“Then do us both a favor and sign.” He reaches around me to grab a pen from his desk. The motion brings that scent full into my nostrils again: caramelizing butter, wintergreen, the acid tang of lemon juice, sweat and smoke, and man. Lots of man.
I’m frazzled enough that I don’t realize he’s offering me the pen until a few dumb seconds pass in which his hand is just hovering in the air between us. In fact, I’msofrazzled that, when I still don’t take it, Bastian grabs my wrist, forces my hand open palm-up, and sets the pen there.
He lets go quickly, but the five points of contact where his fingers touched my bare skin stay sizzling for a while afterward.
I swallow and try to gather my wits about me again. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you really want me around,” I mumble, a half-assed attempt at retreating behind quippy banter again.
He doesn’t bite. “Just sign the contract, Ms. Hunter.”
I pick up the folder, but I don’t open it yet. “Is this your money or company money?”
“Does it matter?”
“I just wouldn’t want you to have to go pawning your things again for little old me.”
I don’t miss how his hand goes to his left wrist and touches there. Like the ghost of the watch—the one he sold to make his dreams come true—still weighs there sometimes.
“It’s company money,” he says finally, forcing his hands into his pockets. I almost miss them when they’re gone—they’re nice to look at. “Budgeted under ‘emergency retention costs.’”
“How flattering. I’m an emergency now? Here I was thinking that I was ‘just another employee.’ ‘One of many.’”
“You’re a necessity.” He moves around the desk to reclaim his space now that I’ve vacated it. “The project needs continuity.”
I open the contract and scan the first page. “Always about the project. No one could ever accuse you of lacking focus. I’ve seen mothers less obsessed with their firstborn children.”
“It’s bigger than that,” he says, a twinge of irritation in his voice. “Olympus isn’t just another ‘project.’ It’s proof of concept for the entire future of hospitality.”
“No one could ever accuse you of lacking ego, either,” I mutter.
He ignores me. “Twelve concepts under one roof, each one distinctive but connected. Fine dining, casual, experimental, traditional…”
“So basically, it’s a really expensive mall food court.”
“So much more than that.” He’s leaning forward now, hands flat on the desk, and if I didn’t know him any better, I’d say he’s set aside his normal bitter-and-broody act for the wide-eyed optimism of a real visionary. “You could spend a week there and never have the same experience twice. Not just eating, butexperiencing.Waking up senses you never knew you had. That’s what no one else understands?—”
“That people with too much money will pay anything for novelty?”
He stops. Looks at me. “You’re trying to piss me off.”
“Is it working?”
A muscle jumps in his jaw, but his eyes are almost amused. “You’ll have to try harder than that.”
I hate that I’m impressed. I despise that I can see so clearly the vision he’s painting and understand at once why investors are throwing literal billions at it. Most of all, I loathe with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns that, when he talks like this—passionate and brilliant and absolutely certain of a world that does not yet exist—he becomes dangerously, deliriously attractive.
I force myself to focus on the contract. Things are gonna get rapidly out of hand if I let that train of thought keep barreling down the tracks.
“Let’s talk terms. Hand me that red pen.”
“They’re all there. One million dollars for ninety days of employment.”
“Yes, but what does employment mean?” I start marking up the first page. “This says ‘available as needed for Project Olympus.’ That’s unacceptably vague.”
“It’s necessarily flexible.”
“It’s grotesquely exploitative.” I look up at him. “What’s to stop you from calling me at three A.M. because you had a thought you justhadto share?”
“Common sense? A healthy respect for my own REM cycles?”
