“Mr. Prescott, it’s wonderful to see you again,” Chantilly said after twenty drawn-out minutes of silence I spent ignoring them.
“We’ve met?”
She paused, her cheeks turning a shade of scarlet that outdid her hair, before she smoothed out the nonexistent wrinkles on her skintight dress and laughed. “You’re so funny.”
Basil.
Basil Berkshire.
Reed’s self-absorbed girlfriend.
The one addicted to Gucci, Balmain, selfies, and sugar-free açaí bowls.
That’s who she reminded me of.
“Not particularly,” I replied, and though Emery wasn’t here, I knew if she had heard me, she would have had one of those ghost smiles on her face—hidden just beneath the blasé expression she wore so well.
Since the idea of Emery smiling nauseated me, I added as Emery walked in, “In fact, I only recognize Cayden.”
Emery held out a hot coffee for me. I brought it to my lips, my fingers clenched around the double layer of heat sleeves. Her smile told me she had spit in it. I held eye contact with her as I took a sip anyway, never one to back down from a challenge. We were the same people in that regard.
Her smirk and the fact that she stood in front of me, hovering, should have warned me. The coffee was black and near boiling, about the exact opposite of the frozen monstrosity I’d ordered. It scalded my tongue, but I swallowed it anyway and smiled even when the liquid lashed at my tonsils, burning a path down my throat.
Whatever I ate in the next few weeks, I knew I wouldn’t taste it. She’d fried my taste buds with a smile on her face, then lifted a blended drink to her mouth, a litany of add-ons written on the side like hieroglyphics, informing me she held the drink I’d ordered.
The smile on her face taunted me. She pressed the straw to her lips and sucked in sugary crap neither of us needed in our bodies. I drew the black coffee—what I would have ordered anyway, for the record—to my lips, ignoring when she mouthed, “I spit in that,” her face angled so the room couldn’t see.
“Change,” I demanded, holding out a hand. “I have a no-tolerance policy on thievery.”
Panic took over her eyes, along with pure rage. She dug into her pocket and slammed two fives and some loose change into my open fist. I made a show of sliding the money into her wallet and shoving it into my inner suit pocket before turning to the rest of the group, dismissing her like she meant nothing.
“As I was saying,” I began. Emery hovered beside me, no doubt talking herself out of first-degree murder. “I only know Cayden.” I shot him a nod of acknowledgment and continued before the rest of them had the opportunity to start introductions. “But Delilah, whom some of you may know as the head of the legal department, gave me the rundown on your names.”
Emery finally took a seat on the couch, but Chantilly made a show of stretching and stood, blocking Emery from my view.
I ignored them both and addressed everyone else, “Let’s cut to the chase. I’m looking for something dark and white. Muted colors. This is a beach hotel, but we want to stay true to our brand. Some base flooring and materials have already been chosen to match different locations, but each hotel still maintains its own identity.”
When Chantilly shifted, Emery finally peeked into view. She gnawed on her bottom lip, her brows furrowed in concentration. The ideas in her eyes brought more life to them than I’d ever seen.
A dash of hope, too.
My depraved sense of justice made me want to extinguish that hope.
After Reed hit high school, Ma gave him two gifts—a door and her permission to redecorate his room. My brother had the aesthetic vision of a prosopagnosiac, so he’d pushed the responsibility onto Emery.
My parents’ budget wouldn’t put a dent in a single Prescott Hotel bathroom, but it had been enough for a few buckets of paint. Unintentional as it was, I’d listed everything Emery had done to Reed’s room.
Dark on white. Minimalistic. But she’d added a mural wall, one that could only shine if the entire room had been dulled. Pictures hidden within pictures. Gray shades that blurred together, and each time you looked at it, you saw a different image.
Magic, she’d declared out loud when she unveiled it to us.
I stared Emery directly in the eyes and said, “No murals. This is a Prescott Hotel, not a decrepit building ripe for some Banksy wannabe to paint on. I expect you all to treat this like the billion-dollar hotel chain it is.”
Prescott Hotels had one worthy rival—Black Enterprises’ hotel chain, owned by billionaire entrepreneur Asher Black—and the company hadn’t stepped foot in North Carolina yet. I’d bought up every ideal property along the North Carolina coast, making this state officially mine.
Truthfully, it didn’t matter how the hotel looked. I could rent out a human-sized fishbowl and sell out a year in advance, because these rooms went for two-thousand bucks a night, and people were hardwired to believe money meant value.
Plus, my name was attached to the building in giant letters. Like Asher Black, I’d acquired my seed money through shady means. Unlike Asher Black, the general public regarded me as a saint.
I could do no wrong in their eyes, a privilege I hadn’t earned but used to my full advantage despite the guilt that nagged at me.
“But,” Ida Marie began, stumbling over what words to choose. “If we stick with muted colors without some sort of a focal point, won’t the design be…”
“Boring,” Emery finished for her.
So much fire burned in her eyes, watching her reminded me of feeling alive again.
Chantilly flinched, waiting for me to explode.
My jaw ticked. I checked my watch and loosened its grip on my pulse, feeling hot every time I looked in Emery’s direction. “It’s not my job to design this hotel for you. If you can’t make it work, I can find someone else.”
I realized, as she stared at me like she wanted to kill me, that it wasn’t only irritation I felt. Her defiance turned me on. I set the shitty coffee on the table, pulled a chair out, and sat on it backward so they couldn’t see I was hard as shit behind it.
She and her family fractured yours. When my dick didn’t get the hint, I added, remember when she basically forced herself onto you and roll the hell out of you?
It saluted her as if the idea made it want her more.
“No need to find someone else, Mr. Prescott.” Chantilly shot a glare Emery’s way. It bounced off her like a quarter off Nicki Minaj’s ass. “We’ll make you proud.”
“I’ll see you all when the mockups are complete and ready for my approval. Miss Rhodes,” I emphasized her new last name, “a word.”
“I have somewhere I have to be.”
“It wasn’t a question.”
Chantilly froze first, taking her time to collect her belongings. Cayden left quickly, twisting the car keys to his Civic around his middle finger. Hannah shoved Ida Marie out of the room when she all but shouted to catch Emery’s attention.
Emery and I waited in silence until everyone left and the elevator in the hall dinged. I stood and leaned against the table, my hands gripped around its edge.
“Your hair is black.” It slipped out, a lapse in control I hated myself for.
“I’m well aware, considering it’s my head.”