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Eric stands beside me, close enough that I catch the warm scent of his cologne. He must be at least six foot three, and his broad shoulders make the elevator feel smaller than it did a moment ago. My pulse still hasn’t settled from the hearing. Having the man whose project I just put on hold beside me doesn’t help.
The elevator begins to descend.
“Name your price.”
I turn to him. “For what?”
“The service lane.”
“I thought I made myself clear. It isn’t for sale.”
“Of course it is.” His gaze sharpens, and something in his tone makes me straighten before I catch myself. I have to remind myself that I’m a CEO too, not one of his employees. “Submitting that report late last night was clever. You gave my team no time to respond. But you should’ve come to me before you followed through. I would’ve been far more generous if you hadn’t put my project on hold.”
“You think I delayed your project to raise the price?”
“I think you know exactly how to negotiate.”
“I’m not negotiating. No amount of money will make me share that lane.”
He studies me, cool and certain. “Everyone has a price, Ms. Hartwell.”
“You’re going to be disappointed.”
The doors open on the ground floor. I step into the lobby, and he follows.
“I’m not changing my plans,” he says.
“Then you’ll be back here in six weeks with the same problem.”
“We’re sharing that lane.”
“No, we’re not.”
He studies me for a moment. Then his smug smile returns. “By the next hearing, we’ll have a signed agreement.”
“I suggest you get your architects started on a new entrance. Because you won’t have my signature.”
He gives me a slow nod, as if I’ve just made my opening offer.
I leave him beside the elevators. Eric Voss has mistaken my no for the start of a negotiation, but my answer is final.
It’s almost three by the time I return to the Hartwell. The hotel gives me less than five minutes to enjoy the fact that Voss didn’t get his way.
At a family hotel, being CEO is less a title and more a promise that every problem will land on your desk. Accounting brings me an invoice for twice the agreed amount. Before I can sort it out, housekeeping calls about water flooding the bathroom in room 412. Then a loose cable takes down the front desk computer, leaving me on my knees beneath the counter in a pencil skirt, trying to plug it back in.
In the middle of it all, I stop to greet a couple who held their wedding here thirty years ago. They want a photo beside the staircase where they took their first one. I make time for them. Fixing problems is part of running the Hartwell, but so is remembering why people come back.
It’s almost seven when I finally leave. A linen truck is inching out of our service lane while our food delivery truck waits on Hartwell Boulevard. The lane can barely handle our own deliveries, yet Eric Voss wants to use it for a 340-room hotel.
Billionaire or not, the man is out of his mind. He based the entire service plan for his hotel on a lane he doesn’t own, certain he could buy access whenever he was ready.
On the way home, I stop at the Thai place near my building. It’s almost seven thirty when I reach the entrance with a paper bag in one hand and my work bag in the other. Jeff, the night doorman, holds the door open for me.
“Home early tonight?”
“Only a twelve-hour day.”
“Practically a day off.”
