“He added it to the Crane Holdings portfolio, yes,” he responded coolly.
Portfolio. She felt her lip curl. To him, her beloved home away from home was a number on a spreadsheet. Nothing more. Which also could mean he didn’t care enough about it to continue with the ridiculous changes.
“There’s been an error. My mother is under the impression that many of the nostalgic and antique fixtures in the building will be replaced.” She plunked down the heavy doorknob on his desk and watched, smiling as a pool of rainwater gathered on a leather blotter.
Reese sucked in a breath through his nose, wrenched his eyes from the puddle, and pulled his hands from his pockets. He moved to his desk—a heavy block of black wood—and rested one hand on the back of a shiny leather chair. Black. Of course.
He gestured with his other hand—manly hands for a guy who spent his days in an office and spare time eating souls, and about as disturbingly masculine as the scruff lining his jaw—for her to sit in one of the two matching guest chairs parked in front of his desk.
But she didn’t want to sit. What she wanted was to march over there and slap the pompous smirk off his face. Then she remembered her compromised top and decided to keep her arms over her breasts.
She sat.
You win this round, Crane.
Reese lowered himself into his chair and pressed a button on his phone. “Bobbie, Ms. Van Heusen will need a car in fifteen minutes.”
“Yes, sir.”
So he’d deigned to carve out fifteen minutes for Merina. Lucky her.
“I don’t want a car.”
“No? You’re planning on walking back?” Even sitting, he exuded power. Broad, strong shoulders filled out his dark jacket, and a gray tie with a silver sheen arrowed down a crisp white shirt.
“Yes.” She wondered what time of day he finally gave up and yanked the perfect knot out of that tie. When he surrendered the top button. A flare of heat shot through her. She hated the way he affected her even though she hated him. She was just so damn aware of him.
It was unfair. She frowned.
“You were saying something about horseshit,” he said smoothly, and she realized she had been sitting there glaring at him in silence for a long while.
She cleared her throat and plowed through what she needed to tell him.
“You can’t redesign the Van Heusen Hotel. It’s an historical site. A landmark. Did you know the hotel was the first to install elevators? The hotel’s chef created the snickerdoodle. That building is an integral thread woven into the fabric of this city.”
She pressed her lips together. Perhaps she was being a tad theatrical, but the Van Heusen did have historical importance to the city, and beyond that, a personal history to her. She’d grown up half at home, half in the hotel. She’d gone to college straight from high school and graduated with her business degree, her dream to run the Van Heusen and continue the rich, rewarding work of maintaining a building with such a meaningful history.
“Born and raised in Chicago, Ms. Van Heusen. You’re not telling me anything I don’t know,” Reese said, sounding bored.
“Then you know remodeling the Van Heusen makes no sense,” she continued, using her best ally: reason. “Our hotel is known for its style. Guests come there to experience a living, breathing piece of Chicago.” She stopped short of going into a monologue about how even the fires couldn’t destroy the dream.
“My hotel, Ms. Van Heusen,” he corrected.
His. A fact she’d only gleaned a few minutes ago. A dart of pain shot through the center of her chest. She should have demanded to see the contract her parents signed before sloshing over here in a downpour and parading her nipples for Mr. Suit & Beard. She was almost as pissed at them for keeping this from her as she was at Crane for thinking he could strut in and take over.
“No matter who owns the building, you have to know that robbing the Van Heusen of its style will make it just another whitewashed, dull hotel,” she said.
Her stomach churned. If she had to bear witness to them ripping up the carpeting and replacing it with white shining tile, or see a Dumpster filled with antique doorknobs, she might just lose her mind. The hand-carved molding, the ceiling medallions…Each piece of the VH had been preserved to keep the integrity of the past. And now Reese was erasing it.
She heard the sadness creep into her voice when she ventured, “Surely there’s another way.”
He didn’t respond to this; instead he pointed out, “Your parents have been in the red for nearly two years.”
She felt her eyes go wide. Two years?
“I gather this is new news to you,” he added, then continued. “Your father’s hospital bills put them further in debt.”
Her dad’s heart attack was last year, but Merina had no idea the bills had buried them. She lived in the same house. How had they hidden this from her?
“They came to us to buy the building and we did,” Reese said. “I could have fired them, but I didn’t. I offered a generous pension plan if they stayed on through the remodel.”