Hey, Handsome
VIPs were as exacting in their demands as the title implied, and everyone had to take particular care—the chefs, every hand in the kitchen, and the waitstaff serving the floor.
As a rule, VIP service fell to the head chef in person, but Tori's was the exception: its head chef spoke little English. The waitress with the most experience on the floor took his place, and today, of all days, that waitress was Zena.
A taxi out of Chicago O'Hare came to a stop in front of Hunter & Carlson Castle. A blonde woman in a vivid red dress drew a hundred-dollar bill from the clutch in her hand and passed it to the driver.
"Thanks for the ride. Keep the change."
Even setting aside the designer labels that wrapped her from head to toe, the particular refinement of the upper class clung to her. Overcome with gratitude, the driver hurried around to the rear door and opened it.
Eva Lambert—only daughter of Senator Roman Lambert, a close friend of Dane's father, Patrick Hunter.
A jewelry designer and a television host, she had bent New York society to her will with dazzling looks and an unerring sense of style. From her teens she had possessed a presence as conspicuous as any actress's; caught by reporters' cameras along the trail of Senator Lambert's campaign, she had become a star and helped carry her father's election to victory.
A formidable pedigree, beauty, and a degree from the Royal College of Art. Eva had everything. Plenty of men made a play for her, but her eyes were fixed on only one.
She swept into the lobby of Hunter & Carlson Castle and approached the front desk at her leisure.
"I'm here to see Dane Hunter."
"Do you have an appointment?"
"An appointment?"
A smile curved Eva's mouth as she turned the question back. The eyes she leveled on the clerk did not match it.
"You must be new."
"I am, but..."
Thrown by the abrupt question, the clerk trailed off, flustered.
"Then remember my face. Don't make this mistake next time."
She said it evenly, still smiling, and held out her hand as though the elevator key were already owed to her.
"One moment, please. I'll confirm with the executive office..."
"Tsk."
Eva's fine brow drew tight with irritation. The clerk's hand, halfway to the phone, stopped in midair.
"I came to surprise him. Don't call."
"That's..."
The new hire stood helpless, face pinched with discomfort. Just then another clerk from the desk, returning with a takeout coffee, hurried over to Eva.
"Miss Lambert."
Eva, chin tipped high, only lowered her eyes. Her gaze settled on the cup in the clerk's hand.
"The coffee's good there, I take it?"
"Ah... yes."
Caught away from her post in the middle of a shift, the clerk went tense under that look.
"I can go up, can't I?"
"Of course. Naturally..."
She answered with careful courtesy and held out an elevator key card. Only then did a faint smile catch at Eva's mouth.
"Thank you."
The bright skirt of her dress flared as she stepped into the elevator, and every eye followed her.
Inside Hunter & Carlson, word had gone around that she was Dane's fiancée. Eva Lambert, arrogance steeped into every smile and every flick of the hand. The sight of her coming and going through the CEO's office as she pleased was more than enough to dress circulating gossip up as fact.
The elevator stopped on the top floor.
Eva sent a bright, eye-crinkling smile toward the secretaries seated side by side at the reception desk and laid a finger to her lips—quiet. No one moved to stop her as she strolled, unhurried, toward Dane's office.
At last she stopped before her destination and turned the handle without a sound. The door opened, and the first thing in view was Dane's back, standing at the worktable in the center of the room.
Bent over the drawings, no doubt—eyes narrowed, brow knotted tight.
Sleeves of his dress shirt rolled halfway, one hand braced on the table, the breadth of those shoulders. A firm backside and thighs no suit could quite conceal. A smile spread over Eva's mouth as she drank in the sight of him from behind.
"Hey, handsome."
At the voice suddenly behind him, Dane's brow twitched and his eyes narrowed. He turned, swallowing his displeasure with an effort, and found Eva standing there, her face alight.
Her heels clicked as she crossed to him in an elegant stride. Even the extra keenness his face took on when he was buried in work was flawlessly attractive.
"You look busy."
Dane glanced down at the drawings he'd been working on and let out a thin sigh. He hated to have the thread of his work cut. For years now, once it was plain that Eva's ambushes put his secretaries in a bind, he had simply told them to let her through. He disliked the way she appeared without warning and demanded special treatment, but the ties between the two families ran too deep for open rudeness.
"Next time, call before you come."
"Oh my. You're not glad to see me?"
The words left her laughing, almost accusing.
Men who set her up like a queen were everywhere. Sick of the ones she could have with a crook of a finger, she set her value on Dane's cold, detached manner. And more than that—his low, resonant voice was a pleasure to hear no matter what he said.
"Come on. It's been ages. Would it kill you to welcome me with a smile?"
Dane regarded her in silence. For years he had indulged her whims out of regard for the closeness between their fathers, but he could not go on overlooking behavior that recognized no one above herself. The time had come to draw a line.
"I haven't eaten properly all day. I'm starving. Let's go get something."
He said nothing.
"There's a vegan restaurant not far from here with wonderful reviews. I booked a table since I was in town. Come on."
Eva laughed, seizing his arm as if she meant to drag him.
They had reached the underground garage and were walking up to Dane's car when a voice behind them brought both sets of footsteps to a halt.
"Well, well. Look who it is."
Liam Carlson, fresh from parking, tossed his keys into the air and snatched them back, then came toward them at an easy stride. Eva drew a deep breath, displeasure written all over her face, and rolled her eyes. She made not the slightest effort to hide it.
"If it isn't Miss Lambert, the flower of New York society."
A sneer threaded Liam's drawl.
"We don't need to waste time on empty how-do-you-dos, do we?"
"Slipped my mind."
At her rude retort, Liam gave her a villain's smile.
"We're heading out to eat. Come along."
Liam's brow lifted a fraction at Dane's offer, but Eva's voice followed at once, full of thorns.
"No. Just the two of us."
Watching her wear the irritation openly, Liam crooked his mouth. Unlike Eva, who looked desperate to be gone, he seemed perfectly at ease.
"We have things to discuss, just the two of us. Today's not a good day."
Eva lifted her chin, aloof, and ignored the look he sent back.
The history between Eva and Liam was long and stubborn. Senator Lambert and Liam's father, Jim Carlson—who had served as a director of the National Academy of Building Sciences—had themselves once been exceedingly close.
With the families constantly in and out of one another's houses, meetings between the next generation had come naturally. Eva and Liam, in particular, had crossed paths more than most. Then Jim Carlson and a host of figures from politics and business were swept up in an enormous sex scandal and forced to resign, and as the shock spread in every direction, things changed.
Conscious of the public eye, Senator Lambert began to keep his distance from Jim Carlson.
Perhaps it was the shift between their fathers. From some point on, Liam and Eva clashed over everything the moment they met and left a chill in the air. Who had wounded whom, and when, and with what words. When it had become impossible to keep a decent distance and offer each other even formal courtesy. Only the two of them knew how it had begun.
"Enjoy yourselves, then."
Liam tipped his head, not the least bit regretful, and turned his back. Eva, who had dropped her eyes to the floor as if the whole encounter disgusted her, looked up and met Dane's gaze. He hadn't asked, and yet she answered anyway.
"I just wanted dinner alone with you for once. Let's go. I'm hungry."
Thirty minutes later.
The moment Dane and Eva stepped through the restaurant doors, a host led them up to a VIP table on the second floor.
He had been dragged along because Eva was a strict vegetarian; Dane himself preferred meat. Fortunately, true to its reputation as one of the finest vegan restaurants in Chicago, the smell that met them the moment they walked in was not at all unpleasant.
Seated at their reserved table, Eva set down her clutch and swept an unhurried glance over the floor below. She had expected more from a place that had wrung praise even from food critics famous for being hard to please, but the interior was plainer than she'd imagined. Mildly disappointed, she turned her gaze to Dane.
Then again, what did the place matter when she was with Dane? She recrossed her legs and leaned forward. Lips painted a vivid red parted on a smile.
"I left you voicemail after voicemail. You didn't get them?"
"I was busy."
Dane answered with one brow lifted. There was no warmth in it, but Eva smiled back as if she were used to that.
"Last time I was hurt. You came all the way to New York and didn't even show your face."
Eva had first met Dane seven years earlier, at the victory party after Senator Lambert's landslide.
"Daddy was hurt too. He thought you'd at least stay for a meal after all that time, and you left saying you were busy."
Raised among people of formidable pedigree, Eva was exceptionally particular about the men she chose, and few could satisfy every item on her list. Dane came closer to her standard than anyone.
He was spoken of not only as a contender for the Pritzker Architecture Prize—the so-called Nobel of architecture—but as a prospect for the next presidency of the National Academy of Building Sciences. A post every architect wanted. The quiet scramble toward that height was fierce, but the field was already tilting Dane's way.
"I paid my respects to the Senator by phone."
She was not so dull as to miss that Dane was not in love with her. But he showed no interest in other women either. He looked after every woman the way a man married to his work might, and his private life was so clean he had never once been caught in gossip. She could hardly complain.
"So—is the Dubai project coming along?"
Above all, if her father, Roman Lambert, won the next presidential election, Eva—already established as a celebrity through her television work—would stand in the world's spotlight as a president's daughter. She needed a perfect husband, one no scandal could touch.
A man who combined striking looks, a brilliant mind, social success, wealth, and the pedigree he was born to was not easy to find. Add a spotless private life to the filter, and such men all but ceased to exist. In that reality, the rarity of a man named Dane Hunter was exceedingly high.
Eva launched into an account of how she had been. Their conversations always had a speaker and a listener already assigned, but simply being with Dane was enough to content her.
"I bought a Tudor mansion in Scarsdale. Come by sometime soon. The location is fine, but the house itself isn't really to my taste. I'd be happy if you looked over the interior."
"If I have the time."
When he agreed so easily, a flush of pleasure crossed Eva's face. She knew he was a cold man who never hesitated to refuse, so even the occasional offhand kindness was enough to excite her.
She leaned in toward him, a coy smile gathered at the corners of her eyes.
"Oh—did you know I turned down the lead host spot on Beauty & Style, the one I'd already accepted?"
He didn't answer.
"You know the model Matthew Cedric, the one they cast as co-host? He was all over me from the preliminary meeting. It was infuriating."
It was true that men's pursuit of Eva never ceased. Among them were plenty of names worth nodding at—broadcasters, models, athletes. But men who worshipped her like a queen were as common as stones, and worth about as much.
"So I've been thinking. What if I... just moved to Chicago for good?"