Page 81

I glance at Freddie to see if he has any suggestions. But he’s not looking at me, and I kind of think it’s on purpose.

“There are a hundred and twenty rooms here,” Freddie says, just before he tells the woman at reception that we’re here to see the hotel manager.

A tall man with gray hair and ruddy cheeks appears before the receptionist has a chance to call anyone. “Freddie,” he booms. “How great to see you. And you’re Ms. Huntington.” He grabs my hand with both of his. “Good to meet you. I’m delighted to show you the Tea Party Hotel. I’m Sean, the general manager here.”

And then I realize that he sees this as a job interview. He thinks I’m here to take on the Tea Party and carry on business as usual and just collect my checks. “How long have you been the general manager?” I ask him.

He chuckles. “Fifteen years. I know this place like the back of my hand.”

I nod, like I’m appreciating what he’s saying. But in the unlikely event Worth would buy this place, Sean wouldn’t continue as the general manager. We try to project understated glamor rather than avuncular familiarity.

“Well, I’m looking forward to the tour,” I say.

“There are fifteen single rooms,” Sean says, just before he opens a bedroom door on the first floor of the building.

“Single rooms?” I ask, wondering how small a single room might be. At Hotel on Ninth Street, we charge by the room rather than by the occupancy of the room. Business travelers are usually on their own, but they have a double room. There are no single rooms in Hotel on Ninth Street.

Sean gestures for me to go inside, and I try not let the shock I feel show on my face. The room is tiny. The bed is not much bigger than a twin. How is that even possible? “Okay,” I say. “This is smaller than I’m used to seeing.”

“We actually have really good occupancy rates for our single rooms,” Sean says. “And we charge around seventy percent of a standard double room.”

“And are all the singles situated together?” I ask.

“They are spread out between the floors,” Sean says.

I turn and look around. “What’s next door?” I ask.

“This side?” he asks.

“Either side.”

“It’s one of our nicest rooms,” he says. “But it’s occupied.”

I turn to Freddie. “Do we have the floor plans?”

Freddie shakes his head. “I’ve requested them.”

“And you say there are fifteen of these single rooms.” That takes the room number down to near a hundred. It’s not a horrible number of rooms. But it’s likely more would be sacrificed.

“Fifteen. Yes,” Sean says.

Next we see a standard double, which again is very small, even by New York standards. This place is a three-star hotel and it shows by the room size. I don’t think we could make it what we’d want, without halving the room numbers. We’d want more suites, not singles. We’d have to reduce it to below eighty. It just wouldn’t be profitable.

I know the figures like the back of my hand, but that doesn’t stop me from wishing that Ben was here. I’d be able to talk him through it, convince him that I was right, and he’d ask me some questions that would make me think about things a little differently and it would make me like him a bit better.

But Ben’s not here. He’s having drinks with his brother tonight rather than trying to get me to fall in love with him. Which is excellent. Better for me.

When we’ve been through the various room types, we get a tour of the other first-floor common rooms. A small, stuffy dining room with views of the building behind. A bar that’s clearly very rarely used. There’s no space for a restaurant or any conference space. It just doesn’t work.

And Freddie said it was the only place where the building was on the market. There are no other options. I have to make damn sure I don’t fall in love with Ben East anytime soon.

TWENTY-FOUR

Ben

Bray and I don’t meet regularly, and when we do, we don’t really talk about much. We tease each other, have some drinks and chat about nothing—the news, sports, business at a very superficial level. It’s some kind of ritual we go through because we’re brothers in the same town who don’t want to lose touch, but we don’t really connect. I didn’t realize how superficial our relationship was until Avril and I went to Worth’s house. It was full of people who don’t share the same DNA but act like a family.

Bray and I are different. We don’t talk about what happened when we were kids, other than to laugh about things we did that we shouldn’t have done. We don’t talk about the fact that both of us have come back to New York, the city we spent the first part of our childhood in, the city where we ended up living in our car with our parents. We don’t talk about Dad and how the last image I have of him is him waving as we went through security at the airport. Maybe it was because I was a kid and I was scared, but something in me knew I’d never see him again.