LITMIR.BIZ

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to work with Neely. And now I’ve phased you back in, as you put it. Basically it’s your plan we’ve used, and while you know it better than anyone, Neely’s worked on the project the whole time. She knows it too.”

      “Not as well as I do.”

      “Which goes without saying. But she knows Blake and Carmody.”

      Exactly. She could undermine the whole damn thing. “She doesn’t like what I do.” That was the long and short of it right there.

      “She’s playing for our team,” Max said flatly.

      Seb remembered their encounter over her pink offices and his “pointy buildings”—in her term—and shook his head. Yeah, he knew Neely much better now. Certainly he liked her personally a lot better now. And that he would happily have taken her to bed went without saying.

      But that had nothing to do with working with her, being on the same page with her in terms of the project. Bed was play, this was work. This was his career, his life.

      “Have you talked to her about it?” Max asked.

      Seb lifted his shoulders. “Haven’t had time.”

      “You should take time.”

      Seb grunted. “Yeah.”

      Instead, after he left Max, he called back Lymond in Reno to see how things stood.

      “Expecting you Friday morning. You need a ride from the airport?”

      “No,” Seb said grimly. “I’ll be there.”

      He rang Roger Carmody to discuss the atrium. If he could answer the questions now on the phone, maybe the meeting would be a mere formality.

      But Roger’s secretary said he was out of town until Thursday evening.

      “Ask him to call me no matter what time he gets in,” Seb said.

      But he had been tied up in another meeting when Roger had called. So all he got was Roger’s voice message afterward saying, “I don’t like it. We need to rethink. I’ll discuss it with you tomorrow.”

      But tomorrow Seb wouldn’t be there.

      Neely Robson would.

      He got back to the houseboat before ten for the first time since Max’s accident. Neely was sitting in the rocker, holding one of the kittens. She looked up and smiled at him when he came in.

      It was one of those Neely smiles that undermined his resolve and made him want to throw good sense to the winds and simply carry her off to bed. Not that she would let him.

      All the more reason to be short and to the point now.

      “I have to be in Reno tomorrow,” he said without preamble. “It’s unavoidable. They’ve rescheduled already. I can’t ask them to do it again. And the Carmody-Blake meeting will have to go on, too.”

      “That’s all right,” she said quickly. “I can handle—”

      “You don’t need to handle anything. Just take care of your part and I’ll take care of the rest next week.”

      Her smile faded. “I’ve already taken care of my part,” she said a little stiffly. “The homespace is all approved.”

      A reminder he didn’t need. “So it is,” he said, aware that his tone was now even stiffer than hers. “And I wouldn’t even ask you to show up, except this is supposed to be the final rundown, and since I can’t be there, Max says you’re the obvious choice.”

      “Max said that?” There was something in her tone he couldn’t quite put his finger on, but Seb knew he didn’t like it. It was both doubtful and challenging.

      “That’s right. He thinks you should be able to hold the fort.” Seb met her gaze with an equally challenging one of his own. “So I’m counting on you to hold it.”

      Neely’s didn’t waver. “Consider it held.”

      The meeting in Reno was, for all of Lymond’s hand wringing, far more of a formality than the Carmody-Blake meeting was back in Seattle.

      Seb was determinedly attentive and made sure every i was dotted and every t was crossed. But in the back of his mind, he was in Seattle, mentally overseeing the meeting with Blake and Carmody and hoping to hell Neely didn’t screw everything up.

      He got out of the meeting at three. His fingers itched to punch in her number on his mobile phone and see what was happening. But of course, she would be in the meeting with Carmody and Blake right then and he wouldn’t get an answer.

      So he went to the airport and paced until it was time for his flight, telling himself she wouldn’t mess things up, inadvertently, or even worse, deliberately, making clear her own dislike of Seb’s designs. He didn’t think she’d do him in deliberately, but how the hell did he know?

      He glanced at his watch a dozen times or more, got halfway to stabbing out her number, then tucked the phone back in his pocket and kept pacing.

      Right before the plane took off, though, he called Max.

      “Reno’s sorted,” he said when Max answered.

      “Of course it is.” He could tell Max was smiling.

      “Just thought you’d like to know.”

      “Sure. I’m going home this afternoon.”

      “Neely picking you up?” Seb asked, grabbing the chance to legitimately introduce her name into the conversation.

      “Not sure.”

      “Haven’t you heard from her?” Seb asked, not quite able to mask the worry in his tone.

      “What? Oh, sure. She may be the one to do it. Said she might be busy, though.”

      “Busy?”

      Max laughed. “I gather she has a life.”

      Seb didn’t find it funny. “What’d she say about the Blake- Carmody meeting?”

      “It went fine.”

      Seb ground his teeth. “What does that mean?”

      “That it went fine, I guess.” Max’s tone was equable enough, but it didn’t invite any further questions.

      “Fine,” Seb muttered. “I damned well hope so.”

      “Chill,” Max advised.

      “Right.” Seb let out a long breath. They were calling his flight. “See you.”

      He tried to tell himself Max would have let him know if Neely had screwed things up for him. He tried to tell himself she’d keep her mouth shut and let him handle it when he got home. So it wasn’t a good sign to find a voice mail from Roger Carmody when he landed in Seattle.

      “Smart move,” Carmody said jovially, “sending Neely. She and I have everything sorted. We’re all on the same page now. Talk to you on Monday. Thanks.”

      Seb felt sick. Shafted. Was the atrium even in the design now? It was crucial to the whole design, damn it! Had his sweeping, open spaces been carved into dinky little “people-friendly” segments. Couldn’t they see how the soaring planes of the atrium spoke to the human soul?

      He supposed he had only himself to blame. He should have called Carmody and put off the meeting until Monday even if it looked as if he wasn’t prepared. He should have insisted Carmody and Blake have the meeting in Max’s hospital room if they wouldn’t wait. At least Max believed in his designs.

      He should have sent Danny or Frank or somebody—anybody!—but Neely Robson to meet with Carmody and Blake. God only knew what she had agreed to.

      Seb was going to have her head on a plate when he found out.

      He was in a cold fury by the time he reached

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