Park Avenue (Book Six in the Fifth Avenue Series) (37 page)

“You expect us to be warm
and fuzzy?”

“Warm and fuzzy like a
grenade.”

“When do you want this
done?”

“Just
do it gradually.
 
It should be a
series of horrific shocks that will continue to unnerve her.
 
Take out Archer when you want to.
 
And I mean that—do him at any
point leading up to the opening of her hotel, which opens soon.
 
You know I want it to end there for her.
 
Front-page chaos.
 
Bloody, uncensored photographs
circulated on the Internet by some mysterious person who happens to be me.
 
In the meantime, if we rattle her
enough—if we really shake her to her core—the poor thing might not
be able to pull off anything but the opening of her own casket.
 
Same goes for George, who’s opening a
new building of his own on Columbus Circle.
 
Apparently, according to the
Times
,
it’s going to be the tallest and most expensive residential building in
Manhattan.
 
Blah, blah, blah.
 
Now Hugo Morel’s name is attached to it.
 
Have you heard?
 
There’s a whole suite of floors numbered
to fetch the attention of the Chinese.
 
Is there nothing George Redman doesn’t think of?
 
Oh, yes—his own safety.
 
We’ll see if he’s alive to open his
building.
 
Or to open his new
hotel.
 
My bet is that he won’t be.
 
But remember, he needs to be alive when
his daughter dies.
 
Or he must think
she’s dead—you two work it out.
 
If he has any feelings for her, which is questionable given what I know
of their relationship, it should at least sting him.
 
That is critical to Louis’ plan.
 
Devastate George Redman before he
dies.
 
Hearing of his second
daughter’s death might do that.
 
So,
put her through hell, if only to make him think that he’s next, which, of course,
he is.”

CHAPTER
FIFTY-ONE

In her apartment at
Redman Place, Pepper Redman blinked away tears of rage as she hung up the phone
on her uncle, who just told her, in no uncertain terms, that she now was to
take direction from Leana on the Columbus Circle project.

“You will cause no
friction,” George said.
 
“I expect
each of you to work well together.
 
I’m finished with this pettiness between you two.
 
She expects you there at five, tomorrow
morning.
 
I wouldn’t be late.”

“Then I’ll be there at
four.”

“Leana will see that as a
challenge.
 
Just be there at five,
Pepper.
 
Show up with a good attitude.
 
Get along with her.”

For a moment, she stood
absolutely still in her kitchen, her mind filled with betrayal, her stomach
clutched into knots.
 
She took a
deep breath and blew it out into the room.
 
She took a deeper breath, held it for a moment, felt her face grow red,
and then shouted into the room a sort of garbled, alien noise that most would
not consider human.

She tried to fathom how
this could have happened to her given all that she had done for her uncle and
all that she had given him—all of that time spent on the building, all of
that hard work, all of the coordination it took to bring the project to the
point where it was at now—on time, under budget, near completion.
 

She went to her
refrigerator, took out a bottle of wine, poured herself a glass, and downed it
before pouring herself another.
 

None of it made
sense.
 
She and her uncle already
agreed upon Hugo Morel’s concepts.
 
How could a few hours spent with Leana, of all people, and who could
barely see, be enough to change a perfectly acceptable design?
 
Something she and George each thought
was on point?
 
And how was changing
one simple design enough for her uncle to believe that Leana should now take
the reins?
 

When she asked, his
excuse was pathetic.

“You’re stretched too
thin,” he said to her.
 
“You’re
still the lead on your other projects.
 
And there will be others.
 
But now it’s time for me to see what Leana has in her.”

“Why?”

“Beyond what she created
with Morel?
 
I think I owe it to
her.
 
I also think she’s doing a
superb job with her hotel.
 
So, I
need to see if there’s something in her that could benefit Redman
International.
 
There might be.
 
I might have overlooked it.
 
What I saw from her today was on par
with what I used to see in Celina, which is no small feat.”

“You expect her to have
any attention to detail when she’s half blind?”

“Let’s just say that even
with one eye, Pepper, she saw more than you did in Morel’s concepts.
 
And she worked with him to improve them,
which only will help to sell that apartment and probably many others.
 
This isn’t the end of the world, so stop
behaving as if it is.
 
I expect you
to be professional tomorrow.
 
Are we
clear on that?
 
No games.”

“Fine.
 
But she’s going to have to earn my
respect.”

“I’m afraid that’s not
how this is going to work.
 
She’s
your boss on this project.
 
You’ll
need to earn hers.”

It was enough to make her
want another glass of wine, but she resisted it.
 
She needed to be sharp tomorrow.
 
If Wharton taught her one thing, it was
that at times like these, she needed to focus.
 

But it still stung.

How could he do this to
her?
 
Why would he do this to
her?
 
The Hotel Fifth would garner
good press for her career, but the Columbus Circle job was the one that would have
shot her to the top and put her name on the Manhattan map.
 
It wasn’t fair.
 
She’d done all the work.
 
Now her bitch of a cousin was going to
waltz in and take the lion’s share of the praise.
 
For what?
 
A few week’s work?

She’s going to destroy me
on this job
,
Pepper thought.
 
She’s going to
make it her mission to get rid of me.
 
I have to plan for that.
 
I
can’t let her win.

But right now, she
couldn’t process how to manage the situation.
 
She was too upset.
 
Despite the wine, she was tense to the
point that her shoulders had seized up.
 

She went into the living
room, stood in front of the enormous gilt-framed mirror next to her piano, and
studied herself in the glass.
 
It
was times like this that Pepper Redman didn’t see the successful young woman
she had become, but rather the fat girl from Arkansas whose life had been in
the shit can until she won a scholarship that changed everything.
 

Looking at herself now,
she didn’t see the fitted perfection of the twenty-thousand-dollar Chanel suit
she wore, or how her red hair curled up just right from the tops of her
shoulders, or how pretty her skin was, or how bright her green eyes were.
 
Instead, she saw something ugly and
destroyed, and she hated herself for it and for what she had allowed to just
happen.
 

She should have
challenged her uncle.
 
She should have
fought with him for her right to finish that building.
 
But she didn’t.
 
She became Penelope again, the bookish,
overweight, meek girl from the sticks who never got the boy, never was popular,
and who always backed down from confrontation until Wharton beat that out of
her.
 
She’d let him take away the
person she had invented for herself through diligence, intelligence and hard
work—Pepper Redman.

How could I have allowed
him to do that?
 
How could I have
been that weak and that stupid?
 
She’s going to ruin me.
 
I
know she will.

And then a thought
occurred to her.

Unless I ruin her first.

*
 
*
 
*

She went into the
kitchen, grabbed her cell from the Birkin she had treated herself to earlier,
and called Parker.
 
Was he
working?
 
Could he be out?
 
She had no idea how he spent his time,
but when you looked like Parker, at the very least, the latter was more
likely.
 

She tapped out his number
imagining that he was having dinner with one of his other paying lady
friends.
 
Charming them.
 
Laughing with them.
 
Fucking them.
 
She couldn’t still the stab of jealousy
that came from that.
 
She was
attracted to him.
 
She liked him
more than she should.
 
He was
perfection in the bedroom and when they went out, his manners were superb.
 
Without embarrassment, she could take
him anywhere—just as he could take her to places she never thought she’d
reach when he had his way with her.

But that wasn’t her focus
now.
 
He or his potential contacts
were.

To her surprise, he
answered.

“This is Parker.”

“Parker, it’s Pepper.”

“Hey!”

“How are you?”

“Just back from the
gym.
 
Sweaty.
 
You should see me.
 
In fact, I wish you could see me.
 
Everything that should be rippling is
doing just that.”

“Parker, this isn’t one
of those sorts of calls, though I appreciate the image.”

“It’s actually true.”

Focus.

“I was wondering if you
were free to come by tonight?”

“Absolutely.”

“You’re free?”

“I, uh, had a
cancellation.”

“Too much
information.
 
How soon can you be
here?”

“An hour?”

“I’ll
see you then.”

CHAPTER
FIFTY-TWO

As usual, he arrived on
time, which was another reason she liked him so much.
 
Punctuality was important to
Pepper.
 
It was one of the things
she was taught at Wharton.
 
Punctuality was key in the workplace.
 
It was the key to success, particularly
if you showed up early and left late.
 
Parker was respectful of her time.
 
He was thoughtful.
 
She
appreciated that.

And Christ is he
hot.
 
He’s the hottest man you’ve
ever been with Penelope, and you know it.
 
You’ll never do better than Parker, unless you lay down a significant
sum of cash for some seriously ramped-up stud.
 
But why bother when the magnificence
that is Parker is standing just outside your door?
 
Escort or not, who needs to know?
 
Parker has the means to change and to
assimilate.
 
He’s so polished and
likable, you could bring him back to your mother, who would adore him.
 
You’d also have an amazing sexual life
if you took him up on his offer and became seriously involved with him.

She couldn’t deal with
those thoughts right now.
 
She
shoved Penelope aside, opened the door and found Parker standing there,
perfectly groomed.
 
His thick, wavy
Sicilian hair was gelled in such a way that his curls gleamed from the light
above him in the hallway.
 
He was
wearing khakis and a white, button-down Oxford that showed off his deep tan and
pressed against his sculpted chest to the point that his nipples were
visible.
 
His shoes were
gorgeous.
 
Dark brown.
 
Obviously Prada because she knew Prada
when she saw it.
 
He stood
six-foot-two.
 
She looked up at him
with a flash of desire before she checked herself and asked him inside.