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“You could pick up the phone. Ask her to dinner and find out.”

I hum a low hum of disagreement. “I don’t know if I’m the right man for her.”

But I want to be. I do know that much.

“I need to learn who I want to be.” Panic starts to rise again and I take a deep breath. I know that if I continue how I am now, I risk losing her—even if I’m not sure whether I had her in the first place. If I don’t figure my shit out, we won’t work in the long run. And I’ve learned that Avril is not a woman I want to be casual with. I want her to be my future, and if I get a shot with her, I don’t want to fuck it up.

THIRTY-TWO

Avril

I’ve been in the office since five. I’ve been awake since three. I woke up in near panic with a niggling feeling that I can’t ignore. I go through the spreadsheets yet again to check that I haven’t missed anything.

Nope. However I look at things, Poppy’s model is watertight. The Boston hotel is always more profitable than New York, whatever way you cut the cake. That’s why Worth is still entertaining the idea of the Boston hotel when it makes more practical sense to open a second site in New York.

“I hate that you’re so good at your job,” I say.

“And good morning to you, little sister.” She slides a coffee onto my desk. “You were up and out early.”

“I wanted to go over these financial models again before the meeting with Worth.” Now that we’re in touch with the owner of the Boston hotel, we’re having a meeting to discuss what our offer should be. Our previous offer clearly wasn’t attractive enough to keep him interested, so I wanted Worth to look at what his maximum investment could be.

But after spending the last four hours going through the spreadsheets, everything’s changed.

“Is there anything you need clarity on?” she asks, hanging up her coat and heading to her desk.

“I think I’ve worked it out.” I don’t have the financial background that Poppy does, but I can figure my way around a spreadsheet when I need to. But I don’t need to, because Poppy is so good at what she does. Worth knows it. He never questions her. I was stupid to think I’d actually find some errors to make the New York option more appealing.

“Anything you want to talk about?” she asks.

I shake my head and, lucky for me, Worth arrives before Poppy can ask me any more questions. I want to talk to them both together. There’s no point in having the same conversation twice.

Worth arrives with more coffee for us all. We’re all going to be bouncing off the ceiling by the end of our meeting. We laugh and hug and chat about our weekends and file into the conference room.

“I can’t wait to hear about your meeting with Patrick O’Leary,” Worth says. “I can’t believe we actually know his name now. Do we understand why it was such a big secret?”

I shrug. “I have no idea. He’s a lovely man.”

“So tell us about your meeting,” Worth says. “I told you Ben East was the man to help us with this.”

“You certainly did,” Poppy says, while she beams at me. “And what a help he’s been.” She tries to stifle a giggle, and I glare at her.

“What am I missing?” Worth asks.

“Nothing,” I snap. “Let’s talk about Boston and Fifth Avenue.”

“Are we still talking about the Fifth Avenue property?” Poppy asks. “I thought we were going to talk about Boston.”

“We’re here to talk business,” I say. “We need to compare the two options.”

“Haven’t we been doing that all along?” she asks. “We know that Boston comes out as a better investment.”

“Except we now need to increase our offer. So that will change things.”

“We have quite a lot of flex in the model before New York becomes more profitable,” Worth says.

My heart sinks. He’s right. Patrick O’Leary is sharp, but he’s not stupid. If he wants to sell his building, he’s not going to ask for anything that would make New York more profitable than Boston. The room rates are just so much higher than New York and the real estate is so much less expensive.

“Right,” I say.