Gaia’s mind was spinning with his words. “You don’t even know if I’m any good. Why would you…?”
“You have vision. You looked at an old, rundown building and knew that it had something special in it. You also looked across the street when I mentioned the other buildings and I know you already have ideas running through your head. I’ve driven by that area every day for several years and I never thought about renovating the warehouse.”
She was still overwhelmed. “You don’t even know if the project will be feasible. The walls of the factory, they might come down with any sort of construction.”
He shook his head. “I still have to do some research, but the building was made with a type of construction that wasn’t always applied. It was much more expensive during the era in which that building was constructed, but the crossbars and support systems, not to mention the type of concrete that was used, has made the building more structurally sound than most. And believe it or not, the mortar that needs to be replaced will help make the building more earthquake proof.”
There was that sparkle again and it made her stomach quiver with awareness and excitement. Had it ever gone away?
“Relax,” he urged, that teasing back in his voice. “It’s going to be okay.”
Gaia lifted her sandwich and nibbled but didn’t reply. No, everything wasn’t going to be okay, because there were too many things wrong with that building. He was going to green light a project that would bankrupt him.
“So, why did you quadruple the costs for the renovation?” he asked, taking another bite of his sandwich, looking across the table at her.
Startled, Gaia carefully set her sandwich back down on the plate. “Um…the costs aren’t…”
“Yes, they are. It was a mystery as to why a proposed renovation project would cost so much, but when I started to look into the numbers, every single one of them is four times what the supplies would actually cost.” He paused, watching her lovely features carefully. “That was on purpose, wasn’t it?”
Again, Gaia struggled to answer. She didn’t think she could come up with a believable answer. Honesty was probably the best way to deal with this man. “Yes,” she finally said, sighing with relief. “Yes, I think that moving forward with the project is dangerous. I don’t know enough about building structures and materials. As much as I would love to see that beautiful building brought back to life, I don’t think that the idea will work. My brother brought my drawings to your foreman without my knowledge.” She shrugged slightly as she said, “As I’ve told you, I dreamt up the idea while sitting in a coffee shop. I never thought my drawings could become reality.”
He smiled slightly and she saw the admiration in his eyes. Admiration? For being honest? Or was he admiring her for her discouragement. Neither possibility made any sense.
“What made you go into interior design?” he asked, changing the subject. Thankfully, that was a subject she could discuss that didn’t cause her to tremble like a leaf. For the next hour, they discussed how each of them had gotten into their chosen professions. His tales of math and buildings fascinated her, the way he and his brothers had designed their first, second, and third tree houses. She laughed and relaxed…well, as much as a woman could relax around a man as attractive as Logan Steele. But she couldn’t deny that she was relieved when he got a call about a meeting and he had to drop her off.
Getting into her own car that afternoon, she smiled, shaking her head at how funny the man was. She really was shocked that she’d been able to laugh at some of his quips.
But that was over, she told herself. No more alone time with Logan Steele. Yes, he was gorgeous and funny, intelligent and surprisingly kind for such a hard looking man. But he was dangerous. Devilishly dangerous.
Chapter 3
“Will this one work?” Gaia asked, glancing at her watch. It was another foggy morning in Seattle and she had to get to work. It was very early in the morning and she’d been woken up by Freddy, her brother, asking how her meeting the previous day had gone and, when she’d heard the strange tone in his voice, had asked if he would meet her for breakfast. His suggestion to meet here, at the old factory, sounded ominous.
Digging down deep, she searched her meager reservoir for a bit more patience as Freddy looked around at the abandoned warehouse. Gaia had worked so hard yesterday to stop Logan Steele from becoming interested in this project and she’d failed miserably! Now Freddy was looking around and Gaia had to bite her tongue to keep from snapping at him for showing his boss her sketches without her permission.
His eyes took in the exposed, steel beams, the broken concrete stairs and pillars, as well as the bricks that needed mortar or had already fallen to the floor. The warehouse was a mess, but there was no denying that the place had once been beautiful.
He looked up and down, left and right, then slowly nodded his head. “Yeah, this one looks good! And your sketches that I showed to Tommy make this whole place look a lot more interesting.” he replied, looking up at the huge windows and metal rafters. He was completely oblivious to his sister’s anger and frustration. “What kind of factory used to be in here?”
Gaia hid her impatience by taking a sip from her thermos. She was still flustered from yesterday’s adventure with Logan, remembering how he’d touched her, the gentle but firm slide of his hand against her back or her arm.
Just the memories of that man’s touch caused her to shiver with awareness and she’d actually had trouble sleeping last night, thinking about what it would have been like if he’d…Gaia took another long swallow of the liquid in her thermos, trying to banish those memories.
Thankfully, the liquid in her thermos only looked like coffee to everyone else and the contents soothed her temper, calming down her anger as the sweet coffee always did. It was actually hot chocolate mixed with coffee, her decadent secret that not even Freddy knew about. The coffee in this town just seemed bitter than anything she’d ever tried. No idea why. The chocolate took the edge off so she could get her caffeine fix without choking.
With the rich coffee soothing her frazzled nerves, she tried not to sound impatient with her brother. “I have no idea what kinds of products were created here, Freddy.” She turned to look up at her brother, seeing the strain around his eyes that didn’t used to be there. If he would only dedicate himself to his current job! He was a good worker when he put his mind to the effort. He wouldn’t be living paycheck to paycheck, trying to find odd jobs just to pay his rent if he could just keep this job with Steele Industries. Unfortunately, he never kept a job for longer than a few months and she suspected that his job with Tommy was going to head in the same direction. Freddy was just so…obsessed! She didn’t understand this anger towards the Steele brothers, but he was the only family she had left.
Besides, she felt as if it were her responsibility to keep him under control. She couldn’t alienate him for fear that he would just go off the deep end and not talk to her. “Does it matter? I thought your idea was more future related than historically relevant.”
Freddy heard the suppressed irritation in his sister’s voice and turned, eyes narrowed. “This isn’t for me, Gaia. This is for Dad. It’s to get back his dignity.”
Gaia sighed, rubbing her forehead, still trying to find that elusive patience. Unfortunately, she was tired from a lack of sleep last night, fed up with Freddy’s plots of revenge, and was going to be late for work if she didn’t hurry. “Freddy, Dad died years ago. His dignity will not be avenged by this plan.” She looked into his eyes, so similar to her amber ones. “Freddy, why do you need to do this? Dad won’t know anything about it. No one will understand why you’ve done this and you aren’t even sure that it will accomplish your desired results.”
“Dad will know!” he said with a vengeful tone. “And you should know that! Dad might have died, but his memory lives on. The Steele family ruined Dad! They ruined our lives!”
Gaia saw the hatred in her brother’s eyes and didn’t know how to funnel it
into more productive causes. Her brother had such passion, a heart that sizzled with fire. Why couldn’t he use that passion for something more current, such as fighting for the rights of the homeless or defending abused children? Freddy would make such a wonderful lawyer or social worker!
Unfortunately, he seemed stuck on this plan and hopefully she’d come up with a safe enough option. A plan that would focus his attention for a while, give him a purpose, so he might see how productive a full time job could be.
Sensing his almost impotent rage, she knew she was going to have to talk to someone about Freddy. He was wasting his life and couldn’t move on. And worse, he was now pulling her down with him. If he continued with this path, she was going to have to let him self-implode, to go down the path but warn the authorities that he needed help.
Even as she considered that, she pushed the thought away. Freddy was her family. The only family she had left. She should be helping him, not resenting him for his struggles. Her guilt hit her hard, as it always did, but she pushed it away and focused on trying to help her brother.
Stifling her angry words, she turned to face him, trying to show him that they were still a family. “I’m here, Freddy,” she said, putting a hand on his arm. With her touch and her words, he immediately calmed down and the fire in his eyes seemed to simmer instead of flame up. “I’m helping. I loved Dad too. And I’ll build up a plan for this if you think the old building will work. So let me do my part while you keep your job, okay?” She glanced at her watch again, and looked up into his eyes. “We need to start our day. We’re both going to be late if we don’t hurry.”
He breathed deeply, shrugging his shoulders as if he needed to get rid of some of the tension. Looking around once more, he nodded his head, almost eager for the plan to get started. “Yeah. I think it would be great, Gaia. And I’m sorry,” he finally replied and pulled her into a hug. “I just get so angry, thinking about how Dad drank himself to death after the sale of our house.”
Gaia pulled back, trying to get him to understand the truth. “You know no one pressured Dad to sell the house and land, right? He agreed to the terms of the sale all by himself.”
Gaia released her brother and walked over to the windows, looking out at the grey, churning waters of Puget Sound. The factory building was perfectly located on the waterfront, which made the views of the water incredible! She would absolutely love to live here, but the dream of this area changing from a weed-ridden building that was slowly deteriorating into a hub of a strong community was only a pipe dream. Making this old building into something beautiful again would be too costly and too dangerous.
Thinking of her father, about how he’d sold their declining, nearly bankrupt farm so many years ago to make room for a housing community, she sighed and tried one more time to get Freddy to see reason.
She felt him come up behind her again and knew from the first words out of his mouth that she’d failed. “Yeah, no one pressured him, but the deal was bad. He should have gotten more money for the land and you know it.”
She and her brother had had this conversation many times over the past few years, since her father finally passed away. Yes, their father had sold their farm and the price had seemed fair at the time. But her father hadn’t been a good farmer. They were in debt up to their ears and after the sale, her dad hadn’t been able to figure out another career, or even find a job. All his life, he’d thought of himself as a farmer, just like his father, and grandfather.
So when the money from the sale of their farm had run out, so had his will to live. He’d started drinking and he’d sunk into a depression, eventually dying of liver failure.
Gaia had taken over. She’d been seventeen at the time and had used her father’s life insurance to go to design school. She’d tried so hard to steer Freddy away from revenge against the Steele family, the owners of the corporation that had bought their father’s farmland, but he’d gotten this renovation plan into his brain and now he couldn’t stop. She wasn’t exactly sure how he was going to extract revenge through this project though. It just didn’t seem like it would work, even if Steele Industries took over the building, renovated the factory into condominiums and none of them sold, she still didn’t think that it would destroy the company. It was a huge corporation, with projects all over the United States, with several happening right here in Seattle, where business was booming at the same pace as the tech industries that were relocating to the city.
Trying to clarify, she looked up at her taller brother, trying to understand his thinking. “Okay, so the plan is to get them to buy this old factory, convince them that it is the perfect location to renovate and build apartments, then walk away laughing when the plan fails.” She looked at Freddy. “Am I missing anything?” she asked. She refused to admit to him how she’d done everything in her power to discourage Logan Steele yesterday afternoon, going so far as to adjust the estimated costs in order to make him think that the project would be too expensive to even consider.
Freddy shook his head. “Nah. Convincing them to buy a dump, tricking them into spending money to fix this place up, and then laughing when they go bankrupt is a fitting revenge.” He smiled, his eyes narrowing as he looked back at the building. Gaia knew that her brother only saw the mess and not the potential. That alone made her sad because it defined his life, showed her that he was fixated on the negative instead of the possibilities.
But as she looked into his eyes she realized there was something more there. Something she didn’t quite….
Gaia didn’t like that look. It scared her, made her think there was more to his plan than he was letting on. Trying to trust him, she tilted her head to the side slightly, trying to gauge his commitment. “And no matter what, after this, you’ll move on, right? You’ll start to live your own life?”
Gaia breathed a bit more easily when Freddy smiled and punched her gently on her arm in a brotherly fashion. “It isn’t going to fail.”
Her mind conjured up startling green eyes and black hair, muscles that made her body tremble with awareness and a smile that caused butterflies to flutter around inside of her body. She needed to be sure that Freddy wouldn’t…that he would… “But if they don’t buy into this, if they somehow see that the idea isn’t viable, you’ll move on. I need your promise that this will be the end of it.”
He laughed softly. “I promise. Once this is over, I’ll go back to school and live my own life. You’ve been preaching it enough. I’ll go to university and do something with my life.”
She looked into his eyes, trying to see if he was telling her the truth. She only saw sincerity in those golden eyes so she sighed with relief. “Good.” Glancing at her watch again, she cringed. “Now I really have to go or I’m going to be late for work. Do you need a ride?”
Freddy shook his head. “Nah. You go ahead. I know you probably have some ritzy client waiting, needing a comfy, little hideaway that only you can create for them.”
Gaia stared up at him, trying not to be offended, but the sneer on his handsome features made it difficult. She really didn’t like how he ridiculed her job. She was an interior designer and loved her work. She didn’t think that was a crime. She loved creating rooms that her clients loved and spaces that helped them work or grow a family. None of her clients were ultra-wealthy, so it wasn’t as if her work was tending to the whims of the super-rich. Her clients were people who worked hard and didn’t have the time or the talent to create a space that helped their family live.
Not wanting to start a fight with him again, she ignored both the sneer as well as the condescending tone. “I love you, Freddy,” she said and lifted up on her toes to kiss his scruffy cheek. At twenty-eight, he was a good-looking guy. He just needed to rid himself of the hatred, find something that he loved to do. And move on from this crazy and unhealthy need for revenge against the Steele family!
Chapter 4
Gaia looked at the drawings and smiled. Every time she finished a design, a little bubble of
excitement would shoot through her. Looking at this one, she wanted to stand up and dance around, do a little jig.
Dancing around her apartment wasn’t sophisticated, she reminded herself. And calling up a handsome, green-eyed devil would be a horrible idea. That thought shouldn’t have even popped into her mind. Probably the only reason it had was because he had e-mailed her some details about the warehouse renovation last night.
Instead, she stood up and pulled her hair up into a ponytail and started stretching. She’d go for a run instead. A much more sophisticated celebration, she told herself. No dancing around the room or laughing, clapping her hands over her head. She would not turn on the music. She would just go for a long, quiet run and center herself.
She’d already donned her exercise clothes, knowing that she would need this at some point during her evening.
“Hey!” a voice called to her as soon as she stepped out of the elevator into the lobby of her building.
Gaia swung around, feeling like she’d been doing something wrong. Which, in a way, she had been. She’d been working on the design to ruin a family. Not something she liked. It was wrong and she wanted to scrap the idea, move on. Since Freddy wouldn’t let it go, she was taking steps to make sure his plan failed while, at the same time, trying to figure out how to get him help. She felt like she was lying on every front during this campaign in an effort to do the right thing for everyone and, most likely, was failing in every way.
But the woman standing in the lobby was one of those vivacious beauties that everyone wanted to befriend. “Marcy! What are you doing here?” she asked of the petite dynamo that was currently working for the man who lived on the top floor of this building. Why the CEO of Steele Industries lived in a condominium instead of a fabulously beautiful house overlooking the water, she didn’t understand, but then again, it wasn’t any of her business either. Gaia knew that Marcy had married that handsome CEO a while ago, and had even heard that they’d had a baby.
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