The Rival's Heir. Joss Wood

with fertility issues.

      Jules placed a cup of tea on the white coffee table between them before taking the seat to DJ’s left. DJ squeezed Darby’s hand. “Sorry you didn’t get the Grantham-Ford project, Darbs.”

      Darby forced a shrug. She hated to lose, even if it was to a Pritzker Prize winner. “It wasn’t a surprise that Huntley got it. They’d be fools to pass up his design. It was magnificent.”

      So was Huntley, for a cold, hard jerk bucket.

      Jules linked her hands around her knee. “And have they announced who will be his liaison between Huntley and Associates and the Grantham-Ford Foundation?”

      Every architect in the city wanted a shot to work with Huntley, to be at his beck and call. Everybody but Darby. She’d seen the measure of the man last night and she was less than impressed.

      “Don’t care. It’s an intern position and I’m not interested.” She took the stack of paper DJ handed her and smiled. Financials. A discussion, then her dividend check. Yay.

      DJ tapped the end of her pen against the stack of papers in her lap and cleared her throat. “Let’s go through the financials first. Let’s ignore page one and two and go straight to page three.”

      Darby flipped to the right page and saw the column detailing income and expenses. Compared to Jules’s interior design income for the past six months, the architectural side of the business—Darby’s side of the business—was trailing Jules’s contribution by half. Up until this year, they’d been equal contributors, with DJ running the finances. It had been the perfect triangle, but now it looked like Darby’s side was collapsing.

      She took the check DJ handed her and looked at the total. Then she looked at DJ, wondering if she’d left off a zero.

      “This is it?”

      “Yes.”

      Well, hell.

      DJ leaned forward, her eyes sober. “It wasn’t a great quarter, it’s tough out there. The interior design had a boost in income thanks to Noah employing Jules to do yacht interiors, and you had small jobs but nothing that brought in big money.”

      Darby stared at her check, her mind spinning. This check didn’t come close to what she needed to pay for IVF. She’d have to put her buildings up for sale immediately, take what she could get for them. She might not even clear her costs, but it would free up the money. Any way she looked at it, she was moving backward, not forward. Dammit.

      “There are other factors that contributed to a less than stellar year, Darby.”

      “Like?” Darby demanded.

      “The rent on this building went up significantly—”

      “We agreed we needed to be here, that this was the best place for us to be,” Darby countered. “And that was only a ten percent increase.” She skimmed the lines, looking for other anomalies. “The real reason we aren’t growing is because I didn’t bring in enough income.”

      The proof was there, in black and white. She hadn’t been an equal contributor. She’d failed.

      Darby didn’t like to fail.

      “I’ll make it up to you. This next quarter, you’ll see.” She felt the need to apologize again. “I’m so sorry. You guys have worked so hard and I didn’t pull my weight.”

      “Oh, for God’s sake!” Jules muttered before sending her twin a hard look. “Can I hand you a hair shirt? Would that make you feel better?”

      “But—”

      “Who bankrolled this business, Darby?” Jules demanded, not giving Darby a chance to answer. “You did. You bought and fixed up that cottage and the profit you made paid our expenses for the first six months. Thanks to you, we didn’t have to borrow money from Mom or Levi or a bank.”

      “The cost of renting the warehouse, the additional staff we’ve had to take on because we’ve expanded have all contributed to the drop in profits,” DJ explained. “It’s normal, Darby.”

      Darby looked at the profit-loss line and winced. “It’s shocking.”

      DJ rolled her eyes. “You are such an overachiever, Darby. We can afford one less than stellar quarter. We still made a small profit.”

      But not enough, not nearly enough. From now on, Darby would be all over every project she could find. She’d work longer hours, take in as much work as she could. She had to make up the shortfall, and that meant doubling her income. She needed work, and lots of it.

      “Oh, God, she’s got that crazy look in her eye,” Jules said. “You just flicked her competitive switch.” She leaned forward, blue eyes pinning Darby to the seat. “We’re in this together, Darby, so stop thinking this is your problem to solve. This is not a competition.”

      It was a refrain she’d heard all her life: you’re too competitive, Darby. You can’t treat anything as fun, Darby. You don’t have to win at everything, Darby.

      What no one understood was that being competitive was the way she was made. She couldn’t remember a time when winning wasn’t her goal.

      One of her earliest memories was being on the playground, wanting to be the girl who could run the fastest, jump the longest, swing the highest. She excelled at all sports, was one of the most popular girls in school. She could remember dreading the results of tests, needing to achieve better grades than, well, everyone. Her report cards were all As and when she got her first C, in college, she’d been devastated.

      Yes, she was competitive. Yes, she was driven. But, dammit, being both got results. She just had to refocus, redefine her goals. Do better, be better. Determination, her old friend, flowed through her, energizing her.

      Darby Brynn Brogan had always produced the results and she would this time, too. Options, scenarios and plans buzzed through her brain.

      DJ leaned her shoulder into Darby’s. “Business is about troughs and highs, Darby, everything balances out in the end. I promise that Winston and Brogan is okay. The next cycle will be a lot better.”

      What if it wasn’t? What if the economy worsened? She didn’t deal in what-ifs, in maybes. She needed a plan to boost her side of the business. She needed work, a lucrative contract, and she knew one place where she could get one.

      Judah Huntley had found his Boston-based architect. He just needed to be notified of the decision.