Chapter One
Isla
“Mr. Scott will see you now.”
At the unexpected words, a shockwave of panic jolted through me. “M-Mr. Scott?” I echoed.
I cursed myself for the stammering the moment the words left my mouth. Up until just a few seconds ago, I’d been feeling confident. Put together. Professional.
I had earned my B.Arch. just six months ago from the New York Institute of Technology, and I’d spent the time since then working as an intern with a midsized architecture firm, and (in my too-rare spare time) building up the very best portfolio I could. I had a résumé and all my best work stored on the iPad in my briefcase, and I wore a navy-blue suit and a silk shirt that made me look—well, more grown-up than my usual jeans and flannel shirts, anyway. I looked, I thought, like a ‘serious architect’. I might have only been twenty-two, but I was more than ready to ace this interview and get this job.
The truth was: after all the loans my parents had taken out to get me through college, not to mention the second mortgage they’d taken out on their farm, I needed a job. Not just a low-paying internship, but a real job. I owed them that much.
And this wasn’t just a job. This was the job. The one that every architecture grad on the East Coast wanted. The junior architect position that could be the gateway to the career I’d always dreamed of.
“Yes,” the receptionist said. She was an older woman, with graying dark hair piled elegantly on top of her head and gold-framed glasses perched daintily on her nose. She smiled at me, not without sympathy. “Ms. Bianchi has been unexpectedly detained, I’m afraid. So you will be interviewing with Mr. Scott himself.”
I struggled to get any words out. Mr. Scott? The Mr. Scott? I glanced desperately around the huge waiting area on the twenty-second floor, as if I might find someone to help me, but it was empty. The space was decorated in a warm contemporary style—gray carpeting, chrome chairs, and modernist paintings mixing comfortably with antique French furniture and beautiful old-style light fixtures. Expansive windows let in the golden morning sunlight, along with a view of some of Park Avenue’s most grand and beautiful buildings. On the wall behind the desk, hardly noticeable amongst all this grandeur, I spotted the small, modest logo of the company.
AS Architects—proclaimed silver letters over a background of the famous blue and green plaid.
“Miss Blizzard?” the receptionist prompted. “Are you ready?”
The panic climbed upward into my throat, choking me. Angus Scott was—well, he was a legend. Only ten years old than I was, but in a short period of time he’d become a world-renowned architect. The firm he’d founded had become so famous, so sought-after, that he’d become a billionaire by the time he was thirty, and most people seemed to agree that he was almost sure to receive the Pritzger Architecture Prize within the next decade.
I’d read article after article about him while preparing for this interview, even though I certainly hadn’t expected to pass him in the hallway, let alone actually meet him. I knew he’d been born in Scotland, had emigrated here and used his family money to study architecture at Cornell, and that he’d shot to prominence in New York City, designing sleek, modern apartment buildings that looked like no one else’s. The thought of meeting him in the flesh—well, to be perfectly honest, it scared the hell out of me.
And yet it also made a strange kind of heat run through me because not only was Angus Scott an amazing success story but, judging from the photos I’d seen of him, he was absolutely gorgeous.
You see, I hadn’t been with a guy since my junior year when I decided men were just more trouble than they were worth and broke up with my then-boyfriend so I could dedicate all my attention to my studies. It had been a long, long dry spell, and mostly I’d been too busy to care that much.
But giving up on guys was an intellectual decision, and my body was not always totally on board with it. Some days it was harder to stick to celibacy than others. And I suspected that the one guy who could make me really, really regret my no-men philosophy might just be Angus Scott.
I remembered all the pictures I’d seen of him and felt myself shiver with irrepressible longing. The thought of those bright blue eyes looking into mine… those sculpted lips against my skin… those big hands on my body…
Don’t be silly, Isla, I told myself, trying to push back the heat building deep inside me. He’s a billionaire running a multinational company, after all. Most likely he sits behind a desk all day long, and even if he was once good-looking, he’s probably flabby and pale now. Those pictures were most likely touched up with Photoshop, maybe even totally altered. Or maybe they were just old and out-of-date. He probably has a face like —what do they call that Scottish meat pudding again? Haggis, that’s it. I bet he has a face like haggis. Maybe a body like haggis, too.
Anyway, he can’t possibly be as hot as he looked in those photos.
The thought stiffened my spine a bit. I rose to my feet, smoothed my black hair (which I’d confined in a professional-looking upsweep, but which had a bad habit of springing loose at the worst possible times), and straightened my shoulders.
“I’m ready,” I answered.
The receptionist smiled reassuringly at me as if she was accustomed to seeing people freak out at the prospect of meeting Mr. Scott. She probably was. I mean, the man was a billionaire, not to mention a god of the architecture world. Who wouldn’t be a little freaked out?
She picked up a folded piece of paper and then escorted me down a long hallway lined with black and white photographs of Manhattan buildings, while I focused on not wobbling in my high heels. A life spent working on my family’s farm accustomed me to work boots, not dress shoes, and even five years spent in New York City hadn’t ever managed to make me feel really comfortable in heels. But I’d learned to walk in them—not gracefully, exactly, but at least I didn’t tip over in them. Much.
The receptionist stopped in front of two massive wooden doors and knocked.
“Mr. Scott?”
I heard a low rumble from behind the door, and my stomach tightened in spite of myself. The way his voice sounded… it was deep and resonant, like thunder in the distance on a summer afternoon. I imagined the sound of his voice growling in my ear as he loomed over me, those sapphire eyes burning into mine—
No, Isla. Stop it. This is not the time.
It was very definitely not the time when my entire career, my entire future, was riding on the good graces of the man on the other side of those doors. Obviously, I’d somehow managed to develop a silly little crush on the man (without ever having actually seen him, which made it particularly absurd for me to be reacting this way), but I needed to keep that little piece of information to myself. This was a professional encounter and absolutely nothing else.
At any rate, after this interview, I would probably never see Mr. Scott again. He was, after all, the head of the entire firm, whereas even if I got hired as a junior architect, I would be a very tiny cog in an enormous large machine. There were over two thousand employees at AS Architects, and the chance that I would even run into Angus Scott again in the elevator was minuscule.
Even so, I couldn’t stop the shivery, hot anticipation dancing in the pit of my stomach as the doors swung open.
The office beyond the doors was truly enormous, with floor-to-ceiling windows lining two walls, and a huge Aubusson-style carpet that looked approximately the size of the back forty on our family farm. A large glass and chrome desk sat at the far end of the room, and behind it, a tall, powerfully built man with rumpled auburn hair was just rising smoothly to his feet. He wore khakis and a white button down shirt, the sleeves pushed casually up to show powerful forearms, with a blue and green plaid tie. The famous Scott plaid.
Instantly the heat in my stomach migrated south, to a spot directly between my legs.
Because Angus Scott did not bear even the slightest resemblance to haggis.