by Olivia Hayle
She enjoys the battle of wits as much as I do.
“You’re not what I expected,” she says.
“No?”
“No. Not at all.”
It’s hard, then, to avoid stepping closer, to run her hair through my fingers and see if it’s just as silky to the touch. To trace her teasing lips and tell her she’s nothing like I expected either.
“Well,” I say instead. “I live to amaze.”
Faye rolls her eyes again. The gesture has an odd effect on me; endearing, rather than infuriating. “Exaggerator.”
I offer her my arm again. “Once more unto the breach?”
“You’re quoting Henry the V now?”
“I knew you’d catch that,” I say, leading us through the main gallery. She’d majored in Architecture, but she’d minored in English Literature—I’d read her CV. We weave past another giant ice sculpture and stop next to the string quartet. Hands fly over instruments, and I’m struck, as always, by awe in the face of sheer talent.
“Imagine having to play for all of these guests,” I say quietly, “knowing none of them will really be paying attention.”
Faye doesn’t respond. Her arm is stiff in mine, her back straight as cardboard. I follow her gaze to the man standing opposite us in the gallery. His gray hair, the rotund build, the hooded eyes. Elliot Ferris.
For a second, I think Faye is afraid of him. But then I catch sight of the blush on her cheeks and the fire in her eyes. She’s not afraid. She’s furious.
And he’s coming directly our way.
12
Faye
Elliot Ferris looks just like I remember him.
The sly eyes and the cravat, a glass of champagne in hand. No doubt it’s his third or fourth already. And he’s coming this way.
Asshole. He’d worked me ragged for years, making me compete with the other architects, all of us jockeying for position. I’d slaved over blueprints for him. Put his name on projects I’d designed. And worse than that… The Century Dome. A project he claims complete credit for when he couldn’t have designed that structure on his best damn day.
Because who did? Me. Without any recognition.
It takes every ounce of effort I have to lock down my body, to make my expression impassive, to hide the pure loathing I feel for this man.
He stops in front of us, lips pursed in consideration. “Henry Marchand,” he says slowly, “and Faye Alvarez. Now this I did not expect.”
“Elliot Ferris,” Henry says smoothly. His voice is courteous, but I can hear the layer of ice below. “Miss Alvarez works at my firm.”
Elliot’s eyebrows rise, and his eyes turn speculative. “Do you now, Miss Alvarez? How interesting.”
“It’s an excellent firm.”
“Yes, I’ve heard good things about your little firm, Marchand. Located somewhere uptown, right?” Elliot says with a smile. You’re not one of the big ones.
“Upper West Side, yes.”
“How’s your father? I haven’t seen him around much lately, but then, he never liked the New York scene.”
“He’s doing well.”
“Did you know that Miss Alvarez here used to work for me?” Elliot grins at Henry before winking at me, as if we share a secret. In some ways, I suppose we do. I’ve never told anyone about the Dome Project, and how his firm ended up getting it. I may hate this man, but I’m smart enough to be afraid of him, too.
“He knows,” I say shortly.
Henry’s gaze flashes down to mine. “Yes.”
“You showed some real promise, Faye. It’s a shame it didn’t work out for you at my company. I’m sure you could have gone far.” Elliot’s smile is patronizing, and I feel my cheeks flush with anger. That makes it not once—but twice—I’ve been spoken down to tonight, and that’s entirely two times too many.
“I was the—”
Henry cuts me off, and I swallow the insult I was stupidly about to throw at him. “Faye is an excellent architect, as I’m sure you know. Thank you for giving her a place to cut her teeth, Ferris, and for letting her go. I owe you one.”
Elliot’s hooded eyes narrow. If there is one thing I know he doesn’t like, it’s being outwitted—or worse, outclassed. And it’s clear that Henry has both in spades.
His smile turns snide. “Glad you see it that way. And you’ve clearly found her useful. Taking your staff to these events?” He winks at me again. “You would’ve protested if I’d have asked.”
I force myself to remain calm. “Well, it was never really clear at Ferris Properties what was work and what was play.”
They’re his own words—he once said the same to me—and he knows it. I see how amusement drains from his gaze to reveal nothing but pure hatred. I’m dangerous to him, and I’ve just reminded him of that.
Henry sees it too, because he cuts the interaction short.
“Enjoy the rest of your evening, Ferris. I trust I’ll see you around.” He speaks with cool indifference, the kind of dismissal it takes a lifetime to learn how to deliver, barely making eye contact.
Ferris hears it too. He’s a successful brute, but he’s no blue blood, and I don’t think he likes being reminded of that.
“Marchand,” he says tightly and walks away without another word to me.
I slowly release the breath I was holding. That was too close. And Henry was witness to all of it, to his words and insinuations, to the disparaging comments.
“Are you okay?” Henry asks, voice quiet. He’s steering me toward a stairwell.
“Yes,” I say, but I feel like I’m burning up inside. “How dare he? In front of you, as well? And what he insinuated about you and me, and about me and him… I would never. You must know that.”
“I do know it.”
“And you having to defend me and your choice to hire me.” I put my head in my hands, anger and shame making my skin hot to the touch. “I’m sorry. I’m afraid you’ve made an enemy tonight, through no fault of your own.”
And I know that Elliot Ferris doesn’t make for a particularly nice enemy.
Long fingers circle my wrists and gently, but forcefully, pull my hands away from my face. Henry’s skin is warm and dry to the touch.
“Faye, I have never once liked Elliot Ferris, and he has never liked me. That goes back to the rivalry between him and my father. You did not start that, all right?”
“Oh,” I say. “I didn’t know.”
“Of course you didn’t. And I defended my choice to hire you because it was the right choice. You don’t have to convince me of Elliot Ferris’s malpractice.”
“He really is an ass, isn’t he?”
Henry’s lips curve upwards again. I realize he’s standing close, far closer than usual, and his hands are still clasped around my wrists. “Yes, he really is.”
I swallow thickly. “Why are we by the stairs?”
Henry drops my hands and takes a step back. “I think it’s time we call it a night. But before we do, I want to show you something, so this night hasn’t been a complete bust for you. Have you ever been to this building before?”
“Many times.”
He looks amused at my tone. “But have you ever been to the roof?”
“No. That’s not open to the public, I think?”
“It most certainly isn’t. But we’re not members of the public, not tonight.” He starts heading up the stairs and looks down his nose at me. “We’re patrons of the arts.”
I can’t help but smile as I follow him up the stairs. It’s not hard to figure out what he’s doing. He wants to take my mind off of Elliot, of the past, of the whole interaction.
We reach the third floor. He’s not even winded, and despite my frequent fitness classes, I am. What does this man do to be in the shape he is?
“It’s up here.” He pauses at the corner of a hallway, peering around it. This high up, everything’s deserted. We walk through a gallery with Bronze Age plates.
“You’ve done this before?”
&nb
sp; “Yes. I think it’s this door… no, this one.” He stops at a wooden door. There’s a large, red sign on it. Staff only.
He walks straight up to it and tries the handle. It swings open, revealing a narrow iron staircase. “Bingo.”
“Umm… have you suddenly become illiterate?”
Henry snorts. “No. But sometimes you have to break the rules. Come on.”
Surprised, shocked, and more than a little intrigued, I follow him up the narrow staircase. This is not at all what I expected from him—straitlaced, businesslike, take-no-prisoners Henry Marchand. Although, a small voice says inside me, for men like him there are no consequences to breaking the rules. He’s the same as Elliot Ferris in that way.
I push the thought away. They’re both privileged, but that’s where the comparison ends.
There’s an iron door at the top of the staircase. Henry pauses in front of it. “Please be unlocked,” he murmurs.
And lo and behold… the door swings open when he turns the handle. We’re greeted to a gust of warm, New York air. It’s hot for late May, summer approaching faster by each day.
“Et voila,” he says quietly. We’re on the roof of the museum. Around us, the city’s spires rise in dizzying heights, reaching for the dark, starless sky. Central Park stretches out to the side, a vast expanse of darkness.
“This is gorgeous.”
“Wait till you see this.” I follow Henry across the roof, to the cupola of glass in the middle. Through the glass, we can see the mingling guests below and the exhibitions.
“If you stand right here, and you look through the glass…” He shows me where to place my feet. “Look through this specific pane of glass. Right here.”
As I do, my vision changes. The world below is much closer—I can see the people below with startling clarity. “What is this? A magnifying glass?” I lean back and look at the pane. It looks warped, the glass thicker than the rest.
Henry nods. “It was the architect’s own little joke, inserting a windowpane up here that doubles as binoculars. Made for spying.”
I can’t help but grin. “That’s… wicked.”
“And something that could only be done a century ago. Can you imagine the lawsuit if this was done today?”
“Astronomical.” I look through the glass again. I don’t recognize the people directly beneath it, but that doesn’t matter. These are the kind of oddities that make old buildings come alive. We’re using a function that was designed in secret, by someone very different from us, in a bygone era. The architect is gone but this lives on, brought back to life tonight.
“How did you learn about this?”
Henry rocks back on his heels. “One of my old architecture professors from Yale is a good friend of mine now. When I first started out in New York, in one of those firms—similar to Ferris’s—he took me out for coffee, and then he brought me here.”
“He knew about this.”
“His great-grandfather was the architect.”
“That’s impossible.”
“That architects have children?” Henry’s eyes glitter with amusement. “No, that’s entirely too possible.”
I roll my eyes at him, but inside, I’m awash with awe and envy. My college had been amazing, and I’d been lucky to get the partial ride that I did. But none of my teachers had connections or ancestry like that.
I’m also intrigued. Henry has never spoken about himself, and yet, tonight I’ve learned more things about him than I ever thought I would.
“Why do you think he showed you this?”
Henry leans back against a low plinth. His face turns thoughtful, gaze drifting from me to the skyline. The lights of the city glitter around us like stars. “I think he wanted to remind me of why we do this. Why we design and why we build.”
I wrap my arms around myself, despite not being cold at all. I shouldn’t push him—we’re not friends—but I can’t stop myself. “Did he think you were in any danger of forgetting that?”
Henry doesn’t answer for a long time. He’s still looking out over the city, a million miles away. “You worked for a firm like Ferris Properties. You know how it is.”
I nod, thinking of the constant pressure to profit. To squeeze the most out of every possible project—to occasionally deliver substandard results to clients and builders alike. It was something I’d hated, and most of the other architects with me. A race against the clock and the budget and Elliot Ferris’s ambitions.
“Dollars and cents.”
He cocks his head. “What really happened at your last job?”
I close my eyes and try to ignore the memories. Working until midnight every night without overtime. Being forced to compete for projects, sometimes with deadlines just a few hours away. The shame of Elliot tearing your project apart in front of the entire staff. He liked doing that. It wasn’t unusual for some of the junior architects to flee in tears after one of his teardowns.
They were usually let go the next day.
I’d survived three teardowns without shedding a tear. You want this, I had repeated in my head as he criticized everything from the floor plans to the material choice. You’re good at this.
And the Century Dome…
The sound of an ambulance on the street below us rushes past, the sirens wailing. “He rules by fear,” I say. “And not the good, inspiring kind. It’s the one that makes everybody unsure if they’ll have a job tomorrow if they make an arbitrary mistake.”
Henry nods, as if he didn’t expect anything else. “He doesn’t seem like a particularly adept boss.”
“No, he’s not.” More memories come rushing in. I know I should stop talking, that Henry doesn’t need to know this. This is my new job and my opportunity at a renewed career. But he’d asked.
And I haven’t spoken to anyone about this beside Jessie.
“He’d won the Century Dome project before I started. It was just about to go into construction, but he wasn’t happy with it. So I redesigned it. I was so happy to be there—to be working with this—that I did it without his knowledge.”
“I can’t imagine that went down well.”
“It didn’t, at first. Except he loved my designs. Overnight, they were incorporated into the dome. It was mediocre before my changes. And when I say changes, they were considerable. It looked completely different before.”
His lip curves slightly, but his eyes are serious. “I have no doubt about that.”
“And I was running point. Promoted. It was a dream job, despite the frequent scoldings, the last-minutes changes, his temper. All Ferris cares about is prestige and money. Being the best, even if it’s a sham.”
Henry nods. “He’s not particularly well-respected amongst architects.”
“In the end I was probably too much of a liability. The Century Dome was unveiled, and I knew too much. I’d been involved but gotten no credit. He couldn’t have me talking, and offense is the best defense,” I say. “I was fired without a letter of recommendation and discredited amongst my co-workers.”
Henry’s jaw is clenched tight, but he doesn’t ask for more details. He just shakes his head. “The man is a disgrace to the profession.”
“Yes.”
“That project was yours, and your name is nowhere near it.”
He understands—of course he understands. My vanity and pride, the part of me that had wanted this since I was a kid, had been the most upset by that part. That something I’d given years of my life to could not be traced in any way back to me.
“No.”
“I’m surprised you could handle being that civil to him.”
I shoot him a crooked smile. “Well, you helped. There was a time when all I wanted was to hit him.”
Henry raises an eyebrow. “Violent, Miss Alvarez?”
“When provoked.”
“Then rightly so,” he says. His jaw clenches again, eyes turning hard. “Was he ever inappropriate toward you?”
It’s not hard to imagine what he’s thi
nking of. I’d used that word in my letter—lecherous. “All the time. That was his way, you know.” I shake my head, thinking about the sly comments and the roaming eyes. “He made comments. Suggestions. Invited my attention—sure. But he never tried anything with me after my consistent nos. I think he knew that I’d quit if he did, and he’d lose the Dome.”
Henry nods. Silhouetted by the city lights, the evening breeze ruffling his thick hair, he looks otherworldly. Tall and tux-clad, with eyes that are almost bruising in their intensity. “Good answer,” he says tightly.
“Oh?”
“Yes. Because if you had phrased that any differently, I’d have had to go downstairs again and find the man.”
“Violent, Mr. Marchand?”
“When provoked,” he echoes. The velvet in his voice is back, and I find myself trapped in his gaze. I don’t want to look away.
We couldn’t come from more different worlds; the power imbalance between us is astronomical. And still, I have the unsettling feeling that no one has ever understood me better.
Henry’s lips curve into a fully fledged smile. It softens his strong features and reveals the faintest hint of a dimple. Is that why he never smiles? Because he doesn’t want to look too human?
No, I think. It’s because it makes him devastatingly handsome.
The smile lights his eyes. “Another staring contest, Faye? You really are twelve.”
“Am I? Look away, then.”
“No,” he says softly. “I don’t think I will.”
And all around us, the city looks on, shining in approval.
13
Henry
On Monday, by unspoken agreement, Faye and I don’t talk about the Founders’ Gala or the intimate conversation we had on the roof. Doing that would be acknowledgement of the friendship between us, tentative as it might be, something that has no place in the office.
Faye is as prepared for the Monday meeting as always. “You have the ten o’clock meeting with Montgomery on Wednesday. I’ll send them the briefs tomorrow when the architects are done with it.”