Page 17 of Love Me Tomorrow

Any other person would crumble under the weight of my daily agenda. The only reason I haven’t thus far is because I know with every fiber of my being that if I were to back off, Dad would turn to Amelie to fill my shoes.

And my twenty-seven-year-old sister wouldn’t last a week in them, maybe not even that.

Dad takes the seat opposite mine. “Genius,” he begins, sounding both seasoned entrepreneur and impatient conqueror, “is giving you the chance to build this hotel from the ground up, Savannah. I want you to be the visionary.”

My palms, now sweaty with nerves, squeeze my knees. “No.”

He arches a dark brow. “No? Not even if that means turning down the opportunity to put your interior design degree to use on something that isn’t rearranging tables in a restaurant?”

I’m being manipulated, I know that.

Edgar RoseIVis nothing if not a businessman down to his very core, and heknowshow to work a situation to his advantage. He knows that I’m unhappy corralling hundreds of employees like sheep for ERRG. He knows that, just before I left to meet Amelie in Europe, I emailed him a resignation letter that he refused to accept.

His response?The Edgar Rose Restaurant Group is in your blood, cherie. Will you really abandon our family’s legacy?

I caved then.

I sucked it up and trudged through months of watching Amelie lounge in beach chairs and dance all night with handsome men and stroll through art galleries while she collected unique pieces for resale, later, back in the States. I watched it all with my laptop cracked open, and my inbox highlighting a staggering two-thousand emails, and my phone going off every few minutes because someone had a problem back here in the city and I was, apparently, the only one equipped to handle it all.

When Dad reaches out to grasp my hand, holding on tightly, I raise my gaze from my yellow Bohemian dress to look at him. “You’ve wanted this for years, Savannah. The design element. The piecing together of furniture and wall colors and room layouts—and I’m giving it to you. You pick the team that you’d trust to see the project through, but every decision . . . it’s yours.”

When something is too good to be true, it usually is.

Life as a Rose has most certainly taught me that.

“Do we really have the funds for a hotel? Investors all lined up?” I shake my hand free of Dad’s to run it through my hair, then remember too late that I tied it back in a long braid today.Crap. Letting the strands do their own thing, I add, “And where in the world is there space in this city to build a new hotel?”

His grin is slow to rise. “We already have the property.” With an uptick of his chin, he nods to the paper he slid before me when I first sat down.

The ticking time bomb.

I reach for it, dragging it closer, and skim my gaze from the top of the contract down—only for my heart to stop.No. “The job site on Bourbon?” I croak, my tongue feeling swollen in my mouth. “That’s where the hotel is going to be?”

Looking all too pleased with himself, Dad leans back in his chair and folds his arms over his chest. “The permits have already been acquired. Same with that daiquiri shop next door. The landlord was all too willing to sell once I agreed to pay him up front.”

Up. Front.

That dread that felt like it was threatening to cling to my ankles now swarms north, to my knees, to my waist, until it becomes hard to breathe. “Pops,” I say slowly, swallowing past the thickening lump in my throat, “please tell me you aren’t planning what I think you’re planning.”

He raps his knuckles on the desk. “I’m going to own the whole block,cherie. Theentireblock, including—”

“Inked on Bourbon.”

I’m suddenly glad I didn’t have time to stop for coffee or a bagel this morning—or, hell, even one of Georgie’s red velvet cupcakes—because if I had, it would all be coming up right about now. Nausea swirls in my gut, and I press my hands to the edge of the desk to stem the need to find the closest toilet. Or trashcan. I’m not that particular, to be honest.

I think of Owen pouring his soul into every tattoo that he inks onto someone’s skin—ontomyskin, even—and I shake my head sharply. “You can’t. It’s one thing if that landlord was willing to give up his shop, and another thing entirely to force out a successful business.”

“But I won’t be the one forcing out a successful business.”

My gaze snaps up to meet Dad’s. “What? Who will, then?”

He grins. “You.”

5

Owen

Café au lait in hand, I cut around a group of tourists throwing spare change into a street musician’s open guitar suitcase, as they bop their heads to the rhythm of drumsticks thwacking plastic buckets.

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