10. Chapter 10
Chapter ten
~DECLAN~
The plan is to get through the Meridian Hotels pitch without disaster.
It's Tuesday afternoon, four days since the hiding Darcy incident, three weeks and four days since Tulum — and I'm standing in Conference Room A watching my hospitality coordinator, Sarah, throw up into the wastebasket while apologizing profusely.
The Manhattan weather has committed fully to summer now.
Eighty-seven degrees, humidity at seventy percent, the kind that makes walking three blocks feel like swimming through soup.
The conference room air conditioning is fighting a losing battle, which means Sarah looks even more miserable than she probably feels.
"I'm so sorry," she gasps, wiping her mouth with a tissue. "I thought it was just — I didn't think it was actual food poisoning—"
"Go home, Miss Banks," I say.
"But the meeting—"
"Is in twenty minutes. You're not presenting anything while you can't keep lunch down." I check my watch. Eleven forty. "Victoria will get you a car. Go."
She leaves, taking the wastebasket with her, and I'm left in a conference room prepped for a meeting that could secure a seven-figure partnership with a boutique hotel group that has been circling our hospitality arm for three months.
The Meridian Hotels pitch.
Six properties across the Caribbean and Central America. Upscale but accessible. Exactly the demographic we're targeting with the Tulum expansion.
And the client — Arthur fucking Castellano — is notoriously difficult, notoriously detail-oriented, and notoriously willing to walk if he doesn't like the vibe in the first ten minutes.
I pull out my phone and text Wyeth.
ME: Sarah Banks is out. Food poisoning. Need backup for Meridian pitch. You available?
His response comes back immediately.
WYETH: In LA. Can dial in remotely if you need.
ME: Do it.
I look at the door. Through the glass walls I can see the reception desk.
At the desk, our newest stand-in receptionist, Darcy Madison, is sitting there, head down, typing with laser-like focus. The afternoon light catches her dark, wavy hair, turning it almost black where it falls over her shoulder.
She's wearing a silk blouse — cream, or maybe ivory — and even from forty feet away I can see the line of her collarbone where the top button is undone.
And I hate that I notice.
Mostly because, despite all the complications of having Darcy Madison here, the mouthy former maid of honor is actually damn good at her job.
I've been watching. She's better than good.
She anticipates needs. She manages logistics efficiently, and she handles difficult people with the same deflection tactics she used on me with the Ricardo-Miguel story.
Which I still don't believe, for the record.
Miguel with the BMW and the tribal tattoo and the lacrosse stick.
For the last twenty years of building the Shaw Entertainment Group, I've learned to read people for a living.
And I'm starting to read Darcy Madison like a book.
Her excuse was too dramatic — too perfectly convenient, too conveniently vague in the details that matter, and too specific in the details that don't.
But I have no choice.
I let it go.
Because pressing her about it means admitting I care about her past, which means acknowledging that the rules we established aren't working as well as they should.
I open the door and walk to the reception desk.
She looks up before I'm halfway there — she always does, like she can sense when I'm in the room — and those hazel eyes do the thing they always do.
They widen slightly and then shutter, that professional mask sliding smoothly back into place.
"Mr. Shaw."
Her voice is lower than I remember from Tulum. More tempered. The corporate register she's adopted for the office.
I preferred it when she was yelling at me about consummation law.
"I need you in Conference Room A," I say.
"For what?"
"The Meridian Hotels pitch. Sarah's out sick. You're filling in."
"I'm a receptionist—"
"You're covering for Beatrice. She's been doing this job for forty years and could run the hospitality pitch in her sleep.
" I check my watch again. Eleven forty-two.
"The client arrives in eighteen minutes.
I need someone who can speak intelligently about boutique hotel operations and who won't fall apart when Castellano starts asking technical questions. "
"I don't know your pitch—"
"You'll learn it on the fly. That's the job." I turn to walk back to the conference room. "Eighteen minutes, Miss Madison."
I make it three steps before I catch it.
The scent.
Whatever perfume she wears — something light, floral, with a base note I can't quite place — it's the same thing she wore in Tulum, and my brain does an immediate highlight reel of memories I've been carefully not thinking about for three weeks.
Fortunately, I know better than to stand in the middle of my office lobby at eleven forty-two on a Tuesday getting hard thinking about a woman I'm supposed to have no personal relationship with.
I give Darcy one glance back, noticing her already digging into her laptop.
And I keep walking.
She shows up in sixteen minutes.
Changed into a blazer I didn't know she had at the office — black, professional, paired with the silk blouse she was already wearing. Hair pulled back in a twist that shows more of her neck than the loose style she had before. Minimal jewelry. Stare steady.
"What do I need to know?" she asks, setting her notebook on the table.
I hand her the pitch deck, and our fingers brush—half a second, maybe less.
I clear my throat. "We're proposing a partnership model. Shaw Entertainment Group provides hospitality management and brand consultation. Meridian maintains ownership, but leverages our expertise to optimize operations and guest experience across their six properties."
She flips through the deck, eyes scanning. "Revenue split?"
"Seventy-thirty in their favor for the first two years. Sixty-forty after that if performance targets are met."
"What are the performance targets?"
"Twenty percent increase in RevPAR, fifteen percent improvement in guest satisfaction scores, ten percent reduction in operational costs."
She looks up. "That's ambitious."
"That's why the deal works. Castellano wants guarantees. We're giving him metrics."
"And if you don't hit the targets?"
"We renegotiate at two years. But we'll hit them."
"How do you know?"
"Because I've seen the numbers on his properties. They're underperforming in areas we excel at: guest experience, staff training, digital presence. We can move those needles."
She's quiet for a moment, still flipping through the deck. "You're missing something."
"What?"
"The sustainability angle. Boutique hotels are increasingly positioning around eco-conscious travel. Meridian's properties are in prime eco-tourism locations, but you're not highlighting environmental impact or sustainable operations anywhere in this deck."
I look at the presentation. She's right.
"Castellano hasn't mentioned sustainability—"
"Because you haven't given him a reason to think about it. But if you present it as a value-add — something that differentiates his properties and attracts a higher-paying demographic — he'll bite."
She's leaning forward slightly, animated now, and the shift in posture makes her blazer pull tight across her shoulders, the silk blouse underneath shifting in a way that makes me very aware of the lace bra I know she's wearing.
I know because I can see the outline of it.
I know because I've seen her in significantly less.
I know because three weeks ago I had my hands on that skin and now I'm standing in a conference room pretending I don't remember exactly what she looks like when her thighs are shaking around my head, her lips pink and puffy as they cry out in—
"You sound very sure of that," I say, dragging my attention back to her face.
"I've worked in boutique hotels. I know the clientele. Sustainability isn't a nice-to-have anymore. It's table stakes for the luxury eco-tourism market."
"Where did you work in boutique hotels?"
She meets my eyes. "Miami. Before I moved here."
“Before Miguel with the terrible cologne and the tribal tattoo.”
“Right.”
Her pupils dilate slightly when she lies.
It's subtle — most people wouldn't notice — but I've been watching her long enough to catch it.
She's lying about something, and I don't know what, and the not-knowing is driving me insane.
"We don't have time to rebuild the deck," I say.
"You don't need to rebuild it. You need to frame what's already here differently.
The staff training program you're proposing?
Emphasize local hiring and community partnership.
The operational cost reductions? Talk about energy efficiency and waste management.
The guest experience improvements? Highlight authentic cultural immersion and low-impact activities.
" She closes the deck. "Same content. Different lens. "
I'm looking at her with an expression I hope reads as professional assessment and not the thing I'm actually feeling, which is impressed.
And aroused.
Both at the same time.
Which is not helpful.
"Can you present that?" I ask, ignoring the stirring in my slacks.
"The sustainability angle?"
"The whole thing. I'll intro, you walk through the partnership model and metrics, I'll close with next steps."
"You want me to present to the client."
"You just rewrote my entire pitch in three minutes. Yes. I want you to present to the client."
She's quiet for a second, and I can see her recalculating. "Okay. I can do it."
"Good." I check my watch. Eleven fifty-six. "He's early."
Through the glass walls, I can see Arthur Castellano walking into the lobby with two associates. Victoria is greeting them, gesturing toward the conference room.
"Show time," I say.
The meeting goes better than it has any right to.
Castellano is exactly as difficult as advertised — interrupting questions, challenging assumptions, asking for data we don't have prepared.
But Darcy handles him.