Anger flashed over his face. “No.” He drew a breath and continued in a more controlled tone. “No, someone I’m doing business with mentioned it to me a few hours ago. It didn’t occur to me as a viable option until just now. One that would allow you to cut ties to the place with a few bucks in your pocket.”
Anger turned to fury and surged from deep in her belly and spiked her body. She was so damned sick of being discounted and underestimated.
“My experience and my knowledge are worth more than a few bucks. In fact, it’s looking like they’re worth close to a million bucks in this situation.” She found that steely place inside her, the one that had gotten her through all her lowest points in life, and rooted herself. “Whether you believe that or not makes absolutely no difference in this situation, because I’ll prove it when I turn that dump into a million-dollar property. And you can tell Jack and Wayne the same thing I told you two weeks ago—this time I’ll leave Wildwood when I decide it’s time to leave Wildwood. No one is going to push me, force me, or buy me out of here.”
She surged to her feet and hiked her purse up on her shoulder, grateful for the anger that would get her out of there before she fell apart.
“Hold on—that’s not . . .” He stood as she turned for the door. “Come on, Delaney. Let’s talk about this. Where are you going to come up with the kind of money you need to renovate that place? Where are you going to find the labor force required to take on this size job? You’re not at Pacific Coast anymore. You don’t have unlimited resources.”
Perfect. This was just perfect. Having a man assume she couldn’t handle a renovation similar to those she’d performed successfully more than two dozen times, while being reminded of the job she’d loved and lost because a man had abused those very abilities . . .
God, irony sucked.
Delaney met his gaze directly. “The other night you called me the renovation guru of the West Coast. Now you don’t think I can handle one project?”
He got that well-shit look on his face. “I didn’t mean—”
“There are three yellow stickies denoting locations in the plans we should just talk about now.” She decided to get all the preliminary talking points out of the way to limit the need for future meetings. “They’re the only areas open to interpretation that could cause conflict, and I’d like to get that out of the way. I really want this to go smoothly. This is going to be hard enough on both of us as it is. I don’t want to cause any undue stress or conflict.”
He heaved a breath that seemed to come from the bottom of his lungs, closed his eyes, and rubbed his face with both hands. After scraping all ten fingers through his hair, he bent, slapped his palms to his desk, and read over the first noted item.
While he listened to her requested modifications, Ethan’s jaw muscles flexed. The sight reminded Delaney of his restraint in bed and the lengths to which he’d gone to please her. The hole in her gut burned hotter, and she had to look away.
After some back-and-forth, he ultimately agreed to all her requests, flipped the packet closed, and dropped into his chair.
Delaney relaxed a little. “Thank you.”
“You don’t have to sound so surprised,” he muttered without looking up.
Delaney rolled her eyes.
When he met her gaze again, his walls were down. He looked as exhausted and miserable as she felt. She couldn’t bring herself to leave, but she knew anything she said would end up in an argument. He must have felt the same way, because he didn’t speak either.
They stayed like that, suspended in that moment, lost in each other’s eyes with thoughts and emotions floating between them for what seemed like forever, yet wasn’t near long enough.
The ring of his desk phone broke the trance.
Ethan swore and hung up on whoever was calling.
Delaney pulled in a breath and pushed out a soft, “Thank you. If you find a problem as you’re going through it, you know how to get a hold of me. And you can have the stills. Come pick them up anytime.”
This was the beginning of the end, and a jagged streak of panic flashed through Delaney’s chest. The kind of panic that signaled she was losing something she could never get back.
Second, third, and fourth thoughts chased one another around Delaney’s m
ind, but she’d done all the preliminary work, had all the numbers. From a business perspective, taking on this project was just the no-brainer Trace had labeled it. She couldn’t justify walking away from it now. And she shouldn’t have to.
She cleared her throat and forced the words forward. “I think this goes without saying, but since this change creates a concrete conflict of interest for you—”
“We can’t see each other anymore,” he finished, his tone harsh, his voice final. But it was the damn-right look in his eye that cut into Delaney’s heart.
She pressed her lips together, nodded, and, with nothing more for either of them to say, walked out of his office, leaving with what felt like a gaping wound in her chest.
TWELVE
Delaney paused on the sidewalk outside Black Jack’s and observed the crowd inside. The small café was packed. People of every age filled the main restaurant and mingled between tables, from Heidi’s wailing two-month-old baby girl to the cackling members of the Geri-Hat-Tricks bridge club.
She was tired and sore from long days of demolition work, and all she wanted to do was go back to Phoebe’s house and sink into that claw-foot tub and a mountain of lavender-scented bubbles. But over the last couple of weeks she’d promised half a dozen people she’d come tonight, and Trace was going to swing by to go over the grand plan for the renovation and talk timeline and budget and crew.