oxford cloth shirt? The shiny black dress shoes? Max’s uniform, in other words. The clothes Seb had seen Max Grosvenor wear every workday for the past ten years.
“You’ll be more professional if you look professional,” Max had said to Seb when he’d hired him. “Remember that.”
Seb had. He was wearing his own version of the Grosvenor Design uniform—navy slacks, long-sleeved grey-and-white pinstripe shirt and toning tie—right now.
Max, on the other hand, was clad in a pair of faded jeans and a dark-blue windbreaker over a much-washed formerly gold sweatshirt with University of Washington on its chest in flaky white letters. His hair was windblown and his sockless feet were stuffed into a pair of rather new deck shoes. “Sorry I’m late,” he said briskly. “Went sailing.”
Seb had to consciously shut his mouth. Sailing? Max?
Well, of course thousands of people did—even on weekdays—but not Max Grosvenor. Max Grosvenor was a workaholic.
Now Max shucked his jacket and took a large design portfolio out of the cabinet. “I would have gone home to change, but I’d told you three. So—” he shrugged cheerfully “—here I am.”
Seb was still nonplussed. A little confused. He could understand it if it had been a meeting. Even a meeting on a sailboat. And admittedly stranger things had happened. But he didn’t ask.
And Max was all business now, despite his apparel. He opened the portfolio to their design for Blake-Carmody. “We got it,” he said with a grin and a thumbs-up.
And Seb grinned, too, delighted that all their hard work had paid off.
“We went over it all while you were down in Reno,” Max went on. “I brought along a couple of project people as well. Hope you don’t mind, but time was of the essence.”
“No. Not at all.” Seb understood completely. While he had done considerable work on the project, Max was the president of the company.
And no one else could have gone to Reno in Seb’s place. That medical complex project there was all his.
Max nodded. “Of course not. Good man.” Still smiling, he dropped into the leather chair behind his desk and folded his arms behind his head, then nodded at the other chair for Seb to take a seat, too. “I was sure you’d understand. And I told Carmody a lot of the work was yours.”
Seb settled into the other chair. “Thanks.” He was glad to hear it, particularly because then Carmody would understand that Max wasn’t solely responsible for the work and he wouldn’t feel as if they were being fobbed off on an inferior when Seb took over.
Max dropped his arms and leaned forward, resting his forearms on his thighs as he locked his fingers together and said earnestly. “So I hope you won’t feel cut out if I see this through myself.”
Seb blinked.
“I know we’d talked about you taking it over,” Max went on. “But you’ve been in Reno a lot. And you’ve still got a finger or two in Fogerty’s project and the Hayes Building. Right?”
“Right.” But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t be willing to work even harder to do Carmody-Blake.
Max nodded happily. “Exactly. And you’ll have more time to run the bid on the school in Kent this way,” he went on. “They were really impressed with your ideas.”
Seb made an inarticulate sound at that point, hoping it sounded as if he was pleased with the compliment. It was a compliment. It was just—he’d really wanted the Blake-Carmody project.
He had no right to be disappointed, really. Logically he knew that. Yes, he’d been invited to share his ideas for the project, and yes, Max had taken them seriously. They’d even discussed the possibility of him taking over as head architect on the job. But while it had been unspoken, it had never been official.
And he could understand why Max would enjoy overseeing a plum job like this one. It was just that over the past couple of months Max had been talking about “stepping back” and “taking it easy.”
And hell, he’d just come in from sailing, hadn’t he?
“I knew you’d understand. Rodriguez is going to boss the office space side of it. Chang’s doing the shops,” Max went on.
That made sense. Frank Rodriguez and Danny Chang had also contributed to the portfolio with ideas that reflected their specialities. Seb nodded.
“And I’ve asked Neely to take charge of the living spaces.”
“What!” Seb sat up straight. “Neely Robson?”
All of a sudden it didn’t sound simply like Max keeping the plum job for himself. It sounded like—
Seb shook his head as if he were hearing things. “You can’t be serious.”
At his tone, Max stiffened abruptly. “I’m perfectly serious.”
“But she’s not experienced enough! She’s been here, what? Six months? She’s green.”
“She’s won awards. She got the Balthus Grant.”
“She draws pretty pictures.” All warm cozy stuff. She might as well be an interior decorator, Seb thought.
He’d only worked with Neely Robson one time—and that had been merely at the discussion stage in the first month she was there. It hadn’t gone well. He’d thought her ideas were fluff and had said so. She had been of the opinion that he only wanted to build skyscrapers that were phallic symbols and had said that.
To say they hadn’t hit it off was an understatement.
“The clients like her.”
You like her, Seb wanted to say. You like her curve body and her long honey colored hair and her luscious lips that curved into dimpled smiles. But fortunately he clamped his teeth together before any of those words got past his lips.
“She’s good at what she does,” Max said mildly. He leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers in front of his mouth, a smile playing on his lips as if he were thinking about something very different than designing buildings.
And what exactly has she been doing with you? Seb wondered acidly. But he had the brains not to say that, either.
Still he had to say something. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t noticed Neely Robson’s appeal to his boss over the past couple of months. She was an attractive woman. No question about it. A man would have to be dead not to notice.
But the firm was big enough that she hadn’t really come to Max’s notice until she’d won that damned award in February. Then he’d invited her to work on the hospital addition.
Since then Max had paid more and more attention to her.
Seb couldn’t count the number of times he had noticed her coming out of Max’s office or the multitude of times in the last couple of months he’d heard her name on Max’s lips. And he’d certainly seen Max’s gaze linger on her in staff
