Because she was under strict instructions to pay special attention to all clients with a stake in The Sylph. And since my commercial team, without any involvement from me whatsoever, had all but fallen over themselves to fast-track her lease, she now fell firmly under that purview. And, as my commercial director had also informed me, having Savannah Knight open her flagship store in my building would garner the kind of publicity I’d be a fool to reject. So whether I liked it or not, she was now a top Mortimer Group client with access to me whenever she chose.
Access she was fully capitalising on.
‘Sir?’
With a grimace, I hit the intercom button. ‘Put her through.’
Soft breathing flowed from the phone a second later. ‘Bryce, how wonderful of you to take my call,’ she murmured in that sultry voice that came second in the instant-hard-on-achieving status only next to those sexy little whimpers she made when she was fully turned on.
Fucking hell.
I gritted my teeth and thumped my head against the leather headrest. I’d jacked off to the sound of that breathy voice fifteen minutes after I’d heard her leave my apartment after our doomed lunch ten days ago.
Since then, I’d masturbated a hell of a lot more times than I could recall in recent memory. Each time I reassured myself I had finally got her out of my system, I’d hear that voice in my head, demanding, ‘Put your mouth on me.’ And I’d be rock hard all over again.
‘Seriously? You’re giving me the silent treatment? When you said you’d changed, I thought you meant in the direction of evolution, not a regression to adolescence.’
‘What do you want, rosebud?’
It was disconcerting how the nickname I’d coined for her rosebud lips fell so easily from mine. How calling her name while I jacked off in the shower felt so bloody right and hellishly wrong at the same time.
‘Besides your overdue response to my invitation? We’ll leave that for now. I have a more urgent problem.’
My back stiffened as a fierce urge to demand what it was so I could fix it scrambled up my spine. Had she missed me? Was she calling to demand a repeat of what happened on my sofa? The sofa I hadn’t been able to sit on without recalling her stretched out on it in all her dark golden glory, her beautiful back arched and her juicy lips parted in delicious pants?
‘Shoot,’ I answered with more vim than I’d intended.
‘I put in a request for a Venetian chandelier for the main showroom a week ago and I haven’t heard back from your people yet as to whether it’s arrived or when it’ll be installed. It’s the centrepiece of the store. Everything else revolves around it,’ she stated crisply.
I struggled to change lanes from lurid to business, unwillingly admitting that Business Savvie turned me on just as much as Sexy Savvie. ‘I employ an excellent team. It’s on their radar. I’m sure they’ll get around to it—’
‘I’m afraid that’s just not good enough. I’m paying extra for an expedited service and I was assured things would be handled smoothly and in a timely manner. I don’t feel efficiently or smoothly handled, Bryce,’ she murmured, evoking another bout of racy images that made me bite back a groan. ‘In fact I’m feeling the opposite. And not in a good way.’
I wanted to handle her in a great many ways, all guaranteed to leave her with that rosy afterglow and breathlessness I couldn’t get out of my damned head.
‘I’m not familiar with the ins and outs of your lease. I’ll get Jerry to personally give you a call with an update. Will that suffice?’
‘I called your site director this afternoon. His son is having his tonsils taken out today. The poor man was distraught. I didn’t think it was fair to bother him.’
Damn it, I’d forgotten about Jerry’s email telling me exactly that this morning. The man had done a stellar job managing a team of over three thousand workers getting my building ready and within a whisker of the projected schedule. It wasn’t his fault his son had fallen ill. And none of the contractors would be around at this time on a Friday evening to confirm her request.
Even if they were, I couldn’t very well pass her off to anyone but Jerry. The Mortimer Group was renowned for its top-notch reputation. I’d met every single one of my long-and short-term investors, taken a personal interest in their wants and desires.
Like my building, my singular attention to detail was what had made me a success. There were several rungs in the hierarchy before a client would normally request my personal input but, once they did, it went against my principles to pass them back down the chain or fob them off simply because the client at the end of the phone happened to make my cock react as if I were fifteen instead of thirty-one.
Yeah, time to stop hiding and man up, Bryce.
‘I can be there in half an hour. Can you make it there by then?’
‘I’m already here, Bryce. I’ll be waiting.’
She rang off before I could reply. I dropped the phone back into its cradle, my bloodstream already humming as the pressure behind my fly grew.
Jesus.
Where the hell was my common sense? You’d think I’d learned my lesson after the one person I’d trusted had let me down so spectacularly. I might not have given her the unsavoury details about my family life and especially my parents—simply because I never discussed that…ever—but she’d known enough about dysfunctional Mortimers. Enough that I’d thought I could trust her with what our safe space meant. But the moment some idiot had clicked his fingers, she’d trotted off without so much as a Goodbye, Bryce.
When that same idiot had shown all the signs of being a complete and utter bastard much like my father, I’d tried to warn her. She’d lied to my face, demonstrating that the woman I’d thought I knew and trusted was just a figment of my imagination.
What the hell had Dan given her that I couldn’t?
You know exactly what! She never made it a secret.
I smothered the voice in my head and rose from the desk. What the hell did it matter now? She’d broken a trust that had probably been only one-sided to begin with, all so she could chase some stupid dream of happily-ever-after. A dream I’d tried to tell her was a figment of her imagination.
And, like me, she’d been left with a pile of ashes. Only problem was, our friendship had been sacrificed in those flames too. Worse thing was, even after all that, a part of me had yearned to reach out, to ease the pain she must’ve been feeling during her acrimonious divorce.
Or perhaps I was projecting…
Whatever. I swallowed the bitter taste in my mouth, made my way to the door and dismissed Tandy for the evening.
Downstairs, I slid behind the wheel of my Ferrari and lost myself for a moment in the smooth throb of the engine.
All too soon I was pulling up to The Sylph.
Normally this was the moment I took a minute or three to look up at the building I’d poured my heart and soul into. The steel and blue-green smoked glass masterpiece that had taken two long years, singular focus and some deep, untapped desire to leave something beautiful, something memorable behind.
Without looking I knew the structure in the pleasing shape of a slender woman’s torso, half turned, perhaps to view her lover over her shoulder, would be gleaming beautifully against the dying rays of the setting sun. That soon lights from within and those reflected from surrounding buildings across the bay would bathe it in a stunning silhouette that drew awed gasps.
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