“Can we go swimming later?”
“We can do anything you want, sweetheart, as long as it includes a significant amount of time with you in my arms.”
“That shouldn’t be a problem.” She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him in for a kiss. “Why don’t we go grab a shower before we have to leave for the site? We have a couple of hours, right?”
She gave him a look that spoke volumes about what she thought they should do with those hours and his body woke up with a vengeance. Still holding her in his arms, he stood and took off for the room-sized shower with its dozens of jets.
“Damn straight, sweetheart.”
CLAIRE STEPPED INTO the outdated lobby and breathed in the scent of old cooking grease and tropical air freshener. In a place where the actual air carried the heady scent of fresh flowers, masking it with a canned spray felt especially offensive. They weren’t there for the ambience, she reminded herself. If Luke bought the building, it would be a tear-down, and they’d start from scratch. The land the hotel stood on made it more than worth considering. They were only a few blocks from the ocean, and she’d bet when they got to the higher floors, there’d be a spectacular view of the water.
“As you can see, it’s been awhile since anyone paid attention to the property,” said the agent. “That combined with the motivated seller means you should be able to walk into this at a very nice price point. Let me show you the view from a couple of the floors and then we can walk the lot if you’d like.”
Unlike so many of the women who came in contact with her husband, the pretty agent seemed immune to Luke. She noticed the wedding band and engagement ring on the woman’s hand and smiled, wondering what her husband was like and whether she was happy in her marriage. Not that being married had stopped other women from losing their minds and mentally drooling around Luke. She used to call it the your wish is my command complex.
Between his money and his looks, Luke rarely had trouble getting people, especially women, to do what he wanted. It was one of the biggest hurdles they’d faced when they first got together. He was so used to getting his way without thinking about it. He’d just assumed she’d fall in line too. It had taken every bit of her will to disabuse him of the notion. In his defense, he’d grown exponentially from the selfish billionaire playboy she’d fallen in love with. The man beside her had proved himself to be an exceptional father and husband. In lots of ways, she felt as though he’d turned into the more evolved of the two of them. It was another thing that didn’t sit well.
The elevator doors slid open onto a dark, narrow hallway. If they did the project, she’d want to pay extra attention to the lighting in the common areas on the condo floors. It might not make sense to maximize the views in the spaces people passed through, but she could use the lighting plan to enhance the open natural feel she already envisioned for the building.
The agent opened the door to one of the unoccupied units and Claire sucked in a breath. A long, dark hallway ended with a standard sliding glass door, but on the other side of the five-foot opening stretched the Pacific Ocean in all its unadulterated glory. Ignoring the tiny boxes of rooms stacked along the right side of the unit, she headed straight for the tiny balcony barely large enough for a plastic lawn chair but with a view that would make anyone who owned the place lucky to live there. If they were doing a tear-down, the ways to maximize the floor plan were almost limitless and her mind raced with images of big, airy rooms that moved seamlessly between inside and out. Her fingers practically itched to start sketching and she felt an excitement for work she hadn’t experienced in months.
“What do you think?” Luke rested his hands on her shoulders as they watched the palm trees sway below.
“I want it.”
As the words came out of her mouth, she ignored the logistics and let herself sink for just a moment into the satisfaction that came from taking a space and turning it into something beautiful. Something breathtaking if they did it right. Behind her, she felt Luke let out his breath and wondered whether she’d misread him.