The Ivy House - By Drea Stein Page 0,74
lease since he had another interested party.
While she had spent the last couple of weeks in a sexual fog precipitated by Chase, life was going on around her. Decisions needed to be made, decisions that had nothing to do with Chase Sanders and more about how she wanted to live her life. Did she want to run her business from Los Angeles? Her whole life had been there. She had never meant to make her stop in Queensbay permanent, had she? There was nothing to say that she and Chase couldn’t keep their relationship going, for a while at least, cross-country. And besides, as Chase said, they were just riding this thing out, seeing where it took them.
So what to do? Phoebe sat in the room at the back of the house, her own little studio. In Los Angeles, she’d never had this much space and it was glorious to be able to walk, to pace, to think as she worked. She had seen pictures of it in the photo album. It had been fitted out like a country gentleman’s study, with leather-bound books and dark wood. Now it was white, with gleaming floors and a row of windows that looked out over the backyard and the harbor. Phoebe had come to love this room and her ability to watch the light as it moved over the water.
Her new desk had come, and she and Chase had assembled it, laughing as they tried to figure out the instructions. It was huge, with plenty of room to spread out, and she sat at it now, letting her mind wander, just drawing. When she was done, she looked at what she had created: a pattern of concentric rings in bright pop-art colors. She smiled and pulled her laptop towards her. Ivy Lane was doing well, the mention of her restoring the house driving a lot of traffic to the site.
Things were starting to take off for her and it was time to get really serious. Perhaps, it was time to give Caitlyn Randall a call. She was, by all accounts, a financial advisor and a whiz with money.
The days passed. Both she and Chase were busy with work, including a quick business trip down to Florida for Chase. He was gone only a few days, but when he arrived, he had sauntered in, taking her to bed almost immediately. Then, he was gone until the weekend. The weather was beautiful and they took another sail, threw steaks on the grill, and shared a bottle of wine with Lynn and her parents.
Weeks went by and she and Chase slipped into a pattern. He would stay with her all weekend and then head down to work. They spent most of their time together at Ivy House, but she went to his apartment once, above the Osprey Arms.
“Why do you live here?” she asked. Room service had delivered some fried calamari, and they were eating it on the small balcony attached to his suite.
“I like to keep an eye on things,” he said, dropping his eyes as he squeezed lemon on his plate.
“Eye on what? Surely, you get to see enough boats during the day from your office. You have a water view there.”
He said nothing and slowly she put it together. “You own this. The marina, the hotel?”
“Yes. I own it. I have a manager, but it’s a part of my holdings.”
“So you’re building up quite the little empire,” she said. It made sense how the bartender had called him “boss” and the way her hotel bill had been suspiciously low.
“Sort of. I’m not bad at organizing things, figuring out how to give customers what they want, whether it’s a new piece of foul-weather gear or a great place to bring their families for a summer cruise or to a hotel with a great view.”
“Are you partners with Noah?”
Chase shook his head. “On some of the things. I was one of his first investors when he started his company. Then, over the years, I leveraged that to invest in some other things. Sometimes Noah joins in, sometimes my brother does, sometimes I do it alone. My brother, Jackson, he’s working in New York now, but he comes out on weekends in the summer to sail and hang out. Hopefully you’ll meet him?”
The question hung in the air. They hadn’t talked much about the future and Phoebe didn’t know if she wanted to.
“That would be nice,” she said absently. She took a sip of wine