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What she hadn’t picked up on during any of their previous conversations was the tension that seemed to simmer between the two men. That hadn’t been apparent over Zoom at all. To be honest, she never would have guessed Luca and Conor had any association prior to this project. She’d thought they were strangers when the work had begun, so discovering some long-standing feud and deep-seated animosity had taken her by surprise.
She was tempted to pick up the conversation Aldo, the gorgeous firefighter, had interrupted earlier, but she decided to wait until after the onion rings were delivered. She was still hungry and didn’t want to take a chance they’d both storm off. She hated eating alone.
However, she was going to address it because Harper had been the type to let sleeping dogs lie in her past—always deferring to Bradley, her mom, her clients, her fans—but she was turning over a new leaf in Philadelphia. She’d spent the first twenty-nine years of her life, tiptoeing around everyone’s feelings at the expense of her own. Those days were over.
She was hopeful whatever had transpired between them, Luca and Conor could clear the air. She wasn’t interested in dealing with two men at each other’s throats throughout this entire project, so they needed to make peace. Perhaps it was the stress of the fire that had provoked the argument and now that things didn’t seem quite so dire, cooler heads would prevail.
“How far back do you think the fire will set us?” she asked Luca when the silence at the table drifted a bit too long.
Luca took a quick swig of his beer. “No way of knowing before the code inspector checks out the building. If there’s minimal structural damage, then hopefully we can get right back to work. Sounds like the kitchen took the worst of it, but there will be smoke damage throughout and that’s a bitch to deal with.”
“Nothing on the top two floors had been touched, and since the plan was to gut them once the restaurant renovation was complete, we’ve lost nothing there,” Conor added, before looking in Harper’s direction. “You sure you don’t want us to move the timeline up on the apartment overhaul? Maybe we could hire a second construction company to tackle that project.”
Luca frowned. “We have other crews, one of which is near the end of their current project. Once they’re finished, I can move them over to work on the apartment above. And if you’re tied to the current timeline as far as the restaurant goes, we can always hire temps, get more people in place to complete the work.”
Conor nodded. “Let’s talk about doing that,” he said to Luca, before turning back to her. “Otherwise, you could be in that hotel for a while.”
Harper shook her head. “My number one priority is finishing the restaurant, getting it up and running. You’ve set me up in a beautiful hotel suite with a kitchenette and comfortable living area, so it’s not like I’m roughing in. Unless?—”
Conor held up his hand. “You can stay in that hotel as long as you need. That’s not a concern on my end. I just want to make sure you’ll be comfortable.”
“I’ll be fine,” she reassured him. “Thank you.”
When they’d purchased the building, Harper had expressed an interest in taking over the top two floors for her own living accommodations. She’d been happy when Conor had readily agreed. During one of their countless phone conversations, they’d discussed construction timelines, which indicated—pre-fire—that she didn’t need to sign a full-year lease on an apartment.
Conor had surprised her by coming up with an easy, flexible solution. Russo Enterprises owned several five-star hotels in the city, and he’d offered to set her up in one of the suites for the duration of the construction work. The offer had been too good to pass on. So she’d put her furniture in storage, and her car, currently parked two blocks over, was packed to the gills with her clothing, toiletries, and other personal items she couldn’t live without until her apartment was ready to move into.
“You didn’t tell your manager about the fire,” Conor pointed out.
“Yeah, that wasn’t a conversation I wanted to get into. It’s taken some time—a lot of it—to get my manager on board with my career switch,” she said. “I mean, obviously he’s taking a hit money-wise by losing me as a client, so it makes sense. He owns his own agency, but I brought in the lion’s share of the revenue. Twenty percent of seven-figure deals is sweet. Twenty percent of five figures is less so.”
“I guess I can see where he’d be sorry to lose you,” Luca murmured.
Harper blew out a long breath. “Bradley was rather insistent that the clock hadn’t run out on my modeling career, and even when it did, he was ready for the next phase.”
“Which was?” Luca asked.
Harper groaned. “Television.”
Conor had lifted his glass to take a sip of his wine but stopped midway. “Do you act?”
She snorted. “God, no. I wish I did because acting in an actual show would be better than Bradley’s ideas.”
Luca grinned. “Do I want to ask?”
“He thought I would make a great judge on one of those competitive talent shows. Or I could be a celebrity on a reality show. Can you see me living in Big Brother’s house? Just the prospect makes me want to throw up. I have no interest in doing anything like that.”
“I don’t know,” Luca said, his shit-eating grin letting her in on his joke before he launched it. “Now that you’ve gone to culinary school, you could try to score yourself a show on the Food Network, maybe become the next Martha Stewart or Pioneer Woman.”
She pointed her finger at Luca. “Never say those words again,” she said, feigning an angry voice, though the fact her lips were quirking up at the ends gave her away. “I don’t mean to bitch about Bradley. To be honest, while it took him some time to come around, he’s actually been really supportive the last few months, interested in the restaurant and my plans for it.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” Conor said.
“I’ve spent the first twenty-nine years of my life under a spotlight. Now I’m ready to spend some time in the background, or more specifically, in the kitchen, making culinary masterpieces.”
Luca lifted his beer, tapping it against her glass. “Sounds like a plan.”
The food arrived, so they dug in, their conversation turning to easier things, like Luca’s insistence that Harper—now a Philadelphia resident—change her sporting team allegiance. He hadn’t liked hearing she was a Yankees fan at all. Of course, she was sort of overplaying her devotion to the team simply to get a rise out of him. Watching paint dry held more appeal to her than sitting through an endless baseball game.
