Page 4 of Second to None
If gentrification came a little closer, maybe they could sell the building for a profit. A lot of sweat equity had gone into fixing up the formerly dilapidated row house. That might produce enough money to buy a building with an adjoining empty lot farther north, where real estate was still much cheaper.
She shook her head. The kids lived inthisneighborhood. This was where the center needed to be.
As she pivoted away from the window, her phone vibrated in her pocket. She’d left her nine-year-old daughter, Izzy, home with the babysitter, so she checked it. There was a text message from a number she didn’t recognize.
Cleared my schedule at 4:30 tomorrow to visit your facility. Max.
“Oh my God!” Emily looked up to see four faces turned in her direction. “Max ... Mr. Varela ... is coming tomorrow at four thirty.”
“You did it!” Gloria said, throwing up her hands in triumph.
“He’s just coming to look. There’s no guarantee he’ll fund the project,” Emily said. But hope danced in her heart as she took a deep breath and typed in,Thank you very much. I appreciate the time you are taking away from work. Do you need the address?
His return text snapped back:No.
“That was abrupt,” she muttered under her breath before raising her head to meet the watchful gazes again. “We’ll make this place shine.”
“And I’ll bake a pie,” Violet said. “Pecan sounds right.”
*
Max cursed softly as he shoved his phone into the pocket of his jeans. He didn’t have time to spend touring a kids’ center all the way up in Harlem. V-Chem Industries was about to become a subsidiary of MatCorp, and he was about to move to Chicago, where his new research laboratory awaited him.
But ever since Emily Wade had burst into his office, he’d been unable to get her out of his mind. Just like seven years ago, when he’d wanted her so badly that he’d cut off a friendship he valued profoundly. But it had hurt too much to spend time with her while he fought to keep his feelings hidden.
Outside his penthouse window, Manhattan’s lights blazed in all the colors that chemistry was capable of creating. He tried to take his mind off Emily by matching chemicals to their hues: mercury for electric blue, helium for the yellow glow, hydrogen to flash red.
But nothing worked. He kept coming back to the fact that Jake was dead. Which meant Emily was a widow.
He mourned the death of the strong, courageous Marine captain he’d felt such a bond with. The blow of that reality still vibrated in his gut.
But no matter how guilty it made him feel to think about the implications, he couldn’t dismiss the most significant one.
The woman he’d been obsessed with seven years ago was no longer off-limits.
