Читать книгу Billionaire Bosses Collection - Кэрол Мортимер - Страница 61
ОглавлениеHE WASN’T going to do it.
And Neely Robson had no right to act as if he was betraying his sister and his family and the rest of the free world just because he wouldn’t.
His father wasn’t Max. Never would be. And there was no point in tackling Philip Savas on this topic. If he wanted to come, he would. If he didn’t…that was pretty much par for the course, in Seb’s estimation.
But he couldn’t stop thinking about it.
No, that wasn’t true.
What he couldn’t stop thinking about was Neely.
He’d been lying there on the sofa in the dark, thinking even darker thoughts about his miserable father and his needy sister and his whole wearisome demanding dysfunctional family, when he’d heard the door open and Neely and Harm had come in.
It was too late to get up and turn on a light and act like he was working, and the bleakness of his thoughts had made him uninclined to make an effort to sit up and act polite if she came into the room.
Besides, if she found him lying on the sofa in the dark she’d wonder what the hell was wrong with him. And he had no desire to discuss any of it.
So he’d stayed there, still and quiet, and hoped she would go straight upstairs.
Of course she hadn’t. And if she’d turned on a light, he’d have feigned waking from a nap. He was tired enough.
But instead she’d got down his grandfather’s violin and begun to play it. When he’d first heard her clambering up on the cabinet, he hadn’t known what on earth she was doing. And the first squeaks and tunings were so unexpected that they’d startled him, making him lift his head enough so he could peer over the back of the sofa.
She was busy adjusting the pegs, tuning the strings and didn’t see him at all. He opened his mouth to ask what she thought she was doing. But then she drew the bow across the strings and it became absolutely clear.
Stunned, bemused—and for the moment completely incapable of saying anything—he sank back onto the cushions.
And listened to her play.
It was a revelation. Of all the things he thought he knew about Neely Robson—even the things he’d been wrong about—he’d never once guessed she could play the violin. It hadn’t entered his mind.
But the moment she touched the bow to the strings, music filled the room. Sound echoed and reverberated. Light and bright and airy, rhythmic, almost mathematical sounds. Spritely dancing sounds that made him think of spring and splashing in puddles. And then slower, broader, more soulful tones that wrapped him in a warmth that carried him back to his grandparents’ home, that made him think of winter days in the house on Long Island wrapped in a blanket and sitting next to a fireplace, waiting for his grandfather to come home.
Nothing in his life had felt like that, nothing had reminded him of home—not since his grandparents had died.
She played sounds that made his throat ache, made his eyes fill, made his heart feel too large for his chest. She made him remember in a way he hadn’t remembered for years all his childhood hopes and dreams and a future full of promise.
And heaven help him, he wanted it again.
No. Not just it. Not just a home, damn it.
He wanted a home with her.
He wasn’t going to do it.
Neely had known it at once from the stubborn set of his jaw, the uncompromising tone, the fact that he had turned and walked out of the room right after he’d spoken.
She didn’t chase after him. Didn’t follow him up the stairs and into his bedroom.
Bearding Sebastian in his bedroom would not have been wise.
Going anywhere near a bed with Sebastian would have undermined all her best intentions. Her attraction to him was far too strong. She wanted him far too much.
Now she sat in her office and stared at her computer screen thinking through all the events of last night—of all the days since Sebastian had moved onto the houseboat—and she knew he was everything she wanted in a man. He was strong, caring, intelligent, honorable and sexy as hell.
But he didn’t believe in love.
Not just the love of a man and a woman, but even the love of a father for his children.
Though why he should, given his experience, she could not have said.
Outside her window the rain was sheeting down and she knew she should get to work. But even though Blake had been enthusiastic over her designs this morning and had given her the go-ahead. She still felt unaccountably depressed.
It had nothing to do with work.
It had everything to do with Sebastian.
She hurt for him. She ached for him. But she couldn’t change him.
So in the end she knew she had to leave him to his obduracy and his pain because she couldn’t fight the one or deny the other.
The only thing she could do—and probably should do, she admitted for the first time—was find another place to live.
Her cell phone rang before she could argue with herself about it.
Just as well, she thought, punching the answer button, because there were no arguments, just the emotional tangle she couldn’t get out of. And she really needed to get some work done.
“This is Neely Robson,” she said doing her best businesslike voice.
“Got a favor to ask.” It was Max. His own voice sounded strained and a little tighter than normal.
“Name it.”
“I’m at Swedish Hospital. Could you come by?”
“Sure. What’s up? New project?” She thought she remembered Max mentioning something about a hospital addition bid at the last group meeting.
“Something like that.” His tone was dry. “A load of pipe fell on me. I’ve got a broken leg.”
She’d never been to Swedish Hospital. Well, truth told, she’d been born there. But she hadn’t been back since.
So finding where she was supposed to go, especially feeling rattled, was tricky. And even once she’d arrived, she still had to find the emergency area and Max who had told her he was going to need surgery.
“Not till I get there!” she’d said at the end of his phone call.
“Well, I’ll tell them to wait,” Max said wryly. “But I don’t suppose they’ll pay much attention. Don’t worry, kid. I’ll still be here whenever you get here. I’m not going anywhere,” he added wearily. “Damn it.”
Neely had said the same two words several times over by the time she finally found herself in the emergency section at Swedish Hospital and hurried toward the reception area.
“I’m here to see Max Grosvenor,” she said breathlessly. “I’m his daughter.”
The receptionist smiled, consulted her list and said, “Yes, we’ve sent him to the Orthopedic Institute for surgery. If you’ll just go out there and across the street.” She pointed in the direction Neely should go. It was the direction she’d just come from.
Neely thanked her and hurried back the way she’d come. The multistory Orthopedic Institute was almost brand-new and definitely state-of-the-art. The receptionist there looked up Max’s name and said, “He’s in surgery, dear.”
“But—” But of course Max was right. It wasn’t up to him, and naturally they’d need to get on it as quickly as possible.
“We have a lovely area where you can wait,” she said and gave Neely directions. “The doctor will come out and talk to you when he’s finished.”
“Thank you.” Neely gave her a quick smile and, still worrying, followed the directions to the waiting area. The last time she’d been in a hospital was when John had suffered a heart attack. Swift and, ultimately, fatal. It wasn’t the same thing at all.
But it had been as unexpected as Max’s accident was, and somehow even though her mind told her to relax, her body was on adrenaline overload. She walked right past the waiting area without realizing it.
“Neely.”
She spun around at the sound of the voice calling her name. “Sebastian?” She stared in consternation at the man standing in the doorway to the waiting room. “What are you doing here?”
“Max called me.”
She let out a breath. Of course he had. She might be Max’s daughter, but Sebastian was his second in command. Slowly she turned and walked back to the room. There were several other people sitting and waiting for other patients. They glanced up disinterestedly as Sebastian led her to a small conversational group and gestured for her to sit down.
She sat. Sebastian sat in a chair next to her. He looked calm and composed, the way he always did. The Iceman returns, Neely thought.
But looking at him more closely, she knew she was wrong. There was tell-tale strain on his face. His jaw was clenched. As she watched, he flexed his fingers, as if he would have cracked his knuckles if he’d been willing to display any feelings at all.
“Did you get here before they took him into surgery?”
“Just.” Now he did crack his knuckles.
“Is he going to be all right? How bad is it?”
“I don’t know a lot. Apparently they’re talking about pins and plates. He didn’t sound thrilled. But he didn’t know too much yet. I suppose it depends on what they find when they get in to do it.”
“Yes.” Neely swallowed. “He’s going to be livid that he won’t be able to go climbing over things, that he’ll have to oversee from the office.”
“Yeah, well, he’s not going to.”
“Not going to what? Stay in the office? He’ll have to!” Trust Max to not know his own limits. She shifted in her chair and gave a despairing shake of her head.
“No, not oversee,” Seb said. “He’s going to be laid up too long. There will be things he can do, certainly. But not the projects he has to be on the ground for. He can stay home and work on new designs. But as far as the other stuff goes, I’m overseeing or delegating.”
His words took a minute to penetrate. The significance of them took even longer.
Finally Neely cocked her head. “What other stuff?” she asked.
And Sebastian ticked off several projects that she knew Max was involved in. “I’m delegating those,” he said. “But I’ll keep an eye on them.”
“And Blake-Carmody?” she asked, because that had been Max’s baby, the one he’d brought her in to work with him on. Was she going to get to do that one?
“That one,” Sebastian said, “is mine.”
* * *
If Neely thought Sebastian was a workaholic before Max’s accident, it was nothing to what he became afterward.
“You don’t have to do everything,” she said. It was like a mantra, she said it so often over the next few days, because regardless of what he’d said about delegating, he didn’t seem to be delegating at all.
He was up at the crack of dawn, working hour upon hour, going between the office, all the construction sites, the design meetings and the hospital where he kept Max updated but, by his own admission, “not very updated,” because Max needed to rest.
Sebastian, apparently, needed no rest at all.
Or needed it less than he needed to prove something to himself.
He was gone before she even got up in the morning, and he rarely got home in time to grab a late meal before Neely went off to bed. One night he didn’t come in before she went to bed and he wasn’t there when she got up, so she wondered if he’d even been home at all.
“No,” he said when she asked him later that morning when she stuck her head in his office at work.
“You can’t go without sleep.”
“I caught a nap on the sofa.” He jerked his head toward the small one in his office. She couldn’t imagine how anyone over the age of ten could have caught any sort of nap on it, without becoming a pretzel in the process. Sebastian was six feet two inches of solid muscle and bone. And stubbornness.
“Not good enough,” she said.
He gave her a steely look. “I didn’t have time, okay? I’ve got to get up to speed on Blake-Carmody. I have a meeting with the committee on Friday and Max said they still had some reservations about the lobby and atrium.”
“Can I help? I just had a meeting with Blake. I know how he thinks.”
Seb shook his head. “No. It’s fine. Thanks. This is my end of things, not yours.” He gave her a quick distant smile and bent over his work again.
Dismissed, and knowing it, Neely backed out of his office. But she was still concerned. And a bit peeved at his dismissal. Did he think she was only able to appreciate her own work?
Later that day she said as much to Max.
He was still in the hospital, his leg immobilized with seven pins and a plate, which he grumbled about continually. There was no way he could come to work and take some of the pressure off Sebastian. Neely knew that, but she thought he might tell Sebastian to ease up a little.
But Max just shrugged against his pillows. “He’s conscientious. Doing what needs to be done.”
“He’s just like you,” Neely countered.
“Somebody has to be,” Max rejoined with a grin.
But Neely didn’t smile in return. “Do you really think so?” she challenged him. “Is it really the way you’d advise him to live? After what it did to your life?”
And mine, she didn’t add aloud.
Max’s grin faded and he plucked at the sheet with his fingers. “I don’t know,” he admitted after a long moment. “I thought so when I was his age.”
“And now?”
He shrugged and raked his fingers through his hair. “I can’t tell him that,” he said.
“Why not?”
“It’s a guy thing,” he said simply.
“Oh, and that means he should just work himself into the ground?”
“Not necessarily. It means he has to get his own priorities sorted out. I can’t do it for him. He has to figure it out on his own.”
“Like you did,” Neely said, for the first time being just a bit sarcastic with her father.
Max’s mouth tipped in a wry smile. “Exactly.”
And Neely supposed he was right. But Sebastian didn’t seem to be doing so. He kept up the dawn-till-well-past-dark schedule as the week wore on. He did turn some projects over to second in commands. But from Neely he refused all offers of help.
Wednesday, though, he was in the middle of working on the atrium proposal when Vangie had a meltdown right in his office.
Neely had been surprised to see Sebastian’s sister appear in the office, but she’d been on the phone at the time and had only glimpsed Vangie through the glass window between her private space and the main room. So there had been no chance to go out and greet her, and when she’d got off the phone and looked up again, Vangie was gone.
Of course she was sure where Vangie was, but somehow turning up in Sebastian’s office to say hi seemed not the smartest idea, given his current state of mind.
It didn’t matter anyway, because ten minutes later her phone rang. “You said you wanted to help,” Sebastian said without preamble.
“Yes,” Neely began cautiously.
“Fine. Come and get her.”
He hung up before she could say a word, and for a moment Neely considered simply ignoring the summons. But she had offered to help, and she hadn’t put a limit on the offer. If Vangie was what he needed help with, so be it.
She hadn’t expected tears. At least they were Vangie’s tears, not Sebastian’s, she thought wryly when she stepped into his office. Though truth be told he looked harried and harassed enough to shed a few himself.
“What’s wrong?” Neely hurried to Vangie’s side, shooting Sebastian a questioning look as she did so, silently querying what he’d said to her now.
“The boxes aren’t silver,” he said flatly, as if that explained everything. “They’re grey.”
“What?”
Vangie looked up, stricken, and said, “The mint boxes for the tables…a-at the reception,” she gulped, “they’re supposed to be rose a-and s-silver. And the rose are r-rose. But the silver are grey!” And she started sobbing again.
“End of the world,” Sebastian said to Neely, “as you can see.”
Neely patted Vangie’s shoulder and glared at Sebastian. Professionally he’d rejected her every offer to help, but when it came to silver boxes…
But much as she felt like leaving him to deal with his sister, she couldn’t. Help was help, and she’d offered.
“Come on.” She urged Vangie to her feet. “Let’s go see what we can do about it.”
“We can’t do anything about it!” Vangie wailed. “The reception will be ruined!”
“We’ll see,” Neely murmured. “We’ll see.” And she chivvied Vangie out of the office with barely a backward glance at Sebastian. He had already refocused on the atrium design.
It took a trip to the hobby shop for some silver paint and half a dozen small paint brushes to get Vangie’s tears dried up. She still looked doubtful. “Are you sure it will work?”
“Of course I’m sure,” Neely said because faintheartedness never won the day. “We can take care of this right now if your sisters will help.”
Vangie sniffled and nodded. “They will,” she said. “And my mom and my stepmothers, too.”
So she got to meet the triplets and Jenna and ten-year-old Sarah, three of Sebastian’s stepmothers and get a look at his penthouse digs, as well. It was enlightening.
The penthouse had probably been austere and minimalist before being overrun by the Savas women. One look around its cluttered surfaces and clothes-strewn rooms gave Neely greater understanding about exactly why Sebastian had been so desperate to move into the houseboat. Further reflection simply reinforced the notion that he was incredibly kind to all of them.
Not many men, she didn’t imagine, would have allowed their siblings and stepmothers to simply move in and take over their home. But Sebastian had. And as she showed them how to add silver highlights to the boxes—which were in fact not quite as grey as Vangie had claimed—she heard plenty of stories about how many other things he’d done for them.
He was paying Jenna’s college tuition. He’d footed the bill for a year’s study in Paris for one of the triplets. He was helping Cassidy, a stepmother who couldn’t have been much older than he was, go back to nursing school and get her degree.
“Does your father help, too?” she asked one of the triplets.
The girl looked blank. “Who? Oh, Dad? We hardly ever see him.”
“We will at the wedding,” Vangie said confidently. “Sebastian’s organizing it.”
Neely glanced at her, surprised and wondering if Sebastian had changed his mind or if Vangie was just making assumptions. It didn’t seem wise to ask.
“There, now,” she said. “I think that takes care of all of them.” She stood up and surveyed the sea of tiny silver-highlighted boxes on Sebastian’s dining room table.
Vangie beamed, then came to throw her arms around Neely. “Thanks to you,” she said. She turned to her mother and stepmothers and sisters. “Didn’t I tell you she was terrific? Seb is so lucky to have you.”
“He doesn’t have me,” Neely said.
But Vangie and all the rest of them drowned her out, telling her how happy they were that she and Sebastian were together.
Arguing didn’t do any good. Sebastian would sort it out, Neely decided. He would doubtless make it clear to them that they were merely roommates.
But as she drove home after sharing a dinner of pizza and salad with so many of Sebastian’s relations, she envied him the joy of them and understood why, even though they exasperated him, he would move heaven and earth for them.
He loved them.
And Neely was stunned to find herself wishing that he loved her, too, the way that she, heaven help her, had fallen in love with him.
“No,” Seb said into the phone. “I can’t.”
Which was an understatement and then some. He paced around the confines of his office and wanted to bang his head against the wall instead of sounding calm and rational on the phone. There was no way he could just pick up and fly off to Reno for a zoning commission meeting on Friday. “Sorry. But you’ll have to reschedule.”
“We have rescheduled,” Lymond, the chairman of the medical group whose project he’d developed, reminded him. “This is the reschedule, Seb. And they aren’t going to do it again.”
“Then…” you’ll have to do it without me, Seb wanted to say. But he couldn’t. He’d asked them to put it off the day after Max’s accident. They said they would, and now they had, and he’d promised to accommodate…
“I’ll get back to you,” he promised the chairman.
“The meeting’s at twelve-thirty.”
Seb cursed under his breath after hanging up the phone because he knew he couldn’t ask them to change it again. It would be unprofessional. But he didn’t see how he could be in two places at once. That wasn’t unprofessional. It was flat-out impossible.
And he couldn’t ask Roger Carmody and Stephen Blake to reschedule, either. Blake might be willing, but Carmody was already apprehensive about Max’s having to leave the project. He’d raised a dozen questions about the public space and atrium when Sebastian had spoken with him on the phone.
It was insane. The plans were good ones. They were his, yes, not Max’s. But Max had approved them. Max would argue for them if Max were able to be there.
Maybe Max would have to go after all. That would settle Carmody’s nerves, they’d all be on the same page, and everything would go on according to the plans Seb had drawn up in the first place.
That’s what would have to happen, he decided. There was no other way to handle it.
“Of course there is,” Max said when he stopped by the hospital that night.
“Oh?” Seb raised an eyebrow. “Have you figured out how to clone me, then?”
“Don’t need to. Send Neely.”
Seb blanched. “You’re joking.”
Both of Max’s brows went up. “Why should I joke? She knows the project better than anyone. She’s worked with me on it since day one.”
“I worked with you on it, too,” Seb reminded him. “Until you phased me out.”
“Yeah, and that was my mistake, “Max admitted. “But you had Reno to do, and I wanted to work with Neely. And now I’ve phased you back in, as you put it. Basically it’s your plan we’ve used, and while you know it better than anyone, Neely’s worked on the project the whole time. She knows it too.”
“Not as well as I do.”
“Which goes without saying. But she knows Blake and Carmody.”
Exactly. She could undermine the whole damn thing. “She doesn’t like what I do.” That was the long and short of it right there.
“She’s playing for our team,” Max said flatly.
Seb remembered their encounter over her pink offices and his “pointy buildings”—in her term—and shook his head. Yeah, he knew Neely much better now. Certainly he liked her personally a lot better now. And that he would happily have taken her to bed went without saying.
But that had nothing to do with working with her, being on the same page with her in terms of the project. Bed was play, this was work. This was his career, his life.
“Have you talked to her about it?” Max asked.
Seb lifted his shoulders. “Haven’t had time.”
“You should take time.”
Seb grunted. “Yeah.”
Instead, after he left Max, he called back Lymond in Reno to see how things stood.
“Expecting you Friday morning. You need a ride from the airport?”
“No,” Seb said grimly. “I’ll be there.”
He rang Roger Carmody to discuss the atrium. If he could answer the questions now on the phone, maybe the meeting would be a mere formality.
But Roger’s secretary said he was out of town until Thursday evening.
“Ask him to call me no matter what time he gets in,” Seb said.
But he had been tied up in another meeting when Roger had called. So all he got was Roger’s voice message afterward saying, “I don’t like it. We need to rethink. I’ll discuss it with you tomorrow.”
But tomorrow Seb wouldn’t be there.
Neely Robson would.
He got back to the houseboat before ten for the first time since Max’s accident. Neely was sitting in the rocker, holding one of the kittens. She looked up and smiled at him when he came in.
It was one of those Neely smiles that undermined his resolve and made him want to throw good sense to the winds and simply carry her off to bed. Not that she would let him.
All the more reason to be short and to the point now.
“I have to be in Reno tomorrow,” he said without preamble. “It’s unavoidable. They’ve rescheduled already. I can’t ask them to do it again. And the Carmody-Blake meeting will have to go on, too.”
“That’s all right,” she said quickly. “I can handle—”
“You don’t need to handle anything. Just take care of your part and I’ll take care of the rest next week.”
Her smile faded. “I’ve already taken care of my part,” she said a little stiffly. “The homespace is all approved.”
A reminder he didn’t need. “So it is,” he said, aware that his tone was now even stiffer than hers. “And I wouldn’t even ask you to show up, except this is supposed to be the final rundown, and since I can’t be there, Max says you’re the obvious choice.”
“Max said that?” There was something in her tone he couldn’t quite put his finger on, but Seb knew he didn’t like it. It was both doubtful and challenging.
“That’s right. He thinks you should be able to hold the fort.” Seb met her gaze with an equally challenging one of his own. “So I’m counting on you to hold it.”
Neely’s didn’t waver. “Consider it held.”
The meeting in Reno was, for all of Lymond’s hand wringing, far more of a formality than the Carmody-Blake meeting was back in Seattle.
Seb was determinedly attentive and made sure every i was dotted and every t was crossed. But in the back of his mind, he was in Seattle, mentally overseeing the meeting with Blake and Carmody and hoping to hell Neely didn’t screw everything up.
He got out of the meeting at three. His fingers itched to punch in her number on his mobile phone and see what was happening. But of course, she would be in the meeting with Carmody and Blake right then and he wouldn’t get an answer.
So he went to the airport and paced until it was time for his flight, telling himself she wouldn’t mess things up, inadvertently, or even worse, deliberately, making clear her own dislike of Seb’s designs. He didn’t think she’d do him in deliberately, but how the hell did he know?
He glanced at his watch a dozen times or more, got halfway to stabbing out her number, then tucked the phone back in his pocket and kept pacing.
Right before the plane took off, though, he called Max.
“Reno’s sorted,” he said when Max answered.
“Of course it is.” He could tell Max was smiling.
“Just thought you’d like to know.”
“Sure. I’m going home this afternoon.”
“Neely picking you up?” Seb asked, grabbing the chance to legitimately introduce her name into the conversation.
“Not sure.”
“Haven’t you heard from her?” Seb asked, not quite able to mask the worry in his tone.
“What? Oh, sure. She may be the one to do it. Said she might be busy, though.”
“Busy?”
Max laughed. “I gather she has a life.”
Seb didn’t find it funny. “What’d she say about the Blake- Carmody meeting?”
“It went fine.”
Seb ground his teeth. “What does that mean?”
“That it went fine, I guess.” Max’s tone was equable enough, but it didn’t invite any further questions.
“Fine,” Seb muttered. “I damned well hope so.”
“Chill,” Max advised.
“Right.” Seb let out a long breath. They were calling his flight. “See you.”
He tried to tell himself Max would have let him know if Neely had screwed things up for him. He tried to tell himself she’d keep her mouth shut and let him handle it when he got home. So it wasn’t a good sign to find a voice mail from Roger Carmody when he landed in Seattle.
“Smart move,” Carmody said jovially, “sending Neely. She and I have everything sorted. We’re all on the same page now. Talk to you on Monday. Thanks.”
Seb felt sick. Shafted. Was the atrium even in the design now? It was crucial to the whole design, damn it! Had his sweeping, open spaces been carved into dinky little “people-friendly” segments. Couldn’t they see how the soaring planes of the atrium spoke to the human soul?
He supposed he had only himself to blame. He should have called Carmody and put off the meeting until Monday even if it looked as if he wasn’t prepared. He should have insisted Carmody and Blake have the meeting in Max’s hospital room if they wouldn’t wait. At least Max believed in his designs.
He should have sent Danny or Frank or somebody—anybody!—but Neely Robson to meet with Carmody and Blake. God only knew what she had agreed to.
Seb was going to have her head on a plate when he found out.
He was in a cold fury by the time he reached the houseboat.
It was getting late, the sun was setting behind Queen Anne Hill. And on it streetlights were beginning to twinkle on the other side of the lake. The wind had died down and there was only a light breeze as Seb grabbed his suitcase, banged his car door shut and stalked up the dock to the houseboat.
The porch light was on, and when he opened the door, he was immediately treated to wonderful cooking smells, light classical music and Harm bounding to meet him. He dropped his suitcase, rubbed his fingers over the dog’s ears and headed straight down the hall toward the open living area.
Neely was in the kitchen. She turned when he appeared, a bright smile on her face. “You’re back.”
“I’m back,” Seb agreed flatly. He didn’t smile in return.
Her own smile faltered a little. “Didn’t it go well?”
“You tell me,” he said.
“No, I mean Reno. You seem upset.”
“Damned right I’m upset! You screwed me over. You went into that meeting and you didn’t hold the fort at all.”
Neely stiffened. “Who told you that?”
“Carmody! Who else?”
“You talked to him? What did he say?”
“He called while I was flying home. Left me a voice mail—all cheery and ‘everything’s swell.’ So he got what he wanted apparently.” Seb very nearly spat the words.
“Yes,” Neely said slowly. “He got what he wanted.” She picked up a towel and began slowly drying her hands.
Seb slammed one fist into the other palm. “I should have known better than to send you. I should have told them they had to wait and talk to me. I should have—Damn it!” He couldn’t even speak he was so furious. He wanted to slam something, hit something, kick something. The kittens took one look at him and skittered for cover.
“What is it you imagine I’ve done?” Neely asked, her voice very even, very calm.
“I can’t imagine, can I?” Seb flared at her. “I don’t know what the hell you would do! You and I don’t see eye to eye—”
“You and I are working on the same project. I was representing the whole project. Not just mine. Which, as you pointed out yesterday, has already been approved.” She set the towel down and came around the bar to stand by the dining room table, facing him.
It was set for two. With candles already lit. Wineglasses. There was a bottle of champagne in a bucket of ice. He stared at it, then back at her.
“What did you do?” he asked her bluntly.
“You’d sent them the designs already. I met with them and asked if they had questions. Roger had a lot of them—especially about the public space, the atrium, the vastness of it.”
“It sets a tone—” Seb began.
“It sets a tone,” Neely said, cutting him off. “Of openness and space, but it doesn’t dwarf the people because it leads them where they need to go. It provides a greenhouse sort of feel with warmth and foliage and curving lines not straight ones. It draws people in, and at the same time it gives them a break between the hustle and bustle of urban Seattle and the office they are seeking. It provides openness and the sense of shelter at the same time. It’s people friendly. It’s comfortable. It makes people feel welcome.”
Seb stared at her.
Neely stared back. A powerful engine thrummed as the boat cut across the lake. Seb heard his own breathing more loudly.
She looked beyond him out the window. “It’s all there in your plans,” she went on. “We went through the drawings one by one. He asked questions because apparently he didn’t have a feel for things. He needed more explanation. So I explained what your intentions were.”
Seb digested that. “My intentions?”
Neely shrugged indifferently. “You’re the one who drew up the plans.”
“Max—”
“They were your plans. Max always said they were yours.”
“You don’t like my designs.”
“I didn’t like the design we tangled over. And some of your stuff is a little too austere for me. That’s true. But this—” another shrug “—I could see where you were going with this. But Roger needed it spelled out, needed convincing. So…I convinced him.”
She turned away abruptly then, didn’t look at him at all.
“I—” She hadn’t sabotaged him after all? “You actually convinced Carmody that my designs were what the project needed?”
“That’s what I went to the meeting to do.” Her voice was flat, hard. “It’s my job.”
He didn’t know what to say. It came out as a hopelessly inadequate “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” The words were carved in ice. She was angry, and who could blame her? He’d been an idiot.
“I mean it,” he fumbled. “I thought—”
“It’s quite clear what you thought. Someday, Sebastian, you’re going to have to figure out that there are people you can trust.”
He’d hurt her as well. Damn, damn, damn.
She still didn’t look at him. Instead she reached over to snuff out the candles.
He watched as her fingers snapped out the flames. Belatedly he realized that she’d planned something special. The table was all decorated. Flowers. Wine. Candles, now lightly smoking, the acrid scent cutting across the rich smell of food.
“What are you doing?” he said, his voice hoarse. “Don’t you want to eat?”
“Not anymore.”
“But what about—” He gestured to the festive table.
“That? I’d thought we’d celebrate. I thought we actually had something to celebrate.” Her voice was tight and she flicked a quick glance his way before taking off her apron and tossing it on the counter. She headed down the hall where she took Harm’s leash and clipped it on his collar.
Only as she opened the door did she look back his way. “Obviously, I was wrong.”
