Chapter One

 

CORINNE WORE her gray suit. She liked the way it made her feel: cool, composed and invincible. She was about to enter into combat with Levi Holt, and she didn’t want to be emotional about it. The gray suit contained her emotions very nicely.

Straightening her shoulders, she entered the barn-shaped building that housed Arlington Architectural Associates. From the outside, the building on the eastern edge of Newcombe Street was boxy and bland. But inside the front door she found a brightly lit hub of desks and drafting tables, jingling phones and staffers chattering and scurrying about. One young woman wore stretchy black capri pants and a loud pink blouse; one young man wore a silver eyebrow ring. A stairway at the far end of the room led up to an open second-floor hallway lined with doors. Private offices, Corinne guessed. Levi Holt was probably behind one of those doors.

She’d never met him, and she didn’t know much about him. All Gerald had told her was that the man was brilliant and talented. “Just do what you think is best,” Gerald had advised her. “Take care of it.”

Of course, that was what Gerald always told her. That was why he’d hired her. That was why he was desperately in need of her and half in love with her: because she took care of everything.

The fellow with the eyebrow ring moseyed over to her. A pencil was wedged behind his ear and a slightly mangled roll of paper protruded from a hip pocket of his jeans. In her tailored suit and low-heeled black pumps, Corinne felt a generation older than him, even though they were probably no more than a few years apart in age.

“Can I help you?” he asked, smiling congenially.

“I have a nine-thirty appointment with Levi Holt.”

“Oh.” He glanced over his shoulder, as if searching the room for backup support. With a shrug, he turned back to her. “Levi’s having kind of a rough morning. You might want to come back later.”

“I don’t think so.” She didn’t care how brilliant and talented Holt was, or how rough his morning was. She’d driven to Arlington last night, checked into a hotel and awakened at seven-thirty that morning, just so she’d get here on time. She was not going to come back later.

“Well…” The young man shrugged again. “It’s up to you. He’s in his office.” He pointed to one of the doors opening off the upstairs walkway. “Take the stairs, hang a right and it’s the second door. I’d walk you up there, but…” He pulled the tube of paper from his pocket and rapped it importantly against his palm. “I’ve got stuff to do.”

“No problem. I’ll find it.” She gave the man a frosty smile, smoothed the straps of her leather tote bag over her shoulder and stalked through the maze of desks and drafting tables to the stairs.

The air smelled of gourmet coffee. A phone on a nearby desk the stairs rang, chirping like a hungry parakeet. The stairs themselves were open-backed, floating up to the second story. It occurred to Corinne that this building might very well have been a real barn years ago, before the town had grown big enough to swallow all the farmland around it, and that the architects who worked here could have redesigned it, turning the loft into the second-floor offices, opening skylights in the sloping roof, hanging large, bright lamps from the rafters on braided steel cables.

Overall, the effect wasn’t bad. Overall, Levi Holt’s design for Gerald’s house wasn’t bad, either. It was just flawed, and the flaws needed to be dealt with. Gerald shouldn’t have signed the contract before he’d discussed the plans with Corinne, but he had. Now she was going to have to make things right.

From the upstairs walkway, the first floor looked more organized. The desks and tables were positioned to form a pattern. The man with the eyebrow ring had unfurled his roll of paper and was reviewing it with a pony-tailed fellow dressed all in black. Maybe they knew what they were doing.

Maybe Levi Holt knew what he was doing, too. Maybe he knew a hell of a lot more about how to build a dream house than Corinne ever would.

But Gerald had asked her to fix this mess, and so she would fix it.

She turned right and knocked on the door the man downstairs had indicated. After a moment’s silence, she knocked again.

It swung open while her hand was still raised. Startled, she fell back a step and gazed up at Levi Holt.

Gerald hadn’t mentioned that Holt was well over six feet tall and sinfully handsome. Of course, that wasn’t the sort of thing Gerald would have noticed—the handsome part, anyway. Gerald himself was short enough that, beyond a certain point, everyone looked extraordinarily tall to him.

Corinne took a moment to gather her wits. At five foot nine, she wasn’t used to men towering over her. Nor was she used to being stared at with such intensity. Levi Holt’s eyes were dark and sharp, his gaze boring into her like a precision drill. He had chiseled cheeks, a sensitive mouth and a jaw that looked stone-hard.

He also had a baby on his shoulder.

She turned her attention from his eyes to the baby. It lay silent and motionless on top of a cloth draped over Holt’s shoulder. It was dressed in a fuzzy yellow one-piece outfit. Fine, dark curls of hair swirled across its scalp, and its face was flushed.

“Don’t say a word,” Levi Holt whispered, backing away from the door.

Well, that was a great way to get this meeting started.

She remained in the doorway, watching as he moved in measured steps to a stroller in a corner of his office. Bending at the knees, he kept one hand firmly on the baby while he released the stroller’s back with the other, lowering it into a reclining position. Very, very slowly, he eased the baby off his shoulder and into the stroller. He hunched over the stroller for a moment, poised as if expecting something awful to happen, and then straightened up. The cloth, a square of white cotton, remained on his shoulder.

It was a diaper, Corinne realized.

She had traveled all the way to Arlington, Connecticut to revise the design for the dream house her boss was going to have built on the four-acre parcel he’d bought in the western part of town, and the architect on the project had a diaper on his shoulder.

Wonderful.

“Look, Mr. Holt—”

He held his hand up to silence her and gave her a stern glare before he pivoted to check on the baby. Satisfied that she hadn’t awakened it, he crossed to the door, his footsteps muffled by the carpet. “I’ve just spent the last half-hour getting him to fall asleep,” he said. “If you wake him, there’ll be hell to pay.”

She sensed his threat: if there was hell to pay, she’d be the one picking up the tab. She considered that possibility completely unreasonable, though. She hadn’t brought the baby into the situation. She’d wasn’t going to let Levi Holt hold her responsible for the success or failure of his son’s nap.

All right. He was a new father. Evidently he’d suffered some sort of child-care snafu that morning. The baby-sitter had called in sick, the mother was in Chicago on business—whatever the reason, Dad had gotten stuck with primary parenting duties today. And being a new parent—and a man—he was probably a bit anxious about fulfilling those duties.

Maybe if Corinne offered sympathy for his plight, he would accept all her requests for changes in the design without making a big fuss. They could both be nice to each other. Niceness as a strategy: it could work.

He didn’t look nice, though. He looked…intense, every nerve in his body tuned a half-step sharp. There was an edge to him, an alertness, as if he was prepared to explode into action at the most subtle signal.

“I’m Corinne Lanier,” she whispered, shooting a quick glimpse at the stroller across the room to make sure her voice was soft enough not to rouse the child. “I work with Gerald Mosley, and—”

“Gerald Mosley.” He raked a hand through his hair. He had large hands, she noticed, perfectly proportioned to his large body. And longer hair than she’d realized at first, given the way it was combed back from his face. It was thick, walnut brown and wavy, and the ends brushed against the diaper on his shoulder. Beneath that diaper he wore an ordinary blue business shirt, a loosened tie featuring a busy pattern of blue and brown splotches, and pleated brown trousers that emphasized the length of his legs. He was built like a basketball player—a college player, not a pro with pumped-up muscles but a lean, lanky athlete, someone who would rely on finesse rather than power to score.

“Gerald Mosley,” she repeated. “He signed a contract to have you design and build a house for him. However, he and I have reviewed the plans, and—”

Levi held his hand up to silence her again. She thought she’d kept her voice muted, but he shot another anxious look at the stroller. Maybe he was going to use the baby to shut her up. Maybe this was a ploy to keep her from making demands and negotiating effectively. Maybe the baby wasn’t even real; it was a lifelike doll that Holt whipped out when he was expecting a difficult meeting with a client.

A faint whimper from the stroller convinced her it wasn’t a doll. Holt continued to stare at the stroller, as if he could will the child back to sleep. Apparently he could. After a moment, the whimpering faded away.

Nodding, he joined Corinne in the doorway. Not exactly a suitable place to hold a meeting. “I’m sorry,” he murmured, slightly louder than a whisper. “This appointment slipped my mind.”

“Well, I’m here.”

“Yes.” He glanced behind him, let out a long breath and shook his head. “Again, I apologize. Things just didn’t work out the way I expected.”

She felt a pang of genuine sympathy for him, and it startled her. He’d screwed up, he was jeopardizing the success of this meeting, he might very well refuse to make the changes in Gerald’s house without charging exorbitant fees—and he was insufferably handsome, to boot. With or without a diaper on his arm, Levi Holt wasn’t someone for whom she ought to be feeling sorry.

She lifted her chin and met his gaze. “I traveled all the way from New York City so we resolve this.”

“Resolve what?”

When she’d set up this meeting last week, she’d explained the reason to the woman who had answered the phone—Holt’s secretary, Corinne assumed. Surely if the secretary had told him about the meeting, she would have told him what it was about.

Then again, with his child care problems, he probably couldn’t remember any conversations from a week ago.

She suppressed an exasperated sigh. “The design needs to be reworked a bit,” she said. “I know Gerald signed a contract with you, but after reconsideration, he realized that some changes have to be made.” She directed her gaze to Levi’s cheekbones. Any lower and she’d be distracted by the diaper on his shoulder. Any higher and she’d be trapped by his dark, soulful eyes.

He raked his hand through his hair again. The motion of his arm jostled the diaper, which slid down his arm. Frowning, he caught it in mid-air as it floated toward the floor. He stared at it for a moment, as if not quite sure why it was there, then spun around and tossed it into his office. It landed squarely on his desk.

Turning back, he said, “We’ve already broken ground on that project. The changes Mosley wants had better not be extensive.”

“You’ve already broken ground? So soon?” Gerald had signed the contract with Arlington Architectural Associates barely a month ago. “I thought construction projects always had all kinds of delays.”

“We’re one of those rare firms that actually gets things done on time and on budget.” He dug his hands into his pockets and slouched against the doorframe, looking arrogantly proud of his firm’s performance. “If the changes Mosley’s asking for are significant, we’ll have to rethink the budget and the completion date.”

This was the reaction she’d anticipated: that as soon as she started enumerating the changes, he was going to ratchet up the price of the house. He’d probably want to inflate the price even more because construction on the project was already underway. She didn’t know enough about the construction business to understand all the ramifications of “breaking ground,” but she could guess that the further along the project was, the more expensive it was going to be to make changes.

“Gerald would really like to hold the price to what was contracted. I know the construction company on this project was hired through you—it’s all one set price for the whole house. And it’s a big price. A very big price.” Not that Gerald couldn’t afford it, but still, there was no reason he should have to pay twice as much as the house was worth, simply because he asked for a few alterations.

“We went to contract, Ms.—what was it?”

She tried not to frown. If he couldn’t remember their appointment, she shouldn’t expect him to remember her name. “Corinne Lanier.”

“Ms. Lanier. If you want changes in the design, you’re going to get changes in the contract. That’s only fair.”

True enough. Her mission was to maximize the changes in the design and minimize the changes in the contract.

Levi Holt was no fool. In spite of his rough morning, in spite of his diaper and his baby and his failure to remember this meeting or Corinne’s name, he was going to bargain hard, to try to make Gerald pay for the privilege of turning a bizarre house into a livable one.

Gerald should never have agreed to the design without running it past Corinne first. Men had no idea how to design a practical house. Multilevel rooms were dramatic, but not if you had to drag a vacuum cleaner up and down the steps, and not if guests who’d consumed too many martinis tripped and broke their ankles when they wandered from room to room. Elevated nooks and beams were eye-catching—but spiders could reside in them for generations because no one could possibly dust them. Changing the bulbs in the two-story entry’s elegant chandelier would be impossible without a thirty-foot ladder, or perhaps some scaffolding. To have such a large house with only three full bathrooms was ridiculous. The fireplace in the master bedroom consumed the only wall where one could place a triple dresser.

And the kitchen was a disaster. Gerald’s concept of cooking involved can openers and microwaves; what did he know about kitchens? But the room lacked adequate counter and storage space because Gerald was infatuated with an ostentatious wall of glass—which was going to suck all the heat out of the room in the winter and let all the heat in in the summer, when the sun struck it. And that wine cellar cabinet? It shouldn’t be taking up valuable pantry space. It ought to go in the basement. That was why it was called a wine cellar.

Women understood these things. Men—even architects—didn’t. They liked flash, special effects, the house equivalent of mag wheels and racing stripes. They were willing to blow a million dollars on a house with soaring glass and multilevel living, and give little thought to the functionality of the place.

“Some of the design changes shouldn’t cost any extra money,” she told Levi Holt, hopeful that “breaking ground” meant nothing more than digging a hole in the middle of the lot. “And some are so obvious, they should never even have become issues in the first place.”

His gaze changed, losing some of its intensity and becoming speculative and vaguely amused. His mouth didn’t move, his jaw shifted only the slightest bit, but the light in his eyes, the angle of his gaze, the deliberation with which he regarded her…

His eyes were almost hypnotic. Maybe that was how he’d gotten Gerald to agree to include only three full baths and locate that stupid wine cellar in the kitchen pantry: Holt had hypnotized Gerald.

“I’ve written a list of the changes we want,” she said briskly, sliding her bag from her shoulder and pulling out her file of notes. She was good at this, she reminded herself—good at being prepared, good at having her documents organized in a neatly marked folder. Good at having everything where it was supposed to be, which was why, once this situation was straightened out, she would have the wine cellar in the basement.

His eyes still glimmering with what could pass for amusement, he took the folder from her and opened it. She watched him skim the first page, and the glimmer faded. In its place she detected skepticism. “Gerald Mosley specifically requested a fireplace in the master suite,” he said.

“You must have misunderstood him.”

Levi raised his eyes from the folder. They’d gone cold. “No. I didn’t misunderstand him.”

“Well, maybe he misunderstood himself,” she backtracked. “He didn’t think through all the implications of having that fireplace there. He got caught up in the razzle-dazzle.”

“He specifically said he wanted a fireplace in the master bedroom. I suggested it and he said yes.”

She checked herself before retorting that no one could sleep with a fire burning right across the room—it would be too bright and too hot. As for lending the room a romantic atmosphere, well, Corinne thought a roaring fire in the hearth was something of a cliché. And there was a fireplace in the family room, if a burning log was really necessary.

Gerald wasn’t the kind of guy who went for fireplace seductions, anyway. He was cerebral and nerdy, the sort who would find innovative software far more of a turn-on than a blaze crackling in a bedroom hearth.

She steeled herself for battle. “Assuming Gerald did say he wanted the fireplace, did you point out to him how much wall space he would be sacrificing?”

Levi studied her for a long moment. “He’s not an idiot. He could see that for himself.”

“You were the expert. You showed him designs, suggested ideas—yet you didn’t point out that if he had a fireplace on one wall, and the glass sliders to the upstairs deck on another wall, and the doors to the dressing room and bathroom on a third wall, there would be only one wall available for both his bed and a triple dresser. This isn’t the sort of problem that would occur to a lay person like Gerald.”

“It occurred to you,” Levi noted. “Aren’t you a lay person?”

His eyes unnerved her. They didn’t seem so cool anymore. In fact, they were smoldering. With anger? she wondered. Resentment?

“I’m a woman,” she said, smiling in the hope of deflecting his apparent hostility. “I notice details that Gerald misses.”

“So you think the fireplace is a detail.” Levi Holt glanced at the folder in his hands, then met her gaze again. His expression was disdainful.

“Getting rid of it should actually reduce the price, not increase it,” she noted hopefully.

He appeared unpersuaded, but before he could flip the page, the baby began to whimper again. He cursed, a low hiss of sound, and stalked back into his office.

She hesitated on the threshold, evaluating how things had gone so far. Not badly, she decided. Not well, but not disastrously. If only Holt had normal eyes, eyes that didn’t seem to cut right through her, things would be going better. If he were about eight inches shorter and had a pot belly, things would be going better yet. Attractive men rarely rattled her; but this man was different. He was just so damned…big.

She ventured into his office. Her gaze circled the room—the broad windows letting in early June sunlight, the austere teak desk neat except for the diaper heaped on it, the drafting table with a jointed light arching over it, the corkboard on the wall, with various sketches pinned to it. The swivel chair behind the desk, the swivel stool in front of the drafting table…and the stroller tucked into the dimmest, but currently the noisiest, corner of the room.

She watched while he eased the baby out of the stroller. Its tiny arms flailed and its sobs grew louder. His large hands cradled the child gently, almost hesitantly, one hand cupped around the baby’s body and one protecting its head as he carried it over to his desk and grabbed for the diaper. Once it was draped over his shirt, he lifted the baby onto his shoulder.

“Shh,” he sighed, swaying slightly. “Come on, D.J. Be a sport. Shh.”

“Deejay?” Who would give a child a name like that?

Still swaying and cradling the baby’s head in his palm, he turned to her. “His initials. D.J.” He bowed his head to the child’s and whispered, “Shh.”

Corinne wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do. Watch him lull the baby back to sleep? Offer her assistance? She’d never dealt with infants, but she figured this one could be crying because he was hungry or wet. What else did babies weep over?

Levi wasn’t asking her for help, but if she offered some she might win points in their negotiation. “Perhaps he’s hungry,” she suggested. “Does he have a bottle I could get for him?”

“He just ate. He’s not hungry.”

“Then maybe—” she tried not to wrinkle her nose “—he needs a dry diaper. If you tell me where I could find one for you…”

“He’s fine.” Levi rocked the child back and forth. Despite their widely contrasting sizes, or maybe because of it, they looked right together, a father and his son doing a magical dance. For a moment, Corinne was transfixed by the sight. Then she shook her head clear. Babies didn’t melt her heart. Neither did fathers. She could think of no reason why Levi Holt would look so magnificent trying to soothe his fussing child.

“Maybe he has a tummy ache,” she suggested, wishing she could fix this problem the way she fixed so many others.

“He’s fine.” Levi seemed to be saying it more to himself than to her. More to himself, and to the baby. “You’re all right, buddy, aren’t you? There you go, D.J. That’s my pal. There you go. Shh.”

The baby had grown quiet. One tiny pink hand clutched at Levi’s shirt, and the other found its way to his own mouth. He snuffled, hiccupped and burrowed his face into Levi’s shoulder. Levi continued to rock him back and forth, slowly, slowly.

“I’m sorry,” he mouthed to Corinne.

“That’s all right.” The more accommodating she was, the more accommodating he’d be. And really, he did look sweet soothing his baby that way.

“He’s teething,” he explained.

“How old is he?”

“Almost six months. The pediatrician says that’s what’s going on with him.” He settled against his desk, apparently not planning to put the baby back in his stroller. Instead, he stroked his hand up and down the baby’s back, up and down again.

His hands mesmerized her.

Again she shook her head clear. She had to stay focused, had to get through this negotiation, pull Gerald’s butt out of the fire and make sure he was getting a livable house for his money. She had to remain ingratiating with Levi Holt—but not fall under his spell. As if a man stroking a baby’s back could cast a spell on her.

“What happened? Did your baby-sitter call in sick today?”

“I just hired someone last week. She’s terrific, the best by far out of all the nannies I interviewed. But she can’t start work until next Monday. I’m juggling things until then.”

“You and your wife are taking turns?”

His eyes flashed, dark and mysterious. “No,” he said so tersely she knew there was a whole lot more than no to it.

Had his wife left him? Abandoned him with the baby? Run off with someone else? Or had she died tragically? In childbirth, maybe. That had happened on an episode of Mercy Hospital a couple of seasons ago, such a depressing episode Corinne had stopped watching the show.

Levi’s no hung in the air, a warning, a challenge. She stored it away, figuring she’d pull it back out and analyze it later. “What do the D and the J stand for?”

“Damien Justice.”

“What an unusual name.” She liked it. It had a lilting rhythm to it.

“It’s too fancy for a little baby,” Levi said. “D.J. fits him better.”

“So, what does one do to comfort a teething child?”

“He’s got toys he can bite on. And there are ointments. They don’t seem to work that well with him, though. According to Dr. Cole, some kids have a harder time getting through it than others. He spiked a fever the other night, just from the teething.”

Levi was talking to her as if she were an expert on child-rearing, someone who understood these things, a fellow parent at the playground or in a medical office’s waiting room. She wished she could contribute some wise advice—rub ice on the baby’s gums, or give him a shot of tequila, or hold him upside-down and count to ten.

“I’m real sorry about this meeting,” Levi said. “Why don’t you leave your notes with me. I’ll review the changes Mosley wants, and then we can talk about how much they’ll cost you.”

That was exactly what Corinne didn’t want. As long as she was present, she could argue against cost increases. But if she left him alone with her list of changes, he could pull out a calculator and start hitting the plus button. And he might not even understand how some of the changes should be made, or why they were necessary.

But she couldn’t hang around his office for hours while he consoled his anguished son.

“Are you staying in town?” he asked. “I could get back to you.”

“I’ve got a room at the Arlington Inn, but—”

“Great. Give me a little time with this stuff, and maybe I can twist some arms and get someone to watch D.J. for an hour while we figure out what exactly Mosley wants me to do. Would that be all right?”

She couldn’t refuse without seeming unreasonable. All he was asking for was a little time. While he reviewed her list, she could drive out to Gerald’s property and see just what “breaking ground” entailed. That would give her a clearer idea of how difficult it would be to make changes, and then she’d know if Levi Holt was being reasonable or ripping Gerald off.

“Fine,” she said, managing a bright smile. “I’m going to drive around town for a bit, but I’ll be back at the hotel by eleven. You can call me any time after that.” She fished into her tote and pulled out the small leather envelope containing her business cards. “There’s my cell phone number,” she said, placing the card on his desk. Both his hands were full of baby; he couldn’t take the card from her.

“Thanks.” He stood, careful not to jostle his son. “I appreciate it, Ms. Lanier. This is not the way I usually conduct business, but—”

“That’s okay. We’ll talk later.” Oh, yes, she could be accommodating, and charming, and terribly flexible. How could he be a bastard about amending the contract when she was accepting this inconvenience with such equanimity?

“I mean it. I appreciate it,” he whispered, walking her to the door. She stepped out into the hall, and he gave her a farewell nod. A few paces down the hall, she glanced back and saw him bowing his head and touching a kiss to the baby’s downy hair.

A man kissing his son. Who would have thought it would be the most beautiful sight in the world?