"A textile factory?" Mom's eyes light up. "I love industrial conversions. There's something really special about those big open spaces."
"Exactly. There's also an old hospital in Queens that's been sitting empty for twenty years, a department store in the Bronx with copper cornice work, and a row of carriage houses near the East River that are literally falling apart." I trail off, realizing I'm rattling off a mental list I didn't know I'd been keeping.
Mom is watching me with an amused expression.
"What?" I ask.
"I haven’t seen you this animated about something in a while," she says.
"I've felt lost," I admit. "After selling the company, I thought freedom would feel... different. Better. But it's just been empty."
"Well..." Mom sets down her cup with a decisive clink. "New York restoration projects. Where would we even start?"
"You're serious?” I ask. “About doing this together? I mean, it would be amazing. You have the knowledge and I have…" I chuckle and shake my head. “Well, apart from a lot of money I’m not sure what I’d bring to the table but I’m willing to learn.”
“Nonsense. You know more than you think. And with your background, you’d make an excellent project manager. I could be your consultant,” Mom says. “Not a structural one, of course. But design-wise I think I’d be good at it and we’d make a great team.”
“I suppose that’s true,” I say. “But what about Danny? New York isn’t exactly around the corner.”
“I could take trips to New York with Danny to discuss milestones. Danny would love that. Or I could come alone; he’ll be happy to stay here with John too.”
Mom stands and picks up our empty cups. "I'm excited about this, Blair. Really excited." She pauses at the porch door, looking back at me with a grin. "How about another cup of tea while we do some online research?"
37
LIV
The elevator doors open on the fourth floor, and I step into the hallway juggling my coffee, laptop bag, and the dry cleaning I picked up on the way. It's Monday morning, which means I'm mentally running through this week's schedule. I have an engagement party on Wednesday, final venue walk-through for a wedding on Thursday, and seventeen vendor calls that need to happen before?—
I push open the office door and stop dead.
Red roses. Everywhere.
Glass vases cover every available surface. They’re on the conference table, the filing cabinets, the windowsills, the desks, even the floor. They're clustered so densely I can barely see my team behind them.
My office isn't large—we don't need it to be. Only six people work here full-time: me, Sophie, two junior event coordinators, an accountant, and our social media manager. Most of the people I employ are freelancers with their own workspaces—florists, photographers, musicians, caterers. I meet clients in their homes to discuss wedding plans, so we only need a homebase for practical reasons. Storage for samples, a place to make calls, somewhere to handle the administrative side of running a business.
The space itself is simple and functional. White walls, concrete floors, a conference table that doubles as a workspace. Everything is organized and minimal. There’s nothing romantic about it.
Or at least, it wasn’t until someone turned it into a botanical garden.
"Okay." I set my coffee down on the only clear corner of my desk I can find, nearly knocking over a vase in the process. "What's going on? Who caught their partner cheating? Husband? Boyfriend? Girlfriend?" I look around at my staff, who are all watching me with varying expressions of amusement. "Because someone is clearly very, very sorry about something they did. Which, for the record, doesn't make it okay. Whoever it is—" I gesture vaguely at the sea of roses, "—dump them. Immediately. They cheat once, they'll do it again. They lie once, they'll lie again. That's just human nature."
Sophie stands up from behind a massive arrangement on her desk. "They're not for any of us, Liv. They're for you."
My stomach drops. "What?"
"You," Sophie repeats. "All of these are for you."
“No... They can’t be. Who would do that?”
But even as I'm saying it, I know exactly who would do something this excessive, this dramatic, this completely over the top. There's only one person who would buy out multiple florists' entire stock of red roses and have them delivered to my office.
Blair.
"The delivery guys showed up at seven-thirty this morning," Jennifer, one of our coordinators, says. "Twelve different florists. It took them forty-five minutes to bring everything up."
"Twelve different florists?" I repeat weakly.
