bag?” She leans over and peers in. “Looks like shoeboxes.”
Shoeboxes? I wore my shoes back home on Sunday morning. There’s no need for him to send me shoes.
“Oh yeah, there were a few options where they didn’t have my size,” I lie. “The sales associate must really want that commission, huh?”
“Great service from them,” Poppy says, heading to the door. “I left the pastries in the boardroom. I’m going to rescue them.”
When the door closes behind her. I peer into the three shoeboxes in the second bag. They contain the same shoes I wore on Saturday but in different colors. What’s that about?
I grin to myself. He’s just trying to get me to think he’s charming.
He doesn’t need to try so hard.
I root around in the bags, which also contain some beautiful underwear, but there’s no note. No indication that Ben was the person who had all this delivered to me. But it couldn’t be anyone else.
I suppose it would be rude not to thank him. And I guess I could mention that the Boston hotel project has run into difficulties. I could even admit how Worth was suggesting we call him.
There’s no way I’m going to ask him for help. But I could just put that bait on the hook and see if he bites.