Restraint - Adriana Locke Page 0,30
to me but tap pleasantly through my veins.
“Are you listening to me?” Sienna asks.
“Yes. I should agree to his proposal. I hear you.”
“Yes, you should. So … are you?”
Am I?
While the idea has nested itself in my psyche, I’m still not positive. Rushed judgments tend to lend themselves to trouble, and I know better. I need to think clearly.
“Maybe. I’m going to think about it for a while first. Good decisions come after a lot of thought.”
“Well, good experiences come from impulsive decisions, so don’t think about it too much.”
“You’re crazy,” I say with a chuckle. “I gotta go, Sienna. Talk to you soon.”
“Don’t overthink this!”
“Goodbye, Sienna.”
“Ugh. Fine. Bye.”
I end the call.
Twelve
Holt
“I can move this building here and change the interior concept,” Wade says, moving his finger across the paper on my desk, “but it will be an engineering nightmare.”
My chair squeaks as I rock backward and take in Wade’s point.
“Oliver said Landry won’t agree to sell until we demonstrate our intent with the property,” he continues. “Ollie tried to gloss over it as best as he could, but Landry wanted visuals.”
I tear my eyes away from the design and look at my brother. “With this version, we still have hotel space, two restaurants—”
“Three.”
“Okay. And some office space too, correct?”
“Correct.” Wade takes off his glasses and sighs. “Boone has been working his ass off, believe it or not—”
“Or not,” I mutter.
Wade grins. “I’m confident we have solid interest in all the spaces except for the retail section on the east end. If you can get Landry to sell the land to us, we can start securing merchants and investors. It will make us a motherfucking fortune.”
And if we don’t get him to sell to us, it might cost us everything.
I sigh. “I know.”
I push my chair the rest of the way back and get to my feet. My right hand clasps against the back of my neck where the muscles are rigid. As I work my neck back and forth, my thoughts veer from Wade’s monologue on architectural symmetry to Blaire.
Blocking out a woman—especially when a project of this magnitude is on the table—has never been an issue. I’ve always gotten way more out of a multi-million-dollar deal than a relationship. That’s probably why I’ve never been in a lasting relationship to start with: it can never hold a candle to what I do all day.
So why in the hell am I tuning out Wade and tuning into Blaire?
I know better than this. Fuck.
“Where the hell did you just go?” Wade’s voice snaps me out of my delirium. “You didn’t hear a word of that, did you?”
I rub a hand down my face. “Wade, I think I’m losing my mind.”
“Please. No. Don’t leave me with Oliver and Boone all on my own.”
I can’t help but chuckle.
Wade takes in the scene before him—my less-than-stellar attention span, mussed-up hair, and wrinkled forehead—and sighs. He sits on the sofa near the door and looks at me unamused.
I lean against the wall and stare back at him. It’s like looking in a mirror. Our hair is the same color. Both of our eyes a green-gold mix. We’re built the same too. If he didn’t handle his stress better than I do, we could be twins. Unfortunately, I have way more lines on my face than him.
“Can we get this over with?” he asks.
“What?”
“Why are you losing your mind?” he asks as if I’m a baby.
I glare back at him. “You wanna know what I did today?”
“No. But here we are, so tell me so we can get on with it.”
“I asked a woman to stay with me,” I say, my jaw set in place. “In my house. Willingly. This week of all weeks.”
This gets a reaction. He leans up, pressing his hands against his knees, and makes a surprised face.
“I know,” I mutter.
“I have to admit that you’ve stunned me a little bit.”
“Hell, I’ve stunned myself.”
He mulls this over. “Do you like her? I mean, you must if you’re subverting your whole ‘my house is my sanctum’ rule.”
Do I? Do I like her?
What a stupid question to be asking yourself now, Holt.
I turn toward the glass that overlooks downtown Savannah and consider his question. Of course, I like her. She’s intelligent and witty and fucking gorgeous. But do I like her enough to stay with me?
My house is off-limits and has been for years. Ever since Kendra Thompson and I ended things—something I apparently thought was a lot less serious than she did—and she