Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 96752 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 484(@200wpm)___ 387(@250wpm)___ 323(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96752 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 484(@200wpm)___ 387(@250wpm)___ 323(@300wpm)
Sonja goes a brilliant shade of pink, says something under her breath in a language I don’t understand, and huffs away. If I wasn’t leaving tomorrow, I would worry about revenge, but she can find me in Manhattan if she wants to.
I down that app in one bite.
“You have to look after the men,” the woman with the tiara says, lifting her glass of champagne my way in an obvious salute. “They are impressionable at this age. Very tender hearted. They can find themselves in trouble with predatory females.”
The waiter simply grins and walks on.
I nod the woman’s way. She’s obviously wise. “They are our greatest gift, and we must protect them.”
Reid’s laugh booms through the room.
So the guy can take a joke.
He’s smiling when I turn his way. He bows slightly and offers me the glass in his left hand. “For my knight in shining armor.”
I take it and gesture the way Sonja exited stage left. “Was she an old friend?”
Reid winks back, likely at the woman with the tiara before putting a hand on the small of my back and leading me toward my friends again. “Not exactly. She’s the wife of a wealthy former client of mine.”
I feel my brows rise. “She’s married?”
“You say that like it’s shocking,” he says under his breath. He smiles at the people we pass, but it feels like a professional expression. Not the smile he’s given to me more than once tonight.
“It is. She was practically humping you in public.” I say it through my own professional smile. I’ve probably made enough scenes for the day.
“She’s had a bit to drink, and I heard her husband has a new mistress,” Reid offers. “So I’m certain she’s emotional. This is kind of the way at this level of society. Not for everyone, of course. I suspect Luca is going to be happy with Anika, but there are still a lot of marriages that are somewhat arranged. Luca, in many ways, was lucky.” He winces. “I shouldn’t use that word because I know how the flooding damaged this country.”
I get what he’s saying. “But if he hadn’t been forced to use a good deal of his personal wealth to save his people, there would have been pressure on him to find the right wife, a woman of a royal line. Because he had no money, no one expected a royal to marry him.”
“Oddly, yes. Not many of the women who will hit on him for the rest of his life would have walked into the situation Anika finds herself in now. Sometimes we lose everything and find someplace completely new. I know it seems like tragedy, but it can also take the blinders off our eyes so we value what truly matters.”
I stop and stare at him for a moment. “Do you believe that?”
“I do. I know it’s true.” He’s close, our bodies nearly brushing together. “There will always be bad things that happen in our lives. How we deal with them is what makes us who we are. Sometimes in order to change and grow, we have to let go. Even when it feels like the worst mistake we could make.”
He’s talking about the show. I don’t know why or what made him leave, but he walked away for a reason, and not because he got bored. Not because he didn’t want to do it anymore. “You’re serious about Banover Place.”
“I am very serious about Banover Place.” He steps back and takes a short sip of the whiskey. “I’m serious about finding something new for me and Jeremiah and some of the crew we worked with. This isn’t some vanity project for me. How about you? Are you simply doing it to help your friend?”
I’m not. There are many reasons this job Ani offered me feels like a lifeboat. I’ve been mired in the daily act of running a company for so long. “In college I studied business. My father pretty much made me. They wouldn’t pay for it otherwise. But I minored in architectural design. I took a ton of woodworking classes and specialized courses in restoration. All on my own dime, of course, because my parents didn’t think those things would help me build apartments.”
“But you love the work.”
I love the silence sometimes, the almost communion-like feeling I get when everyone else has gone home and I’m still working in a house. It’s not the same in a big, new building. I don’t feel the history. “Oh, I fell madly in love with it. Even in high school I loved it. My shop teacher was Mr. Hubbard, and he spent his weekends working on this old farmhouse outside the city. Sometimes a couple of students would go out, and his wife would make these big lunches and he would teach us how we could take something old and make it new again.”