“Don’t get bent out of shape over this, Sophia. It’s business.”
“Whatever…” I waved a dismissive hand at him.
Weston tilted his head toward the elevator bank down the hall. “I’m going to get coffee and then run to my room for a quick shower. Do you want me to pick you up something?”
I shook my head. “I’ll get my own.”
He shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
***
The day only got worse after that.
As expected, my father didn’t take the news about the flood very well. He basically called me incompetent, as if I’d installed the pipe incorrectly and not a contractor that he, himself, had been using for decades. Then while I was upstairs with Sam and the plumber, I tripped over a tool on the floor and my iPhone went flying from my hands. It slammed into a pile of debris that had fallen from the ceiling and now no longer turned on. After that, the legal team learned of a new lawsuit just filed against the hotel, which we needed to somehow value in the next day or two in order to factor that into our bid price. And to top it all off, Liam had left two messages on my office phone. So when Weston let himself into my office at four o’clock, I was in no mood.
“If you’re coming to tell me how incompetent I am again, just turn around and let yourself back out.”
Weston walked to my desk and extended an envelope. “Actually, I was coming to give you this.”
Inside were two tickets. “Drunk Shakespeare? What is this?”
“It’s a show here in the City. A bunch of actors get together. One of them downs at least five shots of whiskey, and then they attempt to act out Shakespeare.”
I laughed. “Are you serious?”
“Yep. Figured it might be the only play the two of us would both enjoy.”
I caught the date on the tickets. The play was almost a month and a half from now. My anger was quickly replaced with that warm feeling once again. I looked up at him. “When did you buy these?”
“A few days ago. They were just delivered by messenger, so I figured I’d use them as a white flag.”
“You bought us tickets to an event a few months away before we’d even had a discussion about our future?”
“You’re the only one who needed that discussion to make things formal, Soph.”
I stood, walked around my desk, and wrapped my hands around his neck. “Why don’t you go lock the door…”
Weston flashed a cocky smile. “Already did on my way in, sweetheart.”
***
I tucked my blouse into my skirt and turned my back to Weston. “That works better than Xanax,” I said over my shoulder. “Zip me, please.”
He zipped my skirt and pushed my hair to the side to kiss my neck. “Happy to be of service. What’s on your agenda for the rest of the afternoon?”
I turned and smoothed down my clothes. “We have that conference call with Elizabeth, the hotel’s attorney, in a little while about the new lawsuit. I’d planned on running to the store to get a new cell. I dropped it earlier, and now it won’t turn on.” I looked at my watch. “But I don’t think I’m going to have time. I don’t want to miss the start of the call, and there’s usually a line at Verizon ”
“You want to take mine? I’m just going back to my office to go through reports. That way if you’re still at the store, you can dial in for the call.”
“You sure you don’t mind?”
Weston held out his phone to me. “No problem. You already know my top-secret code.”
The gesture felt monumental. It was something a couple did for one another. Things we keep in our phones can be very personal—not that I was planning on scrolling through his and searching for anything. But it meant Weston had nothing to hide. Even more than that, it meant he trusted me. And that spoke volumes.
I took the phone and kissed him. “Thank you. I’ll tell you what, as a token of my appreciation, tonight we can do a live reenactment of your code.”
Chapter 24
* * *
Sophia
It was a good thing I borrowed Weston’s phone.
I’d been standing around the Verizon store, playing with a bunch of phones I had no interest in buying for the last forty minutes, waiting for my name to be called. I had to dial in for the conference call with the hotel’s attorney in five minutes. So I rummaged through my purse to find the paper with the telephone number. As luck would have it, one minute before the call was to begin, my name was called.
I held out my broken iPhone to the sales clerk. “Hi. My phone isn’t working. I dropped it, and it won’t turn back on. I have AppleCare on it, so if I could either get this one fixed right away or get a new one, that would be great.”