He grinned at her. “Fair point. Continue.”
“You are you. And I know you have options. Hell, I’ve seen you with redheaded options who’d look good in a paper bag.”
“After I lost you at the club, I walked outside and took a cab home. Alone.” Anders ran a hand along his jaw. “If this is your roundabout way of asking if I’m dating or interested in anybody else, I’m not.”
“Good.”
“I have a rule. No sex for at least five dates.”
Olivia wiggled against him, making it crystal clear that she could feel what was going on in his jeans. “Does that really need to be a rule?” She leaned forward and pressed a soft kiss to the corner of his lips. Fuck, it would be so easy to turn his face a fraction and savor the taste of her again. Instead, he gently placed her on the floor and stood.
“I think it does. We need to figure out how to fit.”
Olivia laughed playfully. “I think we already figured out how to fit.”
“Liv,” he warned.
“Fine. Fine. Okay. No sex for five dates. But can we hurry them along?”
Anders shook his head. “The joy of my career is that there are going to be periods when I’m out of town or with the team. We’ll have to fit them in when we can, find moments when we can be together.”
“Can we define sex?” she asked, glancing down at his thumbs currently stroking the underside of her breasts.
He snatched them away. It would be impossible to keep his hands from her completely. “Fine. Remain clothed at all times. Closer to second base than third.”
“So, we’re doing this. We’re dating?” Olivia asked, stepping up against him.
He couldn’t resist putting his arms around her, pulling her close so his hand could rest on the curve of her ass. Damn, she felt as good as he remembered, and suddenly he was cursing himself for his bright idea and moral high ground. “We are. So, I’m going to leave before I break the rules minutes after making them.”
Her hands ran up his sides, and he savored the warmth of her touch. “Liv?”
“Yes, Anders?”
The way his name breathlessly left her mouth made his balls throb. “Kissing’s allowed, right?”
And without waiting for an answer, he pressed his lips to hers and reminded himself just how good she tasted.
5
“Well, this isn’t nerve-wracking at all, is it?” Emerson said, as Jake held the door open to the offices of the architects they’d selected to work on the designs for the distillery.
Jake squeezed her shoulder. “Just breathe, Em.”
Olivia took Jake’s advice and began to do the same.
Just breathe.
She ran her palms down the front of the black pants she wore. Thank goodness the meeting was happening early in the morning. She’d barely gotten a wink of sleep the previous evening. Partly because she’d been thinking over her conversation with Anders, and partly because she’d been worrying about the details, realizing the reason the renovation was being done slowly and in pieces was her fault.
Sure, she hadn’t caused the storm that had destroyed the main events venue. But everything else was all on her. She’d sucked at her PR crisis management, she’d messed up filling out the insurance company paperwork, and she’d failed at being strong enough to withstand the impacts it had on the business. And her father had been forced to take out an additional loan to pay off the clients who’d trusted them with their weddings. Days later, he’d died.
Yeah, it still stung.
By rights, she wondered if she should even be here. Jake and Emerson did all the real work. What did her contribution add up to?
She forced herself to recall what Connor had said, about her branding and design for Dyer’s Medallion gin being a large part of why people were taking it off the shelves. He’d reasoned that the everyday shopper didn’t really follow awards and medals. They just went to the shelf and grabbed the product that caught their eye. Then they bought it again because they loved it.
But in the grand scheme of things, that didn’t really feel like enough.
Emerson practically ran the company, Jake made the goddamn gin. What did she do? She didn’t work sixty percent of the hours they did.
She was lazy, as well as incompetent, by comparison.
Her therapist would have something to say about her thoughts sliding back that way. Doubting her own worth was something they’d talked about often.
“I hope they found a way to fit space for five stills, even if we can only afford to put three in it for now,” Jake said, while Emerson spoke to the woman at the reception desk. “And I know Em hopes they can do it without a major rebuild of the events hall. From a cost perspective, it would be better to not have to deal with too much demolition. If the footprint could remain close to the same, or with an extension that only affected a small portion of the foundation, that would be the best option.”
Olivia felt selfish for hoping that any offices built wouldn’t be freezing in winter and a tropical forest in summer. Prints of contemporary buildings the company had worked on framed the walls.
“I hope they retain the character of the distillery,” Olivia said quietly to Jake. “That’s the charm.”
By the time they were seated in a conference room with large windows that faced over a park, Olivia had managed to rein in her emotions.
Terrence, the chief architect on the project, stood at the front of the room next to an enlarged drawing of the side elevation of the events hall. The plan was to renovate this into the new distillery. Then turn the old distillery into a new events hall. “This is the view from the parking lot. By moving the doorway from the long edge of the building to the short edge, you’ll improve the flow of goods, but it will also create a longer, uninterrupted internal wall to run the stills against. It’s obviously cheaper to brick it up, but if you wanted, you could put in large ceiling-to-floor windows so customers could see into the distillery from the lot.”
Olivia studied the drawing. “Given the space isn’t big enough as is, which way do you intend to expand the building? This elevation is right on the edge of the parking lot.”
Terrence nodded. “Yeah, losing the parking lot would be the most ideal, but I get why that isn’t practical, especially once the old distillery building becomes the events hall. Our thought is to expand the south end to bring the factory closer to the road. Currently, you get seen from the road, but only when you’re about to turn into the lot. This way, the front of the building is visible from three angles from farther away.”
Olivia turned to Emerson. “That would be perfect for marketing space. We could advertise campaigns and events.”
Emerson grinned. “I like it. And am I right in assuming the costs are kept down because the foundation is only affected on the south side?”
Terrence nodded. “Yes. We’re making the building longer, that’s all. Jake took us through the distillery as it stands now, and this works better.”
“It’s actually better because it’s more oblong than square. In the existing building, we have a central corridor with stills on either side,” Jake said. “This way, we’ll have them all in a line with better flow.”