Chapter1
Big Dick Energy
Verity
“Don’t screw this up, Max,” I said through gritted teeth and a practised smile. Winning this pitch would represent the pinnacle of everything we’d worked towards. It would secure the company’s showcase piece in a prime central London location. Every architecture firm in the country wanted to win the bid for the London School of Economics’ main campus. Huge plots for development in central London come up very rarely, and this commission would be the largest carbon-neutral building in the UK and we werethisclose to being picked as the architects to design it.
If I could just control Max a little longer, just get through this next meeting, we’d be golden. Our designs were by far the best to have been submitted. The panel had been overwhelmingly positive. This meeting was just a formality – everyone knew it. To be honest I didn’t even really know why it was necessary. All we’d been told was that one of the big guns financing the building wanted to vet the potential architects personally. Annoying really – what did some random billionaire know about good design?
Freya and Sundip, the junior architects who had worked with Max and me on this project, were already sporting small smiles of victory and relaxing back into the comfy chairs of the massive conference room we were waiting in. Max was tense, but then Max was a tense human.
This was part of the problem with having him at these meetings. He was a brilliant architect and one of my best friends, but he could make one hell of a bad impression on clients. Mostly because he had a tendency towards brutal honesty – by way of example, our last clients did not take kindly to their ideas being dismissed as “pretentious bollocks”. Our business partnership worked because Max produced fabulous and innovative designs, while I was the charming level-headed negotiator who could massage clients’ egos. In all honesty, we tried to keep Max’s face time with the customer service end of the business to a minimum, but there’d been no way to avoid him coming to this particular meeting.
I rolled my head on my shoulders for a moment and focused on my breathing, just like Max’s sister Yaz had been showing me. Having always been dismissive of Yaz’s alternative therapy bullshit, I’d finally started listening to her after she’d recently used her breathing techniques to talk me down from a full-blown panic attack in the office. Since then, her techniques seemed to be really helping my anxiety. Only Yaz knew about the panic attacks – I’d sworn her to secrecy and hadn’t even confided in my brother, Heath. As far as Heath was concerned I’d left those panic attacks in the past, along with the rest of our early years. He’d only worry if he knew they’d come back, and I wanted him to concentrate on his own happiness, not on me. If he could just stop being such a prick to Yaz and accept he was in love with her that would be a start. Also, I’d never been very good at admitting vulnerability, and I did not want to be pitied or perceived as being weak – not if I could help it. Competent, together, gets-shit-done Verity: that was the image I projected into the world, and panic attacks weren’t compatible with that.
I focused on my surroundings, picking out specific things in turn – the leather chairs around the huge conference table, the bank of floor-to-ceiling windows behind me with the view across London stretching out below us. It was fair to say that this room exuded a lot of Big Dick Energy – it was designed to intimidate, to put whomever you were meeting with on the back foot. Well, that wasn’t going to work with me. It took a lot to intimidate Verity Markham. Beside me, Max had started tapping his pencil against the shiny tabletop.Tap tap tap tap tap… I put my hand over his to stop him. His nervous tension was driving me insane. Suddenly the doors opened and I started in my seat. All the air left my lungs in a rapid whoosh and my mouth fell open as the tall man who’d just pushed into the room came into view.
Harry.
His bone structure was much more defined now, a perfectly sculpted designer beard highlighting his chiselled jawline, which had been softer and less developed twenty years ago. His previous mop of dark curls had been shorn off and combed back, with only a slight wave indicating the craziness of before. Gone was the gangly boy with uncoordinated limbs and clumsy movements. In his place was an unbelievably gorgeous man in an Armani suit that he filled with a built physique, moving with the absolute confidence of someone who owned everything and everyone in this conference room.
His eyes were the same though, that same warm, deep brown – there was the Harry I remembered, there in his eyes. But then he focused on me and… nothing. No flash of recognition, no widening in surprise to see me sitting six feet away from him after twenty years. Just… nothing. The excited smile that had formed on my face after the initial shock of seeing him started to fade. Those beautiful eyes dropped from mine down to where my hand was still lain over Max’s and I did catch a flash of something in his expression, but then he looked away towards the other members of my team and the blank mask was back before I could read anything further into it. Max cleared his throat and shook my hand from his (no mean feat considering the death grip I’d started to exert), bringing me back to reality. With a jerk, I realised that everyone but me had stood up to greet Harry and his entourage. I was the only one in the room still sitting down with my mouth now open like a goldfish.
“You must be Mr York, I’m Max Hardcastle,” Max rumbled in his deep Yorkshire accent, his hand extended across the conference table to shake Harry’s. I shook my head to clear it and then sprang to my feet, accidentally sending my wheeled chair crashing back into the window behind me. Everyone’s eyes flew to me, and I muttered a harassed apology, praying for the glass to stay intact.
“Please don’t worry about the window,” Harry cut me off as he shook Max’s hand. “The glass is bullet-proof.” He gave me a practised, urbane smile which didn’t reach his eyes and which I instantly hated, then turned his attention back to Max. “Great to meet you too, finally, Mr Hardcastle – and please, call me Harry.”
“Max,” Max said, even managing his own smile which was a real turn-up charm-wise for him. “And the chair thrower is Verity Markham, my business partner.” Didn’t Max recognise Harry? Were we all just going to pretend we didn’t know each other? That we hadn’t gone to school together for four years? What was wrong with these people? I mean, Max I could maybe understand – Harry had been in the year above us and, really, I was the only one to have known him properly at school. But surelyHarryrememberedme. How could he possibly have forgotten?
“Ms Markham, of course,” Harry’s too-smooth voice was grating on my nerves now together with that smug, unaffected smile. I stared down at his large hand which was now extended in my direction and blinked. Max elbowed me sharply and cleared his throat and I jerked into action, rubbing my now sweating palms down the side of my skirt before forcing my hand to meet Harry’s. So much for me being the charming, together one in this scenario.
“Hi, Harry,” I forced out, my voice seeming unnaturally high and strangled. “I–”
“So, please take a seat,” Harry cut me off. He actually talkedright overme. Had I been sucked into an alternate universe where Harry York talks over me? “I’m so sorry but I have another meeting in…” he pushed up the sleeve of his jacket to check the time, and I got a glimpse of muscled forearm – his watch had that same Big Dick Energy as his conference room – “… another twenty-two minutes so we’ll have to keep this brief.”
Twenty-two minutes? My presentation alone was nearly an hour long. We’d worked for weeks on this. He looked over at me and raised his eyebrows expectantly. As my eyes locked with his it was like all the oxygen was sucked out of the room.
You are everything, Harry.
Those words from my teens flooded my mind. I could feel the same desperation and longing I’d felt back then, the rush of love and affection I hadn’t tried to hide when seventeen-year-old me had made that confession to Harry. The acute relief when I’d believed he felt the same. When I believed that he wanted me too. But he hadn’t wanted me, had he? It had all been an illusion. And here he was, proving that all over again.
Harry, please. I don’t know what’s happened. I don’t understand why you’re not taking my calls.
You’re scaring me, Harry.
Please, just speak to me.
My cheeks heated as in my mind I replayed those voicemails I’d left on his phone twenty years ago. I’d been so in love with Harry that I’d totally abandoned my pride and self-respect. And it had changed me. That humiliation had shaped me into a different person. Nowadays Ineverleft my pride behind, and I nevereverbegged.
I blinked, cleared my throat and tried to focus on the task in hand. Unfortunately, when I reached for my laptop my hand tipped over a glass of water, sending it flying across the table. Sundip, who’d spent the last week working on the model that now lay in the path of my destruction, quickly stood up and threw his jacket over the table, mopping up the water before it could reach the painstakingly designed miniature building.
“Jesus Christ,” Max muttered to me. “What’s up wi’ ya?” His northern accent tended to deepen with stress. My gaze flicked up to Harry for a moment. The smug bastard was supressing a smile. The only reason I could tell is that Iknewthat dimple on his now sculpted face. He was finding this allveryentertaining. I cleared my throat and opened my laptop. Sundip finished mopping up the water, then gamely put his soaking jacket back on as if nothing had happened. I made a mental note to give him a raise.
The screen was already going, so I opened the first slide and tried to segue straight into presentation mode. This project was too important to bugger up just because someone from my past, someone whoIthought was significant, couldn’t remember me. Unfortunately, instead of my usual slick presenting style I was tripping over my words, skipping essential parts and having to go back. At one point I made eye contact with Harry and the disinterested expression on his face made me completely lose my train of thought. There was silence for nearly a full minute before I could recover it.
“So, it’s not just the aesthetic appeal, but also the environmental impact of this building which puts it way above whatever–”
“Right, I think I’ve heard enough for now, Ms Markham,” Harry spoke over me. Again! “Thank you for your time today. I’m sure we’ll be getting in contact in due course. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
