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Cameron told her, “I don’t understand why they’re both still single. You, either. Except, well … I know your history.”
“Don’t you mean my hang-ups?”
“I was trying to be polite. Now, I have your flight schedule all mapped out. Cabo San Lucas, Las Vegas, Paris. Joseph and Lars are taking a second plane to accommodate security and shipping of the paintings and scotch, but the yacht is to be transported by the new owners’ designated people. Jack from Legal will be on hand, too, in the event any issues with the agreements pop up. Accounting will handle the initial electronic transfer of funds immediately at your request.”
“God, you’re efficient.” Jewel collected her laptop and packed up.
“You do understand that if even one deal falls through you’re not getting that land.”
“I love that you’re a realist. Truly, I do,” Jewel said. “But let’s all have a little faith here. Bayli and Scarlet laid some awesome groundwork, and I put everything systematically in place. This is going to work.”
Cameron handed over the itinerary. Jewel slipped it into her bag as well. Then she left the office, took the elevator to the ground floor, and climbed into the town car waiting outside the lobby of the Catalano Enterprises building on Sacramento and Davis Streets. The early-evening fog had rolled in. The gray haze ribboned through the skyscrapers and the Embarcadero Center, filled with restaurants, shops, and galleries. A light mist fell.
Jewel had always found the weather in San Francisco sultry and provocative, adding a mysterious element to a city already brimming with alluring personality.
The first flat she’d rented with Bayli and Scarlet, who’d both gone to San Francisco State University with her, had been on Columbus Avenue and Greenwich Street along the edge of North Beach. Rumor had it scenes from a Dirty Harry movie had been filmed there, and the front rounded windows had a straight shot to Alcatraz Island. The Powell-Mason cable car line ran just outside her door, and she’d gotten a kick out of the ching-ching of the bell every time a cable car stopped at her corner.
She’d loved the unique view and the energetic ambience. The sunsets over the bay and the foghorns from ships in the early morning.
Now she owned a Victorian house in the upper-crust Pacific Heights neighborhood, per her parents’ request, since they deemed it safer. The street she lived on was beautiful and well maintained but admittedly lacking the character of the Wharf and Columbus Avenue, which held the sinfully delicious aromas of roasted garlic cloves and fresh seafood from the multitude of Italian restaurants and the sounds of music and laughter echoing through the corridor of the avenue from the pubs and bars she missed frequenting.
Actually, she missed all of artsy, lively North Beach. Mostly its zesty, mouthwatering, mozzarella-dripping pizza slices.
She considered whether she’d move back to River Cross once she broke ground on the inn. It’d likely behoove her to establish an office there and be on-site on a daily basis. She just wasn’t sure how that decision would sit with her father. He liked having her in the San Francisco headquarters, keeping her finger on the pulse of the company.
But Jewel contended that even if he wanted her to eventually take over, that wouldn’t be for another two decades, since her father was only forty-eight. And she had three older, male cousins currently serving as executive vice presidents who might be better suited to run the organization when the time came—and if her inn panned out.…
Jewel contemplated that scenario as the car wound through the city and then pulled into her drive. Behind a pewter-gray Range Rover.
“Were you expecting company?” her chauffeur asked.
“No. But I think I know who it is, so it’s okay.”
Rogen.
She had no idea what vehicle he drove, though this one seemed befitting of him. Elegantly rugged.
But what was he doing here?
EIGHT
Rogen was sprawled in a chair on the porch when Jewel ascended the steps and propped a hip against a tall column along the railing.
“How’d you find me?” she asked.
“Wasn’t too difficult.”
“Yet you’ve been back in California for six months and this is the first time you’ve shown up outside my house.”
“Yeah, well.” He hauled himself out of the chair. “You haven’t exactly called, now have you?” He gave her a pointed look.
She said, “I lost my phone years ago and had to reprogram a new one. I didn’t have all the old numbers written down anywhere.”
“The ‘old’ numbers.” Contacts from the past—her main connection to the past.
He couldn’t tell if her excuse was just that or legitimate.
Did it matter?
