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“Please,” I said. I was going to snap the arms of my chair in two. Good, maybe I could throw the pieces at his head later.

“Go ahead.”

4

BLAKE

If Cassandra Kellylooked like she wanted to fire me when she first walked into the boardroom, she now looked like she wanted to full-on murder me, dig my grave, and toss me in all by herself.

With everyone watching.

But it was too late to lose.

At first, after I’d parted ways with Eli and gotten into my rental car, I’d intended to get cleaned up, then head straight to the resort to talk to Cassandra ahead of the meeting. To explain that I hadn’t known it was her. That I always checked out places before I was hired to get a candid feel of the business. That I was sorry for whatever had happened between us just now. But I knew the moment I thought it out that anything I said to Cassandra ahead of the meeting would come off like an excuse. Like I was more worried about the project than her feelings.

Which wasn’t true at all.

Though I wanted this project so bad I could taste it. Competent clients. Potential so potent I could smell it.

Business number 100.

But I also knew Cassandra wouldn’t cancel this meeting. She didn’t seem like the kind of person to act rashly and cancel something at the last minute—and I knew she’d want the results of our preliminary study. That in and of itself had been expensive, and that’s what her siblings were waiting for.

That was when I’d decided I’d have to swim—fast, sharp, and sure, like the shark I was.

Now, as I launched into my presentation, I shifted my attention to the work. I felt myself loosen up, the words coming easily as I strode around the room. Some of these were things I said at every client meeting of this type. Our experience. How we’d started. How we’d resurrected massive, deeply in-debt firms everyone else said were dead. I could talk about this stuff in my sleep, but I knew better than to give anything but my absolute best here. I needed to win everyone over, including Cassandra. Because if I did manage to salvage this project, it would be she and I working closely together. For six weeks.

But I couldn’t think about that now. Instead I went on, flipping through my succinct, sparing slides with the pointer—images mostly, and a few hard-hitting numbers I used only to hammer points home, or to keep names and numbers in my clients’ minds.

As the minutes flew by, I could feel it working. I always knew when I was killing it. I could feel the energy building in the room. This morning’s events may have shown that I was no good at winning over a woman, least of all Cassandra. But there was no one better than me at winning a room. Maybe it was cocky, but it wasn’t unearned. This was how we’d gone from ambitious college students to the most in-demand consultants on the East Coast. This was business, and I’d studied business like it was a science and I was after the Nobel Prize. When I was a kid, I’d read business books like my life depended on them, which maybe they did, considering how my father had hammered into me that success in business was the only kind of success that mattered. It was never about the money for me—though that helped. It was about doing the best. Being the best. Knocking it out of the goddamned park.

Getting to 100.

And I was doing it now. I knew, if my father could see me, he might offer me a begrudging frown—his version of a smile. Maybe. Or maybe he’d shoot me a text like the one he had this morning, when he heard Goldman had poached another of our clients lined up for this fall. He tracked my business like it was his own special side hustle.

Always the bridesmaid, Blake. Never quite pretty enough to be the bride.

I shoved that aside fast, telling one of my home-run quips, which sent the room into peals of laughter, which gave me a quick moment to take a sip of water and a breath.

Thinking about my dad was the only thing that could throw me off my game right now—he’d poke holes in a gold-medal win, if I was on the podium. The only reason I didn’t cut off communication altogether—theonlyreason—was because I wanted to tell him personally when I hit it.

But that wasn’t true anymore, was it? It wasn’t just Dad who could throw me right now. Cassandra could too.

I’d never been so fucking rattled by a woman.

Even when I paused, I didn’t look at her. I looked each of the other Kelly siblings in the eye, but I knew if I looked at her before I was finished, I’d falter.

I was nearing the end of my presentation, and the entire room was hanging on my every word. Even Cassandra was rapt—I could feel her eyes on me.

“In closing,” I said, “The Rolling Hills resort is going to undergo the most phenomenal transformation any of us have ever seen, and we’ve seen a ton of transformations with our work. The Rolling Hills will have name-brand recognition that will perk the ears of travelers worldwide. We guarantee it.”

With that, I lowered the pointer down on the table.

My temples were damp with sweat and across the room there was a murmur of excited, bubbling conversation.

Jude stood up. The tennis star had come in just after I’d begun, looking slightly wobbly. He wore dark sunglasses, and his blond hair was tied back in a man bun, which I realized I remembered from the sports pages. I never did follow tennis, but Brynn practically had stars in her eyes—she was a sports nut, and her enthusiasm at getting to work with Jude Kelly was probably one of the reasons Lila had finally warmed up to the job.

I held my breath as he opened his mouth, even though I was pretty sure he was now my most enthusiastic fan. Then he slapped his hand on the table. “Sold!”