Chapter 8: Suite on the Boss: Chapter 7

My goal for today had been a simple one. Swim a few lovely laps, use the spa, and sit in the sauna. Then I’d order room service from The Ivy, most likely the truffle burger. And then I planned on passing out dead in the most comfortable bed I can imagine to the sound of an old sitcom playing on the TV.

I had hoped, too, that I wouldn’t think about my ex-husband too much, either. It would have been our fourth wedding anniversary today.

And I’d gone to the very hotel I’d caught him cheating in. But not in my room, at least. I know exactly where he was. 1714.

It felt full circle. It felt better than sitting at home.

But the night hadn’t gone as planned.

Isaac is quiet beside me, as if he’s taking in my reaction to the suite he’s upgraded me to. Only I’m not sure suite is the right word.

Mansion, is my first thought.

The foyer is tastefully decorated, sparingly furnished, and leads into the living room.

And the living room is tremendous.

The penthouse must be a duplex, because the living room’s ceiling is three times the height of a normal one. The entire wall is covered in beautifully trimmed windows that look out over the glittering city. Tasteful white sofas are arranged around a giant marble coffee table. On it is a vase of fresh flowers, their scent spreading throughout the room.

“Oh my God,” I whisper.

“It’s big,” Isaac says. I hear him set down my bag and move around behind me. Opening doors, perhaps. I don’t know. I can’t look away from the wide expanse of oriental carpet and the open doorway leading into a study.

A study. In a hotel room.

“I can’t imagine who’s stayed here,” I say. “Presidents? Superstars?”

“Yes, and yes.” His voice comes from somewhere far away. “The security protocol it takes to host heads of state is a bitch, honestly, but we have it down to a science now.”

“Wow.” I run my hand over the back of one of the couches. “This place is old.”

“Yes. We’ve renovated the penthouse suite three times, but it still has some of its original features.” He’s on the steps to the stairway. “Sophia, I want to show you something.”

I follow him up the stairs. “You must have had old movie stars staying here, right? During the black-and-white film era?”

“All of them,” he says. “Diana Dunne took that famous photo here. You know the shot of her with the martini glass and pearl necklace?”

“Yes,” I say. “It’s only one of the most iconic images ever taken.”

He pushes open the door to the upstairs bathroom. “It was taken in this tub.”

The room is familiar. The lip of the giant standing tub, its gold wrought legs, and the skyline of New York behind it. The entire bathroom is clad in subtle marble and lightened with inlaid sconces.

“Oh my God,” I whisper.

Isaac’s watching me. “The view from the tub is one of this suite’s best features.”

“How much is the penthouse per night?” I ask. Then, I shake my head. “Please don’t tell me. I can’t possibly accept spending the night here.”

He closes the door to the bathroom and heads to the stairs again. I follow him, catching a glimpse of the master bedroom on the way. The bed is enormous.

Gigantic.

“You can,” he says, “and you will. The suite is empty tonight regardless. And maybe it’ll change your mind about the pitch. This is the old-world glamour we’re famous for, after all. Give the new chain some of this elegance.”

I chuckle. “You’re trying to win our argument?”

“Of course, I am, Miss Bishop.”

“Sophia,” I say. “We said… Sophia, when we’re like this.”

What exactly like this means is unclear, and yet it makes perfect sense. When we’re alone.

When we’re talking like equals.

He smiles. “Okay. Sophia.”

“Thank you for this. I don’t know how I’ll ever repay you.”

“Blow my mind with the pitch.”

“I will, I promise.”

His eyes are dark with intensity. “Oh, I have no doubt about that.”

I sink down on one of the couches. “I appreciate the vote of confidence.”

Isaac takes a few steps back toward the door. The suit he’s in looks near-black in the dimmed lighting. “Enjoy your stay.”

“Thanks,” I say. “Oh… wait a second.”

“Yes?”

“Do you want a nightcap?”

The presumptuous words hang in the air between us, filling the giant suite with tension. My hand curls around the plush fabric of a pillow.

But then he nods. “Yes.”

I walk to the well-stocked minibar, but in this place, absolutely nothing deserves the prefix mini. The bottles are full-sized.

Isaac joins me, opening the built-in wine cooler with the ease of someone who’s been in this suite a lot. He pulls out a bottle of white, and I catch the label. It’s a Chardonnay.

“You remembered,” I murmur.

“Of course.” He pours me a glass and himself one of brandy before we settle on the oversized couches. I want to draw my legs up beneath me and resist the impulse. The suite is too pristine and filled with too much history. It feels like I’m on a movie set or at a museum.

Look, but don’t touch.

“Will you tell me more about this suite?”

He takes a sip from his glass and clears his throat. “What do you want to know?”

“Who’s stayed here?”

“You want names?” he asks, an eyebrow rising.

“A few,” I say. “Maybe not too many, or I’ll never be able to fall asleep in that bed.”

He chuckles and stretches his legs out. “We change mattresses pretty frequently, especially in this suite.”

My mouth drops open. “Because it gets so…”

“To make sure the springs are fresh,” he says. “Get your mind out of the gutter.”

I laugh. “God, the things I was picturing.”

“I can only imagine.” He taps a finger against the tumbler, and it makes a soft clicking sound. “All right, so you want some names. How about these…” he says and goes on to recite a long list.

My eyes grow wider with every single one. “Oh,” I say, “my God.”

His lips curve. “Yeah. It sounds a bit unreal all laid out like that.”

“The last two you mentioned… did you have to sanitize the suite after they were done?”

Isaac snorts. “My dad had the whole suite reupholstered and scrubbed down with bleach. This is confidential, but every glass surface had traces of cocaine on it.”

“Oh my God.”

“It was the nineties,” he says, “and they were the biggest stars in the world at the time.”

“Do you interact with them? The guests who stay here, I mean?”

“Not often.” He looks down at the glass in his hands. “That sort of thing loses its appeal pretty fast. Besides, guests of that caliber aren’t here to talk to the staff.”

“You’re not exactly staff.”

“Oh,” he says, and there’s humor in his voice, “to a foreign president visiting for a UN summit, or to a young pop star with an entourage, I am very much the staff.”

“I guess I’ve never thought of it like that.” Isaac and his family are giants on the New York stage, and he’s a giant in the world of hospitality, but his name might not be one every household knows.

I look away from his dark eyes. The coffee table sports a few huge books, along with the vase of flowers.

“Look,” I say. “The Winter coffee-table book would look stunning on here.”

He chuckles. “Always working, Sophia?”

“It’s hard to turn it off sometimes.”

“I know all about that,” he says, and I know he means it. “Although, you might just have me beat here. You came to the hotel to spend a night off just for research.”

I run a hand along my neck. My hair is drying, and without a blow drier, it’s quickly becoming a frizzy mess, braid or no braid.

“Well, I wasn’t just here to do research.”

“You weren’t?”

I shrug. “Well, today is technically my wedding anniversary.”

His eyebrows rise. “It is?”

“Yes, and it’s the first since the divorce, and I didn’t want to sit at home. I figured that using the lovely spa you’d shown me and ordering room service would make the day… better.”

It had also been something to placate my mother and my sister. Both had called today, and I love them for their thoughtfulness. But there’s only so many questions about how I’m feeling that I can handle. You could come back home, had been said by both.

I’d sent them a picture of the spa area and told them I was treating myself. My mom had responded with six thumbs up and a heart emoji.

“I would have thought this particular hotel would be a difficult place to be,” Isaac says, “especially on an anniversary.”

I look down at my wine. “I’ve already been here for work, and that’s taken the edge off the memory. Besides, I can’t let him ruin the best hotel in New York for me, can I?”

“You know, I agree with that,” Isaac says. But there’s a frown marring his face, making the lines around his eyes deeper.

Maybe I’ve overstepped. Here I am, talking about myself and my divorce. Again.

I’m like a broken record.

I take a long sip of my wine, the sorry hovering on my tongue.

“Look,” Isaac says, and his voice is rougher around the edges. “About the thing we spoke about last week. In DC.”

“Oh?”

His eyes are steady on mine. “I suggested we go together to the benefit in a few weeks, where your ex-husband will be a guest, too.”

Heat rushes to my cheeks. He must think I’m pathetically hung up on Percy, a man he’s made clear he doesn’t particularly respect.

“I remember,” I say.

The benefit is one of the few social things over the past months I haven’t been able to get out of. And now, I don’t want to, either. I want to show up and prove… well. What, I don’t even know.

That I’m still here. That I’m doing great. That Percy made the biggest mistake of his goddamn life.

“I just want to say,” Isaac continues, “that the offer still stands.”

“I couldn’t possibly ask you to do that.”

“It would be helpful for us,” he says, and his jaw works. “I guess, I have somewhat of an… unconventional proposal.”

“You do?”

“Being seen with you would benefit me as well.”

My mind goes perfectly blank. I can’t think of a single reason why that might be. My social capital in these circles is a pebble to his mountain, and lesser still after the divorce.

“It would? Why?”

“I mentioned my family,” he says. “The insistent ones.”

“I remember.”

“Well, they’re under the misapprehension that I don’t date. Ever.”

“But you do?” I ask. It’s not meant to sound incredulous, but the conversation is taking a turn I can’t quite follow.

His mouth thins. “Yes, I do. Just not very publicly.”

“Right,” I say. “Okay.”

“Let me bring you as my date,” he says, “and we’ll make a statement. To your ex-husband, and to my family and friends.”

The idea is outrageous. Inappropriate on as many levels as this hotel has floors. I can’t. I know I can’t. And yet the part of me I’m not proud of—the petty, revengeful part that still replays the image of Percy on top of his mistress in that hotel room—sees this for the opportunity it is.

I swallow. “Are you absolutely sure it would serve your purposes, as well?”

He chuckles. “Yes. Trust me, you’d be doing me a favor.”

“What about our work?”

“It won’t be affected,” he says. “I can keep the two separate.”

“Well, you said you prefer to keep business and pleasure separate.”

He lifts an eyebrow. “Pleasure?”

“Oh, never mind. I guess this will technically also be business. Just of a different sort?”

“Yes,” he says, and his voice sounds gruffer. “Just business.”

“People at my company might find out.”

“I don’t think it would be a problem,” he says. “You’re not doing anything wrong by dating a project client. If anything, we can say that we used the events to talk more about the pitch. It’s networking. I know it’s big in the consulting industry.”

“It is,” I admit. “Meetings are often held… anywhere. I have a colleague who likes to have them on the golf course.”

He nods. “Right.”

“Gosh, can we do this? Really? I would love to. Just to see the look on Percy’s face…”

“I promise you this, too. If it ever becomes a problem, I’ll call St. Clair and set the record straight. He’ll accept that the lapse in judgement was on my side.”

I look at the man opposite me. There’s not a hair out of place on his head, and the intensity in his eyes tells the tale of a man who lives and breathes control.

Lapse in judgement and Isaac Winter don’t belong in the same sentence.

“Okay,” I say and make what might be the second biggest mistake of my life. But I’ve already made the biggest, and that was saying “I do” on this very day four years ago.

There’s something freeing about having had your life fall apart. After that, there’s very little else to worry about losing.

“What do you think?” he asks.

I take a deep breath. “I’d love to go with you to the benefit. If you need to sell the image of us as… dates to your family, I promise to uphold my side.”

“As do I,” he says, and there’s a dark promise in his words. “I know how to make Percy jealous.”

I have to stand to reach him, and he rises too, accepting my outstretched hand. It’s the first time we’ve touched since we shook hands weeks ago, surrounded by our teams.

His hand is strong and warm around mine. “Just business,” he says and shakes my hand.

A shiver races up my spine. “Yes. Just business… and revenge.”

He releases my hand. It’s a slow slide of his palm against mine, and then he steps away, voice curved around the edges with a smile. “Always a pleasure working with you, Sophia.”