can go home since you won’t be here?”
“No. But nice try.”
I noticed he already had his coat on. When I stood, he’d taken my coat off the rack and held it out for me.
Ooh. Gentlemanly Nolan gave me a little tingle too.
Stop it.
“I’ll check in before the end of the day. Any crises arise . . . kick it upstairs to Britt.”
“Will do, boss.” Sam mouthed, Thank you, before Nolan herded me away.
He didn’t say anything as we rode his private elevator to the parking garage.
A chirp chirp sounded, and the lights flashed on a white Porsche Cayenne.
“No super-fancy sportscar today, Chewie?”
“Nope. You’ll have to make do with this one.”
Somehow, I didn’t think he’d appreciate it if I confessed I preferred this car anyway.
I waited for him to remind me he was Lando, and that retort never came either.
We’d barely buckled up when the center console in his dash lit up with an incoming call.
He sighed. “Sorry, I have to take this.” He poked a button on the steering wheel and said, “Nolan Lund speaking.”
Maybe I should’ve listened. But corporate doublespeak bored me. Who cared about risk assessment ratios and frequency markers?
But within fifteen seconds of ending the first call, another came through. This time he didn’t apologize, he just launched into another conversation that I tuned out.
Meanwhile, I scrolled through my bank accounts, trying to assure myself this shopping excursion wouldn’t bankrupt me.
We pulled up to the valet stand while Nolan was still on the phone. “No, Gerry, the numbers don’t lie despite you trying to convince me otherwise. Yes, Brady has seen them. I’m the one who brought the discrepancy to his attention. Have the revised proposal to my assistant on Wednesday morning. LI is done dicking around with this. Oh. And don’t ever question my right to speak on behalf of the company that bears my name.” He hung up and muttered, “Fucking amateurs,” as the valet opened his door.
Yikes.
Had Nolan realized he hadn’t spoken to me at all in the past thirty minutes?
He held the building door open for me and I paused inside the entryway. The place looked like a mall with an open corridor and the stores branching off from the center. Airy. Lofty.
Expensive.
A door—polished honey oak, grooved panels inset below the milky glass—was centered between the exit to one store and the entrance to another. Déjà vu hit me. I remembered a door exactly like that in my elementary school in North Dakota.
That line, You’re not in North Dakota anymore, Gabi, nearly caused hysterical laughter to bubble up.
Nolan strode right through that door and I followed.
We’d entered a workspace with tables covered in bolts of fabrics. One seamstress ran a sewing machine while another cut pattern pieces—both of them ignored us. Nolan just kept dodging and weaving around dressmaker dummies, equipment and furniture until we were in a center room again. A room that looked like a cross between a tea shop and private study. A split staircase off to the left with twisted wrought-iron railings created a focal point.
At the center of that focal point stood a man. Tall. Burly. Sporting a full dark beard. Big square frames seemed to cover half his face. He had a measuring tape draped around his neck and a pincushion attached to his wrist.
He growled, “You’re late,” as he stomped down the stairs.
Nolan glanced at his watch. “Four minutes is all.”
“Follow me.”
We entered a large dressing area with an enormous three-way mirror. The man faced us. “Given this is an emergency, I won’t invite either of you to sit.”
Nolan nudged me forward with a hand on my back. “This is your client today, Gabriella Welk. Gabriella, this is Jacques Andres.”
This guy was Nolan’s stylist?
His hands looked better suited to cracking skulls than crafting suits.
Offering my hand, I said, “Nice to meet you. Please call me Gabi.”
“Call me Q.”
“Q . . . like in Star Trek?”
“No, Q like the gadget designer in the James Bond movies,” Nolan replied. “I started calling him that because his first name is too close to my brother’s and he doesn’t like being called by his last name. We compromised on Q.”
Q didn’t add commentary. He just demanded, “Well, Gabi, what’s the fashion emergency?”
I bet he got a huge kick out of saying that. “I have an in-person interview on Friday for a position that could change the course of my career. I need next-level styling.”
“What’s the position?”
When I hesitated to answer, Nolan said, “Client confidentiality isn’t an issue, is it, Q?”
“With