I leaned back, admiring the curve of her figure as she walked across the plush carpet to the bathroom. I pushed the covers back, fully intending to join her in the shower, but my phone beeped with a calendar reminder.
Shit.
I had a meeting with the Svensson brothers.
* * *
My nightand morning with Ivy had been so great that I wasn’t even all that mad that I had to go spend several hours with Greg and Hunter.
“Now that we have enough property assembled,” Greg said when I sat down in the conference room, “we need to discuss the timeline of the developments.”
I looked at the picture of the development area on the large screen at the front of the room. The area looked strangely familiar.
“Carl,” Greg addressed his half brother, “how are the resident removals going?”
“Great,” he said. “I just bought out the last holdout, an old Italian lady in the co-op on 626 29thStreet.”
I froze. I knew that address. That was Ivy’s address.
There must be some mistake.
“I thought that was a four-unit building,” Hunter said, frowning as he looked through the packet with the development parcels listed.
“Yeah,” Carl said, “but two of the units were owned by the Sutherland Bank, and they rented them out. The third was resident owned, but she took out two mortgages on the condo, so the Sutherland Bank de facto owned it. The owner hasn’t been paying, so we have every right to evict her. I’ve already had Josh start the proceedings.”
Ice flooded through my veins.
“We can’t do that.”
“Excuse me?” Greg said, grey eyes cold. “I was under the impression that you wanted to be brought in on a large, high profile real-estate development. Part of that is removing people from the property. When appropriate, we offer above market rate, but if they don’t even own the property or can’t manage their money, then it’s not my problem.”
“But that’s where my…”My what? Hookup? Friend? Girlfriend? Woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with?
“That’s Imogen’s wedding planner’s house.”
Greg looked at me blankly. “So?”
“So,” I said, grasping, “you know how my half sister is. This could derail the wedding.”
“Yes, we can’t derail a wedding,” Greg said sarcastically. “Who the fuck are you? Man up.”
“You can’t kick Ivy out of her home,” I said.
Hunter was giving me a knowing look.
“He’s sleeping with her, Greg. In fact,” Hunter peered at me, pinning me with his gaze, “I think he fancies himself in love with her.”
Greg snorted. “Figures. I should have known you were an idiot. I never should have brought you on this project.”
“There has to be some other way,” I said desperately.
“We didn’t even want this property originally,” Beck Svensson stated. “If you can bring us that other property, we can leave this one alone.”
Hunter looked at him flatly.
“What?” Beck said. “If it were Meghan, you wouldn’t even waste time with asking, you’d just go scorched earth.”
“Fine. The original offer is still on the table. Bring us the preferred property, and Ivy can stay,” Greg told me.
