inherited it.”
Surprise flickered across his face. “You did do your homework. I was seventeen. I wasn’t in a position to run a hotel. But I sure wasn’t going to let my dad get his hands on it either.”
“I was curious about that. He really thought the building should be knocked down?”
Sawyer gazed up at the ceiling, shaking his head. “He still thinks that. Can you imagine all of this, gone forever?”
Kendall admired his profile, and the way he got lost in the details. This meant a lot to him. She could hear it in his voice. “It’s going to look incredible in a magazine or newspaper. We’ll get a photographer in here right away.”
“If you think this looks good, let me take you up to the main bar.” He locked the ballroom and they traversed the reception area to a metal door. “Ladies first.”
Kendall stepped into the dimly lit stairwell. “The fire stairs?”
“Only way to get there right now. They’re working on the wrought-iron railings of the grand staircase.”
She began to climb the concrete steps. “How far up?”
“Third floor.”
“Have you been this hands-on through the entire project? Or is it just because you’re behind schedule?” Sawyer was directly behind her. Was he doing what she’d been doing earlier and ogling her backside? He shouldn’t be, but part of her wanted to think he was.
“I’m here all the time. There are so many tiny details and they all have to be exactly right. I spent enough time here as a kid to remember most of it. Everything else I research in my great-grandfather’s records.”
“Don’t you have an architect to do that?”
“I take the lead. No one could possibly care about it as much as I do.”
Kendall stopped on the third-floor landing. “So you’re a control freak.” She didn’t mean it as an insult. She admired his dedication. How many men in his position cared about the details?
He reached past her to open the door. Inches apart, they faced each other. His presence resonated through her body, memories of his skin touching hers impossible to fend off. “I prefer methodical, but sure. Call me a control freak. That’s how you get what you want.”
She held her breath, recalling exactly how much control Sawyer had taken during their one night together—the way he’d gathered her wrists in his hands and pinned her arms to the mattress as he trailed kisses along her jaw, her neck, then across her collarbone and down the centerline of her chest...
Now she was happy for the construction helmet. She’d save herself a tragic head injury if he continued to plant these thoughts in her head and she fainted.
They entered a service hall and found yet another door hidden away around a corner. How anyone would ever find this was beyond her. He opened it and she stepped inside, the odor of fresh paint hitting her nose. Sawyer again flipped on the lights, revealing a room that put the ballroom ceiling to shame. She had not seen this room in her research.
A long, ebony bar lined one side of the room, with leaded glass pendant fixtures pooling light on the gleaming surface. The other side had more than a dozen intimate booths, with dark leather seats and ornate black and gold metal screens separating them. In the wall at the far end of the room was a massive circular frame, tall enough to skim the ceiling and graze the floor, and just as wide. It was shrouded in paper, but sunlight filtered through at the edges.
“A window? On the front of the building?” Kendall asked. “I don’t remember this.”
Sawyer nodded. “It was an original feature, but it was taken out in 1919. I had it rebuilt from the first photos of the hotel.”
“Why would anyone close up a window?”
“It’s a bar, and it was Prohibition. The entire thing was closed up, at least from the outside. In fact, the Grand Staircase led to nothing but the third floor elevators at that time. As far as the outside world knew, this didn’t exist. But if you were in the know, it was the busiest place in the entire hotel.”
“A speakeasy?”
He smiled with a hint of mischief. “You know, my great-grandfather bought the hotel with money he earned from bootlegging. The speakeasy is how he found out about it in the first place.”
“So that’s true? The Locke family fortune came from running liquor?”
“My family comes from very humble beginnings. But my great-grandfather had big ideas.” There was a fondness in his voice that warmed her heart. She hadn’t expected him to be sentimental. “It makes my father crazy. He’d prefer to think of the Lockes as upper crust through and through, but that’s just not the case.”
“You can’t change family history.”
“Exactly. And isn’t that the American dream? Make your way however you can? So much of what I have is because my great-grandfather was determined to make a better life for himself. Starting with this hotel.”
The fire in his eyes and the way color rose in his cheeks said how much this meant to him. She’d learned in Maine exactly how passionate he could be. “I’m sensing the hotel is more than another piece of your real estate portfolio.”
He turned to her, scanning her face. It was much more difficult to stay trained on the task at hand when they were alone like this. Another time or in another set of circumstances, it wouldn’t take much to convince her to kiss him, to see how much of his fire he might be willing to unleash on her.
But she was stuck with the here and now. Her lips and his were never to meet again.
“The Grand Legacy is my baby. I’ve been in love with this hotel since I was a kid. It’s a tie to my true family history, not the version of it my dad wishes were true.”
The Locke family tree was starting to come together now. “Is that why your great-grandfather left it to you? Instead of keeping it as part of Locke Hotels?” Kendall pulled out a notepad, wanting to take notes. As soon as she got back to the office, she was going to pen her first press release and start setting up the key interviews.
Sawyer shrugged. “Care to sit for a minute?”
“Oh, sure.” They slid into the closest booth.
He reached across the table and took the construction helmet off her head. It was such a simple gesture, but it all happened in slow motion as it brought back a memory from the wedding. “I think you can lose this. You’re safe.”
She smoothed her hair, wishing she had a mirror and a moment to collect herself. She saw him in the elevator at the wedding, the moment he’d brushed the side of her face with the back of his hand, telling her she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. It had probably been a line. She’d suspected it at the time. But part of her wanted so desperately to believe it, even now, when she wasn’t supposed to be thinking about him like this. That was how good Sawyer was at getting what he wanted. He made her want to give him everything.
“Can I ask you a question?” she asked, steadying her voice. “Do you think your
