Chapter Eleven
“To what do I owe this pleasure?” Ginny dropped her pocketbook on the floor, slipped off her coat, and slid into a chair opposite Eli at Dean & Deluca, a steaming cup in her hand that he knew would contain her beverage of choice—a half-sweet, non-fat caramel macchiato. “You haven’t set foot on the island for weeks. I was starting to think I’d never see you again.”
He hadn’t been counting the days, but now that he thought about it, Ginny was right. Thanks to email, texting, and Skype, he’d been able to keep tabs on things without having to return to Manhattan since moving into Candy Court. And more surprising, he hadn’t missed it one damn bit.
He smiled and sipped his way-less-complicated dark roast, black, with his usual two shots of espresso. “Would you believe me if I said I missed you?”
“No.” She blew across the top of her cup, making waves in the thick foam.
He put a hand over his heart. “You wound me.”
“You’ll get over it.” She licked some of the foam from the rim of her cup and drank. “Your absence hasn’t gone unnoticed. People have been talking.”
“I didn’t expect it would.” He set his half-empty cup down on the table with a hollow thunk. “What people?”
“Simon. I don’t think he’s buying my story about the Tibetan monastery.”
He leaned back in his chair, stretching his legs out and crossing them at the ankles. “You seriously went with that?”
“It seemed like a good idea at the time. Hard to prove one way or the other.” She patted her silvery gray hair and loosened a button on her cardigan. “Then again, I didn’t think you’d fall off the face of the earth for two months.”
“Last time I checked, Brooklyn’s still on terra firma. And it’s not like we haven’t been in constant contact.”
“What’s so important you broke your self-imposed exile and dragged me out of the office in the middle of the workday?” Ginny asked, clearly anxious to get to the purpose of their tête-á-tête. “Do you have a lead on our mole?”
“I was going to ask you that same question.”
She shook her head. “Nothing yet. Mr. Spock should be sending me a status report any day now.”
Eli raised a brow. “Mr. Spock? What is this, Star Trek?”
“Do you read my emails?” She clucked her tongue at him. “Gordon Spock. He’s the private investigator who’s been following Dupree.”
“Yes, I read your emails,” Eli insisted. “I’ve been a little busy lately.”
“Busy? Or preoccupied?”
“Busy.” He repeated the half-truth. Ginny didn’t need to know how much time he’d been spending with Brooke. Or what they’d been doing. “With the Candy Court project.”
“I’ve seen the architect’s renderings.” She blew into her coffee again and took another tentative sip. “Very ambitious.”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.” He bent down and picked up a long cardboard tube from under the table. “There’s been a change of plan.”
He popped the cap off one end of the tube and slid out a rolled-up sheet of paper. He moved his coffee to one side and spread it out on the table.
Ginny fished her reading glasses out of her purse, perched them on her nose and squinted down at the drawing. “What’s this?”
“Like I said, a change of plan.”
The furrows in her forehead deepened as she studied the sketch in more detail, her finger tracing the clean lines. “Are you sure about this?”
“As sure as I’ve ever been about anything.” The words left his mouth freely, easily. He was sure. Damn sure. He’d spent the week and change since the wedding working with the architect on the new drawings. He’d thought Eli was nuts, too, scrapping everything and starting from scratch on a design that wouldn’t be anywhere near as profitable as the one they’d first agreed on. But for the first time in his business career, this deal wasn’t about profit. It was about people.
Or, more accurately, one particular person.
“What gives?” Ginny stared at him like he had three heads and a tail. Maybe a set of wings, too. “Where’s the real Eli Ward and what have you done with him?”
“He’s sitting right in front of you, wondering if you’ve gone completely insane or you’re suffering from caffeine overdose.”
“I’m serious, Eli.” She peered at him over her glasses, her voice gentle but firm. “This is nothing like what you originally had drawn up. If you do this, you’ll be leaving a lot of money on the table.”
He shrugged and stared down at his loafers. He hadn’t worn them in weeks, yet for some reason, he’d felt compelled to put them on today. Same with his freshly pressed button-down and flat-front khakis. Hell, he’d worn a goddamn tie. Like putting on armor to do battle.
He retrieved his coffee and took a sip, savoring the taste and feel of the hot, dark liquid as it ran over his tongue and down his throat. “Money isn’t everything.”
“Now I know something is wrong. You’re not sick are you?” She reached across the table and put a hand to his forehead. “Oh my God, that’s it, isn’t it? You’re dying. You’ve got six months to live, and this is some sort of last ditch effort to make peace with your maker.”
“It’s nothing that melodramatic, I swear.” He finished his coffee, crushed the cup in his hand, and tossed it into a nearby trash can. “Besides, aren’t you the one always telling me the best things in life are free?”
“Yes. But I hadn’t realized you were actually paying attention.” Ginny’s glasses slipped lower on her nose, and she pushed them up with her index finger. “Dare I ask what—or who—is responsible for this remarkable transformation?”
The answer to her question was obvious, but it wasn’t one Eli was ready to give, even to the woman who’d become almost a mother to him. What he shared with Brooke was too new, too fragile, too uncertain.
“The building doesn’t need to be razed, it needs to be restored.” He tapped the drawing. “High ceilings. Exposed brick. Natural wood beams. If we do this right, it’ll appeal to everyone from baby boomers to millennials. We’ll be at full occupancy before the paint is dry.”
“Fine.” Ginny took off her glasses, snapped them shut and stowed them in her purse. “Don’t tell me who she is. I’ll figure it out eventually. I haven’t worked for you for eight years without learning a few tricks.”
He rolled up the plans and slid them back into the tube, glad to be done with the sensitive subject of his love life. At least for now. “Any word from the title insurance company?”
She pulled a manila folder from her pocketbook. “I’ve got the preliminary title report right here, along with the FEMA flood map and a summary of the applicable zoning regulations and permit requirements from the city planning department.”
She slid the folder across the table to him. He opened it and leafed through the documents. “Good work, Ginny. Anything else?”
“Not that I can think of.” She stood and started to put on her coat. “Oh, I sent your tuxedo out to be cleaned so it will be ready for the silent auction next week.”
The auction. Shit. He’d all but forgotten about it. “Thanks. You’ll be there, I hope.”
“Wouldn’t miss it. I know how important Geek Girls is to you and Paige.” She hitched her purse over her arm. “Will you be bringing a date?”
He rose to join her, grabbing his coat from the back of his chair. “Nice try, but you’re not going to worm it out of me that easily.”
“Ah-ha.” She jabbed a finger at him. “So, there is something to worm out of you.”
Damn, the old bird was good. He slung an arm around her considerably smaller shoulders and steered her toward the door. “If there is, I’m not going to let it slip at a black-tie benefit with the grand dames of New York society looking on. Those women scare me. They’re the real gossip girls.”
Part of him—a big part—wanted nothing more than to stroll into the fundraiser with Brooke on his arm. But there was no way he could invite Brooke without blowing his cover, and he wasn’t ready to do that yet.
He would be. Soon. Very soon. He just hoped when that time rolled around she’d be willing to listen to him.
…
“We’ve got trouble.” David burst through Brooke’s door, tanned and refreshed from his honeymoon and waving one arm excitedly.
“Knock much?” Brooke put down her pencil and rested her elbows on her drawing table. Since the wedding, she’d been more productive than ever. Her muse, which had deserted her, had returned with a vengeance. Like most creative types, she didn’t want to overthink the reason for her sudden change of fortune. But it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what was different.
Her relationship with Eli. Okay, yeah, she’d used the word relationship. Shoot her. And she hadn’t been hit by a stray comet or struck by lightning. Miracle of miracles.
It was like she and Eli had crossed a bridge that night after the wedding, from friends with benefits to a bona fide couple. They’d established a sort of new normal. Going about their own business during the day, which for her meant writing or drawing or pulling an occasional shift at Flotsam and Jetsam, and for him meant tabulating columns and organizing spreadsheets or whatever it was financial wizards did. Then it was takeout or dinner at a local restaurant, neither one of them being particularly adept in the kitchen. Well, adept at cooking. They’d found plenty of other, more creative, uses for the space, and about every other surface in their respective apartments
In between their marathon sex sessions, they’d watch movies, listen to music—aside from their shared affection for second British invasion bands, he preferred jazz fusion, she headbanging heavy metal—or talk about everything from politics to prime-time television, staying deftly away from their personal lives, which they avoided as if by tacit, unspoken agreement, his apparently being as messy as hers. When they were spent, from conversation or coitus, they’d fall asleep tangled in each other and wake the next morning to have breakfast together before starting the whole cycle over again.
The kind of normal a girl could get used to, if she let herself.
“No time for formalities.” David smacked a hand down on her drafting table, scattering papers and snapping Brooke out of her Eli-induced daydream. “There’s a guy outside with a tripod and some fancy electronic equipment, planting little flags everywhere.”
Icy fingers of dread clawed at her gut. She swallowed hard and tried to tamp it down as she gathered the fallen papers and tossed them haphazardly on the table. She’d have to sort that mess out later. Right now, she had more a pressing predicament to deal with.
“It’s probably someone from the gas company marking where the underground lines are.” She crossed her fingers behind her back, hoping her tone was more optimistic than she felt.
David frowned. “His truck says Atlas Surveying and Mapping.”
So much for optimism.
“Come on.” She threw on an oversize sweatshirt over her usual writing attire—yoga pants and a graphic tee—and slipped into a pair of Ugg boots she’d left by the door. “Let’s find out what’s going on.”
Half an hour and whole host of unanswered questions later, they were back in her apartment.
“Okay.” Brooke paced the length of her studio, drumming her fingers together. “Let’s summarize what we know.”
“Not much.” David pulled open the refrigerator door and peered inside. “Do you have anything to eat besides and white bread, mustard, and Italian dressing?”
“How can you think of food at a time like this?” She came up behind him and pushed the door closed.
“Chris did all the cooking. Ever since he left, I’ve been subsisting on ramen noodles and mac and cheese. A giant step down from my usual fare.”
“He’s only been gone two days.”
“The two longest days of my life.”
He leaned against the counter and let out a heavy sigh, looking so forlorn Brooke took pity on him and tossed him a granola bar from a box in the cabinet above the sink. “Here. This should tide you over until your next ramen fix.”
“Thanks.” He ripped off the wrapper and bit into it with a satisfied moan.
She closed the cabinet and leaned against the counter next to him. “Now can we get back to the matter at hand?”
“And what would that be?” Eli strode through the door, the smell of Thai spices wafting from the bag in his arms.
“Hallelujah. Real food.” David came around the counter and took the bag from him.
Eli shrugged off his dark gray topcoat—the same one he’d been wearing the night they met, she remembered—and tossed it over the back of the couch. “Good thing I got enough for an army.”
Brooke crossed her arms under her chest. “Again, with the no knocking. What is it with the people in this building?”
“What’s the big deal?” David put the bag on the counter and started emptying it, laying out the contents in a neat, straight line. “He practically lives here anyway, and vice versa. You two might as well exchange keys.”
Brooke scuffed the toe of her boot against the hardwood floor. He had a point about the keys. And maybe about the food, too. Things always looked better on a full stomach. She opened another cabinet, took out three plates, and placed them on the counter with the food.
“He’s got you there.” Eli, who knew his way around her kitchen as well as she did at this point, added forks, knives, and napkins to the pile. “Why don’t I have a key to your place?”
“We can talk about that later. Right now, we’ve got bigger problems.” She shoveled some pad woon sen onto her plate. “Did you see the surveyor’s flags outside?”
“No.” A flicker of something she couldn’t quite identify crossed Eli’s face, only to be quickly replaced by a blank, neutral mask. “I was in a hurry to get the food upstairs before it got cold.”
“So much better than mac and cheese,” David, seated on the sofa with his plate balanced on his knees, muttered through a mouthful of drunken noodles.
“A survey means the building’s been sold, right?” Brooke finished loading up her plate and took the chair across from David.
“And the new owner’s going to knock it down,” David added. “Or convert the units into condos and throw us all out on our asses.”
“Not necessarily.” Eli’s speech was hesitant, his tone strangely evasive. He averted his eyes as he sat on the far end of the couch from David, developing a sudden fascination with his panang gai. “They could still be in negotiations. And a new owner’s probably going to want a survey even if he doesn’t plan on making major changes.”
David gave Eli a side-eye glance. “You sound like you know what you’re talking about.”
Eli continued his preoccupation with his chicken curry. Strange, since he didn’t seem to be eating much of it, just pushing it around on his plate. “I’ve got some friends in real estate.”
“Maybe you could ask around, see if they’ve heard anything,” Brooke suggested, her voice a touch more panicked than she’d intended. She was already freaked out by the little flags all over the place. Despite his reassuring words, Eli’s odd behavior wasn’t helping any. “We tried talking to the surveyor, but he either didn’t have any information or didn’t want to share it.”
“Uh, sure.” Eli lifted a forkful of food to his mouth. Finally. “No problem.”
His cell chimed. He set his plate down on the coffee table and pulled the phone out of his pocket, frowning as he studied the screen.
“Something wrong?” Brooke asked.
“Shit,” he hissed, still scowling at his phone.
“I take it that’s a yes,” David observed wryly.
“Work crisis.” Eli shoved the phone back in his pocket and stood, bumping the coffee table and almost knocking his still full plate onto the floor. He caught it just in time and brought it into the kitchen. “I’m sorry, I have to go deal with this.”
“Now?” Brooke got up and followed him.
“It can’t wait.” He grabbed his coat from the back of the couch, shoved his arms through the sleeves and gave her a quick, distracted kiss. “I’ll text you later.”
She watched him disappear out the door then turned back to David, who was scraping up the last of his drunken noodles.
“What do we do now?” David asked. “About Candy Court?”
Brooke dumped the rest of her pad woon sen in the garbage and put her plate in the sink, her appetite suddenly gone. “We make flyers.”
“Flyers?” David looked at her blankly, his jaw slack.
“Advertising a neighborhood meeting.” She sat down at her drafting table and ripped a fresh sheet of paper off her sketchpad. “Then we post them in all the local businesses. There’s strength in numbers. If the new owner thinks he’s going to march in here and turn this place into some sort of yuppie, hipster paradise, we’re going to be ready for him. And we’re not going down without a fight.”