Though the fellowship program paid me well, it wasn’t Agent Provocateur or Christian Louboutin well, and my habit required a certain amount of sale stalking. Forty-five minutes of salivating over unimaginably expensive lingerie later, I laid my hands upon some of the most beautiful mesh and dot lace panties.
I was one of the odd few for whom nude-colored underthings nearly matched my bare skin, and when I picked up the panties, I knew I’d look naked wearing them, and I loved that idea. I couldn’t contain the jolt of excitement rippling through me at the thought, a giggle slipping from my lips and attracting the side eye of the shopgirl. When I spied the matching bra in my size—finding 36DDs in La Perla was like seeing the ghost of Paul Revere riding through downtown on a unicorn—I knew this treat was precisely proportional to today’s victory.
Perhaps I wasn’t on karma’s shit list.
With my finery tissue-wrapped and stowed in my tote bag, I headed for my next appointment, and with any luck, an overdose of good news for my school.
Of all the issues I expected to encounter in my school-opening odyssey, finding a functional building or bare bit of land never cracked my short list. The fellowship established rigorous environmental and sustainability requirements, and the architects approved to handle that kind of work were few and far between—exactly seven in the state of Massachusetts with the mandated credentials. Two only touched multi-million dollar residential designs, two others weren’t accepting new business, and the last three belonged to a single firm—Walsh Associates—specializing in historic preservation.
It sounded charming, really: a business focused exclusively on keeping Boston’s old buildings looking new…ish. It was probably a New England thing; it seemed unlikely that a niche architect would find enough work in my hometown, San Diego, to stay in business.
They were located a few blocks from my apartment, and without knowing it, I had been walking past the Walsh Associates office every time I visited my favorite coffee shop.
It took several calls and a box of the best from Mike’s Pastry to get on Matthew A. Walsh’s calendar. His assistant had eyed the cream-filled sfogliatella, made me promise to “stop calling all damn day,” and scribbled a date and time on the back of his business card.
Retrieving the card from my suit coat pocket, I studied the string of letters trailing after his name, denoting his credentials. He was an architect and engineer, he was an expert in sustainable design and preservation, and with any luck, he was the solution to all my problems.
If he wasn’t, I’d research ways to operate a school from a quiet corner of my neighborhood Starbucks.
Chapter Two
MATTHEW
“Would you liketo know what bullshit Angus is pulling now?” Shannon asked.
I rolled my eyes as her voice piped in through my phone’s speaker. My older sister, Shannon, only referred to our father by first name. We all did. I couldn’t tell you the last time I heard someone call him Dad, and all things considered, it was better than calling him Miserable Bastard.
Even if that was fitting.
After a shitty morning crammed with ornery inspectors and stop-work threats, Shannon’s issues were par for the course.
“Go for it,” I murmured. Peering over the steering wheel, I scanned Neponset Avenue for a shuttered church and my one o’clock appointment. “Can’t be much worse than changing the designs on the Belmont project at the last minute. Again.”
“Believe me, Matt, itisworse,” she hissed. “He’s picked up four rehab and restore properties around Bunker Hill. Apparently, he wanted to. You know. Just because.”
I turned down a side street and brought the Range Rover to a stop. My fingers curled around the steering wheel. Tension seized every muscle in my hand, up my arm, along my neck, and into my jaw. I didn’t need this shit and I didn’t need four bullshit projects clogging my days.
“Who’s going to run that? Does he realize how much we’re managing right now? Sam, Patrick, and me, we’re fully booked. I’ve backed out of three marathons in the past few months! I have no time for anything, ever, and now I have four properties that will definitely fall to me because Sam’s busy agreeing to random shit without discussing it with us first, and Patrick works twenty-nine hours a day, and no one stops to say this is insane.”
“Exactly! And me, right now, I’m saying this is insane.” Sharp clicks punctuated her angry sigh, her stilettos reverberating against the hardwood as she paced her office. “He just wants us to know he’s still holding some of the cards and plenty of chips.”
“A lot less than you think, Shan.”
In the nine years since we—me, with my brothers Patrick and Sam, and my sister Shannon—put our stake in the ground and edged Angus onto the sidelines of our ailing third generation architecture shop, he never failed to concoct obstacles to our success. He hated that we were doing more with the family business than he ever did. Us kicking up some dust in the sustainable design world didn’t meet with his favor either, and he made his displeasure clear every time he interfered with projects or bought crumbling buildings to add to our overflowing slate.
Externally, it appeared that visionary architect Angus Walsh was simply staying engaged with the work in his retirement. What could be obnoxious about an old man who wanted nothing more than to preserve the city’s forgotten architectural gems?
And he was brilliant when it came to keeping up appearances. Only a select few outside our family knew the truth of Angus’s alcoholism, his vindictiveness, his violence. We went along with the rouse, even when that meant absorbing costly projects and covering up his public indiscretions.
I shook my head and drained the coffee from my afternoon stop at Dunkin’s. I was always the intermediary, always stuck cleaning up Angus’s messes. I didn’t know when I earned that role but seeing as I never let him get to me it was mine to keep.
I felt a glimmer of wry relief Angus hadn’t shown up at one of my properties to deliver the news of his acquisitions in person. Increasingly, his appearances were moving out of the office’s controlled environment and into public venues. And after my face-off with the inspector, a visit from Angus would have gone down as smoothly as a shot of scotch and a handful of nails.
“Fuck,” I sighed. “Just…fuck.”
“You know there’s nothing I enjoy more than Angus and his little visits. We need to hire a bouncer.”
On most days, Shannon was a steamroller and that was putting it mildly, but when Angus was in the office, he usually raked her over the coals. He treated her with such derision and scorn I couldn’t help but take those bullets for her. She shouldered more than her share of the work and family burdens.
