I let the town house door slam closed behind me and then stalk up the stairs into the living room. I throw my purse down on one of the three sofas crammed into the room and kick my shoes off.

I don’t know whether I want to laugh, scream, or punch something.

I can’t believe Luke is Luke Whittaker.

I can’t believe I’m going to be stuck working with him for the next couple of months.

I can’t believe I let him do … that … to me in the elevator.

Oh God, I need a glass of wine. I need a whole bottle.

I shuffle into the kitchen and pull a bottle of white out of the fridge, then pour myself a generous glass.

“You can stay right here with me,” I tell the bottle, taking it into the living room with me instead of putting it back in the fridge.

I take a big gulp of wine and sink down onto the comfiest of the three sofas, the one with the floral velvet upholstery. It may look like it belongs in a grandmother’s house, but goddamn it’s comfortable. I curl up into a little ball and get cozy.

I can still almost feel Luke’s hands against my skin. His fist twisted in my hair. His lips on my throat. His fingers sliding through my …

Stop.

That is so not happening again.

Just the thought of what my father would think about this is enough to make me shudder. Leaving aside the fact that he’s my father, and never thought anyone was good enough for his little girl, I have to think he would hate the idea of me hooking up with the competition.

And I hate it too. I had come back here to honor Dad’s wishes and run his company. The last thing I needed was for his legacy to become nothing more than a social media scandal.

I take another gulp of wine.

This is crazy. I’ve only met the man once — well, twice now. It really shouldn’t bother me this much, that I can’t see him anymore. In fact, I had already decided that I wasn’t going to pursue anything with him so that I could focus on work. That was the whole reason that I’d walked out of his apartment the other day without giving him my number.

But that was before I saw him again, a little voice whispers. Before he touched me in the elevator. Before he made me …

“Gah.” I take another gulp of wine, then dig my phone out of my purse. There’s only one person who can talk me down right now, and thank God, the time difference is working in my favor this time.

I punch Margaux’s contact info and it rings just twice before I hear her breathy voice on the other end of the line.

“Darling!” she says. “I was just thinking about you.”

“Hi Margaux.”

“What’s wrong?” she says suspiciously.

I laugh. Margaux and I have spent so much time together over the last few years that I sometimes think she knows me better than I know myself.

“Nothing’s wrong.”

“Bullshit.” Her french accent makes the word sound strangely elegant.

I laugh again. “Fine. I met someone.”

“Darling, that’s wonderful! It’s about time.”

I’m shaking my head, even though she can’t see me. “It’s not so wonderful, really.” And then I’m telling her the whole story, about meeting Luke at the Design Times party the other day, and who he is, and how I saw him again today and what I let him do to me in the elevator. Okay, I don’t tell her exactly what I let him do to me in the elevator, but enough that she gets the idea.

I expect her to be as horrified as I am, but instead she just lets out an exasperated sigh.

“You Americans. You make everything so complicated. Just fuck him and get it over with.”

For some reason, that is not the advice I was expecting, and for a minute I’m speechless.

“Come on, darling,” she says. “I can tell without even seeing your face that you want to.”

I take a giant gulp of wine. “But that’s the thing, I already did. That’s what got me into this mess in the first place.”

Margaux huffs out another breath. “That was before. Before you knew who he was. You can’t scratch an itch before it happens, darling. There’s no preemptive scratching. You’ve got the itch, now you have to do the scratch.”

Her words make a strange kind of sense, but I chalk it up to the accent. Somehow it always seems to make it sound as if she’s imparting some deep knowledge, even when she’s just taking the piss.

Because obviously she’s wrong here. Sleeping with Luke is so not going to help my situation. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s the last thing I should be doing right now.

Or ever.

“Anyway, enough about me,” I tell Margaux, changing the subject. “What’s going on with Bounce? Anything I need to know about? How did the Covington Garden show go?”

And with that, Margaux is off on a long rant about last weekend’s show in London. I listen raptly, soaking up every detail, suddenly missing Bounce so bad I can taste it. When I left, we agreed it was easier for both of us if I officially stepped back from the business to concentrate on my work on Bailey Living. I was still a full partner in Bounce — and Margaux had made it perfectly clear that the second I wanted to come back, it was mine to run again — but for now I knew she was doing a bang-up job at the helm.

“Anyway, so I just told him that tampon strings were part of the look we were going for and if he had a problem with women’s menstrual cycles, he should ask his wife about it sometime.”

“You didn’t,” I giggle.

“Of course I did. He was such a pig, Bree.”

“Well, it sounds like everything worked out for the best.”

“It did. I’m sure you would have handled it much more diplomatically, but you know me, I like to speak my mind.”

“I know you do,” I laugh.

“Oh, before I forget!” Her voice perks up. “After the whole tampon thing, we were asked to contribute a piece to this women’s shelter fundraiser. I was just going to do it myself but honestly, I’m so busy and I thought maybe you might miss getting your hands dirty?”

“Oh, wow, yeah.” I do definitely miss the creative aspect of Bounce. In many ways, the business aspect is the same at Bailey Living as it was at Bounce. But at Bounce, I had a dual role — actually designing all the clothes. It feels like it’s been ages since I worked that part of my brain.

Except now I’m not sure I have the time to devote to taking on a new project. Especially not with all the extra work that the Trinity Central Hospital fundraiser is turning out to entail.

But thinking of the fundraiser makes me think of Luke, and that starts to make me … itchy.

“I’ll do it,” I tell Margaux, before I can change my mind.

“Thank God. I didn’t know what I was going to do if you said no,” Margaux admits.

“Are you really maxed out?”

“Ehn, it’s okay.”

“Okay — well, make sure you let me know if it does get to be too much. We can find someone to help out. Or I can just come back.” I’m half joking about that last part, even though I wish I wasn’t.

“You stay right where you are, darling. I’ll survive.”

We say our goodbyes and I get off the phone. I pour another glass of wine and then snuggle back down onto the comfy floral couch. I flip idly through my phone for a few minutes, checking my email and our Bounce Instagram account. Eventually though, I flip open the browser.

I tap my teeth for a second, then type in “Luke Whittaker”.

The Loft & Barn page comes up first, of course, but I click over to the image search. A lot of the photos are just products from the catalogue that have somehow been indexed under his name, but there are a bunch of pictures of him in there too. I click on each one of them to open them up and make them bigger.

He looks better in person, but the pictures are definitely nothing to sneeze at. Except in every picture, he seems to be with a new girl. A lanky blonde in this one, falling over his arm. A black-haired beauty here, leaning seductively against him. Woman after woman after woman. My stomach starts to twist as I scan through them. I’d suspected Luke was probably a bit of a playboy, but this definitely confirms it.

I do find one picture of him in a tux, standing next to a couple of guys that I can only assume are his brothers, given how similar they all look. I click the description and see that it’s from a wedding. His brother Trent’s wedding, this past spring.

Trent. That was the name Tomas had mentioned at our meeting this afternoon. I navigate to the Loft & Barn website’s “About” page, and read up a little on the two brothers.

It turns out they founded the company a little over ten years ago. Trent acts as the CEO, and Luke does the creative work. As I read, my jaw drops. I didn’t realize he did all the designing and prototyping himself.

I click back over the images page and start looking more closely at all the furniture pictures. These are all Luke’s designs — the farmhouse table with the iron legs. The light birch wishbone chairs. The vintage-looking desk with the hand-carved apron.

My wine is warm by now but I take a long swallow as I stare in awe at his designs. Somehow, knowing that he’s creative, that he can do this with his hands, makes me like him even more.

I close the browser and throw my phone to the other end of the sofa in irritation. Why does he have to be so damn charming? And talented? And good with his hands?

I pour another glass of wine and glance around the apartment, at all the furniture from Bailey Living that Dad had collected over the years. There are some nice pieces, but there’s nothing here he had ever designed himself. Instead, he had scoured the country, buying up designs from all kinds of places, commissioning collections and buying the rights to pieces that struck his fancy. He had vision, but no talent of his own when it came to that kind of thing.

As I look around, my eyes light on my sewing machine, gathering dust on Dad’s dining room table.

I’d gotten my sewing skills from my grandmother, who’d taught me how to use her machine on nights I slept over at her house. When Dad was traveling for business, he’d sometimes take Mom with him, and during those trips, I’d stay out at Gram’s place. I’d sit in front of her sewing machine for hours, practicing sewing straight lines into sheets of loose leaf paper.

I walk softly over towards the machine now, almost as if I’m afraid I might spook it if I move too fast. Or as if I might spook myself. It’s the same machine I learned on, the one Gram left me when she died. I haven’t touched it at all since I’ve been here, so it isn’t even loaded up with thread yet. All I did was take it out of the moving box, stick it on the dining room table, and neglect it for six weeks.

Back in London I use a Juki model, pro level, one tough enough to work leather and denim if needed. I still have a soft spot in my heart for the Singer though, and so that’s the one I’d brought back to America with me.

My fingers flex involuntarily as I think about winding the bobbin on the old machine, threading the needle, letting my foot sink down onto the pedal.

In a burst of energy, I clear everything off the dining room table except the sewing machine, tossing it all onto one of the less comfortable couches. I root around in the closet until I find my sewing case, and a few bolts of fabric I brought with me.

Not too long later, I’m sitting at the dining room table, making happy little noises as I feed my freshly cut pieces of cream-colored twill under the presser foot.

I’ve missed this. A lot. More than I realized, actually. And it makes me think about how much I’ve given up to be here, to be running my father’s company for him. I’ve given up everything — my whole life, really.

I won’t let that sacrifice be for nothing. I left Bounce behind because I wanted to honor my father’s legacy.

And with a sigh, I realize that means I can’t have anything more to do with Luke Whittaker. I’ll still do the charity event with him, because it wouldn’t look good for Bailey Living if I walk away. But other than that?

Other than that, I just have to pretend like nothing ever happened. Like nothing ever will happen.

Ever.